The Au Pair Read online

  ‘She’s crying!’ Marie-France rushed past. ‘Where’s the back door? I’ll look after her.’

  ‘Suit yourself! She’s only … Merde. Someone’s coming in!’

  There was indeed the sound of voices coming from the front door. ‘So I told her that …’

  Marie-France stared in horror as a small, dark-haired, skinny woman walked in along with Jilly – Jilly from the au pair agency.

  ‘What is going on?’

  The skinny woman’s voice rose as she surveyed the coffee cups everywhere and the stumped-out cigarette ends on plates.

  ‘I ask my friends to my house.’ Antoinette was speaking in a defiant voice instead of one which sounded sorry. ‘You give me permission!’

  ‘Yes, but I also said I didn’t want anyone smoking indoors.’ The dark-haired woman looked around, her eyes darting from one side of the room to the other. ‘Where is Immy?’

  ‘In the garden,’ said Antoinette quickly. ‘I come in to get her some juice.’

  ‘She’s crying,’ said Jilly, moving to the window. ‘Looks like she’s stuck again.’ Her eyes fell on Marie-France reproachfully as though she had participated in this mess. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get her.’

  Marie-France had wanted to explain that none of this had been her fault but there wasn’t a chance. ‘I like to stay and tidy up,’ she offered while helping to put some of the coffee cups in the dishwasher, ‘but I must return to my work.’

  Jilly, who was playing with a now-comforted Immy, gave her another reproachful look. ‘Are you happy with your family, Marie-France?’

  Now was not the time to admit how badly Dawn was treating her or she might find herself out of a job. ‘Oui, madame.’

  The skinny woman opened a bottle of wine even though it wasn’t yet lunchtime. ‘Probably living the life of Riley there, I should imagine, with that pool and all those servants.’

  Riley? What was that? Marie-France made a mental note to check it out. Meanwhile, she really had to go. She’d been hoping to pop into the library on the way back and if she didn’t get a move on, there wouldn’t be time.

  ‘Well,’ said the tall thin man at the library when she’d explained she was trying to find someone who had lived in Corrywood nineteen years ago, ‘Your best bet is to look on the electoral roll but you need an address for that.’

  That was no good then! Her mother insisted, before she left, that she ‘couldn’t remember’ it. So what, wondered Marie-France as she made her way back up the hill to Dawn’s place, should she do now?

  Reaching the gates, she pressed in the security code Madame Dawn had taught her (‘It changes every month so make sure you remember’) and walked up to the enormous front door with those huge pillars.

  Before she could find her key, the door swung open. A furious Madame Dawn was standing there with a small television in her hand. ‘What do you call this?’

  Bon! She had found it. ‘That is the television you search for before!’

  ‘So you admit it then?’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Of course you do. We found this in your room. You stole it.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘You’re no more than a common thief! Now don’t move because I’m going to call the police!’

  ‘The police?’ A deep voice sounded from behind her. ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘Tom found his television in that girl’s room!’ hissed Dawn.

  ‘And what was he doing there in the first place?’

  Just what she was about to ask!

  Dawn looked embarrassed. ‘He was exploring.’

  ‘Tom!’ The child was standing at the top of the stairs, grinning, with defiance flashing from those piggy eyes. ‘Come down here. Your mother says you found the television in Marie-France’s room. Is that true?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘If it is there, it is because someone places it there,’ spat Marie-France. ‘If you tell lies, Tom, the police will put you in prison! Not me!’

  Tom burst into loud tears. ‘She’s the liar. Not me!’

  ‘You will go to your room, Marie-France,’ hissed Dawn. ‘Now. And stay there until I say you can come down. Got it?’

  CONFUSING ENGLISH IDIOMS FOR AU PAIRS

  Give someone a leg-up (Helping someone)

  Raining cats and dogs (Intensive rain)

  Letting the cat out of the bag (Revealing a secret)

  Eating someone out of house and home (Being greedy)

  Driving someone round the bend (Annoying someone)

  Tearing your hair out (Feeling very frustrated)

  Cold as brass monkeys (Freezing)

  Lend an ear (Listen)

  Chapter 9

  THANK GOODNESS FOR Paula! Without her help, Matthew told himself, he couldn’t have gone back to work. As it was, James had been very understanding. If he hadn’t been a partner, he’d never have got so much time off.

  ‘Of course Lottie can come to us during the day for a week or so,’ Paula had said when he’d rung round Sally’s friends for emergency help. There hadn’t been that many, to be honest. His wife hadn’t been the kind of woman who’d had lots of friends. ‘Poor you! It sounds as though you’ve had some really bad luck. My own au pair isn’t great, to be honest, but we’re still together.’ She made a sympathetic noise. ‘Almost sounds like a relationship, doesn’t it? But that’s what it is, really. Immy, don’t do that or you’ll get stuck again. Sorry. Antoinette – that’s my girl – is out at the moment so I’m struggling with my lot. Anyway, just drop Lottie off on your way to work and we’ll hang on to her until you’re back.’

  So he’d taken her at her word, even though Lottie hadn’t been very keen and had protested all the way that ‘Immy is a baby’ and that Paula’s son William, who had been at Puddleducks with her, wasn’t her ‘friend’ any more.

  It had almost broken his heart to leave her and drive off while she stood at the doorstep next to Paula, who’d put her arm around her in a motherly fashion when it should have been Sally doing the same thing. In fact, he’d had to pull in at a lay-by on the way to the office and actually have a bit of a weep, which was, Christina had been saying for months, exactly what he needed to do instead of bottling it all in. It just wasn’t great timing when he was due in the office by eight thirty.

  How odd, he shivered as he pulled into the car park and found his ‘usual’ space. He hadn’t parked here since the week before Sally had finally died. Now he was back here, in his suit which he’d had dry cleaned and his shirt which he hadn’t pressed particularly well and the navy striped tie which Sally had given him two birthdays ago. It was almost as though he’d never been away.

  But no. Judging from the look on Karen’s face as she got out of the little blue sports car which had pulled up next to his, there wasn’t going to be any chance that he could pretend anything was still the same.

  ‘Matthew, how are you?’ His PA, with that rather irritating little-girl voice, was approaching him now with both arms outstretched and her wide generous mouth positively homing in on each check. She paused slightly but long enough for him to take in her trademark perfume that always made him sneeze.

  ‘We’ve all been thinking of you.’ She was standing a short distance away from him now but still somehow clasping both his hands as though dragging him out of a deep stretch of water, determined not to let go. ‘You poor, poor thing! What a dreadful ordeal to go through. And so young too! You did get the flowers I sent, didn’t you? I wanted to send my own, although of course I contributed to the general office collection. But I felt that, having met Sally twice, I knew her, Matthew. I really did! And although I don’t have children of my own – well, not yet, at any rate – I felt for you with your dear little daughter.’

  By now they were walking towards the entrance and the name plate James Matthew Architects was gleaming at him. He and James had started it nearly four years ago when they’d both found themselves working for a company that they didn’t particularly care for. Amazingly, in the
recession, it wasn’t doing too badly.

  ‘Now, it’s bound to feel a bit strange on your first day.’ Karen sounded like a mother at the school gates. ‘But everyone knows what you’ve been through, of course, so they’ll all make allowances. If there’s anything I can do for you, aside from the usual things, of course, all you have to do is let me know.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Matthew was beginning to feel suffocated. Karen had always been over-solicitous but now she was simply making everything worse. Much worse. He turned to face her before they got as far as the reception desk. ‘There is one thing, actually.’

  Those loose soft blond curls bobbed energetically and her low-cut blouse imitated the movement. ‘Anything, Matthew. Anything.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about Sally.’ His words came out sharper than he’d meant them to and her fallen face made him feel a heel. ‘I just want everything to be normal again. OK?’

  The curls and cleavage nodded disappointedly. ‘I understand, Matthew. I really do.’

  Right. Now he had to walk past everyone else’s desks to get to his own office at the end. Matthew braced himself for the embarrassed faces but found to his relief that, on the whole, everyone seemed quite normal.

  ‘Hi, Matthew,’ said someone.

  ‘Good to see you back, mate,’ said another.

  He and James had agreed they wouldn’t stand on ceremony with their employees. Nice to see that hadn’t changed.

  ‘We’ve got a new sandwich service,’ someone else called out, ‘so bung in your order before eleven a.m. or you’ll be left with tuna.’

  It was feeling better already!

  ‘Matthew!’ James was coming out of his office, giving him a quick hug. Someone wolf-whistled across the floor. ‘Cheeky buggers,’ grinned James, stepping back.

  After Sally’s death, James had rung him every now and then to see how he was. Occasionally, he had invited him out for a beer. But Matthew had turned him down, not wanting to leave his daughter. Privately, he felt hurt that his friend and his wife hadn’t asked him and Lottie over for a meal together.

  Now it seemed as though James was trying to over-compensate. ‘Come on through.’ He ran his hands through his hair which, Matthew noticed, had got considerably thinner over the last year. ‘I can tell you, I’m glad you’re back. We’ve got a few big deals in the last couple of months and I need your input badly.’

  *

  ‘You’ll feel better when you go back to work,’ Christina had said during one of their recent sessions. ‘It will distract you.’

  She’d been right. By lunchtime, Matthew’s head was full of designs for the new shopping centre which James, amazingly, had won the tender for. It was a huge project and part of him was ashamed that his partner had had to do all the hard work in securing it.

  ‘I felt you had enough to cope with,’ his friend said as they munched their cheese granary sandwiches over the outline plan. ‘How’s Lottie doing?’

  Matthew felt a pang, thinking back to her anxious little face when he’d dropped her off at Paula’s this morning.

  ‘Not great. She misses her mother badly of course and she’s still getting the occasional nightmare.’ He could hear his own voice trembling and had to force himself to look out of the window and concentrate on his car down below in order to steady himself.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. Charlie sends her love, by the way, and says that if there’s anything she can do, to let her know.’

  Charlie had been with James for years but neither seemed to want kids so how could they know what he and Lottie were going through? ‘Thanks. I will.’

  ‘Who’s looking after her now?’

  Matthew groaned. ‘It’s a long story. It was meant to be a girl from Bulgaria, or Vulgaria as Lottie insisted on calling it. Then there was Berenice but neither of them worked out – don’t even ask why – so a friend of Sally’s is having Lottie until I can find another au pair.’

  James grinned. ‘I saw a film about au pairs once when I was a teenager. It was part of my adolescent passage.’

  Matthew felt uncomfortable. ‘Yes, well today’s girls aren’t like that. At least the two I had weren’t. In fact, you won’t believe—’

  ‘That your mobile?’ James nodded at the small black phone on the desk. ‘It’s OK. You get it. We need a bit of a break anyway.’

  Caller withheld? Matthew felt a twinge of unease. Who was it? Paula? Had she been trying to get hold of him because Lottie was sick? His imagination ran riot. Maybe she was lost. Or hurt. Dear God, please may she be all right. He should have stayed at home to look after her himself.

  ‘Mr Evans?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘This is Janine from the agency.’

  Relief shot through him. Lottie was all right after all. Still, he didn’t like the sound of the woman’s voice which was in direct contrast to last week when she had sounded very contrite.

  ‘I’ve just interviewed Berenice, Mr Evans, about the unfortunate hair incident and it appears that there is more to this than we had thought.’

  A cold feeling passed through him. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Berenice claims that your daughter insisted that she cut her fringe. In fact, she wanted her to cut off much more. She said she wanted to look like one of the other au pairs you had before.’

  Sozzy? Matthew vaguely recalled that her daughter had indeed admired her spiky style but that had just been a silly whim. She hadn’t meant it, surely?

  ‘Lottie also suggested that Berenice tried on your wife’s clothes. Your daughter said that you had left instructions that Berenice should go through them before you gave them away.’

  ‘That’s preposterous!’

  ‘Are you sure, Mr Evans? Lottie also apparently asked if she could help with the housework instead of being forced to do it as you said.’ The voice was a bit softer now. ‘Forgive me for speaking out of turn but grief can do strange things to people, especially children. Berenice said that Lottie was always making stories up. There’s something else too. Your daughter claimed that you often smacked her for losing her shoes.’

  ‘That’s an utter lie!’

  Matthew heard his own voice rise just as Karen walked past the office, glancing in with undisguised curiosity.

  ‘She also claimed that her mother wasn’t dead at all but that she comes to visit her every night when she is asleep.’

  Matthew felt his mouth going dry. That part was certainly true. Lottie did keep saying that but, on the doctor’s advice, he didn’t contradict her.

  ‘I’m not suggesting you take Berenice back, Mr Evans. I think the damage has been done on both sides. But I do feel that before you take on another au pair from an alternative agency, you might want to have a word with your daughter first. I’m a mother myself and I can’t help feeling that Lottie is deliberately seeing off any strangers in the house because she doesn’t want anyone else there.’

  He could feel the panic rising in his throat. ‘But how am I going to be able to work if I don’t have some help?’

  There was a sympathetic sound at the other end. ‘That’s a question which only you can answer. Good luck, Mr Evans.’

  James gave a little I-couldn’t-help-overhearing cough as he came off the phone. ‘Everything all right?’

  He nodded. A small tell-tale pulse began to throb in his right temple the way it had ever since that day when Sally’s first lot of tests had come back. ‘Fine. Everything’s just fine.’ He reached across the desk to pick up the plans. ‘Let’s get back to this, shall we? I don’t know what you think but in my view, this bit over here is crying out for another window ’

  Matthew forced himself to concentrate on work until it was a reasonably decent time for him to pick up his jacket. Usually he stayed later than this but he didn’t want to impose on Paula any more than was necessary. So this was how single mums felt! He’d always thought that the word ‘juggling’ was a cliché but now he could see that it summed up his dilemma perfectly. It really
was a balancing act; trying to make sure that you did your bit at work but were a responsible parent at the same time. Add a large gallon or two of grief and that might just about give someone the tail end of the picture.

  Still, he told himself as he made the forty-minute-or-so drive back to Corrywood, at least he had his job! Those few hours at his desk when he had refused to allow himself to dwell on Lottie and Berenice and who was or wasn’t telling the truth had helped to block everything out. But now it was time to ask some tough questions.

  Paula’s house was one of those easy-on-the-eye homes with a horseshoe gravel drive which had been built in the 1930s. It sang out security and safety and those sponge cakes in the kitchen which Sally used to make on her two days off a week from the lawyer’s office in London where she had worked as a part-time legal secretary. He and Sal had both liked the look of these houses, which were in a better part of town than they were. ‘One day,’ she had said dreamily at the stage when there had still been the possibility of a ‘one day’, ‘I’d love a home like that.’

  Why was it, Matthew asked himself as he knocked on the front door, that some people had everything? Paula’s husband worked away during the week in Brussels to pay for all this but when he came back, he had his wife and his kids and the Sunday night drama on television which he could watch without wincing if one of the characters died of cancer.

  Odd. No one was coming. Matthew knocked again, more urgently this time and his heart began to beat faster. Ever since Sally, he had become convinced that something else would go wrong. If Sally could be taken, so could Lottie. Christina said it was part of the natural grieving process but the explanation didn’t make the symptoms any easier to deal with.

  At last! A shape loomed up through the glass.

  ‘Yes?’

  The dark, sultry girl standing in front of him, barefoot in skinny denims and a T-shirt which dipped in the front, eyed him suspiciously as though he had interrupted her from something.

  ‘Hi! I’m Lottie’s father. Are you Antoinette?’

  ‘Yes.’ This was said in precisely the same tone as the first word. She nodded dismissively. ‘Plis. Enter.’