Forget Me Not (14 page)

‘Can’t your nanny bring her?’ Citronella demanded.

‘I don’t have a nanny,’ I replied. ‘And my au pair takes Milly to Monkey Music on Thursday afternoons – and you love Monkey Music, don’t you, darling?’ Milly clapped her hands. ‘But I’ll let you know,’ I added, hoping that would conclude the conversation.

But it was clear that Citronella wasn’t done. ‘Is your gardening business going well?’ she asked.

‘Yes, thanks,’ I said, surprised at her sudden interest. I swatted away a wasp. ‘It’s a good time of year, of course, but I’m pretty busy.’

‘I see your partner, Xan, is too,’ she added slyly as she bit into a sausage roll.

‘Ye-es,’ I said again, profoundly regretting that I’d ever been stupid enough to mention Xan’s name, let alone what he did.

‘We’ve seen him on TV. He’s awfully good,’ she added as she flicked pastry flakes off her large lap.

‘Hmm.’ I wondered what this was leading up to. ‘Is Erasmus talking yet?’

‘I expect you’ll be glad when he’s back.’

‘Oh … we will – especially Milly – she adores her daddy, don’t you, poppet?’

‘Da-da!’ Milly beamed, dribbling happily.

I caught Jenny’s eye. ‘Well … I ought to circulate. Nice to see you again, Citronella,’ I lied.

She daintily licked the ends of each finger with a little sucking sound. ‘Funnily enough there’s a piece about him in this week’s
Hello!
.’

I felt as though I’d fallen down a mineshaft. ‘Really? I mean … he did tell me but I haven’t … bought it yet. I’ve been busy.’

‘I’ve got it with me,’ Citronella said innocently. ‘Would you like to see it?’

‘Er … OK,’ I said, my pulse racing. ‘Thanks.’

Citronella shifted her vast bulk – seemingly undiminished by childbirth – and returned a minute later with the magazine. ‘It’s on page 112,’ she said helpfully as she handed it to me. Then she began talking to Tanya on her other side. I found the page, quickly registered Xan’s photo among the other foreign correspondents they were profiling, then scanned the piece, my heart pounding.

Xan Marshall, thirty-nine … reports for the BBC from
Indonesia … based in Jakarta … former banker … Hong
Kong … Suddenly, my face was aflame. Marshall lives with
his girlfriend of six months, Trisha Fox, CNN’s South East
Asia reporter … Harvard-educated Miss Fox, twenty-eight,
is a rising star at CNN
…

I shut the magazine, my hands trembling, bile simmering at the back of my throat.

‘Are you OK?’ Jenny whispered.

‘Did you read it?’ I heard Citronella ask. ‘I haven’t read it myself yet,’ she added innocently.

‘Yes, thanks, I did.’ I handed it back to her and stood up, my legs shaking. ‘But Milly and I have to go now.’

‘What a shame,’ she said sweetly.

‘’Bye, Nicole,’ I said. ‘It’s been great.’

I was so upset that I couldn’t work for the rest of the day. I didn’t know what hurt me most – the verification of what I knew to be inevitable, or Citronella’s malice. When I’d seen Xan I’d been careful to confine the conversation strictly to Milly – it would have been too painful to know anything about his personal life.

‘Of course she’d read it,’ I said to Jenny when she phoned me later and I tearfully explained. ‘It was all so calculated. She
is
evil.’

‘She isn’t,’ Jenny insisted. ‘You don’t know what evil is, if you think that.’ Why did she always have to be so nit-picking about it, I wondered crossly. ‘But she’s certainly odious.’

‘What’ve I ever done to her?’ I wailed. The woman wasn’t just ivy – she was
poison
ivy.

‘You’ve done nothing,’ Jenny replied. ‘Which only goes to show that she must be unhappy.’

‘Unhappy? She’s the smuggest woman on earth. She’s always going on in her wretched column about how “blessed” and “fortunate” she is, and how “sad” or “brave” other people are.’

‘Exactly. She has to put everyone else at a disadvantage to her. But do genuinely happy people need to do that?’

‘No,’ I conceded after a moment. ‘They don’t.’

I briefly wondered what reason Citronella might have for being discontented – banker husband not rich enough? House in Luxembourg Gardens not huge enough? – before throwing her invitation into the bin.

Over the next few days I managed to persuade myself that Citronella had done me a favour. It was A Good Thing if Xan was attached because it meant that I’d have to relinquish any lingering feelings I still had for him and view him in a different way. I even comforted myself that I’d find someone else, though I couldn’t imagine this happening before Milly had left home – by which time I would be
fifty-one
. Saga material, I realised miserably.

Xan met Milly four more times before she was two. By then she was so smitten with him that she would rush to the television every time he was on and kiss it. The screen would be smudged with her little hand and lip prints, which Pavlina would dutifully rub off. She ‘talked’ about Xan a lot, and would ‘phone’ him every day – on her Postman Pat mobile or if that wasn’t to hand, on my calculator, on a cowrie shell, on the bath plug, or just on the palm of her hand. Their conversations were invariably animated and I would often feel excluded. I tried not to think about Xan’s girlfriend, and if I had to phone him I did so on his mobile, never on his home number. I couldn’t have coped with hearing her voice.

When Milly was a bit over two, Pavlina left. She’d saved enough to put down a deposit on a flat, and wanted to return to Prague and work in the Czech tourist industry. I was sorry to see her go – she’d been even-tempered, efficient and reliable. But it wasn’t until I tried to replace her that I realised quite how good she had been.

The same agency sent me four more au pairs, each of whom proved hopeless – if not downright dangerous. First there was Gabi from Bonn who got off to a good start, but then became so homesick that she left after three weeks. After that I had Natalie, who was French. I dispensed with Natalie’s services after a month, not just because she was lazy and disorganised but because I caught her slathering Milly’s rear end with my Crème de la Mer. Then came Lucia from Rome who’d take to her bed for a week every time she had a period; then there was Svetla from Bulgaria, whom I liked – until, in defiance of my strict instructions, she gave Milly egg. Luckily the allergic reaction that it then triggered in Milly was ‘only’ severe and not fatal.

I was thinking despairingly about this as I went to buy some milk one late January morning when an advert in the newsagent’s window caught my eye:
I like work au pair. I
kind heart. I lob kids and doogs. I startet right now. You no
egrets I work for you. Bery good referencias. See you soon!
Luisa … xx

I was so desperate for help as I was doing my GMTV appearances every morning the following week that I called the mobile number. Luisa’s spoken English was as bad as her written, but we managed to establish that she would come and see me later that day.

She had been in the UK for a month, but had worked for a family in Marbella for a year. She was twenty-three, Colombian, rather plump, but with pretty, mobile features and an appealing vivacity. My main problem would be how to communicate with her.

‘I wan lairn spik Eenglish bery
good
,’ she said as I sat with her in the sitting room. ‘I go school eaches days. Lairn spik Eenglish bery
queek.
’

Milly was holding on to my knee, eyeing Luisa suspiciously.

‘I’d like to take up your references,’ I said. ‘Could you tell me who to ring?’

Luisa looked at me blankly.

‘Telephone?’ I said. She pointed helpfully at the phone on the sideboard. ‘No. Who do I telephone?’ I jabbed my chest then made dialling and ringing gestures. ‘To get a
reference
– for
you
?’

‘Ah.
Referencia. Sí
. I hab
bery
good
referencia
.’ She dug into the back pocket of her jeans and produced a dog-eared letter, the folds seamed with dust. It was all in Spanish, but there was a number on it.

‘And when would you be able to start?’ I asked her as I wrote it down. ‘If we decide to go ahead?’

‘Head?’ Luisa repeated, clearly confounded.

I suddenly saw that I was wasting my time.

‘Look, Luisa …’ I said. ‘You seem very nice, but I really don’t think that this is going to work out, I’m awfully sorry …’

But then something remarkable happened. Luisa, who’d been smiling at Milly intermittently, suddenly threw out her arms: ‘
Venga aquí, preciosa!
’

In a flash she’d swept Milly on to her lap and was bouncing her up and down, making funny faces at her. Instead of crying or struggling to get down, Milly was laughing. Then Luisa gave Milly a great, smacking kiss on the cheek and that, somehow, was that.

I did of course take up her references. In broken English the husband said how much they had all loved Luisa and how good she’d been with their little boy, now five, and how sad they’d been when she’d left to go to London, where she felt opportunities were better.

Opportunities for what? I’d found myself wondering.

‘And she seeng,’ he added.

‘Seeing who?’

‘No, she
sing
,’ he enunciated. ‘Tra la la
la
. Luisa hab lobely voice. Real
lobely
.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s nice.’

The following day Luisa moved in. She came on the bus from Shepherd’s Bush, where she’d been in a flatshare. It had been a crystal clear day and there was a hard frost. She rang the bell at the appointed time – 6.30 – and beamed at me and Milly as she stood on the doorstep in her silver puffa jacket, with her small blue suitcase and her guitar.

‘
Hola
!’ She waved a mittened hand at Milly, who was clutching my leg.

‘Hi, Luisa,’ I said. ‘Come in.’

‘Starry starry night,’ she added as she stepped inside.

‘I’m sorry?’

She pointed behind her to the sky. ‘Ees starry starry night.’

I peered outside, craning my neck. ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘So it is. We don’t often see the stars from here. Anyway, come in, Luisa. Welcome.’

She took off her blue bobble hat. ‘
Gracias
.’

Over the next few days I told myself that lots of au pairs didn’t speak much English to start with – that’s why they wanted to be au pairs. But I was so desperate for Luisa to learn that I told her I’d pay for her language classes as she said she didn’t have any money. It would cost five hundred pounds for the six-month course. She would go to school every weekday morning, in Bayswater, while Milly was at Sweet Peas. Luisa would collect Milly at one, give her her lunch, then play with her all afternoon while I worked.

Perhaps because my expectations were so low, I found myself pleasantly surprised. Luisa was efficient around the house and kept Milly’s toys and clothes in neat order; she’d do useful things without being asked. She liked cooking and was good at it, although it was usually Spanish or Colombian and I noticed that Milly was soon eschewing fish fingers and sausages, and developing a taste for chorizo and refried beans. Luisa took Milly’s allergy problem very seriously. She always read the backs of packets and learned the word for ‘egg’ in a dozen languages. In one of her old copies of
Hola!
she found a recipe for an eggless cake.

I liked Luisa’s Latin warmth, which I appreciated after Pavlina’s cool detachment. Best of all, she seemed to adore Milly. She loved playing with her, even when off duty. She’d watch
CBeebies
with her and I’d hear them laughing their heads off at
Pingu
while I cooked supper for us all. Luisa was always cuddling Milly or giving her big noisy kisses. And I soon discovered that Luisa could, indeed, sing. The first time I heard it was about a week after she arrived. I was lying on my bed, having a quick rest. ‘
Starry starry night
…’ Up it floated from the kitchen, this rich, folksy contralto. ‘
Paint your palette blue and grey
…’ Her pronunciation was a bit odd, but her voice had a purity and a huskiness that tugged at the heartstrings. ‘
Look out on a summer’s day, with
eyes that know the darkness in my soul
…’

It was indeed ‘lobely’ – so much so that I never found it annoying, not even when I was working. It invariably made me feel calm.

‘Things could be a lot worse,’ I told myself as I drove back from Surrey with a sleeping Milly after my final farewell to the house. ‘Luisa appears to love my child and takes great care of her; Milly’s happy to be left with her when I have to go out. Luisa works hard and is thoughtful. What more do I want? Her English will get better in time.’

I’d already been surprised by how slow her progress had been. She had fifteen hours’ tuition a week, yet I’d detected zero improvement in the three weeks that she’d been with me. Still, give it time, I thought.

‘How are your English lessons going?’ I asked her the evening after I’d returned from my final visit to Oxted. I put down the box containing my mother’s trowel and the three gardening books I’d taken:
Flowers of Southern Italy;
Gardeners’ Latin
and
The New Small Garden
– a classic text. ‘Are you working hard on your English, Luisa?’ I tried again.

‘Ah!
Sí
!’ She nodded enthusiastically. ‘Absolutamente!’

My father moved to London the next day. His flat was on the top floor of a modern apartment building on Campden Hill, overlooking Holland Park.

‘What wonderful views,’ I said, as I helped him arrange the furniture a couple of days later. ‘I can even see the London Eye – and you’ve got this lovely balcony. You’ll be able to watch the sunset – and you’ll hear the open-air opera in the summer.’

‘And the peacocks,’ Dad added ruefully.

‘I’ll get you some nice new planters,’ I said, looking at the desiccated geraniums in their cracked terracotta troughs. ‘Chrome ones would look good.’