Cristina Odone - The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew

‘Yes, whatever suits.’ I can tell the donor has impressed my boss.

Mary Jane takes out a small powder compact and dabs at her nose. ‘I’m going to soften him up for you: we’re having lunch. Well, speak of the devil!’ She emits a weird, girly giggle. Anjie and I stare at each other: Mary Jane Thompson is trying to flirt!

I swivel in my chair to see the object of her attentions – and find myself face to face with James Weston.

I can’t believe it: James, my first ever boyfriend. James, the man I once thought I would marry.

‘Harriet Tenant!’ He smiles down at me. ‘You – here!’

I sit as if turned to stone – or back to the shy eighteen-year-old who all those years ago felt herself being watched by a handsome student across the crowded cafeteria.

‘You know her?’ Mary Jane sounds amazed.

‘We haven’t seen each other in fifteen years.’

I feel myself blush under his gaze: ‘Ye-yes, something like that.’

His eyes move up to the wall behind me and I am painfully aware of the Worker Bee poster. Then, seeking my gaze: ‘You look exactly the same.’

I smile, unconvinced. ‘You too.’

‘Do you live around here?’

‘Yes. I, we, live on Elton Road. It’s Clapham North. The less expensive bit.’ I feel I’m babbling, betraying my penury and my husband’s failure to keep me in style.

‘We should catch up – what about a coffee next week?’

I nod and try to smile.

‘James –’ Mary Jane is impatient ‘– we’d better go, they don’t hold reservations long.’

‘I’ll ring you.’ James waves me and Anjie goodbye as he follows Mary Jane. At the door he turns back to me: ‘I suppose we’ll be seeing a lot of each other now.’

Only when the door has shut behind him do I remember that, the last time we met, James told me I had betrayed him and he never wanted to set eyes on me again.

6

‘You’re better off without these people.’ Igor, Ilona’s new boyfriend, looms menacingly over our threshold. ‘You can stay at my place until we get you sorted.’ With his long black hair loose on his shoulders, his bomber jacket and big knuckle-duster hands, he looks scary and the boys are wide-eyed with nervous excitement.

Ilona stomps up and down the stairs. ‘She is angry because she have no sex life,’ she sobs, looking daggers at me. ‘She jealous of me.’

I say nothing and try to quash a sneaking suspicion that there may be an element of truth in my over-sexed, man-eating au pair’s accusation. Her stream of admirers has certainly brought home to me my flagging sex life.

Guy remains oblivious to these attacks on our conjugal life. He is eating his porridge while reading to Maisie. Mercifully, our toddler seems to be listening to The Little Red Engine rather than her au pair’s sobs. I stand, helpless, humiliated and slightly guilty, by the door, trying not to study the tattoo that snakes its way up Igor’s neck. Ilona gives me one last look of contempt, and then they’re gone.

Within twenty-four hours I’m a wreck. I’ve met Ludmila, who speaks two words of English: ‘No understand’; Andrea, who is allergic to Rufus; Anya, who won’t look me in the eye; and Sacha, who wears a stud in her nose and some strange metal staple in her cheek.

I’m almost tempted to call the whole thing off and promise Ilona and Igor a white wedding if she’ll come back.

What’s worse, the roof has started leaking in earnest, and the man from the roofing company came down the ladder shaking his head, and asking what ‘cowboys’ were responsible for ‘that lot up there’. We’re still waiting for his estimate.

And it’s half-term. The boys start off cheerful and buzzing with energy and plans. They spend most of breakfast reading the job ads at the back of the papers.

‘Mum, look! You could be Head of Human Resources at the Schools Trust – seventy thousand pounds starting salary.’ ‘Dad, there’s an ad for Development Director of the White Hart Theatre Company – thirty thousand pounds. It says writing skills required. You’d be brilliant!’

I watch my sons vie with one another to come up with the most appealing post and feel guilty that their parents’ financial difficulties should be so obvious to them. When I was growing up, I don’t remember ever hearing my parents discuss money, and I didn’t realize it could be a subject of tension and conflict until my father’s death and the question marks over his will. But here are my boys, trying to find something remunerative for their parents to work in. I feel I have failed to protect their childhood from the harsh realities of our financial straits.

Guy, however, seems to think it normal that our children should take an interest in our income stream. ‘It would be brilliant, boys,’ he says, looking over their shoulder at the papers. ‘But, frankly, I don’t think drama is my strong suit. Let’s wait and see if that nice television lady rings.’

The job-seekers game soon palls, in any case, and Alex and Tom sink into a sulk. Alex, because Louie, his new best friend at the Griffin, whose invitation to Tuscany we had to turn down, has emailed him boasting about water skiing. Tom is in a foul mood because Alex is bragging about being in the First XV and the excitements of boarding school.

Both are cross, too, because we have to forgo the traditional half-term in Somerset with the Carew grandparents: I have to be here to interview Ilona’s would-be successors.

This has not gone down well with the grandparents.

‘But the children need fresh air! Can’t you stay on your own and interview these girls?’ Cecily Carew says crossly.

Guy, too, feels cheated of his break at the homestead. He only cheers up when, just before lunch, Archie rings.

‘Hmmm, is that Harriet? Archie here. Yes, yes, Cecily and I were just wondering: we’re coming up for a funeral next week … No, no, old friend from army days. We could, of course, stay at the club, but …’

I gulp. Oh no, not the in-laws! Not here, when we have no au pair, the children are running wild and the roof is leaking. But I look at the boys, spilling cereal on to the tabletop, and at Guy, immersed in the paper. I’ve cheated them of their grandparents because of the search for Ilona’s successor, and I know they’re disappointed. So I swallow my reservations and take my cue.

‘Of course you must stay with us. Which night did you say?’

‘Yippee!! Grandpa and Granny!’ The boys reward me with a cheer.

‘Darling, you’re a star, you really are.’ Guy rewards me with a kiss on the cheek and the promise to take the boys to the Laser-Quest in Tooting Bec.

This leaves me with Maisie, who is easy and pliable and as yet unaware of the change in her life. We read after lunch, and then, as soon as she takes her nap, I’m free to think about James Weston.

Is he married – and to whom? Does he really think I looked the same, or at least, not that different? Does he live around the corner? The prospect of bumping into my ex at Tesco’s gives rise to horrific visions. Me, hair greasy and roots showing, wearing the size-12 jeans that really are a bit too tight, and the T-shirt that has a magic marker squiggly on the left breast, being spotted by a shocked-looking James. Or Guy and me, standing in the frozen meats aisle, arguing over what to buy while James rolls past, his trolley filled with champagne, exotic fruits and an expensive box of chocolates. Or the children and me – Maisie in her buggy, the boys acting up on either side of me – taking up most of the pavement on the High Street, and drawing attention to ourselves as Alex and Tom bicker and demand a gizmo they’ve spotted in the shop window.

‘Oh, are they yours?’ James asks me with a raised eyebrow.