What the Nanny Saw (42 page)

“Could you be a bit more descriptive?” Jake suggested without moving from the sofa. He was going through the file of newspaper cuttings amassed by Foy. He was in the middle of a piece from
The Sun
describing how Nick Skinner’s guard dog had set upon the newspaper’s photographer. There was a picture of a leg with stitches and a large photograph of Leicester, looking quizzical and distinctly unmenacing. He was wearing a white diamante collar that Nick had bought Bryony as a joke to celebrate Leicester’s birthday. “White-collar criminal,” read the caption beneath the picture. Jake laughed, pushed the piece into Ali’s hands, and kissed her on the inside of her wrist. Ali anxiously looked round to see if Foy or Izzy had noticed. They hadn’t.

“She looks familiar,” rasped Foy, in a voice as throaty as the doorbell.

“Do you recognize her?” asked Jake hopefully.

“I don’t recognize her, but she looks familiar,” Foy muttered. “That’s the best I can do.”

“Maybe it’s one of Izzy’s friends?” suggested Ali, pulling away from Jake.

“Who would dare to arrive unannounced here?” Foy asked. “It’s like one of those houses with the mark of the plague on the door.”

“Some of Izzy’s friends are stupid enough,” said Jake, hoping to get a rise out of his sister.

“Fuck off, Jake,” shouted Izzy without looking up from her book at the other end of the room. No one admonished her. She had become so withdrawn that any response was gratifying. A couple of weeks after the photo of Jake had appeared, she had been photographed leaving one of those Kensington nightclubs favored by public-school types, wearing a tiny silver minidress and draped over the shoulder of a male friend who, it transpired, was the son of a hedge-fund manager who had been shorting Lehman’s shares. “Consorting with the Enemy,” screamed the headlines. It was the only time since he had disappeared that Nick had contacted Ali. He sent a text from a phone number that she didn’t recognize, saying simply, “Protect them.” She didn’t tell anyone, and quickly deleted the message.

“I’ve got it,” said Foy excitedly. He stepped abruptly backward and bumped into the arm of a chair. Ali darted forward to catch him in the small of his back. He felt frail and bony as she gently pushed him upright. “It’s that nanny who slept with Cupcake’s husband.”

Ali looked out the window, tracing Foy’s finger to the top doorstep. But she knew it was Katya even before she saw the long legs and the lean, gymnastic body. Katya stood by the intercom, head bowed, shoulders slouched, trying to make herself as insignificant as possible.

“Ali, are you there?” Katya called through the letterbox. “Please let me in.” Sensing a story in their midst, the photographers on the other side of the road stirred and idly began attaching lenses to their cameras. Someone asked Katya about her relationship with the Skinners.

“How do you know them?” a voice shouted. Katya ignored them.

“Do you know where Nick Skinner is?” someone shouted. “Has he tried to contact you?”

Foy leaned back against Ali. She didn’t resist. He needed the ballast, and his closeness was comforting. The sleeve of his jacket tickled her nose. It smelled musty. His breath was short and uneven. Tita really should take him to the doctor, thought Ali. But Tita was too busy worrying about her daughter and her grandchildren to bother with her husband. Uxorial detachment was the price of infidelity. He breathed out and Ali could smell stale alcohol from the night before on his breath. She caught Jake’s eye.

“Have you met Nick Skinner?” someone shouted at Katya from the huddle on the other side of the road.

“Shall I let her in?” Ali asked.

“Why not?” asked Jake.

•   •   •

“Where have you been?”
Ali asked Katya gently. They sat together on the sofa in the drawing room. Leicester was asleep between them, snoring contentedly. Katya stroked him, and he growled in his sleep. She pulled her hand away.

“He’s the most misanthropic dog I’ve ever met,” said Ali, pleased to have space between her and Katya so that she could escape the smell of cheap perfume. Katya frowned in confusion.

“He hates people,” explained Ali. “So don’t be offended.”

“I saw this in the paper,” said Katya, pulling her leather wallet from her handbag. This time, instead of the fifty-dollar bills, she pulled out a neatly folded copy of the photograph that Ali had taken for Foy’s olive oil label and pressed it into Ali’s hand. Someone had circled Ali’s name in pencil at the top of the photo. Katya pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Jake and Izzy.

“You can’t smoke in here,” said Foy, sounding alarmed. He peered around the side of the armchair to underline his disapproval. “It’s bad enough that you’re wearing shoes. I’m the only person allowed to wear shoes in this room.” His petulant tone made Katya laugh.

“If you saw the state of my feet, you’d want me to keep them on,” said Katya, fiddling with rows of bangles on her left wrist.

“I thought you’d gone back to Ukraine,” Ali questioned her.

“I got another job in London,” said Katya.

“As a nanny?” Ali asked.

“In a bar.” Katya shrugged. She paused for a moment. “They play music. It’s called Whispers.”

“Is it fun?” Ali asked.

“I can’t believe you’re still here,” said Katya, her voice lowered, “when this is all about to come tumbling down around you. Everyone says the same thing. Why don’t you get out while you can? Go and finish your degree. You were always the one with all the plans. What are you doing here with these people? They are bad news.”

Alfie and Hector burst into the room and ran over to Ali. They landed upon her body with such force that she was pushed back on to the sofa. They giggled and pulled at her, their voices muffled as they each buried their faces into her armpit. They breathed in her smell and she stroked them on the back with small circular movements until they gradually calmed.

“These are my two reasons.” Ali smiled.

“We missed you,” they said, turning in her arms to face the rest of the room.

“I’ve been here all the time,” said Ali. “Do you remember Katya?”

“Where’s Thomas?” Alfie asked, immediately making the association.

“He’s at home with his parents,” said Katya in an even tone.

The door handle turned, and Bryony came into the room.

“What’s she doing here?” Bryony asked, pointing at Katya. The way Bryony nervously darted across the room toward them reminded Ali of an animal that couldn’t decide whether it was in flight or fight mode. “Don’t you understand the authorities are looking for even the most tenuous evidence to connect Nick and Ned? You need to leave.”

“I’m sorry,” Katya apologized, getting up from the sofa. “I wanted to see Ali.”

“They’ll start digging for information about you,” said Bryony, pointing at the window. “Anyone who comes here is of interest. And given your history, I would have thought you’d want to keep a low profile at the moment.”

“Calm down, Mum,” said Jake. “They’ll hear you outside.”

“I’ll go right now,” said Katya. She pressed a piece of paper into Ali’s hands. “The address where I work,” she whispered.

“Why haven’t you got the television on?” Bryony demanded. She waved the controls at Foy and Jake. “They’ve got a new angle. Felix called to warn me. I think they’re going to call someone else in for questioning.” Katya called out good-bye to them all, but only Ali responded.

“What’s going on?” rasped Foy in confusion. He pushed down his hands on the arms of the chair to lift himself out for the second time in less than half an hour. His hands were so withered that you could see the tendons stretching beneath the loose skin. Foy closed his eyes and bit down on his lower lip to focus all his strength into his enfeebled biceps. His upper body shook with the effort as he lifted his body above the seat of the chair. For a moment he was suspended, trembling in the air, like a heavy object on the end of a crane. Then his arms collapsed and he fell down into the cushion again. No one said anything.

“I’ll let myself out,” said Katya, as Sky News came on. Foy craned his neck round the side of the armchair to watch. He wasn’t going to make another attempt to get up on his own, but Bryony, Jake, Ali, and Izzy stood too close to the screen for him to see. A business reporter stood outside the Lehman’s building in New York. The bank had just announced third-quarter losses of $3.9 billion. Shares were trading at just $7 a piece and it looked as though a last-ditch deal with Korea to buy the bank had fallen through. The female reporter’s eyebrows arched as though she was wincing.

“What does it all mean?” Jake asked Bryony.

“It means, short of a miracle, Lehman’s is going to the wall,” she said. “Which means your father has lost a fortune in stock options.”

As they struggled to absorb this information, the report switched to the Lehman’s building in Canary Wharf, “the center of a major insider-dealing ring.”

“God, they’re making it sound as though these two events are connected,” said Bryony.

“We went there,” shouted Hector and Alfie excitedly.

A picture of Nick fleetingly appeared on the screen.

“Daddy, Daddy,” the twins shouted at the television. Hector started crying as though it had suddenly dawned on him that his father was someone he could now find only on the pages of newspapers and on television screens. It was a close-up of Nick wearing black tie at the Mansion House dinner. Ali recognized it from the photo that used to sit on the table beside the drawing room door. She looked over to the table. The photo had disappeared.

Ali glanced over at Foy and saw a small tear of self-pity roll down the side of his cheek. Jake saw, too, and went over to his grandfather and put a hand on his shoulder while turning toward the television screen in the corner of the room.

“Fugitive Banker May Have Another Accomplice,” the headline flashed.

“He’s not a fugitive,” Bryony shouted at the television screen. “He’s given a statement and gone to ground to get you bastards off his back.”

“Do you know where he is, Mum?” Jake asked.

“He’s safe and well. That’s all you need to know,” snapped Bryony without looking away from the screen.

Bryony turned up the volume so loud that the twins stuck their fingers in their ears and started chanting.

“Make them be quiet, Ali,” Bryony pleaded.

“Shut up,” Foy shouted unhelpfully.

Ali went and sat back down with them on the sofa. She picked up Hector and sat him on her knee.

“Why can’t we go and play at someone’s house?” he sobbed into her shoulder. “It’s so boring being here all the time.”

“No one wants us,” said Alfie, kneeling beside Ali to pat his brother on the back.

“Why not?” asked Hector in between sobs.

“They liked us rich, but now we’re poor,” explained Alfie, “and they think it could be infectious.”

“Only Ali wants to play with us,” said Hector. “Don’t leave us, Ali.” He clung onto her, limpetlike.

Jake came over and joined them. He picked up Alfie and put him on his knee. Alfie and Hector held on to each other. They sat in silence as the report about Nick began in earnest. There were rumors that disgraced City bankers Nick Skinner and Ned Wilbraham may not have been acting alone when they bought shares in stock-market-listed companies that were about to be bought or sold. The reporter gave a brief explanation of how insider trading worked. “Insider dealing carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.”

He turned again to the charges leveled against Nick. Ali and Jake leaned forward toward the television. Nick was accused of making a series of transactions over a period of three years, using information believed to have come from the same source.

“It is believed that the FSA has made significant inroads into identifying where Skinner was getting his information,” said the reporter in an annoying tone that indicated he knew full well who fell under suspicion, but was unable to reveal their identity because it might prejudice the investigation.

“I’m going to ask Felix if he knows who it is,” said Bryony, tapping a message into her BlackBerry.

“Careful, they’ll be monitoring your messages, Bryony,” Foy pointed out.

“I know what I’m doing,” said Bryony. Her phone rang immediately. She listened without saying anything for a minute and then put down the phone and slumped onto the sofa. She lay there for a moment, staring up at the chandelier.

“What did Felix say, Mum?” asked Jake.

“He said that they think it is me,” said Bryony simply. “They think that I am the person who fed Dad information. I am their main suspect.”

For the second time that day, the front doorbell rang. Bryony went to answer it. Ali knew before she opened the door that it would be the police with a warrant for Bryony’s arrest.

 24 

September 2008

There was awful symmetry that when Bryony called Foy, Ali, Jake, and Izzy into the drawing room later that day to reveal that the accusations of insider trading against Nick all involved her clients, CNBC flashed the news that Lehman’s stock was trading at $3.71 a share, its lowest level ever. Less than a year ago it was worth $86.18 a share. The boats are all sinking at once, thought Ali, remembering Nick’s comment in Corfu.

“I don’t understand. What does it all mean?” asked Foy in confusion, glancing from Bryony to the television screen and then back again. He was in the middle of eating lunch, a ham-and-mustard sandwich, hastily prepared by Ali. There were crumbs stuck to the mustard around his mouth, crumbs in the trench where his sweater wrinkled over his stomach, and crumbs all over the floor. Leicester sat openmouthed at his feet, hoping for a piece of ham to drop. Foy’s grip on the sandwich was so feeble it was a race to eat it before it disintegrated. But at least he could manage unaided. He could no longer guide a fork to his mouth without asking Ali for help.

“It means that the FSA thinks that I was passing on information about deals involving my clients to Nick,” said Bryony, her voice shaky. “They assume I’m the deep throat.”

“Nick used information about your clients to buy shares?” Foy confirmed.

Bryony nodded her head.

“It’s too much coincidence for him to be innocent,” she told them.

On the television screen Lehman’s shares fell again, as if there was some magical connection between Bryony’s loss of faith in her husband and the world’s loss of faith in the banking system.

Bryony was paler than ever, and Ali noticed that her hands shook in her lap. She half considered walking to the stiff, upright chair where Bryony was perched to steady those hands in the way Bryony had steadied hers the first time she had driven the car to school almost two years ago to the day. It remained one of the most intimate moments they had shared.

But she suspected Bryony was too proud for sympathy. And it would have meant moving away from Jake. Being physically apart from him increasingly felt like more loss than she could bear. For the first time, the previous night, Ali and Jake had a conversation where they dared to imagine a future for themselves outside the confines of 97 Holland Park Crescent. Jake suggested Ali should see if she could transfer to Oxford and do her final year at university with him. They could live together. She could meet his friends. They could rent a cottage in the countryside. It sounded like a song by an indie band, thought Ali, enjoying the daydream.

They had lain naked on the bed beside each other, holding hands, having just had sex for the third time that night, imagining themselves shopping in Sainsbury’s, sitting in a Cotswold pub drinking cider, painting the walls of their bedroom. It was a bittersweet image. Because Ali understood, even if Jake didn’t, that the moment their relationship came out of the shadows it was probably doomed.

“I can’t believe he’s done this to me.” Bryony’s voice was almost a whisper.

“Maybe the FSA is trying to exert maximum psychological pressure by getting to you, to make Dad cave in and admit to something he hasn’t done?” Jake suggested. If nothing else gave them away to Bryony, it would be Jake’s optimism in the face of the disaster that had befallen his family. He had the drunken happiness of someone in the early stages of a love affair. Even Izzy now turned to him and told him to “get real.”

Jake’s arm was resting across the back of the sofa, and he casually stroked the back of Ali’s neck, letting his finger come to rest on her shoulder. Ali shifted away, worried that someone might notice. She glanced round the room and saw Foy was focused on his sandwich, Izzy was shredding the skin around her fingernails until they bled, and Bryony was staring at her hands, flummoxed at her inability to control them.

“Over the past five years I’ve worked on six big deals for clients, and in every case Ned Wilbraham bought shares in those companies. The FSA says that all the information came from your father,” said Bryony quietly.

“How do they know?” asked Izzy.

“I don’t think they have any evidence, but I think they’re probably right,” said Bryony. “He had a bank account where money was transferred to him from Ned every couple of months.”

“Dad hardly even knows Ned Wilbraham,” said Jake.

“Or likes him,” observed Izzy.

“And Mum hates his wife,” said Jake.

“I kept trying to tell them that we have nothing to do with the Wilbrahams. They showed me a photograph of Nick and Ned together in Corfu and another of the three of us at school sports day. They wanted me to admit that we were part of a crime syndicate. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.”

“Maybe there’s a simple explanation?” suggested Foy.

“As far as the FSA is concerned, it’s very straightforward: I passed Nick information about the deals I was working on, he passed it on to Ned Wilbraham, who bought the shares, and then they split the profits when they were sold,” explained Bryony. “It’s very neat.”

“So you definitely didn’t give Nick this information about your companies?” asked Foy. “Not even inadvertently?”

“Of course not,” Bryony said impatiently. “Why would I do that? It would destroy the business that I have spent years building and ruin my reputation. As it is, I’ve already lost five clients, and everyone agrees it’s best if I don’t show my face in the office.”

“So why would Dad do it?” asked Jake. “It’s not as though he needed the money.”

Bryony pointed at the television screen. The CNBC reporter was pointing at a graph showing the decline of Lehman’s shares, explaining that they had lost ninety-three percent of their value since January 31.

“I don’t know, because I can’t get hold of him,” said Bryony, staring at Jake and Izzy as though she wasn’t sure how much truth they could endure. “But I think it might have something to do with the crisis at Lehman’s.”

“Go on, Mum,” said Jake. “If you don’t tell us, we’ll just read it in a newspaper.”

“Lehman’s always paid out most of its bonuses in stock,” said Bryony. “Two years ago your father’s share of the company was worth fifteen million pounds, now it’s worth less than one million. I think he saw the storm clouds gathering and thought that doing a bit of insider dealing was a good insurance policy against losses at the bank.”

“Well, if that’s the case, he’s a fucking fool!” Foy exploded with some of his old bravado. “And even more of a fucking fool to get caught. This kind of thing goes on all the time, but it’s only the amateurs who show up on the radar.” He was warming to his theme, rubbing his hands up and down his trousers, sending a confetti of crumbs onto Leicester’s head.

“You’re not being helpful,” Jake warned his grandfather.

“I’m paying for his bloody lawyer,” said Foy, “so I can say what I like. I built my business brick by brick, from the foundations up. Nick always had it too easy. He’s never had to really work for a living. Selling bundles of debt isn’t a real living. Bloody snake-oil salesman.” He slumped back in his armchair.

“Actually, Dad has always worked really hard,” protested Izzy. “That’s why he was never around.”

“His great risk-minimizing formulas don’t look very clever now, do they?” Foy continued.

Hector and Alfie were downstairs in the kitchen, fiddling with the music system. The sound of Cat Stevens singing “Wild World” at full volume suddenly filled the house. Everyone jumped. Then it switched to “Two Little Boys,” the original version that Foy had bought for them. No one moved, momentarily shocked into silence by the noise, and relieved that it drowned out Foy.

“Turn that racket off,” rasped Foy, leaning forward as if he was going to try to get up out of his armchair. His sandwich fell from his hand, and Leicester greedily gobbled it up.

“I need to find a good lawyer who specializes in corporate crime, Dad,” said Bryony. She didn’t have the strength to argue with her father. “Otherwise I’m going to go down for something I didn’t do.”

“Won’t Daddy tell them that you’re innocent?” asked Izzy.

“I’m sure he will, but that doesn’t mean they’ll believe him,” said Bryony flatly.

“We should phone Julian,” said Foy emphatically. It was a line he had obviously used in the past when stuck in a tight corner.

“Why?” asked Jake incredulously.

“He might be able to help us,” said Foy.

“How can he possibly help?” asked Izzy. “And why would he?”

“Eleanor has just sold a story about her fifty-year relationship with you to a tabloid newspaper,” said Bryony bitterly. “That’s not the sort of help we need right now.”

“Eleanor has lost the plot.” Foy sighed. “She’s not in her right mind.”

“So how did Nick find out about which of your clients were buying or merging with other companies if you didn’t tell him, Bryony?” asked Ali. It was the first time she had spoken. Bryony looked at Ali as if surprised to find her in the room with them.

“I don’t know. The police asked me the same question, and I couldn’t give them an answer. Do you have any ideas?”

•   •   •

On Sunday night,
after she had read the twins four chapters from
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
, an appropriate choice in the current circumstances, Ali went to her bedroom and began tidying it. She started with the wardrobe, haphazardly pulling out everything until she was left holding a handful of clothes that belonged to her when she first moved in with the Skinners.

She put together on the bed an outfit that she once wore at university, trying to imagine herself wearing it for a lecture on eighteenth-century writers. She smoothed down the wrinkled purple T-shirt and the jeans. “John Locke, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne.” Ali did a roll call of authors she had studied, pleased with the way she could remember not just their names but the order in which the lectures had taken place.

She closed her eyes for a moment and saw herself dressed in this pair of jeans and this T-shirt, lying on her back in the grass, dreaming about Will MacDonald as he quoted, “‘Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words.’” She tried to remember the subject of her last essay: Was it the exploration of solitude in the fiction of Richardson, Defoe, and Sterne, or the relations between castration, clocks, midwives, and the military in
Tristram Shandy
?

Then she remembered a rucksack of books that she had stuffed at the back of a cupboard at the top of the wardrobe, and impulsively dragged over a chair so that she could pull it down. There was one on the rise of the City of London as the financial and commercial capital of the world in the eighteenth century; another on the dominance of political power by mercantile interests; a book by Carole Pateman about patriarchal society and the sexual subordination of women; and
The Birth of a Consumer Society
by John Brewer.

She carefully took each one out of the rucksack, cleaned off the dust with the purple T-shirt, and put them in an orderly pile on her bedside table, resolving that she would take advantage of her incarceration to do some background reading to prepare for her return to university. Whatever Nick had done and whatever Bryony’s role in his crime, it was obvious to Ali that she was living in a house of cards. “We’re nearing the end game,” she had told Jake. It was one of her few certainties.

For a moment, she allowed herself to imagine studying at Oxford with Jake. When he was with her it seemed almost possible. When they were apart it became a prospect as absurd as the Mad Hatter’s tea party. She turned her attention back to the pile of clothes. Most of them had been given to her by Bryony: some were castoffs that she no longer wore, others ill-advised purchases made during one of Bryony’s snatched forays with a personal shopper to Selfridges or Harvey Nichols. Ali remembered a conversation with Mira and the other nannies about the inverse relationship between wealth and generosity. “She makes me pay for my own milk . . .” “They buy children’s portions for me in restaurants . . .” “I have to show receipts even if I’ve only bought a packet of M&M’s after school.” None of their complaints resonated with her.

Ali counted at least ten pairs of shoes that Bryony had given her. She put on a pair of jeans that Bryony had bought for her in New York, some Belstaff boots that Bryony had never used, and a Sass & Bide top. She looked at herself critically in the mirror.

Many of the clothes were too formal. These she put in a bag for her friends. Her old clothes from Norfolk went in the Oxfam pile. Then Ali turned her attention to the chest of drawers. She removed all four drawers and tipped everything onto the floor: knickers, socks, scarves, belts, notebooks, booklists sent in the early days by her tutor, hoping to lure her back to university, letters from her mother, toys that belonged to the twins.

Then she pulled out the Francis Bacon poster from the back of the wardrobe and decided she would hang it in the drawing room where the original used to be, in the hope of raising a laugh from Foy. She attributed this flurry of energy to a desire to impose order on the creeping chaos that had enveloped the Skinners. It was the same mentality that took hold among civilian populations in war zones or among aid organizations delivering relief in the aftermath of natural disasters. Bryony was right. Routine and order were the best antidote to anxiety and uncertainty.

In the midst of this disarray, at the point where everything looked much worse than it had before she began, she heard her phone beep. She glanced down and saw a message from Jake.

“Can’t sleep, want company?” it read. She frowned at Jake’s punctuation. Was he trying to say that he couldn’t sleep or was he asking her whether she couldn’t sleep? Ali tapped in “yes and yes” into her BlackBerry. Even before she had sent the message, the door handle started turning and Jake poked his head around the bedroom door, holding a couple of bottles of beer.

“They’re warm,” he apologized, “and I don’t have an opener.”

Ali saw him glance around the room, checking past her shoulder to the wardrobe, taking in the plastic bags of clothes lined up by the dressing table and the piles on the floor. He came over to the bedside table and picked up one of the books that Ali had piled up.