The Nearly-Weds (7 page)

He hesitated before he headed towards us. ‘Can you . . . just give us a minute?’ he asked the photographer.

The photographer recognized the look in his eyes and backed away.

‘Listen, Zoe,’ Andrew began, his neck red with nerves. ‘There’s been a bit of a – a hiccup.’

‘A hiccup?’ I asked calmly.

‘What do you mean, a hiccup?’ added Dad.

Andrew gulped.

‘Oh, God, don’t tell me the flowers didn’t turn up!’ I said. The colour-blind church housekeeper had been determined to provide them and I’d had visions of a gaudy array of fit-inducing hydrangeas.

‘No, nothing like that,’ said Andrew, loosening his collar.

‘The organist? Oh, shit – Jess warned me he was a bit of a pisshead but I thought—’

‘No, Zoe. Stop!’ said Andrew. ‘It’s nothing like that.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘It’s – it’s Jason.’

My mind went blank. I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. ‘He’s . . . been in an accident?’

‘No,’ said Andrew. ‘He’s fine. I mean, he’s not fine . . .’

‘What
, Andrew?’ I said, suddenly impatient. ‘What is the matter with Jason?’

‘He’s not coming,’ said Andrew, lowering his eyes. ‘Zoe, he’s not coming.’

Chapter 13

‘Zoe! Wake up, Zoe!’

It’s a nightmare. It must be a nightmare.

‘We want our breakfast, Zoe!’

I roll over and put a pillow over my head, willing myself to go back to a semi-erotic dream involving Jason, a plush hotel room and a six-pack of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs.

‘Zoe!
Come on!
’

The voice is soft and not particularly loud. But what it lacks in volume it makes up for in insistence.

‘Zo-eeeeee!’

I open one eye and see Ruby and Samuel standing there, perky as two little bunnies on a spring day. ‘What time is it?’

‘Um, not sure,’ says Ruby, unconvincingly.

‘You could tell the time last night,’ I point out.

‘Um, six twenty-five,’ she replies sheepishly.

I groan. ‘You shouldn’t be up yet.’

‘But we always get up at this time,’ says Ruby.

‘Oh, goody.’ I rub my eyes. ‘Excellent news.’

I turn to look at them. ‘You’ve only had a few hours’ sleep,’ I remind them. ‘You’ll be exhausted today.’

‘We’re not exh– exh– tired,’ says Ruby, as Samuel stands behind her, yawning.

‘I want
SpongeBob
,’ he says, rubbing his eyes.

‘Not sleep?’ I ask, hopefully.

‘Uh-uh,’ they confirm.

As I hobble out of bed, I can’t help reflecting that I’m supposed to have Sundays off. And, while I know I’ve only just got here, part of me had hoped that would apply today so I could at least try to get over my jet-lag. Problem is, Mr Talkative and I never got round to discussing that.

‘Come
on
, Zoe!’ the children shout.

I head downstairs in my dressing-gown, holding Samuel’s hand and looking, I suspect, like a Victorian charlady after a forty-two-hour shift. We go into the kitchen, where Ruby puts on the TV – yes, there’s one in there too.

‘Okay,’ I say, trying to sound upbeat. ‘What do you normally have for breakfast?’

‘Hmm, we had Hershey’s yesterday,’ Ruby tells me.

‘Isn’t that a chocolate bar?’ I frown.

‘Uh-huh,’ says Ruby, as if that was the most reasonable thing in the world.

‘Now, come on, I can’t believe your daddy would let you ha—’ I begin. ‘No, hang on, maybe I can believe it. Okay, what did your last nanny give you for breakfast?’

‘French toast,’ declares Ruby.

My heart sinks. I was hoping for something no more taxing than a bowl of Cheerios. ‘How about cereal?’ I ask, hopefully.

‘Whatever.’

I’m about to look for some cereal, when I stop myself. What am I thinking? This is an opportunity to win the kids over, especially after last night’s dramatics. Of course they can have French toast. It’s virtually a speciality of mine. And, besides, there’s no way I’m refusing them something a previous nanny gave them.

‘Okay,’ I reply jauntily. ‘Seeing as it’s you two, French toast it is.’

I have visions of the children greedily tucking into my home-cooked breakfast and viewing me as some sort of Nigella Lawson figure, primed to rustle up a luscious culinary delight from nothing more than half a pound of self-raising flour, a couple of pistachios and the odd free-range vanilla pod.

I head for the fridge to seek out what Nigella would refer to as the ‘store-cupboard ingredients’ required for this particular dish: a couple of nice fresh eggs, a little butter and some thick-cut bread, preferably the organic wholegrain kind with super-healthy nutty bits and bobs.

Then I open the fridge.

The only consumables inside it are alcoholic. Although there are several items of food, the majority are so old they could be classed as Jurassic. There’s a semi-decomposed tomato in the salad tray, several crusty-lidded sauce jars on the top shelf and a piece of cheese so hard Roger Federer could have served an ace with it.

There are certainly no eggs. And a quick glance in the bread bin confirms there is no bread, unless you count one amorphous lump of carbohydrate with enough mould spores on it to provide an entire hospital with antibiotics.

‘I’m afraid it’ll have to be cereal,’ I tell the children.

But, sadly, when I open the cupboard I realize it isn’t going to be cereal either.

‘Well,’ I say, spinning round. This is the sort of challenge that nannies like me can rise to without a second thought. ‘Where’s the nearest shop?’

Ruby giggles. ‘You mean
store
, don’t you?’

I can see I’m going to be a source of some amusement round here.

Chapter 14

I’d assumed Ryan was sleeping off his hangover while I dressed the children, stocked the fridge with half the contents of the local 7/11 and made sure the place remained so immaculate that an OCD sufferer would have eaten their dinner off the floor.

Apparently not. I hear the door slam at ten thirty, followed by footsteps bolting up the stairs.

‘Is that your daddy coming in?’ I ask.

‘He’s been for a run,’ Ruby informs me proudly. ‘He runs a lot.’

‘Oh, right.’ I’m reluctantly impressed. Actually,
amazed
is probably a better word. After the bender he went on yesterday, I can’t believe he’s managed to roll out of bed at all, let alone go for a jog.

‘He does ten miles every morning,’ adds Ruby.

Fifteen minutes later – long enough for me to have satisfied a mysterious urge to dash to the bathroom and apply a slick of mascara and nude lip gloss – Ryan enters the kitchen.

He smells deliciously clean and his hair is so wet from the shower that it’s still dripping, moistening the skin on one side of his now clean-shaven jaw. Despite that, he still has the rough-round-the-edges quality and has obviously thrown on the first pair of jeans he could find. But he’s so glamorous somehow that I feel embarrassed to be in the same room. I get a flash of paranoia that my subtle makeup is fighting a losing battle against the bags under my eyes, which, when I glanced into the mirror earlier, were of a colour best described as ‘ecclesiastical purple’.

‘Daddy!’
hollers Ruby, jumping up and skipping across the kitchen to hug him.

‘Daddy, daddy, daddy!’ echoes Samuel, running over to join in.

‘Hey, you two, what’s up?’ He gives them a cursory hug, prises them off and picks up the newspaper – the one I nearly tripped over when I opened the front door.

‘Um . . . good morning,’ I say brightly, flicking back my hair.

He looks up briefly, and in the split second that he catches my eye, I’m shocked at the extent to which my pulse quickens.

‘Howya doing?’ He sits down and examines the front page. It wasn’t a particularly enthusiastic greeting.

‘Can I get you some coffee?’ I ask, picking up the pot I’ve just made and bringing it to the table.

‘Hmm, great,’ mutters Ryan, starting to dismantle the paper’s sections.

‘Daddy, we had French toast for breakfast,’ Ruby tells him brightly.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Zoe made it for us. She’s a real good cook.’

I swell with pride – and not just because Ruby apparently hadn’t minded that I’d burned hers twice and broken the piece she ended up with when I slid it on to her plate.

‘Good, honey,’ he mumbles, turning a page. I note that his hands don’t look like those of an office worker, although I gleaned from his phone conversations in the car yesterday that that’s exactly what he is. They are big, tanned, hard-working hands. There’s a vein running along one that I want to trace with my fingertips.

Ryan takes a sip of coffee and pulls the sort of face you see on contestants undertaking a bushtucker trial on
I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here!
‘Think I’ll stick with juice,’ he says, handing the cup back to me.

As I take it from him, our fingertips touch and an electric current shivers through me. I take a deep breath and tell myself to get a grip. ‘So, you work in the city?’ I ask, hoping to spark something approaching a conversation.

‘Yup,’ he replies, turning a page of his newspaper.

‘What is it you do?’ I ask.

It takes him a second to register that I’m still speaking. ‘Oh, I work for a global sportswear company.’

‘Ooooh.’ I nod approvingly, wishing I could think of a more intelligent comment. It hardly seems to matter, though, because I don’t think he’s listening. ‘So, are you a salesman or something?’

‘Vice-president of communications.’

‘That sounds . . . fascinating,’ I add, although I can’t help thinking that communication hasn’t struck me as his forte so far. ‘Did you have any plans for today? Only I need to sit down with you for ten minutes to go over a few matters. About the children’s regime, what activities you’d like me to do with them and, um, my days off.’

‘Well, I gotta be somewhere today,’ he replies unapologetically. ‘I’ll be gone for most of the day so it’ll have to keep for now.’

‘Right. If you’ve got five minutes now—’

‘I haven’t,’ he snaps.

I feel ridiculously wounded by the sharpness of his response, as well as infuriated. Is asking for a couple of minutes so unreasonable?

‘Daddy,’ says Ruby, tentatively, ‘can’t we do something together today?’

‘Sorry, honey, not today,’ he replies, at least looking a little sorrier than he had when he addressed me.

‘But,
Daddy.
’

‘Come on, no buts,’ he says, putting down the paper as he pulls her on to his knee. As she puts her arm round his neck, she looks tiny compared with him.

‘But I made a card for you, Daddy.’ She hands him the collage to which she’s spent the last half-hour gluing bits of dried pasta and rice.

‘That’s sweet,’ he tells her, barely glancing at it. Then, as if hit by a flash of guilt, he pulls her to him and kisses her head. His eyes close as he breathes in the scent of her hair. When he opens them, they’re softer than before and his smile intended to be bright and reassuring, is almost melancholy.

‘We’ll do something next weekend, I promise,’ he murmurs.

Now Samuel is at his daddy’s side and clambers on to Ryan’s other leg. Ryan laughs and ruffles his hair. ‘Okay,’ he says finally, disentangling himself from the children and standing up. ‘I really have to go.’

‘Awwww,’ says Samuel, but Ruby grabs his hand and squeezes, perhaps to prevent a tantrum. I glimpse her dejection as she puts an arm round him.

‘Come on, Samuel,’ she says, with an authoritative air, as she guides him to the TV and turns it on.

I wonder if I should persuade her to turn it off and do some more drawing, but something compels me to run after Ryan.

Now, I know that questioning a parent’s decision is not part of my remit. And that Anita – my old boss back at Bumblebees – would have given me such a bollocking if I’d done so that my ears would have been ringing for three weeks.

But something in Ruby’s face drives me to action. Besides, I can be diplomatic when I want to be. I could give Kofi Annan lessons. All I need to do is think of a subtle but effective way of suggesting that Ryan spends some time today with his kids.

‘Er, um!’ I say, as I reach him in the hallway.

He spins round and my heart somersaults.

‘Um, this thing you’ve got to do today,’ I begin.

‘Yup?’

‘Well, is there anything I could do to help? So that perhaps you could spend some time with Ruby and Samuel.’ My intention is to sound thoughtful and efficient.

Ryan stares at me as if I’m something unpleasant stuck to the sole of his shoe.

‘It’s just that Ruby is obviously dying to spend some time with you this weekend,’ I continue, ‘and if there was anything I could do for you so you could . . . well . . .’

Okay, it doesn’t sound as persuasive as I’d hoped.

Ryan is taking a deep breath. The sort of deep breath parole officers take when they’ve learned that one of their charges has broken another bail condition.

‘No,’ he says. ‘There isn’t.’

‘It’s just that—’

‘Listen to me,’ he snaps. ‘You and I will get on really well if we understand each other.’

‘Okay.’ I’m already wishing someone had taped my mouth shut before I’d got out of bed this morning.

‘You may have come to the conclusion that I’m a bad father –’

‘Oh, God, no,’ I bluster, feeling heat rising to my face. ‘I didn’t mean to imply—’

‘– and maybe I am. Although, I gotta say, it usually takes longer than twenty-four hours for someone to work that out.’

‘But I—’

‘This is the way I do things,’ he continues. ‘And it isn’t going to change. Okay?’

My neck and chest are blazing like a rampant forest fire. ‘Fine,’ I manage.

‘Good. Because I’m not employing you for your opinion. I’m employing you to look after my kids.’

I cross my arms, suddenly defiant. ‘Fine,’ I repeat, refusing to look away as his eyes bore into mine.

After a couple of seconds it becomes apparent to both of us that we’re engaged in a playground staring competition. But I’m not to going to wimp out. My pulse is still racing but now it’s for a different reason than how chiselled his features are. Now an overwhelming thought whizzes through my mind: I might have felt sorry for this guy, I might have developed an annoying obsession with his bone structure – but there’s no way I’m going to let myself be pushed around. Not by him or anyone else.