“The job will require you to be with the children on-site on a full-time basis,” she said, “at least until March. Is that a problem?” Her eyes searched my fingers for any sign of a ring. “No . . . partner who’ll want you home for Christmas?”
“Oh,” I said. “No. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
She frowned at that, but something in her mind told her that this was the answer she wanted and she moved on. “Well, your reference was glowing, of course. Tom only sent the application pack to a selection of trusted associates—we don’t use recruitment agencies or anything like that—so we were delighted when Verity championed you.”
She was beaming now, and my face contorted into a rictus grin while my mind did somersaults. Verity?
“Oh, Verity,” I said lightly. “She’s . . . that’s so kind . . .”
Maren batted her hand in the air as though I was being modest, not clueless. “Of course she championed you. And after the thing in Belgium . . .”
I gave a nervous giggle and eyed the door. What thing in Belgium? I wanted to shriek. It was abundantly, sharply clear now that I was way out of my depth. It was wrong to lie to a family who’d lost their mother. It was wrong to parade as something I wasn’t, despite how desperate I was. I placed a foot on the floor and lifted my hips off the chair, preparing myself to sprint the hell out of there.
“Hello?” a man’s voice called. I looked up and saw a figure in the French doors, silhouetted by celestial afternoon sunlight that was swelling in the garden. A tall, lean man in a smart navy polo shirt and chinos, dark, tousled hair flecked with silver, and a hint of beard. A slightly more upmarket, skinnier Colin Farrell, with rimless glasses and overlapping front teeth. He marched across the room toward me and extended a hand. A gold wedding band flashed in the light. “Tom Faraday,” he said, grinning. “You must be Sophie. A pleasure to meet you.”
“A pleasure to meet you, too,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Is that a Geordie accent?”
I hesitated. “Yes?”
He glanced at Maren. “Spend a lot of time in the north, did you?”
“I . . . looked after a child from the north,” my mouth said, while my brain tried to keep up. “She was homesick and so I adopted her accent to make her . . . less homesick.” Phew. My excuse seemed to make sense. But I would have to curb my accent. Now that I thought about it, Sophie didn’t sound particularly northern.
A warm smile. “Well, that’s very kind of you. How long have you been nannying?”
“Ten years,” I blurted out. Lies, lies, lies, said my brain.
I was sure Maren would launch into questions about the specifics of this—who did I nanny, and where—but she merely smiled and said, “And if you had to describe your nannying style, what would you say?”
I tried to make up another lie, but a squeak came out. My bladder was actually threatening to explode right there on the floor.
I stood up. “Sorry,” I said. “But is there a loo I could use?”
“Certainly,” Tom said, spinning around to his left. “Straight ahead, past the fridge. Oh, on second thought, best not, as it’s still blocked. Kids and their toys . . . Use the one upstairs. Second door on the left.”
“Thanks.”
I headed quickly upstairs and locked the toilet door behind me, then sat down with my head between my knees and groaned. What was I doing? What. Was. I. Doing?
I spent a few moments taking deep breaths and planning my next moves. I would go back downstairs and tell them that I was very sorry but I couldn’t do it after all. My friend was pregnant—or Sophie’s friend was pregnant—and I had to be around for her. Or Plan B: I’d tiptoe back down the stairs, open the front door, and run the hell out of there.
I was still weighing up Plan A and Plan B when I opened the door to find a small child staring up at me. She had white-blonde hair tied back in a loose plait, a pink gingham dress with a strap hanging off one shoulder, both arms behind her back. Round green eyes shone through turquoise spectacles, and I noticed that someone had drawn pictures all over her hands and bare legs in red felt-tip. She surveyed me curiously.
“Are you my new nanny?” she said.
“I’m . . . I’m Sophie,” I said.
It sickened me to lie to a child, I swear, but I could hear Tom’s footsteps on the stairs.
“I’m Gaia,” she said. “I’m six. How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“My mumma’s in heaven,” she said.
This was a sucker punch to my heart. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
“This is my teddy,” she said, producing an old teddy from behind her back with floppy limbs, a tweed waistcoat, and a missing eye. “He’s not feeling very well today.”
It was clear that there would be no sprinting out the front door, so I crouched down in front of her and said, “What’s your teddy’s name?”
“Louis.”
“And why’s Louis not feeling very well?”
“He’s just feeling a bit sad. And he has a sore tummy.”
“Ah,” Tom said, reaching the top of the stairs. “I see you’ve met Gaia and Louis.” He winked at Gaia. “How are you doing, pudding?”
“Daddy!” She ran to him with her arms out, wrapping them around his legs and burying her face in his thigh. “Is this my new nanny?” she said, glancing back at me.
Tom scooped her up and grinned at me. “Well, that depends.”
“On what?”
“Shall we introduce Sophie to Coco?”
Tom gestured for me to follow him into one of the bedrooms and I opened my mouth to say something along the lines of I have to go now, but somehow I found myself in the sweetest child’s bedroom I’d ever seen, more a mini apartment than a bedroom, with thick cream carpet, powder-blue velvet curtains, and peachblossom walls, a crescent moon made out of twinkling LED lights, a miniature hot-air balloon as a chandelier, and enough toys to fill a crèche, including a plush, twelve-foot toy giraffe. The name Coco was hand-painted in fancy gold lettering across a wall, and when I looked over the white sleigh cot I saw a little girl in a Babygro hanging on to the bars, her legs wobbling as she looked up and threw me a wet smile.
“I’m Ellen,” a voice said. “How do you do?”
I hadn’t noticed the woman in a long green dress sitting by the crib. She was cross-legged, her arms held out in that absentminded way I’d seen mothers do when their babies were learning to walk. The nanny who Maren mentioned before. The one who couldn’t go to Norway.