Who Loves You Best (17 page)

The doors behind us whoosh open, and the nurse bustles in.

“I’m afraid we’ve got triplets on the way up. We’ll need you to wait downstairs for a bit. I’ll come and find you as soon as I can.”

“I think we should go home,” Marc says. “Poppy’s in good hands, and I want to check on Rowan. I’d be happier if he slept with us tonight, so we can keep an eye on him.”

“You go. I’ll stay with Poppy—”

“Clare, we can be here in less than ten minutes. Come home.”

Later, I lie in bed wide-eyed and sleepless, listening to the sound of my husband and my son breathing on either side of me. I have to consciously relax my hands, and loosen my grip on the coverlet. At any moment, I’m afraid the phone will ring and tell me my daughter—

I can’t even think it.

Eventually, I drift into a troubled sleep, in which I’m
running down endless corridors, searching for Poppy and Rowan. Something nameless and terrifying is pursuing me, and the faster I run, the faster it comes after me. I can’t find my children anywhere. And then Marc is there, standing on the other side of an unbridgeable crevasse, holding the twins and laughing—

I’m woken by the sound of banging on the front door. I push myself up on one elbow. It’s still dark; the clock on the dresser says 5:16. Marc stumbles out of bed, knotting his dressing gown. “This better not be your damn brother again.”

I tuck Rowan safely in the center of the bed, and get up and pull on my own robe. I dismiss my first panicked thought—
the hospital
—realizing they’d phone, not send someone around. Voices rumble downstairs. I lean over the bannisters. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but a pit of unease opens in my stomach.

Marc comes to the foot of the stairs. “Clare, it’s the police. You’d better come down.”

“The police? But Xan’s not here—”

“It’s not Xan they want,” Marc says, his voice strangely hard. “It’s you.”

“Salt
poisoning?” I exclaim. “How on earth could that happen?”

“It’s complicated,” Marc says evasively. “The doctors say her sodium levels are off the chart, but they don’t know why. Her kidneys are functioning fine, but she’s got way too much salt in her body. Basically, she’s really dehydrated.”

“I don’t get it. Poppy drinks loads, she’s always thirsty—”

“That’s one of the signs, apparently.”

I slide Rowan into his high chair and put on his bib. “I still don’t understand. Signs of
what?”

“They’re still trying to figure that out.”

“So, it’s like some kind of illness?”

“Not really.”

“Well, what then?” I say impatiently. “Everything Clare buys is fresh and organic, no additives, nothing, she’s totally anal about it—sorry, Marc, but she is. There’s no way Poppy could get salt poisoning from her food—”

“They don’t think she did.”

The penny drops.

“You mean … they think someone gave salt to her
on purpose?”

“The concentration in her body was the same as you’d find in seawater,” Marc says. “It’s the same as if she’d swallowed four whole teaspoons of salt. No one could accidentally give a baby that much.”

“That’s insane.”

Marc says nothing.

“Who’d want to make Poppy sick? It’s not me, Marc, I swear, I love the twins, I’d never do anything to hurt them, I—”

“No one thinks it’s you.”

“But she’s never out of our sight! Clare or me are with her all the time—”

“Exactly,” Marc says.

I feel queasy. I know he and Clare have been having a few problems over money, but he can’t believe she’d hurt her own baby like this. That’s
sick
.

“Where is she?” I ask suddenly.

“The police wanted to talk to her,” he says reluctantly. “They came around last night. She’s still with them.”

“They
arrested
her?”

“She hasn’t actually been charged. They just want to ask her a few questions.”

“Marc, there’s obviously been a mistake!” I cry. “The doctors are wrong. Clare would never hurt Poppy, you know that. She adores her!”

“She hasn’t been herself lately,” Marc mutters.

“But she’d never hurt the twins. You told them that, right?”

He shifts uncomfortably. “Clare never really took to the whole motherhood thing. It’s a miracle she survived her own childhood, given her own bloody mother. I thought she’d get used to it, but …”

He trails off, unable to look me in the eye.

I can’t believe this. The spineless little shit! He’s her husband! How can he believe this
crap?
What the fuck is the matter with him?

I’m only Clare’s nanny, but I
know
she didn’t do it. Working with kids gives you a kind of sixth sense about people. I can walk into a class full of four-year-olds and know right away which little suck-up is going to be teacher’s pet and which kid is the charming bastard who’ll cause nothing but trouble. Clare’s neurotic and a total control freak, but she’s not the type of woman to suffocate her baby with a pillow because he won’t stop crying. She’s far too sorted. I wish I could be a bit more like her. I might not have backed myself into a corner with Jamie if I was.

“Lots of women take a while to adjust after they’ve had a baby,” I snap. “They don’t all rush out and stock up on table salt.”

“She’s never really bonded with Rowan. And look at the way she went off and hired you the moment she came home from the hospital. She couldn’t wait to get rid of them—”

I slam Rowan’s breakfast bowl on the table. “Oh, don’t be so fucking ridiculous! Are you telling me every woman who goes back to work after she’s had a baby is secretly a homicidal maniac? Get real, Marc! This is the twenty-first century. Women have careers, too, or hadn’t you heard?”

For a frozen moment, you could hear a pin drop. Marc steps forward and pushes his face into mine.

“Who the
fuck,”
he hisses, “do you think you are?”

I flinch. Perhaps I may have stepped over the line a little. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about my job right now, but the last thing Clare needs is to come home and have to deal with everything on her own, particularly with Poppy still so sick.

“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I didn’t mean that. I’m just a bit stressed out—”

He looks like he wants to hit me. “You fucking women. You all stick together, don’t you? For all I know, you’re in on this with her.”

“That’s not fair! I’m just trying to—”

Upset by the raised voices, Rowan starts to wail. Marc picks up his bowl, and shoves it at me. “Why don’t you do what you’re paid to do, and look after my son, instead of interfering in something that’s none of your fucking business?”

“But what about Clare? Did you get her a lawyer? You can’t just leave her at the—”

“I’ll deal with Clare,” he says grimly. “She’s my wife, and this is my family. It has nothing to do with you. Stay out of it.” He picks up his briefcase, and turns in the doorway. “And if you ever …
ever …
speak to me like that again, I’ll make sure you’re thrown out so fast your feet don’t even touch the ground.”

———

“Marc’s been amazing.” Clare sighs. “I’d never have gotten through this without him. He’s been so supportive.”

The bastard shifts uncomfortably on the sofa. At least he has the grace not to catch my eye.

I realize I’ve made a permanent and dangerous enemy. The first chance he gets, he’ll find an excuse that forces Clare to fire me.

Well, screw him. Clare pays me, not him. She’s the one in charge.

“Such a pity Marc couldn’t go down to the police station with you,” I say sweetly.

“I was a bit upset at first. But that’s all forgotten now, darling,” she adds, turning to Marc. “As you said, someone had to stay home to organize things. And Davina’s lawyer did a brilliant job. I’m so glad Marc called her. She can be a bit difficult, I know, but she’s marvelous in a crisis.”

Marc
called her? Excuse me,
I
was the one who picked up the bloody telephone.

Clare squeezes his hand. “I’m so relieved it’s all over. Honestly, Jenna, they’d got me to the point where I didn’t know which way was up. I was almost ready to believe I
had
given poor Poppy that salt.” She shudders. “The important thing is, she’s well enough to come home tomorrow. That’s what we have to focus on now.”

“That’s fantastic news! Oh, Clare, I’m so relieved. What
was
it?”

“They don’t actually know yet,” she says awkwardly. “But my lawyer made it clear that unless they can prove I had anything to do with it, they’ve got no reason not to let
Poppy come home. I suppose they’re hoping I’ll be too scared of being caught to try anything again.”

Poor cow. She’s far from a perfect mother, but she doesn’t deserve to be policed like this. In future, every time one of the twins falls out of a tree or off a skateboard, they’ll pull up Poppy’s case notes and treat Clare like a criminal. She’ll never be free of it.

As it is, she’s lucky they haven’t taken this any further. If she wasn’t Lady Eastmann’s daughter, with a big-shot lawyer and a godfather in the House of Commons, she’d probably be in a jail cell with a bunch of tattooed lesbians right now, and the kids would be in foster care.

“Jenna, can you come into the kitchen with me a minute?” Clare says. “Marc wants to have a little party on Saturday to celebrate Poppy coming home, and I’ve got a thousand things to organize.”

She smiles brightly, but the weariness in her eyes tells a different story. This is the last thing she fucking needs. What the hell is he playing at now?

Moments later, as the front door slams behind him, I discover his game.

“I was hoping to get into work this afternoon, but I don’t think I’ll have time now,” Clare confides. “It’s very sweet of Marc, but I wish he’d waited until I’d got everything sorted out at the shop. It’s going to be days before I get a chance to go in now and catch up.”

“Look, just tell me what you need me to do. I can hold the fort for a couple of hours.”

“Oh, Jenna, that would be wonderful,” she says gratefully. She pulls out an emerald Smythson diary—I’d kill for
one of those—and flicks through it. “I’m not sure who’ll be able to make it at such short notice. I know Marc wants to push the boat out, but I was thinking something a little informal would be better; that pretty black-and-white dress you wore to Davina’s would be perfect. Actually, we could make it a black-and-white theme—what do you think?”

I think Marc would shoot me on sight if I crash his party.

“It’s really sweet of you, Clare, but I’ll be going home. I baby-sat last weekend and—”

“We
did
pay you overtime,” she says, slightly huffily.

“It’s not that. It’s just … I promised my boyfriend….”

“I realize Saturday is your day off, but obviously you won’t have to work this time, Jenna, you’ll be our guest.”

Sure. And you’ll treat me just the same as Lady Horseface.

“The thing is, Jamie hasn’t been well recently, and—”

“I’m sure he’ll understand, after everything that’s happened. And it’ll give you a chance to meet our friends and get to know everyone. We haven’t had a party for ages.” She smiles persuasively. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

Fun?
I know exactly what it’ll be like, and “fun” isn’t the word I’d choose. The women will patronize me or not speak to me at all; the men will talk to my cleavage and pinch my bum. Halfway through the evening, Clare will forget I’m a “guest” and ask me to pass around a tray of hors d’oeuvres. One of the twins will start wailing upstairs, and I’ll spend my precious Saturday night pacing the hallway and changing shitty nappies. Sometime around midnight, after everyone’s left, she’ll decide it’ll be much better if “we” clean up now rather than wait till morning, and I’ll be on my
hands and knees getting red wine stains out of her Persian carpet at three
A.M.
Oh, yes. It really sounds like a riot.

“You can tell me all about it on Monday,” I say firmly.

Not that my weekend at home is likely to be a barrel of laughs either, I think wearily on Friday. I get the Tube home and walk back from the station, my feet dragging slower with every step. I’m exhausted from organizing Clare’s party; all I really want to do is sleep. And I still haven’t figured out what to say to Jamie. Easing out of this relationship gently is proving harder than I thought. He keeps guilting me into promising things I don’t mean. I’m going to end up walking down the bloody aisle still wondering how to dump him.

I let myself into our flat. Every light is blazing, as usual, but I can’t hear the television, which means Jamie’s out. I hope he’s not down at the pub. He can get really violent when he drinks.

The door jams on a heap of mail. I skim it quickly for anything interesting. Oh, joy: A magazine from Jehovah’s Witnesses and a special offer for a Stannah stair lift. All the others are credit card bills and ominous brown envelopes.