The Nearly-Weds (26 page)

Oh, God.

‘So I’m leaning out of my bedroom window, smoking,’ she continues, ‘and it was great. It was really bloody great. The ciggie was as stale as hell, tasted like a camel’s armpit . . . but great.’

‘Go on.’

‘And I’m taking my last drag and just about to put it out . . .’

‘When Barbara caught you,’ I finish for her.

She nods.

‘Oh, God,’ I say.

Smoking is absolutely against the rules for any nanny, these days, in virtually every country in the world. However, that goes doubly in the US. And it goes triply for Barbara King, a woman so obsessed with protecting her children from toxins of any sort it’s a wonder she hasn’t issued them with purification masks.

‘I’m guessing she didn’t take it very well.’ I know that just the thought of one stray molecule from that cigarette smoke making its way into one of her children’s lungs will have been enough to make her apoplectic.

‘No, she didn’t,’ Trudie continues, wiping even more tears from her cheeks. ‘Zoe, she sacked me. Which means I’m not only being booted out of my job, I’m being booted out of the country.’

Chapter 62

I don’t think Ryan’s pacing is doing much to help Trudie’s nerves, not given the state she’s been in for the last two hours.

He used to do a lot of pacing when I first arrived. He hasn’t done it for a while – not for ages, in fact. But he’s doing it now. Not as manically as he used to, I’ll admit: this is more of a pensive stroll across the living room while he thinks up a plan. All he’d need is a cigar and he’d be a dead ringer for Hannibal from
The A Team.

‘I’m going to see Barbara,’ he announces, pausing mid-stride.

Trudie sniffs and takes such a large gulp of the beer I’ve just handed her that I’m surprised there’s anything left in the bottle afterwards. ‘It won’t do any good.’ She sighs. ‘Honest to God it won’t. You don’t know Barbara and smoking. She might as well have caught me injecting crack cocaine.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ says Ryan.

‘No, it’s not. I think she’s right.’ Trudie starts to peel the label off her beer bottle. ‘I told her I was a non-smoker and I betrayed her trust.’

‘But you
were
a non-smoker when you applied for the job,’ I persist. ‘You’d given up by then, hadn’t you?’

‘Well, yeah. But only twenty minutes earlier,’ confesses Trudie.

‘But you haven’t had one since you got here, have you?’ asks Ryan. ‘Before now, I mean.’

‘No.’ Trudie shakes her head decisively. ‘In fact, I was doing bloody well till my patches ran out and I forgot to get some new ones. That’s PMT for you. I’d forget my own name at certain times of the month.’

Ryan pulls on a sweater. ‘Well, I meant what I said. This is ridiculous. And somebody needs to do something about it.’

Trudie and I flash each other a look as Ryan heads for the front door, then slams it behind him so hard they must have felt it in Kentucky. The children rush to the window to watch. I’m about to instruct them not to be nosy, but decide against it and huddle up beside them with Trudie.

Ryan is crossing the road towards the Kings’ house with utter determination. I can’t help feeling impressed. Then he stops, turns, heads back towards us and in through the front door.

‘You changed your mind?’ I ask, trying to hide my disappointment.

‘Course not,’ he replies, striding to the coffee-table and picking up the bunch of lilies I’d put there earlier today. The stems dripping, he goes into the kitchen, opens the fridge, picks out a swanky bottle of Californian white and departs.

This time, he makes it to Barbara King’s front door. When she opens it and sees him, she couldn’t have looked less enthusiastic if he had been the neighbourhood’s new rag-and-bone man trying to flog her some second-hand pan-scourers. Ryan responds by producing the flowers from behind his back. She seems entirely unmoved.

‘This is never going to work.’ Trudie sighs.

‘My daddy will save you, Trudie,’ Ruby assures her.

Trudie tries to smile, but is about as convincing as a fifteen-year-old mongrel at Crufts.

But she’s about to be surprised.

Within five minutes, Barbara King’s expression has softened to such an extent I’m convinced her last Botox session has only just decided to kick in. She invites Ryan in.

‘Well I never . . .’ I grin.

‘Go, Daddy!’ says Ruby, triumphantly.

‘Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’ squeals Samuel.

Excitedly, we settle down to wait for him. And we wait. And wait. In fact, we do so much waiting that this whole thing becomes less of a drama and more like watching a two-hour Open University programme about advanced vacuum-cleaner mechanics. Things become so dull that the children end up plodding to bed virtually by themselves.

‘He’s been in there a bloody long time,’ I tell Trudie, once they’re safely tucked up.

Then a thought flashes into my mind. ‘You don’t think he’s . . .’

‘What?’ asks Trudie.

‘You don’t think he’s . . .’

‘What?’

‘Seducing her.’

Trudie’s eyes widen. ‘God, I know he wanted to do me a favour but I didn’t mean him to prostitute himself.’

Just then a car pulls up, and I recognize it instantly as Mr King’s. I start to panic on Ryan’s behalf – perverse, to say the least.

‘Shit!’ Trudie exclaims. ‘I hope he doesn’t catch him with his pants down in the living room!’

I frown at her.

‘What I mean is, I hope he hasn’t
got
his pants down in the living room. If he
has
, it would make things so much worse than—’

‘Trudie,’ I interrupt.

‘Yep. Don’t worry. I’ll shut up.’

We turn back to the window. Except now there’s nothing to see. In fact, there’s nothing to see for ages. And ages. And ages.

The next thing I know, I’m waking with a start as our front door opens. Trudie and I have fallen asleep on the sofa and I’m dribbling like a hungry St Bernard. The clock says it’s ten to midnight.

Trudie rubs her eyes as we stand up and the livingroom door flies open. It’s Barbara King, with Ryan behind her. She looks as if she’s spent all day at a wine-tasting session and forgotten to spit.

‘Tshhrudie,’ she slurs, leaning on Ryan’s shoulder. Her eyes are so crossed you’d think they’d fallen out with each other. ‘Tshhrudie, you and I need to have a talk.’

‘I know, Barbara, I know. I’m so sorry. I really am sorry. It was all my fault and you were right to throw me out. But I love my job. And I love Andrew and Eamonn. And I love being here next to my mate Zoe. And I love this country. And, and—’

‘Sssssh!’ instructs Barbara, attempting to press her finger to her lips but prodding it up her nose. ‘We’ll go through all this tomorrow. The point is I’ve had a shange of heart. You can come back.’ She throws her arms open and leans in to hug Trudie, who catches her before her face becomes acquainted with the living-room carpet. ‘Shall we go home, Tshhrudie?’

Trudie beams and squeezes her arm round her. ‘Let’s do that, Mrs K.’

Ryan and I watch as Trudie and Barbara weave their way back to the house, where Mr King is waiting at the door to greet them. He waves to Ryan and Ryan waves back. I turn to him, my mouth ajar. ‘What
happened
over there?’

‘I made friends with my neighbours, that’s all. And I just pointed out what a great nanny Trudie is and how much their kids love her. And, well, that was it.’

‘Come on,’ I say sceptically. ‘There must have been more to it than that. How did you get so friendly?’

He says nothing.

‘You must have flirted with her?’ I ask, trying to look unbothered by this scenario.

‘Maybe.’ He smirks. ‘But it wasn’t that either.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’ve promised to mow my lawn.’

‘No!’

He nods. ‘Every goddamn week.’

Chapter 63

Ruby and Samuel used to watch so many cartoons on TV that they were in danger of growing up believing the world was populated with little yellow people like the Simpsons. Not any more. Life is no longer dictated by the whims of the programme schedulers.
SpongeBob SquarePants
, is no longer a powerful, omnipresent force in our lives. And they no longer sit and stare at the screen for hours, as if they’ve been put under a spell. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve got more interesting things to do.

By the way, I don’t say this to be smug. I’m not saying I’m Jo Frost. And I should confess that
something more interesting
recently involved giving Barbie’s hair a funky new look with a pair of craft scissors (Samuel) and painting Spiderman’s head with my Tropical Sunset nail polish (Ruby). But, still, we’ve come a long way.

However, that’s not to say both children don’t still enjoy the odd
bit
of television. And, with the weather having turned so wet and cold it has felt like Skegness in November recently, we’re in the mood for getting cosy and doing nothing more energetic than a rigorous session of channel-hopping.

Ruby has taken control of the remote and landed on something that caught her attention immediately: James Bond. ‘Does everyone in Britain dress like him, Zoe?’ she asks, staring in wonder at Roger Moore’s tuxedo. It’s
The Spy Who Loved Me
– made in the late seventies, which means everyone’s lapels are so wide you could park a Volvo on them.

‘Not all the time, sweetheart.’

She turns back to the television, where Barbara Bach is on screen in a dress like something you’d find hanging over the windows of a bungalow. ‘She’s pretty, isn’t she?’ muses Ruby.

‘Yes, she is,’ I agree, glancing to Ryan at the other end of the couch.

His face breaks into one of his heart-stopping smiles and my neck flushes. Which still strikes me as weird, and not just because of my lingering heartbreak over Jason. It’s weird because Ryan and I have done things together that are significantly more intimate than a coy smile. Yet such a simple expression – which isn’t suggestive, or racy – has a physical effect on me that is nothing less than profound.

My train of thought is broken as the famous 007 theme tune crashes out of the TV speakers and both kids lean forward in anticipation.

‘Now, that’s a real man,’ I declare, as Roger Moore scoops Barbara Bach into his arms having rescued her from super-baddie Jaws. ‘Despite the dodgy hairdo and mahogany complexion.’

Ryan chuckles and – with the children clearly not about to be distracted by anything short of a seismic wave – leans over to me. ‘I’d do that for you,’ he teases, kissing my ear.

I pull back. ‘No way.’

‘Way,’ he insists. ‘No problem at all.’

‘Well,’ I say, ‘given we’re unlikely to find ourselves in the sea off Sardinia any time soon, fortunately for you you’re not going to be forced to prove yourself.’

He’s about to protest again when my phone rings.

‘Give your mom my love,’ says Ryan, sitting upright again.

With Christmas rapidly approaching, she has been phoning me so often her next quarterly bill is set to rival that of a FTSE 100 company. I’m about to answer my mobile when I glance at the screen. The blood drains from my face. The number is as instantly recognizable now as it was when he last tried to contact me.

‘What is it?’ asks Ryan.

‘Oh, um, nothing,’ I mumble. ‘Just my mum, like you said. I’m going to take this outside so I don’t disturb you.’

When I’m out of the living room, I stumble up the stairs with all the grace of an inebriated donkey. I reach my room, my finger hovering over the answer button. It keeps hovering. And hovering. Chewing my lip, I pray for strength – but end up taking a chunk out of my tongue. Finally, I answer. ‘Hello?’ I croak. ‘Jason? Hello?’

Chapter 64

I’m too late. He’s rung off. I slump on to the bed, my mind reeling so wildly I can barely focus on my light shade.

I know I should be relieved, and part of me is. I think.

Coming out to the States was supposed to represent a clean break with my past and talking to Jason won’t help in that respect.

The sensible part of me also knows that he should have phoned me back on one of the countless occasions I tried to contact him immediately after the non-wedding. He had his chance.
Chances,.

I’ve promised myself I’ll be a strong, focused, independent woman, who doesn’t dwell on her past. And I know, having come this far, that the worst thing I could do would be to indulge Jason – or myself – in a long conversation that reopens old wounds.

Yet part of me is desperate to do just that.

I have so many questions to ask him I could out-interrogate Jeremy Paxman. Like, what happened to him that day? And was there really no one else involved? When did he decide he wasn’t going through with it? And, more to the point,
why
did he decide he wasn’t going through with it?

But the thought that I could just pick up my phone and hear his lovely, familiar voice saying my name is too much to bear.

My eyes bore into my mobile as I pull up the last number dialled. I’m going to do it. I know I shouldn’t but I am.

I’m milliseconds from pressing call when there’s a knock on my door.

Panicking, I shove my mobile under my pillow and lean back against my headboard as if I’m on a sun-lounger waiting for someone to come and rub in some factor fifteen.

I must look ridiculously shifty.

‘Everything okay?’ Ryan is mildly concerned.

‘Yes, of course!’ I declare. ‘I just came up here to have a chat.’

He doesn’t say anything.

‘With . . . my auntie,’ I add.

He still doesn’t say anything. My eyes dart round the room for inspiration and land on the mountain of toiletries on my dressing-table.

‘My auntie . . . Lil-let.’ Oh, Christ. I’ve named my imaginary aunt after a tampon.

Ryan frowns. Then smiles.

He walks over to the bed, puts his hand behind my neck and kisses me, making my pulse thump with desire.

‘You’re so beautiful today,’ he whispers, running his fingertips across my cheek.

‘Am I?’ I ask, bewildered. I have no makeup on and a spot is developing on the side of my nose.