Bad Heir Day (10 page)

“But I’m only asking you to pick up my goddamn lighter,” Jett had protested. “You know I can’t bend down that low with my goddamn back problems.”

“I don’t care,” Cassandra had shrieked. “You’ve gone too far this time. You’re disgusting.”

“OK then, I’ll pick it up myself,” Jett had drawled. “And you can pay the goddamn osteopath’s bill,” he had grimaced a few minutes later, clutching his spine in one hand and flicking the tiny silver microphone lighter furiously on and off with the other as he headed through the door to spend the rest of the night in the spare bedroom. Cassandra sighed. Most men Jett’s age only wanted sex once a year—and usually not from their wives even then.

“…a vote of thanks for Kate,” Polly Rice-Brown was saying when Cassandra tuned back in. Cassandra glanced enviously down the table in the direction of Kate Tressell’s flawlessly chic porridge linen Mao jacket. Then there was the Cartier Tank on the narrow wrist, whose thinness implied steely self-control and whose tan hinted at regular trips to the second home in Tuscany. Trust Kate Tressell always to wear the right thing, as well as have the right job being the nation’s favourite current affairs anchorwoman, as respected for her brain as for her shapely bottom. She also had the right husband—happening architect Julian Tressell who combined building Britain’s most talked-about edifices—such as his famous Tressell table which sank into the floor when not in use—with presenting a successful TV programme on the history of architecture. Kate also had the right haircut, dark-blonde and expensively tousled. And the waft of discreetly delicious perfume that had just entered Cassandra’s nostrils from Kate’s direction was, no doubt, the right smell.

“How does Kate manage to be the hottest thing in broadcasting, not to mention being one of the most proactive of St. Midas’s mothers?” simpered Polly, echoing Cassandra’s boiling thoughts. “Really, she’s an example to us all…”

The rest of the table sat and listened to Polly’s encomium about how, without Kate’s determination and, more importantly, her contacts, the schools new state-of-the-art TV studio would never have got past first base. Or off the drawing board of Julian, who had designed it. The TV studio was intended not only to elevate St. Midas’s facilities for its pupils into an entirely different league to that of even its closest competitors, but also to provide a training ground for the producers and presenters of tomorrow, amongst whose ranks Kate and Julian’s daughters Savannah and Siena were obviously intended to feature.

Savannah and Siena, no doubt, would dominate the chattering classes of the future as easily as they excelled in the Kumon maths classes of today. They and their parents were easily the brightest stars in St. Midas’s mini-firmament. And it was for this reason more than any other that Cassandra had come to the meeting.

Her mantelpiece—in infuriating contrast to Fenella Greatorex’s—
still
being inexplicably innocent of an invitation to Savannah and Siena’s birthday party, Cassandra had decided to screw her courage to the sticking place and
force
Kate Tressell to invite Zak. After all, the children certainly
got on;
Savannah and Siena were almost unique among St. Midas’s pupils for
not
having been the victims of some of Zak’s more hilarious pranks. And there had been so many of those high-spirited expressions of Zak’s boundless humour and creativity—Cassandra had only to raise her eyes and recall the time Zak had shut Milo Hope-Stanley in the garage overnight. Or when he had helped himself to the foie gras in Fenella Greatorex’s fridge that was intended for a client-clinching dinner party.
Then
he had been sick all over the sisal. She quickly lowered her eyes again.

Zak had never done anything remotely like this to Savannah and Siena, although preventing him
had
,
Cassandra thought ruefully, taken more persuasion than Jane Austen. So why, why,
why
had she not been granted dropping-off and picking-up rights to the birthday party? Cassandra clutched her fists so hard under the table that her knuckles turned white. Zak simply
had
to be there. After the appearance of Cherie Blair and the First Kids at last year’s celebration had prompted a rash of newspaper articles about Power Children’s Parties, the Tressell bash had become the most talked-about children’s event since the Pied Piper hit Hamelin.

Cassandra hardly noticed the meeting moving on. Her mind was locked on to the party like a barnacle on the hull of a boat. She felt panic rising; had she not, for the past month at least, tried to impress on Zak that if he didn’t get an invitation, there would be hell to pay? And there had been plenty to pay already—Zak had been connected to the Internet on the grounds that last year’s summons had been sent out by e-mail. Cassandra had heard that this year’s was some sort of smart card pass. Surely the invitation, whatever form it took, would come soon? She looked desperately at Kate’s smiling face as she acknowledged the applause for her efforts. How on earth could she introduce the subject? Perhaps over a cup of coffee afterwards? But what would she
say
?

Kate’s minimal makeup made Cassandra wonder anew if she’d needed
quite
so much lipstick on herself. But then, some of the mothers coming to these parents’ meetings hired makeup artists for the occasion. And why not? St. Midas’s, after all, was not any old school. It was a power prep of the first order. Which was why securing an invitation to its most sought-after event was so
vital
.
Cassandra felt sick. She
couldn’t
go home empty-handed. If Zak wasn’t asked, they’d have to change schools; there would be nothing else for it, the shame would be too much to bear. But Zak had already changed schools so often due to what Cassandra could only put down to the lack of
imagination
of the head teachers, there were precious few left for him to go to—landing a place at St. Midas’s had been a miracle of the first order. But even so, and without losing her sense of proportion
too
much, the rest of Zak’s
life
depended on this party.

She swallowed hard and tried to refocus on the matter in hand. The meeting had by now moved on from the much-anticipated joys of the about-to-open studio—“Can you imagine, a mini
Question Time
?
We could make a pilot and try and get the Beeb to squeeze it in between Blue Peter and the six o’clock news…”—to the next item on the agenda. Some group of bleeding hearts, Cassandra noted with scorn, were suggesting that St. Midas’s set up an outreach link with London’s underprivileged—“Holiday work with the homeless so that the children would gain some understanding of those considerably worse off than themselves,” as the movement’s main spokeswoman put it. Cassandra listened with contempt. Who in God’s name wanted to understand anyone
worse off
?
The whole
point
of St. Midas’s was to meet as many rich and useful people as possible. But the bitter core of her loathing was reserved, not for these ludicrous sentiments, but the fact that their mouthpiece was that
bloody
Fenella Greatorex. Whose son
had
been invited to The Party.

“I mean, it’s the
homeless
I just can’t bear to see,” Fenella sighed.

“Oh,
absolutely
,”
burst out Cassandra. “I mean, if they
have
to lie around all over the pavements, why can’t they do it in nicer sleeping bags? Those disgusting blue flowery ones are
so
unstylish. They really ought to have more consideration.”

A frozen silence followed. Cassandra smirked to herself.
That
put the bleeding heart lefties in their place once and for all. The shocked expressions round the table reminded her of the time, several meetings ago, when she had admitted to spending Zak’s child benefit on Chateau Lafite.

“Um, well,” Polly Rice-Brown said, after a plethora of throat clearing. “Perhaps we could think about that while we move on to the next item, the Promises auction. Which, hopefully, will get the fund-raising for our next project, the film-editing suite, off to a great start.”

Cassandra’s dormant interest in any other subject but The Party was briefly stirred. The film-editing suite would, with luck, encourage Zak’s obvious acting ability and get his film star career off to a great start as well. Her secret dream, apart from securing The Invitation, was that Zak star as Alaric St. Felix in the blockbuster film version of
Impossible Lust
,
the only one of her books to be optioned by a film studio and still, as it had been for the past five years, stuck in Development Hell. “Impossible Film,” Jett sneeringly called it.

To demonstrate her devotion to the project, Cassandra had come up with what she confidently expected to be the most sought-after item in the auction. Surely even Kate Tressell would be impressed with this.

“Well, thanks, everyone, for promising such wonderful things,” Polly Rice-Brown said, half an hour later. Wonderful my
arse
,
thought Cassandra sourly. What on earth was the use of Caroline Hope-Stanley’s offer of a year’s supply of horse manure from their weekend place in Oxfordshire? “For the garden, of course,” Caroline had snapped when Cassandra had said as much. Or Polly Rice-Brown’s wildly over-generous year’s subscription to her bloody newspaper? Much as it pained Cassandra to admit it, the detox day at a health farm promised by Fenella Greatorex almost nudged the borders of reasonableness—until one reflected on the fact that Strydgel Grange was, quite apart from being firmly on the health spa B list, one of Fenella’s own PR accounts.

Cassandra’s own contribution had not quite been the one she had intended. Her original offer of an autographed boxed set of her own works was unexpectedly dismissed out of hand on the grounds that the purpose of the auction was to raise the school’s profile, not any of the mothers’ (Cassandra had dwelt bitterly but silently on Fenella Greatorex’s spa at this point).
In extremis
,
she had had to come up with a substitute. VIP seats at the Solstice reunion concert being deemed similarly unsuitable, Cassandra had eventually been pressed into offering to cook a dinner party for eight
at her home
.
Or rather, offering Anna to cook for it, and the cheapest way possible. Was pasta and pesto, Cassandra wondered, a socially acceptable dish?

The end of the meeting was now in sight. As the smell of coffee drifted over from the kitchen wing, Cassandra braced herself to buttonhole Kate Tressell—despite the fact that the latter’s Mao jacket had no obvious buttons on it. Leaping to her feet, the leather seat ripping from the backs of her thighs, Cassandra stumbled, eyes watering, in Kate’s wake as she headed with remarkable speed for the hallway.

“Just one thing,” Polly called, holding up a hand to the half-dissolved meeting. “Kate’s had to dash, but she wanted to suggest the auction be held at Siena and Savannah’s birthday party. She thought it would be something for the parents there to do.”

Cassandra’s heart sank. Following the rest of the herd into Polly’s Provençal-style kitchen, she wondered whether to commit hara-kiri with one of the large knives protruding from the olive-wood butchers block. The worst had happened. She had secured neither invitation nor word with Kate Tressell. Suicide seemed the only option.

About the same time as Cassandra took her seat at the highly polished conference table, two men behind the counter of a little French cafe in Kensington burst into flamboyant and flirtatious life as a curvaceous girl with long brown hair and precisely applied lipstick made her entrance. Geri, Anna saw as she followed in her wake, was clearly a regular.

“So tell me what’s going on,” Geri said, as they sat nursing cappuccinos. “Why have you departed from my carefully constructed, individually tailored personal goal-achieving plan?”

Anna’s face stayed frozen. “I
haven’t
,”
she said evenly. “As a matter of fact I’m sticking to it like glue. I’m
supposed
to be Cassandra’s assistant. She’s
supposed to
be teaching me to write.”

Geri raised an eyebrow and lit a cigarette. “I see. When did you start?”

“Today’s my second day.”

“Which means,” Geri said, “you’ve been with her a full twenty-four hours. That puts you streets ahead of some of Cassandra’s past nannies. One lasted about ten minutes, I believe.”

“How many has she got through?” Anna’s voice had lowered to a horrified croak. Her heart thumped against her rib cage and, despite the fact she was sitting down, her knees shook uncontrollably.

“Well,” grinned Geri cheerfully, “you’re the seventh this year, at a conservative estimate. I expect Cassandra just forgot to tell you about the others.”

Anna was silent. It was all very well for high-powered career girl Geri to think her predicament the most enormous joke.

“But the good news,” Geri continued, “is that you’re in a
brilliant
position.”

“I
am
?”

“Yes. All us nannies are.”

“You’re a
nanny
?”
Anna gawped at Geri in amazement. “But what was all that about management consultancy and executive responsibility? I thought you were the head of Unilever at the very least. A captain of industry.”

Geri took a bite from her croissant and grinned at Anna as she chewed. Her other hand still held the cigarette.

“But I
am
,”
she said. “We both are. We’re valuable commodities in one of the most highly sought-after sectors of the economy. That of childcare provision.”

Anna snorted. “You
are
joking? I feel about as valuable and sought-after as yesterday’s copy of the
Sun
.”

“Don’t you
see
?
It’s a complete seller’s market,” Geri continued enthusiastically. “Play your cards right and you have the pick of who you work for, you can practically write your own salary cheque, you get glamorous holidays thrown in and get paid for going on them, you don’t pay tax or National Insurance, there are no overheads whatsoever, and there are plenty of perks. I, for instance, have a company car.”

Anna stared. “A
company
car?”

“Sure. You have to see the families you work for as companies. Some of which perform well, others not so well. Your job is to help them improve their performance.”

“
Performance
?”
gasped Anna, to whom the idea of the family as a unit floated on the stock exchange of life was an altogether new one. “But how on earth do you
measure
it?”

Geri gave a short laugh. “Let me count the ways,” she grinned. “Like any company, through the achievements of its individual members and of the group as a whole. For children, there is a practically endless list of fields in which they are expected to compete and excel. Some of their timetables are more crammed than their parents’…”

Anna suddenly remembered the list of Zak’s after-school lessons.

“Academic performance, for example,” Geri continued. “The competition among parents even before the school stage is incredible. I’ve worked for people whose nursery floors are covered with rough sisal matting so the child will be discouraged from crawling and learn to walk more quickly.”

“
No
!”

“Oh yes. Some of my past employers set up entire pay structures incorporating performance-related bonuses if the baby learned to talk by a certain date. At the moment, for instance, I have to make sure Savannah and Siena can talk about current affairs at their parents’ power Sunday lunches. So every night we watch the six o’clock news and discuss it afterwards.”

Anna was speechless. Geri, meanwhile, was anything but.

“The key,” she said, stuffing in the last of the croissant, “is to identify your role in the corporate organisation and then exploit it. If you don’t believe me, ask the others. They’ve just come in.”

A laughing group were ordering at the counter. Anna recognised them as the same glamorous creatures she had seen milling about outside the gates of the school; a dark girl dressed entirely in white, a lanky man in a tight T-shirt, and two blondes—a rangy, bobbed one who sported loafers and cashmere, and a larger sporty-looking one. “You see that blonde with the bob?” Geri whispered. “That’s Alice. Worked for Cassandra about three months ago.” As a roar of laughter suddenly convulsed the group, Anna’s heart fell out of her bottom and hit the stripped wood floor. The sick feeling in her stomach, she told herself sternly, must be due to her lack of breakfast.

“Hey, guys. Over here.” As the group began to look about them for seats, Geri waved frantically. “Come and meet the new recruit.”

Chairs borrowed from neighbouring tables were scraped across wooden floorboards as people shoved, exclaimed, giggled, and shuffled into position. In the end, everyone was squashed round the tiny marble table, which the waiter then attempted to pile with cappuccinos and croissants.

“This is Anna,” Geri announced. “She’s Zak Knight’s new nanny.” A collective gasp followed, then a silence interrupted by a giggle, followed by a snort which, much to Anna’s annoyance and intense embarrassment, soon achieved fullblown laugh status. Alice, Anna noted, was laughing hardest of all.

“Well, you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?” she sniffed, mopping a streaming eye. “Otherwise you’d cry.” She stopped as she caught Anna’s baleful glare.

“Let me introduce everyone,” Geri interrupted hastily. “This,” she said, gesturing at the large blonde girl who, Anna saw with interest, had a perfectly round face the colour of strong tea, “is Trace. Works for a journalist called Polly Rice-Brown. Cassandra knows her. Zak tried to kill her son once.”

“Wish she bladdy hed,” pronounced Trace in broad Australian tones. “Wouldda sived me doin’ it. Liddle
bastard
.”

“Oh, come on, Trace, you know you don’t mean that,” interjected the lanky youth who, besides his rangy figure, had big lips, high cheekbones, a heavy Eastern European accent, and subscribed to that variety of sexiness known as brooding. “You love Sholto,” he continued in the same flat monotone. “You just won’t admit it.”

Trace grinned. “Well, I suppose I
im
fond of the liddle
bastard
really. When I think what I could have inded up with…” She flicked a small-eyed glance at Anna.

“This is Slobodan,” Geri intervened, introducing the lanky youth. “He looks after the children of someone called Caroline Hope-Stanley, another of the St. Midas’s mothers.”

“You’re a nanny?” Anna exclaimed. “But you’re a
man
.”

Everyone laughed. Slobodan winked at her.

“Male nannies are
terribly
trendy at the moment,” Geri explained. “Particularly exotic ones. One of the St. Midas’s mothers has a rather dishy Japanese bloke called Hanuki, who was the first male Norlander. Slob’s from Bosnia. Lots of the mothers are starting to want men to look after their children—they’re more athletic and brilliant at games.”

“Yes, Caroline loves my games.” Slobodan narrowed his eyes
and grinned. He shifted in his seat, drawing attention to the very tight jeans straining across his crotch, and pushed back his floppy dark hair with both strong, tanned forearms.

“Slob’s a terrible flirt,” Geri said, rather unnecessarily. “The St. Midas’s mothers love him, despite the fact he insists on pickled fish sandwiches for breakfast. The Hope-Stanleys’ stock has shot through the roof since he came on the scene—they get invited to everything so everyone can flirt with Slob. He’s probably been through most of the mothers by now. And a few of the fathers as well.”

“Ees not true, Geri,” Slobodan protested, grinning. He winked at Anna. “Not
all
.
Not
yet
.”

He might be about as subtle as Benny Hill, Anna thought, smiling back, but he was
very
attractive. However, judging by the challenging way the dark-haired waif next to him was looking at her, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“I’m Allegra,” the girl breathed in an Italian accent of X-rated sexiness. “How do you do?” She over-pronounced the “H,” Anna noticed, in a way that made her large lips pout even further forward.

“Allegra’s even trendier than Slob,” Geri supplied. “She’s one of London’s first New Age nannies. She smears her children with oil and makes them take baths with lots of dirt and leaves in them.”

“Oh, Geri,” protested Allegra, pushing her lips out like drawers. “You know the hoils are hessential hoils, for the calming of the bambini, and they are sage baths with horris root, to promote ’appiness.”

“Allegra ees very good at massages as well,” Slobodan added, grinning. Anna smiled back, feeling slightly better. It was, she decided, like being in a nanny version of
Friends
.

“And this is Alice.” Geri waved at the girl with the blonde bob, whose face, Anna thought, was as long, flat, and pale as a new wooden spoon. “As I explained, she used to work for Cassandra and now works for someone called Shayla, whose husband’s a footballer. Now you’ve met everyone. I’ve just been telling Anna that being a nanny’s the best job in the world,” Geri added, to general murmurs of assent. “That we’ve got our employers round our little fingers. Trace has, in any case. Almost didn’t take her latest job because of the skiing—”

Anna nodded, feeling it was about time she said something. “Skiing’s not my strong point either,” she told Trace, who looked astonished.

Geri stepped in, grinning. “Trace
loves
skiing,” she explained. “The problem was that the Rice-Browns wanted to take her to Val D’Isère with them and Trace never skis anywhere but Aspen.”

Trace nodded triumphantly as she took a large mouthful of
pain au raisin
.
“They daren’t even take a holiday without checking with me whether it’s somewhere I want to go to and that the dates are convenient for me,” she assured Anna through a bad case of tumble-drier mouth. “I was saying to Polly only yesterday, do we have to go to Barbados
agin
?
Why not splish out and try the Maldives? So thit’s where we’re going.”

Anna stared.

“Trace gets poached more often than anyone else,” Geri explained. “The Rice-Browns are desperate to keep her, but she’ll go eventually. She gets great offers, all the time. Fighting off half the royal family at the moment, aren’t you, Trace?”

“Not that that’s saying
anything
,”
Alice chimed in. “I worked for some royals once and they were ghastly. Mean as mouseshit. Wrote the dates on the lightbulbs, for Christ’s sake. Rock stars are the best ones—at least I used to think so before, um…” Her voice faded into a cough as she avoided Anna’s gaze and pretended to splutter on her Marlboro. Anna blushed anew.

“But we’re all very jealous of Allegra,” Geri said hastily. “She’s worked for loads of celebrities, from Tom and Katie to Richard and Judy. She’s supposed to be writing a kids-and-tell book about it all, in fact.” Allegra pouted and raised an eyebrow. “But she’s got such a cushy number anyway,” Geri added. “Her family, the Anstruthers, are so anxious not to lose her, they’ve given her a Saab convertible and her own apartment with a Jacuzzi bath. She’s got them by the balls, haven’t you, darling? Quite literally, if all that stuff about you and Oliver Anstruther is true.”

Slobodan sucked his cheeks in thunderously, while Allegra smiled lazily. “
Si
, and I’ve already had offer of upgrade to Porsche Boxter from someone else.”

Anna was fascinated. She had never thought of nannies as ruthless executives before. Less Mary Poppins, more Gordon Gekko. The only things Poppins about Geri, Anna noticed, as they all stood up to leave, were the top few silver buttons of the short-skirted blue dress straining to hold back the brown tide of cleavage. That was Poppins out all over.

“Is that a uniform?” Anna asked pointedly as everyone started to drift out of the cafe. After all Geri’s self-determinist big talk, the clothes of subservience seemed something of a comedown. “Don’t you mind having to wear one?”

Geri threw back her shoulders, thrusting out her impressive bosom yet further. “
Mind
?”
she barked, slipping on a navy blue coat with distinct NHS overtones. “Far from it. I
insisted
on it, as a matter of fact. Best professional tool I’ve got. You look the part, no one argues with you when you’re in one, and”—she lowered her voice—“men
love
them.”

“Uh?” Anna was lost again.

Geri flashed her a sly smile. “Let’s just say that at my current employer there are benefits I’m planning to avail myself of when the market situation is right.” She paused and grinned. “I’m having some very interesting discussions with the CEO at the moment.”

Anna frowned. “You mean the father?”

Geri nodded. “He’s an architect and works a lot from home.” She paused and gave Anna the benefit of her dazzling smile. “You might say the situation’s building up nicely.”

***

Cassandra roared through Kensington crashing her gears and grinding her teeth. The SMSPA meeting had been a nightmare, and not only because of the non-materialisation of the party invitation. As she was leaving, Cassandra had overheard Fenella Greatorex mention that St. Midas’s was holding aptitude tests at the end of the week; when questioned, she had turned those huge cow’s eyes on Cassandra and said,
yes
,
absolutely, and hadn’t Cassandra got a letter about it?