The Nanny (26 page)

Maybe it’d be different if she hadn’t cut off my balls over the money.

Shit, I know I screwed up. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d freaked and gone off the deep end when she found out; I was ready for flying crockery, tears, a slap round the face.
After months lying awake worrying about it, I was almost looking forward to having it out in the open. She’d yell, I’d apologize, hopefully she’d get over it, and that would be
that.

But no. She had to be so fucking superior and
disappointed
.

I cling on to the strap as the subway rattles round a sharp corner. Must be nice and sunny up there on the moral high ground. Where the fuck does Clare get off? Telling me I can’t
‘handle’ my job. Banning me from seeing Hamish and the boys. Christ! Who does she think she is, grounding me like a fucking eight-year-old?

Felix is right. I
am
pussy-whipped.

Back in the day, I kind of liked Clare’s know-it-all confidence. Hell, I was used to it. It’s what I grew up with. But having your ass handed to you by your mother is one thing.
Having your wife rip you a new one every time you open your mouth is another.

When I was a kid, Mom took charge of all the household stuff. She picked out curtains and decided if we could afford a new sofa. She was the one who yelled three ways to Sunday if any of us came
home with bad grades, not Dad. It was much easier to hit him up for cash, rather than Mom; it was him we went to when we were in trouble with her and needed someone to fight our corner.

But there was no doubt Dad called the shots when it really mattered. Mom might choose the colour scheme, but Dad picked the house. He let her win the small battles, because he knew damn well
who’d come out on top in the war.

I realize women expect marriage to work differently these days. I never minded Clare working and building up her business till she was ready to have kids. I guess I just expected that when the
babies came along, the flowers would take a back seat for once.

The subway train rattles into Sloane Square Station. I elbow my way through the crush of commuters up into the daylight, ignoring the newspaper guy as I pass through the ticket barrier. He
ignores me right back. I love the British. You’d never know we spent Christmas Eve sharing a bird’s-eye view of my wife’s cunt.

It’s a pleasant evening, with a mild summer chill in the air. I cut down a couple side streets and stroll along the Embankment, thankful I’ve survived another Friday cull. Four
dealers on the trading floor had to clear out their desks today. Clare has no idea the pressure I’m under. Doesn’t she read the bloody newspapers? It’s carnage out there. Every
Monday, a few more faces are missing from the trenches. Any one of us could be next.

As I mount the front steps and let myself into the house, I hear shouting from the kitchen. I drop my briefcase in the hall, and walk into total fucking chaos.

Clare, covered with some kind of chocolate Jell-O, is screaming at Rowan at the top of her lungs. The poor kid bursts into tears as Poppy cowers in a corner, terrified and bewildered. An
upturned bowl drips more shit on the floor. Every surface is covered with dirty plates and cups. We could be on a sink estate in Peckham, rather than in a multi-million-pound house in one of the
most expensive streets in London.

I snatch up my son before Clare does anything worse than scream. ‘You don’t have to shout at him. He’s only a baby. He didn’t mean to do it.’

Clare glares venomously. She’s hated the poor bastard from the start. ‘I’ve been dealing with them on my own for the past four hours!’ she yells. ‘I’ve put in
a full day at work too, Marc! The last thing I need is to come home and clear up after these two monsters!’

‘
Monsters
?’

‘They’ve been absolute horrors! As soon as I get one settled, the other one starts. It’s a total nightmare—’

Rowan hiccups miserably in my arms. There’s something wrong with Clare if she can’t see how helpless and vulnerable the kid is. ‘Can’t you control two small babies for
five minutes?’

‘It’s not that easy—’

I’m sorry, but I really don’t see the problem. Most women would give their right arm to sit at home and look after the kids while someone else goes out and puts bread on the table. I
don’t know why the fuck Clare finds it so hard. She wants to be in charge, and then she expects me to be the main provider. She wanted babies, but she won’t give an inch when it comes
to her company. These damn career women want it all, and then blame
us
when they can’t have it. It’s a bloody con, and they’ve got away with it for far too long.

I wipe Rowan’s snotty nose. ‘My mother had six children under eight.
She
managed.’

‘She didn’t work!’

I could point out that when Clare didn’t work, the situation at home was even worse, but I can’t be bothered. ‘Your choice.’

‘If I didn’t have the company, we’d be on the streets right now,’ she sneers.

Change the fucking record, you ball-breaking
bitch.

‘Has it ever occurred to you,’ I snarl, ‘that you
drove
me to take chances? Flaunting how much more money you earn, how successful you are. Too successful to look
after your own children—’

Clare throws the scrubber, with which she has been trying to sponge her ridiculously impractical white linen skirt, into the bowl of chocolate sauce and splatters it further round the
kitchen.

‘You try it!’ she shrieks. ‘It’s impossible.
They’re
impossible. They hate me. They’ve been fine all day with Jenna. It’s
me
they
can’t stand. I’m a terrible mother.’

She bursts into noisy sobs, heedless of the children whimpering in confusion. I scoop Poppy up along with her brother, sheltering the two kids in my arms.

What does she want me to say?
Don’t be ridiculous, darling, of course you’re a good mother, of course your children love you. You’ve just had a bad day, it’ll be
better tomorrow.

Like hell. She’s been fucking shit from the start. First all the fuss over breastfeeding, then the near-hysteria when she had to cope with them on her own at home. She practically ignored
Rowan; poor bastard was lucky he didn’t starve to death. And the house looked like a bomb had hit it. Heaps of filthy laundry all over the place, dirty plates piled in the sink, stinking
diapers in the bathroom, and nothing to eat in the damn cupboard. Clare bloody gave up. Most days, she was still wandering around the house in her crappy dressing gown when I got in from work.
Hardly the kind of home a man wants to come back to.

Admittedly, Jenna knocked things back into shape, but Clare took her arrival as
carte blanche
to drop her mothering charade once and for all. Until the salt business with Poppy put her
front-and-centre-stage again.

Call it Munchausen’s, depression, neglect – I don’t give a shit why she did it; I’m just damn sure it wasn’t an accident. She can’t be allowed to spend time
on her own with them again. Jenna’s a bolshy little cow, but I know she’d die for the twins. Much as I’d like to get rid of her, I need her to keep an eye on things when I’m
not here. Until I come up with a better plan.

Poppy and Rowan bury their damp faces in my chest. I stare coldly at my wife over their heads. If Clare’s waiting for reassurance, she’s not going to get it from me. It’s my
children I care about now.

‘I should never have had them,’ Clare whines. ‘They’d be better off without me.’

‘Yes. Maybe we would.’

I leave her to stew in self-pity and take the kids into my study, settling them on the thick silk rug in front of the unlit fire. They immediately roll on to their tummies and start to trace the
vibrant colours with fat fingers, burbling nonsense at each other. I watch them play happily for a few minutes, my anger at my wife building.
Christ, how hard is it, Clare? Change a few
diapers, spoon in some apple sauce, sing ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ a couple times, and put them down for a nap. What the fuck’s the damn problem?

I pick up the phone. ‘Hamish? Look, I’m sorry to bother you on a Friday night, but I need a favour.’

‘I wish I could say it’s a level playing field, but I’d be doing you a disservice,’ Stephen Morton tells me. ‘In this country, the woman still
holds all the cards when it comes to custody.’

‘But I’ve explained. Clare doesn’t
want
the children—’

‘Look, Marc,’ the lawyer says, getting up from behind his vast mahogany desk and perching cosily on one corner, ‘I don’t want to rain on your parade. If your wife is as
agreeable to your having full custody as you say she will be, we won’t have a problem. I just want you to be fully cognizant of the situation should she prove less accommodating than we
hope.’

Stephen Morton wasn’t my first choice. He’s smug, patronizing and smarmy. But Nicholas Lyon refused to represent me; his wife Malinche is an old schoolfriend of Clare’s, though
as far as I know they haven’t seen each other for years. Lyon is also notoriously conservative, which could have made things a little sticky when it came to the business over the second
mortgage and my borrowings from Clare’s company. Morton didn’t bat an eyelash. I just hope Lyon extends the same scruples if Clare approaches him. There’s no question he’s
the best in the business; although, from what Hamish says, Morton comes a close, if less fastidious, second.

The lawyer returns to his side of the desk. ‘We need to prepare for the worst, even if,’ he adds, holding up one hand to forestall my protest, ‘it turns out to be unnecessary.
I take it your wife is financially able to support her children without your help?’

‘Yes,’ I say bitterly.

‘The court will want to know you’d be prepared to give up your job and care for them full-time.’

I narrow my eyes. ‘She’d have to pay me, then, wouldn’t she?’

‘If you were their primary caregiver, then yes, she would be required to pay you maintenance and child support.’

‘And I’d get the house?’

‘In all probability. It’s helpful that she put the house in your name, not hers. She would be left with her company, of course, and enough funds to put a roof over her
head.’

‘The damn company’s all that matters to her anyway,’ I say sourly.

Morton pulls a pad of foolscap towards him. ‘Marc, I’m sorry to be blunt, but right now this is all academic. Unless you have a very good reason, the court rarely gives custody to
the father when the children are this young.’

‘She tried to kill my daughter. Is that good enough?’

For a moment, Morton appears lost for words.

‘Would you care to explain?’ he manages finally.

His flashy gold fountain pen scratches as I talk. I describe in detail the sudden dash to the hospital with Poppy, Clare being dragged out of bed by the police at midnight; and I tell him her
latest wild claims of salt diabetes and miscarriages of justice and low levels of vaso-something. I don’t believe a word of it, and I can tell from Morton’s expression that neither does
he. This is some bullshit Clare’s cooked up to throw me off the scent.

When I’ve finished, he leans back, reads through his notes and taps his pen thoughtfully against his mouth.

‘Was the post-natal depression ever formally diagnosed?’

‘She was a basket case. Crying all the time, snapping at everyone, it was obvious—’

‘But not medically diagnosed?’ He puts his notes down and folds his hands on top of his pad like a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis. ‘Marc. I’ll be honest with you.
As far as the issue of your wife hiring the nanny goes, we’ll have to tread very carefully. It’ll depend entirely on which judge we draw. Some of them are very old-school on the subject
of working mothers, but others . . . especially the women . . . I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. We can play that by ear. But the salt business,’ he adds, picking up his pad
again and thoughtfully pulling on his lower lip. ‘That could be very interesting. Obviously, from our point of view it’s unfortunate no charges were brought, but we could make a lot of
hay with the midnight arrest none the less. No smoke without fire, all that sort of thing.’

I find myself warming to the man. I’m certain Lyon would be far less enthusiastic about playing dirty. But I don’t want a gentleman in my corner; I want a brawler who’ll do
whatever it takes to win.

‘Let me do a little research into Munchausen’s and this salt diabetes,’ he says briskly, scrawling in the margin. ‘If there’s any question about the
children’s safety, the judge will err on the side of caution, which in this case serves us well.’

‘Will I be able to stop her seeing them altogether?’

‘That’s a little more difficult. Our case for custody is fundamentally circumstantial: if we can throw up enough doubt over the salt poisoning, together with the post-natal
depression, and her clear reluctance to care for the children herself, as evidenced by the hiring of the nanny against your express wishes . . . yes, it could be enough to swing custody in our
favour. But unless we can prove the children are in immediate danger, we’d be unlikely to deprive your wife of access altogether. Let’s take one step at a time for the moment.’ He
stops writing and looks me in the eye. ‘One other thing. I need to know if there’s a third party involved. I couldn’t give a damn either way, but I don’t want to be ambushed
by the other side when we’re trying to build a case based on your concern for your children—’

‘There’s no one else,’ I snap.

‘And what about your wife?’

I laugh harshly. ‘Hardly. Not unless you count the bloody nanny.’

‘It happens,’ Morton says neutrally.

I glance at the flowers on his desk. Camellias. Like the ones Jenna brought home the other day for Clare.

There
is
something strange going on between them: an intimate, secret bond that excludes me. As soon as Jenna joined us, I was shoved out of the nursery, even though I was the one
who’d looked after Poppy on my own for her first two weeks of life. The two women created a mysterious, feminine world full of secret smiles and laughter at my expense. Every time I tried to
do anything with the twins, I was gently but firmly rebuffed.
This is our world. We don’t
need you
.