The Sound (2 page)

When I’m done, Brodie hands me a clean nappy and shows me how to do it up. I reseal the poppers on the Babygro feeling more proud of myself than when I passed my driving test.

‘Oh my goodness.’

I spin around. There’s a woman in the doorway and I am guessing from the red hair that she is the mother of the pooing baby and the precocious four-year-old, and therefore my new boss.

‘Did Mike leave you to change Braiden’s diaper?’ she says. ‘I am so sorry. And I’m sorry I wasn’t here to welcome you when you arrived. I just had to run to
the store. We only just got here ourselves.’

‘That’s fine,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry. Brodie here helped me out.’ I wink at Brodie and she grins back at me.

‘It’s Ren, isn’t it?’ she asks, putting her handbag down on the bed and shaking my hand. ‘It’s so lovely to meet you. I’m Carrie Tripp.’

‘Hi,’ I say, shaking her hand. ‘Nice to meet you too.’

‘Did my husband at least show you to your room?’ she asks.

I shake my head.

‘Mike!’ Mrs Tripp yells at the top of her voice. She turns back to the bed and picks up Braiden. Mr Tripp walks into the room at that point.

‘Hey, honey,’ he says, seeing his wife. ‘You met Ren, then? I was just taking a quick call.’

Carrie raises an eyebrow. He gives her an innocent look as if to say,
what?
And then his wife shakes her head and laughs and I think to myself that I’m going to like these people.
I’m going to like being part of their family for the summer. Even if poo-filled nappies are the trade-off.

‘Brodie, can you show Ren to her room, please?’ Carrie says.

‘Sure,’ Brodie says and she slips her hand into mine.

The house is amazing. Or, if I’m going to start being American about it, it’s
totally awesome
. It’s like something from that old TV show
Dawson’s Creek
. Crossed with
Anne of Green Gables
. It’s wooden and painted dove-grey and it has this beautiful white veranda running around it. They call it a deck.
And to complete the whole olde-worlde effect it also has shutters, painted an egg-white colour.

Right now, at this second, I could be at home in south London, trying to figure out a way to get through the summer without seeing either Will or Bex. But the fates, and my mother, intervened
and
bam
, I’m not in the delightful suburb of Bromley staring at my Facebook friend list and deleting slash untagging photographs while waiting for my A level results to blast through
the letterbox like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

No. I’m in Nantucket. Thirty miles off the coast of Massachusetts. Nantucket island. The faraway land. Home of Moby Dick. Or at least some of the whalers who chased him all over the
Atlantic. Now home to a lot of wealthy Americans who summer here and who require nannies to do their dirty diaper work for them.

I didn’t need much persuading. I would have taken a job herding yaks in Outer Mongolia if it would have got me out of London for the summer but this seemed too good to be true and now,
even taking into account the nappy episode, I’m still reeling from just how good and how true the situation is.

My bedroom is gorgeous. I have a double bed, layered with quilts. There’s an antique writing desk topped with a three-way mirror, a chest of drawers and a little armchair beside the
picture window. Brodie leads me to it and climbs on the arm. ‘Those are salt flats,’ she says, pointing at the marshy low land that stretches almost as far as the eye can see.
‘And that,’ she says, still pointing, ‘is the Sound.’

‘The what?’ I ask.

‘The ocean,’ Brodie says, still pointing. I squint at the thin strip of blue that I can see glimmering invitingly just beyond the flats. ‘It’s called the Sound,’
Brodie repeats, and then turning to me she adds solemnly, ‘People die there all the time.’

I blink. ‘O-kay,’ I say slowly. ‘Good to know.’ I am assuming she means that maybe people have drowned in that stretch of water or boats have been shipwrecked and I make
a mental note to neither step foot in the water nor onto a boat while I’m here. (And also to Google shark attacks, though I’m fairly certain that this far north it’s too cold for
sharks.) Brodie, done with showing me the view, jumps off the chair. I turn back to admire the room and let out a long and happy sigh.

I want to live here forever. That is how it feels at this moment in time. I want this to be my house. I even wouldn’t mind having Brodie for a little sister.

‘Ren.’

I turn. Mr Tripp is standing in the door. ‘We’re heading out to the club for lunch, you’re welcome to join us.’ He sees my suitcase, still unpacked, standing by the bed.
‘Unless you want some time to settle in?’

I glance around the room. I would like time to unpack my books and my clothes, listen to some music and maybe send a few emails to my mum and Megan, but I think it might be rude to turn him down
so, ‘Yeah, OK,’ I say, ‘that sounds good.’

‘Great,’ Mr Tripp says and then heads for the stairs.

I follow after him and climb beside Brodie into the back seat of their enormous, space-age style car. Carrie straps Braiden into his car seat beside me.

‘Do you have your licence?’ she asks me.

For a moment I think she’s asking me if I have some kind of childcare licence and then I realise she’s talking about driving. ‘Um, yes,’ I answer. I only just got it,
after failing the first time (for not using my mirrors – Megan laughed at the irony) and I’m still wrangling with my mum over use of the car so I haven’t driven a whole lot. But,
on the upside, I did learn on the streets of south London and there can be no finer training ground.

‘Great, we’ll get you insured on this car so you can drive the kids around.’

She slams the car door and I stare after her. This vehicle makes the car I learnt on in England look like a dinky toy. There’s a whole dashboard of blinking lights. It’s the
equivalent of being asked to fly a plane. To complicate things further, when we get going I realise that we’re driving on the right side of the road – that is to say – the wrong
side. I sink back in my seat and think about whether I should come clean with them that letting me behind the wheel of their car, carrying their children as precious cargo, might not be the wisest
decision on their part.

I don’t recall driving being a prerequisite for the job but there wasn’t really a job description at all. My mum’s friend from university lives in Boston and knew someone who
needed a nanny for the summer. A flurry of emails and a brief introduction later, the flight was booked and now I’m standing here realising that never once were qualifications mentioned.

‘So, Ren,’ Carrie says, leaning back to look over her shoulder as Mike backs out the driveway. ‘Is this your first visit to the US?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘How are you liking it so far?’ she asks. Her voice is clipped – her eyes are penetratingly blue and I remember as she fires questions at me like machine gun fire (What am I
studying? What are my grades? Do I have a boyfriend? – nix to that one) that she’s a lawyer. Buried in the information about flights, arrival times and the children’s ages was
this little morsel of information. I think she’s an entertainment lawyer – which sounds like a total oxymoron to me. And he – I glance at Mr Tripp who is busy driving – is
something to do with newspapers.

I tell Carrie that I want to study English at university and that I’m hoping to be a writer.

‘What kind of writer?’ Mr Tripp pipes up.

‘Um,’ I say, self-conscious all of a sudden, ‘a music journalist.’

‘Wow,’ he says, catching my eye in the rear-view mirror, ‘that’s interesting. You like music, then?’

‘I love music,’ I say, grinning automatically.

‘What kind of music?’ he asks.

‘A mixture,’ I reply, wondering if this will be like one of those chats I’ve had with Megan’s dad where she rolls her eyes and digs her elbow into my ribs and dies a slow
death while I try to explain to him who Lady Gaga is.

‘Mike, don’t,’ Carrie says, laying a gentle hand on his arm.

‘What?’ he asks her. ‘I’m totally down with the kids.’

‘No, really you are not,’ Carrie says.

‘No, Dad,’ Brodie pipes up beside me, ‘you really aren’t down with the kids.’

‘Put in my place by a four-year-old!’ He shakes his head, laughing, then says to me, ‘Well, maybe I can get you a press pass to a few gigs in Boston when we get
back.’

‘Ren isn’t coming back with us, she’s just with us for the summer, remember?’ Carrie reminds him.

‘Oh, right,’ Mr Tripp says, frowning as he overtakes a cyclist.

Carrie shrugs at me. ‘We go through a lot of au pairs,’ she says. ‘It’s almost impossible to hold on to a good nanny in the city. Our last one ran off with our
neighbour’s husband.’

Braiden hiccups at that point and spits up some white gloop. I mop it up with a square of muslin, while wondering where to look or what to say. Was that a warning shot across the bows? Because,
while Mr Tripp is attractive in an American newscaster type of way, he’s kind of old. And that would be totally gross. As well as just wrong.

‘Anyway,’ Carrie says, settling back into her seat, ‘we’re so glad you’re here. Mike and I are both buried with work. Mike works on news deadlines so he’s up
late most nights and I’m working on a big contract at the moment, so we need you to wake up with the kids, get them ready, take Brodie to camp, drop Braiden at day care, pick them both up,
feed them and put them to bed.’ She takes a breath but I’m still holding mine.

Two things she’s just said strike me as odd: they are on holiday but they are working, and the kids are both in day care yet they still require a nanny. I decide to keep my mouth shut
though because a) it’s none of my business and maybe Americans are all just workaholics and b) hiring a nanny and putting the kids into day care sounds like a very sensible and advantageous
plan to me because I am
not
a workaholic.

‘But,’ Carrie continues, with a dazzling smile, ‘the rest of the day is yours. And the weekends. We might need you to do some babysitting in the evenings if that’s OK,
but that’s all.’

‘That’s fine,’ I say and it is. It’s not exactly like I know anyone on the island anyway. And I’ve already planned on spending my free time here writing, listening
to music and reading. If, as I suspect, my A level grades aren’t of the AAA variety but more of the Famine, Pestilence and Death variety, I’m going to have to find another way to make
my music journalist dream happen. My blog is good but it needs to ratchet up a gear if I’m going to make a name for myself.

I glance at Mr Tripp. I wish I was going back to Boston with them. Free backstage passes to gigs? It’s like I’ve been shown the gates of heaven and then had them slammed and bolted
in my face.

I’m so busy thinking about what bands I would have the potential to see if I stayed here and worked for the Tripps for, say, the rest of my life, that I’m not paying much attention
and suddenly we’ve pulled into a parking lot. Up ahead is a two-storey white shingle building with giant decks upstairs and down overlooking the harbour. Sails blot the horizon and seagulls
whirl and swoop overhead. The place is heaving with people – the noise of laughter and clinking glasses carries across the parking lot.

As we walk towards the door I glance down at my scruffy Converse and the short and exceedingly creased Topshop sundress I’m wearing. I threw a ratty old Clash T-shirt over the top of it
and now I skulk a few steps behind the others and tear the T-shirt off over my head and stuff it in my bag. This is not the kind of establishment that looks like it allows entry to anyone unless
they’re wearing black-tie evening wear, even for breakfast, and I have the sense that a Clash T-shirt, no matter how vintagely authentic, might be the equivalent of wearing hot pants to a
royal wedding.

Carrie and Mike are both wearing tan trousers – I didn’t think they were the type of couple to go in for matching, but they’re American and what do I know about how Americans
dress? Mike has on a button-down shirt and a jacket just like one my granddad used to wear and Carrie is wearing a white, short-sleeved blouse and a soft grey cashmere cardigan. Even the children
are pristine and groomed – as though they’ve sprung off the page of a catalogue. Brodie, holding my hand, is wearing polka dot leggings and a spotless white tunic. While Braiden, who
Mike is carrying, is wearing a Babygro with a little polo player adorning it.

I feel even more self-conscious. And this isn’t in any way mitigated by the woman who meets us at the door with a clipboard, hair severely drawn up into a ponytail, whose nose wrinkles in
distaste at the sight of my shoes and then simply at the sight of all of me. Carrie brushes her to one side with her best lawyer snark face and walks towards a table in the far corner, waving at
the occupants.

Mike steps aside to let me pass the clipboard Nazi, winking conspiratorially at me. ‘Ignore her,’ he whispers, ‘it’s the prerogative of waitresses in this town to make
you feel small.’

I smile gratefully at him and then follow, still holding – actually clutching – Brodie’s hand.

Carrie has stopped by a large table in the corner where several seats sit vacant. I do a quick scan of the other diners. A woman is on her feet, hugging Carrie, exchanging quick-fire banter
about something called a realty market and I’m sure I catch mention of Google and Robert de Niro in the same sentence . . . I don’t even attempt to decipher any of it. A tall man in a
jacket and tie is tousling Brodie’s hair while she glowers up at him like an angry leprechaun. The man looks at me and seems a little taken aback, before squaring his facial expression and
offering me his hand.

‘Joe Thorne,’ he says. ‘Family friend.’

I take it and he gives my hand a firm, meaty shake. He’s in his forties and big in that way I imagine only American men can be, with a tanned face, thick greying hair and teeth so white
they shine like headlights.

‘Ren Kingston,’ I answer. ‘The nanny.’

He nods thoughtfully. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ren, please have a seat.’ He indicates the bench running along the wall and then he turns to greet Carrie and Mike with
hearty back slaps and comments about the Red Sox (baseball – I know that one) and how great Carrie is looking.