The Nanny (29 page)

I push it open and switch on the light. ‘
Here
you are. What are you doing, sitting all alone in the dark? Where’s Jenna?’

‘She’s out. Another date with her mystery man. It’s lucky she was in when I got home – my key jammed in the bloody lock.’

I fight a surge of anger, knowing she’s with Xan.

‘I told her she couldn’t take the night off.’

‘I wanted to have the house to ourselves.’ He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘There’s a couple of things we need to talk about, Clare. Why don’t you
come in and sit down?’

I don’t want to sit and talk to you. I don’t want to deal with your problems. I need to go away and think about what’s happened to me today; I need to think about
Cooper.

For better or worse.

I suppress a sigh, and unbutton my coat. ‘I’d rather talk in the sitting room. I’m just going to get some tea. Would you like some?’

‘Another Scotch, please.’

I fetch him his drink, and make myself a cup of peppermint tea. I’m tempted to add a slug of something stronger, but some sixth sense tells me I’m going to need my wits about me.

For a few minutes Marc makes nervous small-talk, clearly working himself up to tell me something. My nerves jangle as I sip my tea. Please God, not more financial losses. I’m not sure how
many more hits we can take before I have to go cap in hand to Davina.

He clears his throat portentously, and I steel myself.
Here it comes.

‘Look, we both know things haven’t been good between us recently. We’re constantly at each other’s throats. I’m miserable, and I’m sure you are
too.’

I hide my surprise. It’s not like Marc to venture on to emotional territory. ‘All right. Yes. It’s been difficult.’

‘We can’t go on like this. It’s not good for either of us, or for Rowan and Poppy.’

Maybe . . . maybe this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. If Marc and I are able to start communicating, perhaps we can begin to make up some of the ground we’ve lost since the
twins were born.

‘I can’t remember the last time we sat down and really talked,’ I say warily. ‘We never seem to have a moment to ourselves.’

He scowls. Before I know it, we’re back on the same old treadmill, covering the same old ground.
My company.
It’s always about my company.

It’d be so easy to give up and slide towards divorce. I’ve seen so many women walk out of their marriages because things aren’t perfect, like divorce is a lifestyle choice,
rather than a last resort. I can’t let that happen. I intend to fight for my marriage; for the twins, if for no other reason.

Nervously, I tell Marc about the counsellor. ‘I didn’t want to go behind your back, but I thought one of us had to do something. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve made an
appointment for us on the twenty-eighth—’

‘Both of us?’

‘Well, yes. You can’t go to this sort of counselling on your own.’

‘I’m not talking about counselling, Clare. Christ! I’m talking about
divorce
!’

My stomach goes into freefall. Divorce. Even though I’ve been thinking the word all day, hearing it said aloud, having it thrown at me when I’m least expecting it, disorientates me
more than I would have thought possible. My head fills with a buzzing sound, like a saw or a hornet, and for a few minutes I can’t take anything in.

‘Come on, Clare,’ Marc says impatiently. ‘Don’t tell me this is a surprise. We’ve barely spoken, let alone had sex, for months. How did you think this was going to
end?’

‘Is there . . . is there someone else?’

‘Not as far as I’m concerned.’ He leans on the mantel with studied casualness. ‘What about you?’

Even though I know the question’s rhetorical, that he cannot possibly know about Cooper, I blush. ‘Of course not.’

His tone drops ten degrees colder. ‘I don’t want this to get messy. If we can agree everything ourselves, without getting lawyers involved—’

‘But the twins are only six months old! They need us, they need a
family
!’

Marc shrugs me off. His stony expression doesn’t change, even when I beg him to reconsider. How can he look at me with such dislike? How can he be so
cold
?

It starts to sink in that he’s serious. He means it.
He’s leaving me
. He’s not even giving me a chance to defend myself, or state my case.

How can he do this to me? How can he do this to our children?

‘Think how they’ll feel when they’re older,’ I beseech, ‘shuttling between us, spending alternate Christmases . . . Oh, Marc, please, you
can’t
want
that—’

He folds his arms. ‘It’s better than being poisoned.’

I don’t understand him, this man I married. I don’t even
know
him. Who is this stranger, who looks at me with such contempt and accuses me of the most heinous crime there
is? Poison my own child? What kind of person does he think I am? Does he really believe I’m capable of that?

I fight back tears. ‘I would never do anything to hurt either one of my children!’

‘Really? The thought’s never even crossed your mind?’

The memory flashes into my head, so vivid I can almost hear Rowan screaming and feel the cushion in my hands.

I close my eyes. One moment of weakness. That’s all it was. I’d never have done anything. I swear. I love my babies. How much longer am I going to be punished for a split second of
madness?

‘. . . We can discuss your access to the children tomorrow, when we’ve both had a chance to calm down—’

Suddenly I focus on what Marc is saying. ‘What do you mean,
my
access?’

‘You can’t possibly think I’m going to give you custody.’

He’s just trying to upset me. He doesn’t mean it. I’m their mother. They’re only six months old; of course they’ll stay with me. As if having a job makes you an
unfit mother! Half the workforce would be in Bedlam if that were true!

What kind of parent does he think
he’ll
make? What kind of example will he set his son? Pushing his face into mine, snarling and spitting, using his size and his sex to intimidate
me. He doesn’t really want full-time care of the twins; he’d go mad with boredom in a week. This is just posturing. Deep down he’s a Sunday father, happy to play with them for an
hour or two when they’re clean and good-tempered and then hand them back when the real work starts. He has no idea what real parenting is, the commitment it takes. If he did, he
wouldn’t be doing this. He wouldn’t be ripping all our lives apart.

‘You’ve made your choice,’ Marc snaps. ‘You can keep your damn company. But I’m keeping the kids.’

No. No.
No
.

I jump up, my fists clenched at my sides, forcing him to step back. I will not let this bastard, this playground bully, dictate to me like this. I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing
my fear.

‘You. Will. Not. Take. My. Children.’ I’m very, very clear about this. ‘I don’t care if I have to give up every single shop. I won’t let you take them away
from me.’

‘You’re an unfit mother,’ Marc sneers, retreating towards the door. ‘You abandoned your children, and now, when it suits you, you think you can claim them
back.’

I stand petrified with shock as he slams his way out of the house.
He won’t be able to get back in
, I think stupidly.
He hasn’t got a set of the new keys.

‘Bloody good thing,’ Fran says robustly, when she marches to the rescue twenty minutes later. She hands me a bottle of champagne. ‘The man’s an arse. About time you
kicked him to the kerb.’

‘Oh, Fran,’ I sob, ‘what on earth am I going to do now?’

‘I’m afraid this isn’t going to be very pleasant,’ Nicholas Lyon says. ‘Marc’s hired Stephen Morton to represent him. That means things
could get very messy.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask warily.

‘Morton’s tactics tend towards the confrontational. I’m afraid he’s not beneath using private detectives’ – he says the words as if the occupation is on a par
with muggers and rapists – ‘to get what he wants.’

‘Detectives?’ I give a nervous laugh. ‘I’m afraid I’m not nearly interesting enough to have any skeletons in the cup-board.’

Nicholas doesn’t smile. ‘I’m afraid that doesn’t always matter. This isn’t a criminal court of law, Clare; you don’t have to prove your case beyond reasonable
doubt. It’s more a question of the balance of probabilities. No smoke without fire, that sort of thing. Family law doesn’t deal with black and white, but with all those tricky shades of
grey in between. There’s no right and wrong. Whatever happens, everyone loses; especially the children.’

How did I end up here, in a divorce lawyer’s office? The twins are barely six months old! What
happened
to us?

‘I realize how hard this is, but we do have to move quite fast,’ Nicholas says gently. ‘The other side have already filed a petition, which means—’

‘But he only left five days ago!’

‘I understand that. However, I suspect your husband has been planning this for rather longer. He has done his homework, I’m afraid.’

Planning this? While I’ve been struggling to meet the bills and pay his debts, tearing myself into pieces and struggling to hold everything together, Marc has been consulting divorce
lawyers and
planning
this?

I rub my eyes wearily. ‘What does he want?’

‘Considerably more than he’s going to get. Morton should know better,’ Nicholas snaps. ‘He’s plucking numbers from the air in the hope that when they finally name
their real bottom line, you’ll be so relieved you’ll agree. Your husband is thirty years old and has a healthy income of his own. Maintenance is out of the question.’

I nod, as if any of this matters. Numbness envelops me like a shroud. If it hadn’t been for Fran and Jenna – particularly Jenna, whose kindness has been almost painful – I
don’t know how I’d have got through the last few days. I keep waiting for Marc to call and tell me it’s all been a terrible mistake. He can’t mean this, surely? He
can’t really want to throw away the last seven years, destroy Poppy and Rowan’s happiness, over . . . over
what
?

‘It’s just a misunderstanding,’ I say suddenly. ‘He’s not going to go through with it. He wants to make a point, that’s all.’

‘Clare, I realize what a shock this must—’

‘I know Marc; he’s too proud to admit he’s wrong. Well, I don’t mind being the first to say sorry. If you—’

‘Clare,’ Nicholas says sharply, ‘Marc is asking for a divorce on the grounds of your unreasonable behaviour. He’s alleging that you are unstable and erratic, prone to
violent outbursts of temper, and excessively antagonistic towards him. He also says you have refused him his conjugal rights for some months now, and that he came back one evening to find that you
had changed the locks to prevent him accessing his own house.’

‘That’s ridiculous! Jenna locked us out of the house by mistake the other day, I had to call out the—’

‘I haven’t finished,’ Nicholas warns. ‘Marc is also seeking custody of the children on the grounds that you’re an unfit mother and a danger to the twins.’

Even though I knew it was coming, it’s still like a punch to the stomach.
He’s actually going to do it.
He wants to take my children.

‘He can’t do that,’ I whisper. ‘Nicholas, please. He can’t take them, can he?’

‘We’ll fight him all the way,’ Nicholas says.

‘But they’re just babies! I’m their
mother
! They need me!’

‘Which is exactly what we’re going to tell the judge.’ He hesitates. ‘Clare, I’ve got to be honest with you. Marc makes a plausible case. This salt
poisoning—’

‘But I’ve explained that! Poppy has a special type of diabetes—’

‘Marc has produced witnesses who insist she was force-fed salt. He has copies of the police report, which is inconclusive, and a letter sent by a doctor at the Princess Eugenie Hospital
referring the matter to Social Services. He claims he can produce a number of expert witnesses to back up his allegations. I’m not saying any of this is true,’ he adds, holding up a
hand, ‘but I won’t lie to you, Clare, we must take it very seriously.’

‘You can’t let him take them,’ I plead. ‘He can have everything. The house, the money. I just want my children.’

He pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Clare, I had hoped I wouldn’t have to do this. I don’t want to sink to Morton’s level, but I’m afraid we have no choice. Marc
has already thrown a lot of mud, and however we strive to explain it away, some of it is going to stick.’

‘I can ask Ella Stuart if she’ll testify for me. I’m sure she’d agree.’

‘That would be helpful, yes, but it’s not what I meant.’

He opens the folder on his desk and, taking out a letter, hands it to me. ‘I’m afraid we need to throw a little mud of our own.’

‘What the
fuck
kind of game do you think you’re playing?’ Marc explodes in my ear.

Clearly he’s received Nicholas’s letter. I still can’t quite believe Davina actually sent a private detective to Canada to investigate her future son-in-law, and then sat on
the information for more than seven years; but for once in my life I’m grateful she’s such a devious, suspicious bitch.

I hold the phone further away from my head. ‘I think it’s called tit-for-tat,’ I say.

He’s almost incoherent with rage. ‘You lying bitch! How dare you brand me a fucking pervert! You want to drag the whole family through the dirt, is that it? Is this what you want for
the children? You think it’s good for them to grow up thinking their father is some kind of sex maniac?’

‘No worse than growing up thinking their mother tried to poison them,’ I retort.

‘I was fucking twenty-one!’ Marc yells. ‘The girl looked a lot older than fourteen; she was knocking back shots in a fucking bar, for Christ’s sake! How was I supposed to
know?’

I cradle the phone between my shoulder and ear as I reverse into a space outside my house. As soon as the divorce is finalized, I’m getting rid of this vehicle. I want a cheap, ordinary
car that doesn’t require a twelve-point-turn to park.

‘It can be upsetting when people take an innocent misunderstanding and turn it into something sinister, can’t it?’ I say, climbing out of the car and locking it. ‘You ask
a pretty girl to dance, and the next thing you know you’re a sex offender with a criminal record. People can be so narrow-minded. Especially judges in custody battles.’