Jill Mansell - Sheer Mischief

‘Why did you lie?’ he said coldly. ‘I wouldn’t have minded if you’d told me you’d already seen them. But why the bloody hell did you have to lie?’

The photograph of Véronique must have slipped down the side of the sofa when she had lifted the sleeping Ella and taken her upstairs. Since then, she had been sitting on it.

‘I’m sorry ...’ began Maxine. To her horror, she saw that it was not only crumpled, but torn.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ Guy replied, his tone curt. ‘Just be careful, that’s all. These pictures might not mean much to you, but they do to us. They’re all we have left.’

Chapter 10

Never at her best at the ludicrously early hour of seven in the morning, Maxine propped herself up on her elbows at the breakfast table and wondered how on earth Janey managed to get up at five in order to visit the flower market. It simply wasn’t natural.

And as for having to cope at the same time with two starving children and their picky, irritable father, she thought as she battled to stay awake, it was downright unfair.

‘There’s a pink elephant in my Sugar Puffs,’ squealed Ella, waving the plastic toy in Maxine’s face and sprinkling her with milk.

‘Eat it. It’s good for you.’

‘Don’t forget we’ve got to go and buy my batteries today,’ Josh reminded her, speaking through a mouthful of toast and blackberry jam and jingling the money in his shorts’ pocket for added emphasis. ‘Maxine, open your eyes. I said we’ve got to buy new batteries for my ‘

‘Gameboy,’ she supplied wearily. ‘I heard you. And don’t talk with your mouth full — you look like a cement mixer in overdrive.’

‘You shouldn’t have your elbows on the table,’ Josh retaliated, unperturbed. ‘Berenice says it’s rude. Doesn’t she, Dad?’ He turned to his father for confirmation. ‘Berenice says elbows on the table are rude.’

Having to get up at six-thirty evidently didn’t bother Guy Cassidy. Fresh from the shower and wearing a white linen shirt and faded Levi’s, he was looking unfairly good for the time of day. Although it was all right for him, thought Maxine mutinously; he was zipping off to Paris.

Whilst she spent the week looking after his monsters, he would be surrounded by beautiful semi-naked models only too eager to show him their version of a really good time.

He was standing by the dresser painstakingly checking the cameras he would be taking with him and piling rolls of film into the small case which would accompany him on to the plane.

Ignoring Josh, he turned that unnervingly direct dark blue gaze upon Maxine.

‘Now, are you sure you’re going to be able to cope whilst I’m away?’

She wished she’d had time to brush her hair before stumbling downstairs. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll manage,’ she replied evenly, thinking that he’d be stuffed if she said no. ‘And you’ll have Paula’s mother coming in to keep an eagle eye on me in case I’m tempted to do anything drastic, like tape their mouths up and lock them in the cellar.’

‘We haven’t got a cellar.’ Ella, dive-bombing the elephant into her cereal bowl, looked triumphant.

‘In that case, it’ll just have to be the attic.’ Maxine confiscated the elephant. For the first time that morning, a glimmer of a smile crossed Guy’s face.

‘There you go then,’ he warned. ‘You’d better behave yourselves. A week in an attic wouldn’t be much fun, would it?’

Ella, who was devoted to Coronation Street, said, ‘I wouldn’t mind if I could have a television up there.’

‘Oh, you could have a TV set,’ Maxine exclaimed, cheering up and buttering herself a slice of toast. ‘But no plug.’

The next week, despite Maxine’s misgivings, was a greater success than either she or Guy had anticipated. After one or two inevitable power struggles as the children tested the limits of her patience and she in turn exerted her own particular brand of authority, they settled into a routine of sorts and began to enjoy each other’s company. Josh and Ella could be noisy, argumentative, boisterous and infuriating but Maxine, retaliating in kind, found she didn’t hate them after all. In some ways, she realized with amusement, they reminded her quite a lot of herself.

‘Yuk, I don’t like cauliflower,’ declared Ella, her tone fractious.

To the child’s astonishment Maxine replied, ‘Neither do I,’ and promptly lobbed the offending vegetable out through the kitchen window. ‘Let’s have frozen peas instead.’

‘We like Big Macs,’ said Josh hopefully the following evening.

Maxine, who had been burrowing through the contents of the freezer in search of fish fingers, because she knew how to cook them, closed the door with relief. ‘OK,’ she said to Josh’s amazement and delight.

Berenice had always been a stickler for proper, home-cooked meals. ‘But don’t tell your father.’

Guy phoned every evening. Maxine, hovering unseen in the doorway, eavesdropped shamelessly whilst his children sung her praises. Nannying wasn’t so bad once you got the hang of it, she decided, priding herself on her success. And letting the children stay up until midnight had been a stroke of genius; no more horrendous six-thirty starts. She couldn’t imagine why more households hadn’t cottoned on to such a perfect scheme.

‘Everything all right?’ Guy would enquire, when she was summoned to the phone for interrogation. ‘Perfect!’ Determined to impress the hell out of him to pay him back for ever having doubted her, she boasted, ‘They’ve been absolute angels.’

Josh and Ella, sitting on the stairs, collapsed in giggles. said Guy, not believing her for a second. ‘In that case you’ve got the wrong children. Return them to the spaceship and make sure the real ones are home by the time I get back.’

‘You didn’t tell Dad you’d reversed his car into the gatepost,’ Josh reminded her when she had replaced the receiver.

Maxine’s smile was angelic. ‘Don’t you remember, darling? That stupid man in the Reliant Robin drove into the back of the car whilst we were parked on the seafront.’

‘No he didn’t. You reversed into the gatepost.’

‘Fine.’ She picked up the phone once more. ‘I’ll call and tell your father now. Oh, and maybe you’d like to explain to him how you managed to smash the kitchen window with your sister’s Sindy doll ...’

Josh’s shoulders sagged and he waved his hands in a gesture of defeat. He might have known he didn’t stand a chance against an expert like Maxine. ‘OK, OK. Put the phone down.

You win.’

But whilst being with the children was fun, it had its restrictions. Maxine found herself yearning for adult company. By Thursday she realized she was even looking forward to Guy’s phone call from Paris, and felt absurdly put out when he spoke to Josh and Ella, then hung up.

‘He was in a hurry,’ Josh explained. ‘He said some people were waiting for him and he had to go out.’

‘How nice for him,’ said Maxine sourly. It was five o’clock and the evening stretched ahead interminably. All she had to look forward to was beating Josh and Ella at Monopoly and maybe the added thrill of washing her hair.

Janey, who enjoyed washing her hair, was in the bath when the phone shrilled at six o’clock. Inwardly cursing but unable to leave it to ring – there was always that infinitesimal chance that it might be Alan, after all – she climbed out of the bath and made her way, naked and dripping bubbles, into the sitting room.

‘Big favour,’ Maxine beseeched, on the other end of the line. ‘Big, big favour. How would you like to save your poor demented sister’s life?’

‘Not very much.’ If Maxine was planning a moonlight flit from Trezale House, Janey didn’t want her flitting back to the flat. With a trace of suspicion she said, ‘I thought Guy was away this week.’