The Nanny (11 page)

“Um,” started Jo. “Well my best friend, Sheila, she…” Jo played with her mug a bit. “She's never liked Shaun. Thinks it's quite seedy to go out with your dad's boss.”

“Sounds difficult.”

Jo shrugged. “I've just got used to it. Doesn't really bother me that much anymore. Sheila's boyfriend James knew Shaun from school, so we're a bit of a foursome.”

“Right.”

“In fact Sheila had met Shaun a couple of times before he and I had started dating, which means that…well…it means that sometimes she makes me feel that she knows him better than I do. She doesn't do it on purpose. It's like she understands him better than I do because she knew him when he was single. It can be a bit annoying actually. Sometimes. So we just don't talk about it really,” said Jo. “It's the one subject we steer clear of. Everything else is great. We've been best friends since we were fifteen.”

No wonder you miss her,” said Pippa.

“I—I do love Shaun,” Jo said eventually.

“Of course you do,” said Pippa. “Just not enough to wash his pants for the rest of your life. Makes perfect sense to me.”

Jo gave Pippa a big smile.

“I suppose we'd better make our way over for lunch,” said Pippa. “Otherwise, all the best nooks get taken and we end up with the crap crannies.”

They drained their coffee and made their way to the pub.

“So what about you?” asked Jo, as they waited at the crossing. “Anyone in your life at the moment?”

“Nope,” said Pippa. “If you find anyone, just flick him my way.”

“Okay.” Jo smiled, making a conscious effort to remember to do so.

Walking into the pub was like entering the world of Dick Turpin. Dark wood beams and uneven floors transported her back to another time, and she wondered why she'd imagined London would be soulless. Pippa cried out and waved to two girls sitting in the corner of the furthest nook. Rachel was heavy-boned and short, but almost pretty from quite a few angles; Gabriella was an olive-skinned beauty. Rachel was nanny to Ben, Tom, and Sam: “I think they wanted Labradors”; Gabriella was nanny to Hedda and Titania: “Ees harder than my Ph.D., but ees good to be in England.”

Jo listened to them give each other intensive therapy over the week that was and found it quite extraordinary to see how much time and energy they focused on each other's problems. When it came to her turn, she surprised herself by talking more about Josh's phone calls than any other aspect of her life at the Fitzgeralds. After detailed interrogation, dis
section, and analysis, the others dismissed him as a spoiled rich boy, visualized him as having fat thighs and a double chin and renamed him Josh the Posh Dosh. Jo decided she'd need these sessions every week. By four o'clock, she was happier than she had been for a long time.

“Actually,” she confessed over their first postlunch glass of wine, “I was seriously considering giving it all up and going back home.”

There was a pause.

“You know why that was, don't you?” asked Pippa.

“Why?”

“Because you hadn't met us yet.”

And, as was proving to be par for the course, Pippa was right.

By the time Jo got home that night she felt on top of the world. Except when she fell over her suitcase and landed in her rucksack, when she felt below most of it. She crawled onto her bed and told herself that she'd definitely unpack the next day.

When Jo's head hit the pillow, she was out for the count. The crash, however, woke her instantly. Once awake, her body flew into action pumping blood away from her extremities to her heart. Her body knew it was terrified before her brain did, but her brain cottoned on fast enough.

Someone was trying to get into the house through the kitchen window.

As her heart thumped uselessly against her rib cage, the noises from the kitchen intensified so much they hurt her already pounding head. The metallic taste of fear at the back of her throat almost made her gag. She understood what they meant about your whole life flashing before you. It wasn't so much a list of events as a new perspective, a finished context.

Instinctively, Jo knew that if the intruder came into her room, he'd sense in moments that she was wide-awake, because her brain was so alive it was practically humming. She held her breath and closed her eyes in the dark. When her head started spinning she opened them again. She could now, without any doubt, hear the heart-clenching sound of the slatted windows over the kitchen sink being slid out of their holdings one by one and being leaned neatly against the garden wall. Then there was silence. She allowed herself some deep breaths. Had he got what he wanted and left?

Then, suddenly, a loud bang as the glass was kicked and some of it shattered against the wall. Then real terror as she heard the intruder's hissed swearing. She was trembling.

It suddenly dawned on her that no one upstairs would be able to hear the intruder. She was the only one who would be able to stop him doing whatever he intended to do. And her job—her well-paid job that came with a Clio—was to protect the children. While most of her brainpower was spent on interpreting what she could hear, a part of it veered off into
wretched musings. No wonder they gave her the downstairs suite. Maybe this was why the other nannies kept leaving!

She bit her lip and screwed her eyes shut. A touchy sea monster chose that moment to wake up in her stomach. She realized she had drunk too much the night before. Half of her brain regretted it, half was glad, and the other half rationalized that it didn't much matter as she was about to be murdered anyway.

But what was she thinking? This was no time for musings about musings! The Fitzgeralds' lives were at stake. She needed to be strong. She needed to take control. She needed courage. But most of all she needed aspirin.

She inched her head over to one side of the pillow, noticing for the first time how loud it sounded. She could now see the phone on her bedside table. As she stared at it, willing it to float toward her, she heard a muffled sound, as if the attacker was climbing in through the window. Then a loud crash and a muffled yelp as he fell onto the bread maker.

Jo grabbed the phone and dived back under the duvet. Once under there, she fought the temptation to phone her mother and instead tried to dial 999. Unfortunately, her hands were shaking so much it didn't matter that she couldn't see anything.

Slowly, silently, she turned the top of her duvet over, leaving the phone and her hands outside it. She focused all her attention on her hands, trying to stop them shaking long enough to make the call, while the sound of a man treading softly round the kitchen outside her bedroom door sent her heart shooting into her mouth.

 

“Emergency, which service do you require?”

“Police.”

A click, a pause.

“You're through to the police. How can we help?”

Jo could now clearly hear a ten-foot man treading stealthily round the conservatory, near the television. Jo tried to speak, but no noise came out.

“How can we help?”

“I'm in the bedroom.” She started to cry.

“Keep calm and tell me your address.”

Jo stuttered out the Fitzgeralds' address.

“Well done. Now keep calm and tell me who you are.”

Jo tried to cry calmly.

“I'm Jo.”

“What's happening, Jo?”

“He broke in…through the kitchen window.”

“Keep going.”

“I'm in the bedroom, near the kitchen.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Downstairs. I mean next to the kitchen.”

“Have you seen him? Do you know what he looks like?”

Jo shook her head at the phone.

“Do you have reason to believe this is a sexual intruder?”

Jo couldn't answer, as she was suddenly preoccupied with the fact that her limbs seemed to have frozen.

“Hello? Jo? What's happening now?”

“He's gone away again. No I haven't seen him. Maybe there's two of them.”

“Stay on the line. There'll be someone there as soon as possible.”

Jo stayed on the line, burrowing down beneath her duvet, feeling stronger just having the phone in her hand, connecting her to the police.

 

A mile away, Nick and Gerry, two extremely bored CID officers from the neighboring district, were patrolling the area on a burglary initiative. Nick was leaning against Gerry, wiping dog crap from his trainers.

“Jesus,” he was saying, “this isn't dog crap, it's human.”

“Shut up and wipe before I gag.”

They were interrupted by a radio message.

“EK2, 45 Ascot Drive, Highgate, suspect's on the scene, informant is female resident. Graded I, India.”

“That's near here,” said Nick.

“You're not wrong, my friend,” replied Gerry.

“Think we should help out our uniformed friends, Gerrard?”

“Wouldn't be able to sleep at night if we didn't, Nicholas.”

“You're all heart.”

“And it would get me away from your shoe.”

They got into their car and sped off to the house, the windows wide open.

 

Meanwhile, a police car waited by the curb. Inside it, two constables waited for the longest shift ever to drag itself to an end.

“My point is,” repeated the driver, “I wouldn't want to be plain clothed even if you paid me to be.”

“No one
will
pay you,” yawned his partner. “That's
my
point.”

The radio cackled into life, and the driver jumped into action.

“Yeah, received by EK2,” he barked, put on his blue flashing light, started his siren, sped off down a dead end, cursed, stalled, spun round, and sped off again.

 

Nearby, two Flying Squad officers stood staring at an Oxfam shop, which was underneath a flat they were about to visit. It was the tenth tip-off flat they'd been sent to that night for the Urban Bomber. The ninth flat they'd been sent to had been a little old lady, who'd opened the door to them, taken in their tatty jeans and leather jackets, and promptly had a heart attack. They'd had to call an ambulance for her.

They stared at the Oxfam storefront in silence.

“That's a nice top,” said one eventually. “You'd look good in that.”

“Fuck off.”

Their radios crackled into life. They listened to the message and looked at each other.

“We can try here and probably kill someone else's nan, or go for the intruder two minutes away and save a female resident.”

They got in their car and sped off.

 

“I can hear the sirens,” whispered Jo into the phone, feeling calmer. Then she saw her door handle turn and almost wet herself.

“He's at my door!” she hissed under the duvet.

“It's okay. They're coming.”

A car screeched to a halt outside 45 Ascot Drive, and Nick and Gerry rushed to the front door. Two minutes later the constables arrived.

“She said there may be two of them,” whispered a constable.

“Why you whispering?” asked Gerry. “Siren make you go deaf?”

“What's that smell?” asked the constable.

“Shit,” groaned Nick, looking at his shoe. “That's me. Sorry.”

Meanwhile two Flying Squaddies flew to the back garden and made their way to the kitchen door. One found the broken slatted windows by the wall, saw the man-sized hole in the window, and peered round the kitchen door to see a tall, dark figure hunched up at a door in the back corner of the kitchen, listening intently, his hand on the handle.

He whispered into his radio.

“Intruder's about to enter informant's door.”

As he spoke, the front door was kicked from outside. He jumped through the window, followed by his partner. By the time they arrived in Jo's dark bedroom, they could vaguely make her out, standing by her bed, in a most becoming T-shirt and knickers, brandishing an encyclopedia at a tall young male intruder.

Suddenly Nick and Gerry appeared, followed closely by two constables. The intruder held up his hands and Jo screamed, dropping the encyclopedia on her head. The intruder then launched himself at Nick, Gerry sprang at the intruder, and the constables attacked the Flying Squaddies. Meanwhile Jo crouched on the floor finding God.

The intruder wrestled himself away from Nick and Gerry, bolted for the door of Jo's living room, ran straight into her box marked
fragile
, collapsed knee first onto a sharp edge poking out of it, dived sideways onto the metal framework of her rucksack and catapulted himself headfirst into her door frame, from where he executed a stunning backward triple toe loop onto a different, larger, sharper edge poking out of her box marked
fragile
, all the while emitting a warlike howl. Finally, he crumpled facedown in her suitcase, a resigned and changed man.

Everyone heard the trumpet before they saw it and when the bedroom light was flicked on, they froze, like children caught with crumbs all over their faces. Gradually, one by one, they noticed Vanessa and Dick, who were standing outside the room, wearing one set of pajamas between them and each with a hissing cat by their feet. In the following silence, they took in the carnage, trying to make sense of everything.

After a moment, the Flying Squaddies looked at the constables they were garrotting and let go, only to be pounced on and half-nelsoned by Nick and Gerry.

Vanessa blew the child's trumpet again.

“Right!” she shouted. “I'm not afraid to use this!”

Dick brandished his mobile phone. “I've called the police.”

“We
are
the police,” said Gerry.

This took a moment to sink in.

“So are we,” said someone in a half-nelson. “Flying Squad.”

This took another moment to sink in.

“So are we,” said one of the constables. He hated to be left out.

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Gerry. “We thought you were strip-a-grams.”

“Convince me you're Flying Squad,” Nick ordered the man underneath him.

“
Let go or I'll fucking geld you
.”

Nick let go. He knew the Flying Squad tone. Gerry was persuaded to do the same with the man beneath him.

Vanessa and Dick tried to take in the situation as quickly as possible.

“What are you all doing in my house?” asked Dick eventually.

“
Our
house, darling.”

Three children appeared behind him in the kitchen.
“Go back to bed!”
yelled Vanessa. Everyone jumped.

“What is that awful smell?” she asked.

“Oh shit,” said Nick. “That's me. Well it's not
me
—”

“There's an intruder,” sobbed Jo.

“There are six intruders,” corrected Vanessa. “One who seems to have filled his own trousers.”

“It's a
dog crap
, I haven't—”

“He's the intruder!” shouted Jo, pointing at the intruder, who was lying in her suitcase, his nose in her favorite lace thong.

“I'm not an intruder,” he whispered.

“You look like an intruder to me, mate,” said Gerry, taking the opportunity to half-nelson him.

“Well, I'm
not
!”

Gerry pulled his arm tighter behind him.

“
Ow!”
yelped the intruder.

“What would you call yourself then, mate?”

There was a long silence, as the intruder wiped his tears angrily on Jo's underwear.

“I'm an accountant,” he hissed.

“Right,” Nick told Gerry. “Cuff the comedian.”

Then to everyone's surprise, Dick rushed forward and collapsed on the floor next to the intruder, his arm round his shoulder.

“Oh my God!” he cried. “It's Josh!”

“Where?” asked Gerry. “Who's Josh?”

“My son!” cried Dick. “Get off him!”

“Are you sure, sir—”

“Get off my son!”

Slowly Gerry let go of the intruder's arm and let it fall limply in Jo's undies. There was a very long silence. Eventually, the intruder squirmed painfully into a small fetal ball facing Dick.

“Hi, Dad,” he said weakly. “I like the new TV.”

Jo blinked as Gerry stepped away from Dick's eldest son. Painfully, slowly, Josh opened out the full length of his body and lay on his back in her open suitcase, breathing shallowly. As Jo frowned down at him, Josh Fitzgerald slowly came into focus.

He had his father's tall, boyish figure and thick, wavy dark hair. A bruise was just beginning to show between liquid brown eyes that were heavy with thick, wet eyelashes, a fresh cut emphasized high cheekbones, a line of blood trickled toward full lips and a firm jaw, and his chin, complete with dimple, was trying hard not to quiver.

She stared at him, dumbfounded. Did he really have her thong wrapped round his left ear, or was she still drunk?

“It's Josh!” yelled Zak suddenly, eyes bright, racing into the room. “With blood all over his face! And lots of policemen!” He bounced up and down, holding his willy. “Mummy,” he begged. “Can Toby come and play?”

Cassandra and Tallulah stayed behind their parents.

“Why have they hurt Josh?” asked Tallulah. “Did he take a biscuit without asking?”

Everyone turned to Jo.