‘Yes, I do. I’ll ring my cousin and tell him you’re not to be trusted. That if he wants anyone to look after his son, it should be me, his blood relative, not a complete stranger.’
‘You think he hadn’t thought of that? You think he wasn’t planning on offering you the job, until he saw how dismissive you were of Ethan that weekend we were there?’
‘I was not dismissive. I was just busy, talking to —’
‘The sheep farmer who is now your boyfriend who you have talked about incessantly since then? Just as well you weren’t supposed to be minding Ethan, then, isn’t it?’
‘But if I’d known it was an informal job interview, of course I’d have paid more attention to him. It’s not fair, Charlotte. What is it, a paid job for the rest of their time here?’
‘Not exactly. A paid seven-days-a-week job. Well, not quite seven days. I get a day-and-a-half off each week.’
‘It’s full-time? But how? What about school?’
‘Have you forgotten we finish school at the end of the year? Or that those of us who have already decided not to bother sitting exams that we already know we’re going to fail can finish up any time we like, particularly once we turn eighteen and are officially adults?’
Celia blinked. ‘You’re leaving school early?’ At Charlotte’s nod, Celia only looked more confused. ‘But what do your parents think about that? And how can it be full-time? My cousin and Ethan are only in Australia for another ten days. We’re having a farewell party for them next week.’
‘I know. I’m helping organise it. It’s a farewell to Australia party for them and for me.’
Celia went still. ‘You’re going back with them? Back to America? You?’
Charlotte made a mock bow. ‘You are looking at the newly appointed full-time Chicago-based rather-well-paid if-you-don’t-mind-me-saying nanny to one Master Ethan Giles.’
‘No way. Ethan’s my relation. If anyone goes to America, it should be me.’
‘But you weren’t offered the job, Celia. I was. You’ve barely ever spoken to Ethan.’
‘He’s a kid, what could I possibly have to say to him?’
‘It’s your loss. Ethan’s great. I really like him and he really likes me. We’re friends.’
‘Friends? He’s an eight-year-old boy. How can you be friends? What are you up to, Charlotte? You’re going to go over there, have all your expenses paid, get your green card and then just disappear? Leave them in the lurch? That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘Why can’t it be just what it seems?’
‘Because it’s you. Because this is all completely out of character and I don’t trust your reasons. And I don’t believe your parents have agreed to it, either. They’re hardly going to let you go off across to the other side of the world with a pair of complete strangers to do a job you’re not remotely qualified to do. Have they even met my cousin? How do they know he’s not going to make a pass at you the moment you’re on the plane?’ She stared at Charlotte then. ‘Oh, my God. That’s it, isn’t it? He already has. You’re having an affair with my cousin. Charlotte, you tramp.’
Charlotte laughed. ‘Celia, for God’s sake. No, I’m not having an affair with your cousin and nor is there a flame of desire flickering between us, waiting to combust as soon as we land on American soil. You’re right. My parents probably won’t agree to this. In fact, I’m sure they’ll be horrified at the idea, but the fact is, the moment I turn eighteen —’ She lifted her wrist and glanced at her watch, ‘which is in less than one week, four days, three hours and whatever number of minutes, I am in charge of my own life, my own passport and my own future, and there’s nothing they can do about it.’
‘You bitch.’
‘Do you know, you’re the second person lately to call me that? The first one was my sister and look what happened to her. Watch out, Celia. I seem to have supernatural powers of revenge that I barely know the extent of myself.’
‘You did this deliberately, didn’t you? Made friends with me, talked me into inviting you away for weekends with me and my family, set your sights —’
‘Oh, Celia, stop it, would you? How could I have engineered it? Look at the facts. You took me to a boring party, I got talking to some kid who turns out to be great fun. He invites me to his birthday party, then to the zoo while his dad is working. I do it. More fun. And to the beach. And the museum. We have a good laugh and he entertains me more than any other male I’ve ever met. Then, out of the blue, his dad offers me a full-time job, all expenses paid, back home in Chicago. Now, I might be brilliant and I might be scheming, but even I couldn’t have seen that point A would lead to point B.’
‘But I’ve always wanted to go to Chicago.’ Celia was now whining.
‘And if you promise to be very nice to me, and stop this frankly slanderous carry-on, I’ll let you come and visit me one day.’
‘You’ll let me? They’re my family, remember.’
‘Oh, yes. But remember, it’s the hand that rocks the cradle – or in my case, the hand that holds the joystick – that rules the world.’
Celia finally started to laugh, even as she picked up a pillow and threw it across the room at Charlotte. ‘You really are a bitch. You know that, don’t you?’
Charlotte grinned. ‘Yes. But I’m a very nice soon-to-be-Chicago-based bitch.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Afterwards, Gracie always thought of that day as Black Monday. She’d read the term during her history studies, something about a stock-market crash that had taken place in New York, one bad thing happening after another, bringing the whole world tumbling down. It had been like that in her house. A phone call from Charlotte had started it. Gracie answered it and had a quick chat with Charlotte before going to fetch her mother.
‘I hope you’ve got good news for her,’ Gracie said before she put down the phone. ‘Everyone’s so cranky around here lately. We need cheering up.’
‘Oh, it’s great news, Gracie. I promise. For me, anyway.’
Gracie crossed her fingers that it was something to do with Charlotte’s stand-off about Hope. A trial visit home, perhaps, on the condition that Hope stay locked up in her room, out of Charlotte’s sight? Or an in-between plan, that they all meet up somewhere in neutral surroundings to break the ice? There were so many possibilities. It only seemed right and proper that she stay in earshot when her mother picked up the phone extension in the kitchen. There was a long silence as Charlotte explained her good news. Gracie could hardly believe her ears when her mother shouted down the phone in reply.
‘Moving to America? Next month? You’re doing no such thing.’
Another silence, but this one was short-lived. Gracie was grateful that her mother’s astonishment at Charlotte’s news meant she kept repeating what Charlotte was telling her. ‘You? A nanny? You’re just a child yourself. No, eighteen is not an adult in my eyes. Yes, we can stop you. What about a passport?’ A long pause. ‘Don’t you be sarcastic with me. Yes, I remember you on the plane from England. Charlotte, you can’t. It’s a ridiculous idea. Yes, I am forbidding you. I can. I want you to talk to your father first, before you do anything, agree to anything. No, don’t hang up. Please, wait there.’
Gracie heard the phone clunk onto the table as Eleanor ran out, calling for Henry. Gracie knew he was fixing a tap in the stables apartment. They’d be a few minutes at least. She crept into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
‘Charlotte?’ she whispered.
‘Gracie?’ Charlotte sounded relaxed and amused. ‘Are you eavesdropping again?’
‘I’m trying to, but I only heard Mum’s side of the story. What’s going on?’
‘I’ve been offered a job, Gracie. A great job, in Chicago.’
‘America Chicago?’
‘Chicago, Illinois, America, to be exact. Starting the day I turn eighteen, as nanny to a fortunately adorable eight-year-old boy who has even more fortunately fallen in love with me and told his very rich father that I, Charlotte Templeton,
and only I, can do the job.’
‘But you can’t go! I was going to throw you a surprise eighteenth birthday party!’
‘Gracie, I am going. I’m sorry. And I don’t want a party, thanks anyway. I hate fusses.’
‘But we’ll miss you so much! It’s been bad enough you being in Melbourne.’
‘I had to spread my wings one day. I’m just going away for a few years, not dying, and we can ring or write in the meantime. Oh, Gracie, please don’t cry.’
Gracie couldn’t help it. ‘But what about our family? Templeton Hall? We’re in enough trouble as it is. We can’t manage without you.’
‘What trouble?’
Quickly, with her eye on the door, Gracie told her about their parents’ fights over bills, about the dropping visitor numbers, about Hope and Audrey still being locked in their rooms and even Spencer losing complete interest in the guiding now Tom was around. ‘It’s a mess, Charlotte. I’m the only one who even seems to care about the Hall any more.’
‘Gracie, you were the only one who ever cared about it. It was never going to last. Dad’s ideas never do. And don’t worry about Hope or Audrey, either. Can’t you see they’re just looking for attention? Especially Audrey, with that ridiculous non-talking. The best thing you can do is ignore the pair of them. I know I would.’
‘But —’
‘Gracie, give me the phone please.’
It was her serious-faced father, with her even more serious-faced mother standing behind him. Gracie handed over the phone and then went straight into the hall cupboard to hide.
For the rest of the day, there was nothing but talk about Charlotte’s news. Even Audrey emerged from her room long enough to join in. While she’d stopped wearing the sunglasses, she still wasn’t speaking to anyone. She was asked again and again by her parents if she’d had any idea. She shook her head firmly, finally reaching for her notepad. She knew that Charlotte had been to some parties with Celia, she wrote, but the rest of it was news to her.
‘She can’t go, can she?’ Gracie pleaded. ‘We don’t know anything about these people.’
‘If she’s telling us the truth, we can find out all we need to about this Mr Giles by reading a few back issues of the Wall Street Journal,’ Henry said. ‘According to her, he’s one of the most successful property developers in the US. Charlotte also informed me he’s divorced from his son’s mother, has full custody of his son and is now involved with but not planning to marry a high-flying corporate lawyer in New York. And before any of you ask this as well, Charlotte assures me she isn’t and has no intention of having an affair with him. And no, Gracie, I won’t explain what I mean.’
‘But she’s never been to America, let alone Chicago,’ Eleanor said, upset. ‘You have to stop her, Henry.’
‘I can’t, Eleanor. She’s eighteen, with a passport. She can fly to the moon if she wants.’
Henry was right. It was soon clear that there was no stopping Charlotte. Despite a constant series of phone calls, threats, cajolings, stand-offs and even tears from Eleanor during one call, she refused to back down. She was going to Chicago with Ethan and his dad and that was that, and what’s more, she wasn’t coming back to Templeton Hall to say goodbye. If they wanted to see her, and more to the point, if they wanted to meet Ethan and Ethan’s father in person, they’d have to come to Melbourne.
One week later, Charlotte stood outside her boarding school waving goodbye to her family. Thank God that was over. She loved her family, she did, but she was now well and truly ready to put many thousands of kilometres between them.
At least the lunch meeting between her parents and her new employer had gone well, all things considered. Mr Giles had been his usual businesslike self, Ethan adorable. Charlotte’s parents had fired question after question at Mr Giles at first, to Charlotte’s embarrassment, but after the first tense twenty minutes, the conversation had settled and become quite jovial. Her father and Mr Giles had discovered a mutual interest in eighteenth-century clocks, and it had been obvious that her mother had been quite charmed by Ethan’s good manners and intelligence. Spencer hadn’t seemed to care one way or the other, far more interested in trying to impress that nice boy Tom, who’d come for the trip to Melbourne too. Audrey and Hope hadn’t come, to Charlotte’s relief. The more Gracie had told her about their behaviour recently, the more furious Charlotte had become. Her parents had to realise they were feeding off each other’s dramas, surely?
‘Don’t indulge them, Gracie,’ she advised her little sister. ‘Neither of them will start behaving if everyone’s always at their beck and call.’
Gracie had been very cute all day, snuggling next to her at the restaurant table, whispering to Charlotte that she hoped she would be happy, that if she ever needed to confide in anyone about how things were going in Chicago, all she had to do was ring and Gracie would be all ears.
Gracie had even cried when Charlotte was hugging everyone goodbye. Charlotte saw tears in her mother’s eyes too, and maybe even a glimmer in her father’s, but she’d pretended she hadn’t, saying to them both, as she’d been saying all along, what a great adventure going to Chicago was, and how she’d phone home once a week. They weren’t to worry about her. It was a fantastic opportunity and of course it was all going to work out. All true, too. She was just relieved there wouldn’t be another family farewell at the airport in ten days’ time. She’d insisted. This was the start of her independence, after all.
Returning to her dormitory with the suitcase of belongings that her mother had brought down from the Hall for her, Charlotte wished she was athletic enough to do a leap in the air and click her heels together like an old-fashioned movie star. No chance of that. As she walked briskly down the corridor to her room, she settled for singing a loud and enthusiastically off-key version of Frank Sinatra’s ‘Chicago’ instead.
Back at Templeton Hall, Gracie spent the first few days after the Melbourne trip feeling sad and tidying up Charlotte’s already tidied-up room. It looked so bare now that her clothes and knickknacks were gone. It still felt strange to think her sister wouldn’t be in the same country as her any more. Gracie had already written Charlotte a long letter, and Charlotte hadn’t even left yet. On the bright side, at least the trip to Melbourne had been good fun and Ethan seemed like a nice little boy. She hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to his father, unfortunately. ‘Very businesslike and straightforward,’ she’d heard her parents describe him. He was also very old and ugly, in Gracie’s opinion.
Audrey had written her a note asking how the Melbourne trip had gone, but Gracie decided to follow Charlotte’s advice and not tell her much. ‘I’ll only answer your questions when you ask me, not when you put them in writing, Audrey, okay?’ Audrey had just written two rude words in her notebook and gone back to her room again.
At least one good thing happened that week. On the fourth day after the Melbourne trip, Nina finally came back home from Cairns. Gracie let her and Tom have two hours back home alone together before she ran across the paddocks to their house. There was so much to tell her.
Tom was outside practising his bowling against the tank. Gracie gave him a big wave and told him she’d be back in a minute, then went straight inside. To her dismay, Nina was on the phone, looking very serious, holding a letter in her hand. She gave Gracie only the briefest of nice-to-see-you-again smiles before she kept talking. Gracie got a bad feeling in her stomach. Nina was frowning and asking lots of questions. ‘But doesn’t he have to give me more notice than that?’ More listening, more questions and finally goodbye.
‘Is everything okay?’ Gracie asked, hoping it wasn’t more sad news about her sister.
Nina looked unhappy. ‘I’m afraid not, Gracie. It’s about this house.’ She explained that the owner had decided to sell. ‘So they’re ending our lease. Asking us to move out, in other words.’
This was almost as bad as Charlotte leaving. Gracie stood up. ‘But, Nina, you can’t move out! You can’t leave us! Can’t y
ou buy it?’
‘No, Gracie. I can’t afford it.’
‘But what about Tom and his cricket practice? Where will he do it if he hasn’t got lots of space and a tank to throw against? And what about Tom and Spencer’s agreement? And our friendship? Nina, please, you can’t move away.’
‘I don’t think we have any choice, Gracie. I’m sorry.’
Gracie didn’t stay long after that. She was too unhappy.
That night, back at Templeton Hall, Gracie asked her father if he could loan Nina the money she needed to buy the house.
‘If I could, I would, Gracie. But I’m afraid we don’t have that kind of money either.’
‘But what will they do?’
‘They’ll find another house to rent,’ Eleanor said. ‘They’ll be fine, Gracie. Wait and see.’
Gracie knew her mother wasn’t just being nice. She’d heard her ring Nina after Gracie came home and told them the news. Gracie was pleased they were friendly but she also hoped her mother understood that Nina was her special friend.
‘But if she moves closer into town, I won’t be able to visit her every day.’
‘Worry about that when you have to, Gracie. All sorts of things might happen yet.’
The next morning over breakfast, Gracie couldn’t believe her ears when she heard her parents’ idea. Her mother told her first and then her father repeated it.
‘Don’t get too excited yet though, Gracie,’ he said. ‘It might not suit Nina. She might prefer to be in town.’
‘But of course it will suit her! It’s a perfect idea!’ She wished she’d thought of it herself.
She heard her mother phone Nina, but to her torment, her mother would only tell her that Nina was ‘considering it’. Gracie lasted an hour, before slipping outside and running over to Nina’s house. She started talking as soon as she saw her.
‘Have you decided, Nina? Please say yes. Don’t you think it’s the perfect solution?’
‘Gracie, it’s taken me by surprise. I haven’t had a chance yet to —’
At Home with the Templetons Page 22