The Nanny (8 page)

And then there’s the way she looked at Alexander. I have the distinct feeling there is a story here.

So I’m not altogether surprised when Clare rings me four days later from Chelsea police station and tells me that Jenna’s vanished, and has taken the twins with her.

‘Jesus Christ! The woman’s a bitch!’ Marc explodes as we drive out of Long Meadow.

‘Marc!’ I exclaim. ‘
Pas devant les enfants
!’

‘If you have to talk like a stuck-up snob, at least try to get your accent right.’

I bite back a sharp retort. Marc’s always like this after we’ve been to see Davina, and I can’t blame him. She treats him like a foreigner, a second-class citizen. The only
consolation I can give him is that she’s just as brutal with me.

There’s no point getting upset about it. Davina is never going to change. Wanting her to be a different sort of mother from the one she is will only lead to disappointment and heartbreak.
I know she loves me, in her own way. She doesn’t mean to be so hurtful. I shouldn’t have lost my temper with her. I just have to let it go.

But how can she be so . . . so
cold
? Now that I’m a mother myself, I understand for the first time that Davina never has been one in any meaningful sense of the word.

She spent my entire childhood training me to do without her. By the time I was six, I could get the bus back from my private primary school, walk the fifteen yards from the stop and let myself
into our Pimlico flat. At nine, when she sent me off to boarding school, I had my own bank account.

‘Is she – is she always like that?’ Jenna asks from the back, where she’s squashed between the twins’ car seats.

‘Yes,’ Marc snarls, ‘she is. How you turned out even part-way decent with a mother like that is beyond me, Clare. No wonder Xan drinks.’

‘
Marc.
’

‘Excuse me,’ Jenna says, ‘but Marc, do you think you could open a window?’

‘Oh, fuck. I smell, don’t I?’

‘A bit,’ she giggles.

He’s wearing just his white T-shirt and boxers (roomy and concealing, thankfully), the rest of his wet clothes wrapped in a plastic bag in the boot. His bare thighs ripple as he floors the
accelerator and the Range Rover bounces out of Davina’s rutted drive on to the main road. I’d forgotten quite how much I fancy him. It’s been so long since we had sex, I’ve
got spiderwebs between my thighs.

‘How in God’s name did that bloody bull get in the pool, anyway?’ he demands.

‘Xan knocked down the gate to its field when he crashed his car.’

‘Knowing him, he did it on purpose to piss off your mother.’

‘Do you have any siblings?’ I ask Jenna over my shoulder.

‘Nope. Just me.’

‘I can’t imagine being an only child. Do you get on well with your parents?’

‘Once a month,’ Jenna says drily.

‘Davina should never have been allowed to breed at all, never mind twice,’ Marc says darkly. ‘No offence, darling – I’m glad she did, of course – but the
woman has as much maternal instinct as a vampire.’

‘I suppose that’s where I get it from,’ I sigh.

‘You’re not like her at all!’ Jenna bursts out. She blushes furiously. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out quite like that. But you’re wonderful with the
twins. I can see how much you love them.’

I’m engulfed by the familiar rush of guilt. I love both my children, of course I do. But with Poppy it’s effortless, as automatic as breathing. I have to choose to love Rowan every
single day.

‘I never know why they’re crying,’ I tell Jenna. ‘You seem to have a sixth sense . . .’

‘I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you, that’s all. Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’ll be much easier next time round.’

‘Sounds like an idea,’ Marc murmurs, putting his hand on my thigh.

I remove it, my ardour rapidly cooling. ‘Not in my lifetime.’

‘I know we said that two – Christ almighty!’

He yanks on the steering wheel as a figure stumbles out of the hedgerow, and the Range Rover swerves towards the middle of the road. A car coming in the opposite direction mounts the grass verge
to avoid us, horn blaring angrily. Marc slams on the brakes and pulls over to the side of the road, his face white with anger. I twist in my seat and watch Xan stagger towards us, oblivious to the
near-accident he has just caused, shirt-tails flapping, laughing as if this is all a huge joke.

Marc buzzes down his window. ‘What the fuck d’you think you’re playing at?’

‘Needed a lift, mate,’ Xan grins.

‘Don’t “mate” me. If you think I’m taking you anywhere after that—’

‘Please, Marc,’ I mutter. ‘He’ll get himself killed if we leave him here.’

Marc’s jaw tightens. He nods tersely towards the back of the car. ‘You’ll have to get in the boot. There’s no room in the back.’

‘Nice one.’

I climb out and wait for my brother to haul himself into one of the flip-down seats in the rear of the car, making sure he puts his seatbelt on. Within minutes, he’s passed out. I glance
at him in the rear-view mirror. He looks about twelve years old.

I can cope with the careless way Davina behaves towards me; it stings sometimes, but I’m used to it. I try to remember that her own mother died when she was two; instead of sending her to
school, her father kept her at home with him and an army of servants who waited on her hand and foot. Davina is shallow and irresponsible and utterly selfish, but is it any wonder? I can’t
find it in me to hate her; if anything, I feel sorry for her.

But I’ll never forgive her for what she’s done to Xan.

No one who’s ever seen
Sophie’s Choice
could forget it. That harrowing moment on the railway platform at Auschwitz, when Sophie is forced by the Nazi
concentration camp commandant to choose life for one of her two small children, and death for the other.

‘Don’t make me choose,’ Sophie begs, clutching her children, ‘I
can’t
choose!’ But then, when a young Nazi is told to take them both to the death
camp, she releases her daughter, shouting, ‘Take my little girl!’ and has to watch helplessly as the screaming child is carried away to die.

I was only nineteen or twenty when the film came out, motherhood a distant glimmer on the horizon, but the scene haunted my sleep for weeks. How could any mother choose between her two children?
How would the ensuing grief and guilt not drive you insane?

Except . . . except that I
would
be able to choose.

‘Do you find Poppy . . . easier?’ I ask Marc tentatively one Monday morning.

Marc finishes knotting his tie. ‘Rowan can’t help having colic. It’s not his fault.’

‘Oh, I know,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m not blaming him. Just, you know. Saying.’

‘He’s had a tougher start than Poppy. It’s bound to take him a while to settle down.’

He’s four months old
, I think.

Marc reaches for his jacket. ‘Look, it’d be nice if Rowan calmed down, sure, but he’ll grow out of it, the physician said so. Until then, we’ll manage.’ He smiles.
‘We’ve done OK so far, haven’t we?’

No one knows what I nearly did that night. Sometimes, even I manage to forget. I tell myself I’d never
really
have pressed that cushion into Rowan’s face; that even if Marc
hadn’t come downstairs with Poppy – hiccuping and tearful, woken yet again by her brother’s screaming – I’d still have thrown the cushion aside and scooped him into my
arms and covered him with kisses, soothing his frantic cries like a good mother. It was just a moment of madness, that’s all. A split-second impulse.

Yet I’m afraid to be alone again with my son. I adore him, but I’m terrified of what I might do, what I’m capable of. How do I know I won’t have that . . .
impulse
. . . again?

I’ve read about baby blues, post-natal depression, sleep deprivation; I know what they can do to you. Of course I don’t really want to suffocate my baby! I love Rowan! I’d
never
want
to hurt him.

But I can’t be trusted.

Rowan doesn’t bother to cry as I reach into the pram for Poppy. He knows I won’t pick him up until his sister is fed.

‘It’s a shame you gave up breastfeeding with Rowan,’ Marc says as I settle into the rocking chair and unhook my nursing bra. ‘You never know, it might’ve
helped.’

‘He didn’t want me. He only liked his bottle.’

‘
You
only liked his bottle.’

‘Come on, Marc. You make it sound like I put him off on purpose.’ I swaddle Poppy more tightly in her blanket. ‘You know how much I like breastfeeding Poppy now. I tried my
best with Rowan, but he got too used to the bottle in hospital—’

‘Well, you’d have pulled the plug on it anyway, wouldn’t you?’

‘I haven’t pulled the plug with Poppy,’ I say, surprised by his tone. ‘And I express milk for Rowan every day—’

Marc shuts the wardrobe door with a little more vigour than necessary. ‘I still don’t see why you had to rush back to work. You’re the boss, you set the rules. It’s not
like you don’t get paid if you’re not there. Anyone would think you didn’t
want
to spend time with your own children.’

I stare at him. First the outburst at Davina’s, and now this. Marc used to be so supportive of my job! He knows how much it means to me; and we both need PetalPushers to do well if
we’re to pay our massive new mortgage. For years we’ve put in long hours building our respective careers, working weekends and evenings, rarely taking holidays, so we could get to where
we are now. It’s meant we’ve had less time together than we’d have liked, but neither of us has ever complained. We accepted it as the price we had to pay for our joint success.
We discussed having a baby for years, planning when and how to organize it so that it didn’t disrupt our lives or affect us financially. So why is Marc suddenly coming over all Neanderthal on
me?

‘Fine,’ I say shortly. ‘Why don’t
you
stay home and look after them, and I’ll work? I’m talking twenty-four/seven care, Marc, not a cuddle for thirty
minutes before bed when they’re all clean and sleepy, and a walk in the park for an hour or two at weekends. Let’s see how
you
like surviving on three hours’
sleep—’

‘You’re not the only one kept awake all night, Clare.’

‘I’m the only one actually
up
, though, aren’t I?’

‘I’d give my fucking eye-teeth to stay at home with the kids instead of slaving away in an office all day,’ Marc says bitterly. ‘Women don’t know how damn lucky
they are to have the choice.’

‘
Choice?
’ I demand, livid. ‘Is
that
what you call it?’

We glare at each other over Poppy’s head. It feels as if the ground is shifting beneath my feet. I’ve never heard Marc talk like this before. Since when did we become one of those
strung-out couples who bicker over whose turn it is to take out the rubbish and indulge in I’m-more-tired-than-you competitiveness?

Since we had children and our lives as we knew them ceased.

The truth is that, even though he agreed to it in the end, Marc hasn’t forgiven me for hiring Jenna. I’ve tried to explain how desperate I was, how fretful and anxious, that every
time the babies cried it felt like a slap in the face. I tried to describe the endlessness of it, the relentless demands and chaos and incessant neediness. ‘You said you wanted this,’
Marc responded, confused. ‘You wanted a baby, you
wanted
to stay at home for a while.’

The dreadful thing is, he’s right: this
is
what I wanted. I just had no idea what it really meant. I wanted children, yes; but when I pictured motherhood, what I saw in my head
was the baby, not me
with
the baby. I had no idea how much work one child would be, never mind two. But even more than the sleeplessness, the relentless routine, the effort required just
to get through the day, I hate being needed. I hate the repetitiveness, the mind-numbing
boredom
. My mother’s right. I can’t do it. Usually unflappable, I’ve been
flapping away like a dodo trying to take flight since the birth of the twins. I’ve done everything recommended in all the books, I’ve approached child-rearing like I have everything
else in my life, by reading and studying and becoming an expert; and instead of the success that has always rewarded my efforts until now, I’ve failed.
I’ve failed.

There was only one thing I could do to put things right: hire someone who
was
an expert, someone who could succeed where I had fallen short. Marc’s a professional, a businessman.
Surely he can understand that?

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Marc says unexpectedly, rubbing his hand over his face. ‘I didn’t mean to bite your head off. I’m just stressed out. I’ve had a bitch
of a time at the bank. Of course you should work if that’s what you want.’

‘It’s only a few days a week . . .’

‘I know. I’ll see you tonight.’

He leaves without kissing me, though he drops a butterfly kiss on Poppy’s forehead, and ruffles Rowan’s pale halo of white curls on his way out.

Five minutes later, Jenna’s head appears round the door. ‘Marc didn’t look too happy,’ she says, rolling her eyes. ‘He had a face on him like a slapped arse. Oh,
Rowan, baby, are you still waiting for breakfast? You must be starving!’