Jill Mansell: Sheer Mischief

‘OK,’ Maxine was saying, leaning against her car and surveying the two children before her. ‘Just remind me. Which one of you is Ella and which is Josh?’

Josh relaxed. She wouldn’t, he was almost sure, force them to eat cold porridge. He had high hopes, too, of being allowed to stay up late when his father was away. Berenice had always been a bit boring where bedtimes were concerned.

‘I’m Ella,’ said his sister, meeting Maxine for the first time and struggling to work out whether she was being serious. ‘I’m a girl.’

‘Of course you are.’ Maxine grinned and gave her her handbag. ‘Good, that means you can carry this for me whilst I get my cases out of the boot. Isn’t your dad here?’

‘He’s in the kitchen,’ supplied Josh. ‘With Berenice.’

‘Hmm. Nice of him to come out and welcome me.’ With a meaningful glance in the direction of the kitchen window, she hauled the heavy cases out of the car and dumped them on the gravelled drive. She’d been so serious about the live-in aspect of the job that she’d been up to Maurice’s flat in London to collect all her things. ‘Well, he can carry them inside. That’s what men are for.’

By the time Janey arrived at Trezale House in the van, Maxine appeared to have made herself thoroughly at home. Her enormous bedroom, flooded with sunlight and nicely decorated in shades of pink, yellow and cream, was already a mess.

‘Berenice has given me a list of dos and don’ts,’ she said, rolling her eyes as she tossed an armful of underwear into an open drawer and kicked a few shoes under the dressing table. ‘She seems incredibly organized.’

‘Nannies have to be organized,’ Janey reminded her.

‘Yes, well. I pity the chap she’s marrying.’

‘And you’re going to have to be organized,’ continued Janey remorselessly. ‘If these children have a routine, they’ll need to stick to it.’

Maxine gazed at her in disbelief. ‘We never did.’

This was true. Thea, engrossed in her work, had employed a cavalier attitude to child rearing which involved leaving them to their own devices for much of the time, whilst she, oblivious to all else, would lose herself in the wonder of creating yet another sculpture. Janey, in the months following her own marriage, had traced her love of domesticity and orderliness back to the disorganized chaos of those early years when she had longed for order and stability. It had never seemed to bother Maxine, however. More adventurous by nature, and less interested in conforming than her elder sister, she positively embraced chaos. Janey just wished she could embrace the idea of work with as much enthusiasm.

‘That’s different,’ she said sternly. ‘At least we had a mother. Josh and Ella don’t. It can’t be easy for them.’

‘It isn’t going to be easy for me.’ Maxine looked glum and handed over the list, painstakingly written in neat, easy-to-read capitals. ‘According to this they get up at six-thirty.

And I’m supposed to give them breakfast!’

‘Oh please,’ sighed Janey, exasperated. ‘You wanted this job! You were desperate to come and work here. Whatever’s the matter with you now?’

‘I wanted to work for Guy Cassidy.’ Maxine stared at her as if she was stupid. ‘But he’s just been going through his diary with me and from the sound of it he’s going to be away more often than he’s here. Whilst he’s leaping on planes and jetting off all over the world, I’m going to be stuck here in the wilderness with the kids like some frumpy housewife.’ She paused then added fretfully, ‘This wasn’t what I had in mind at all.’

Guy emerged from his study as Janey was putting the finishing touches to the flowers in the hall. Crossing her fingers and praying that it wouldn’t pour with rain overnight, she had garlanded the stone pillars which flanked the front entrance to the house with yellow and white satin ribbons, and woven sprays of mimosa and gypsophila between them. Together with the tendrils of ivy already curling around the bleached white stone they would provide an effective framework for the bride and groom when they stood on the steps to have their photographs taken by none other than one of the country’s best-known photographers.

‘It looks good.’ Standing back to survey the overall effect with a professional eye, he nodded his approval. ‘You’ve been working hard.’

‘So has the hairdresser,’ Janey observed, as a car drew up and Berenice stepped out, self-consciously shielding her head from the light breeze coming in off the sea. Her mousey brown hair, pulled back from her face and teased into unaccustomed ringlets, bounced off her shoulders as she walked towards them.

‘How are you going to sleep tonight?’ said Guy, and Janey glimpsed the genuine affection in his eyes as he admired the rigid style.

Berenice, turning her head this way and that, said, ‘Upright,’ then broke into a smile as she inspected Janey’s work. ‘This is gorgeous; it must have taken you hours!’

‘I think we all deserve a drink.’ Placing his hand on her shoulder, Guy drew her into the house. When Janey hesitated, he added, ‘You too.’

Berenice said, ‘Where are the children?’

‘Upstairs with the new nanny.’ He grinned. ‘And a pack of cards. I heard her saying she was going to teach them poker.’

‘Enjoying yourself?’ asked Guy, coming up to Janey in the sitting room the next day. She was perched on one of the window seats overlooking the garden, watching Maxine flirt with the best man.

‘It was nice of Berenice to invite me,’ she replied with a smile. ‘And even nicer for her, being able to have the reception here. She’s terribly grateful -- she was telling me earlier that otherwise they would have had to hold it in the skittle alley at the Red Lion.’

He shrugged. ‘No problem. Weddings and bar- mitzvahs a speciality. And forty guests is hardly over the top.’

‘You’ll miss her,’ said Janey, nodding in Berenice’s direction.

‘The kids certainly will. We were lucky to keep her as long as we did.’ He hesitated, a shadow coming over his face. ‘She’s been with us since my wife died.’

Weddings were an integral part of Janey’s job but she still found them difficult to handle at times. They invariably brought back memories of her own marriage to Alan.

‘It can’t be easy for you,’ she said, guessing what would be uppermost in his own mind.

Out in the garden, Berenice and Michael were posing with their arms around each other’s ample waists whilst Josh, his expression exquisitely serious, finished up yet another roll of film.

Through the open window they could hear him issuing stern commands: ‘Don’t laugh ... stay still

... just look happy ...’

Moving her half-empty wine glass out of the way, Guy eased himself down next to Janey and stretched out his long legs.

‘Not easy, but bearable,’ he said, his tone deliberately even. ‘I don’t resent other people’s happiness. And Véronique and I had seven years of it, after all. That’s more than some.’

More than I had, thought Janey sadly, but of course he didn’t know anything of her own past. Since she wasn’t about to try and compete in the tragedy stakes, she said nothing.

Now that the subject had been raised, however, Guy seemed to want to continue the line of conversation. ‘Other people’s attitudes are harder to cope with,’ he said, breaking the companionable silence between them. ‘In the beginning I just functioned on automatic pilot, doing what had to be done and making sure Josh and Ella suffered as little as possible.

Everybody was so concerned for us, everywhere you turned there were people being helpful and sympathetic ... I couldn’t do a thing wrong in their eyes. Then, after about six months, it was as if I couldn’t handle any more sympathy. I kicked against it, went back to work and started, well, it was a pretty wild phase. Subconsciously, I suppose, I was looking for a replacement for Véronique but all I did was pick up one female after another, screw around like it was going out of fashion and get extremely drunk. All I managed to do, of course, was make an awful lot of people unhappy. Including myself. And everyone who’d been so sympathetic in the early days changed their minds and decided I was a real bastard instead. Sleeping with girls and dumping them — deliberately hurting them so they’d understand how I felt — seemed like the only answer at the time but all it did was make me more miserable. In the end, I came to my senses and stopped doing it.’ With a rueful smile and a sideways glance at Janey, he added, ‘I suppose I was lucky not to catch anything terrible. At the time, God knows, I deserved to.’