The Nearly-Weds Read online

  I make a half-hearted attempt at tidying her hair before I throw her into the toy box. Then I pick up a Lego sheep and throw it in after her. The spinning top is next. Then a Bratz hairbrush. Followed by a Mr Potato Head. And by the time I’ve dealt with the My Little Pony Teapot Palace, the fluffy orang-utan with bits of yoghurt stuck to his fur and the Sing-along Spiderman, I’m going at a hell of a pace.

  I just can’t help it. When I’ve cleared all the shoes from the hallway, done the dirty dishes I found in the downstairs loo (I kid you not), mopped the kitchen floor, tidied the bathroom and swept up the layer of muck that was making the hall floor look like a third-world street market, it’s three twenty-five.

  And I’m sleepy. Not just sleepy, in fact, properly tired. Beautifully, gloriously, perfectly, doggedly tired. I’m just about to head for bed when I hear a key in the door.

  I straighten my back.

  I’m ridiculously pleased to be bumping into my new boss because I can’t wait to see his reaction to my handiwork. This is a guy who seemed more concerned about my abilities to scrub his toilet than care for his children, and on that basis he’ll be knocked sideways when he sees my achievements.

  I lean casually on a work surface as Ryan enters the kitchen.

  He’s even more dishevelled than he was when I first set eyes on him – but even sexier too. My eyes are magnetically drawn to the top of his jeans, where half of his T-shirt is tucked in. His hair is enticingly unkempt, his swagger effortlessly self-assured.

  It strikes me that Ryan, without having to say a word, exudes something bewitching and mysterious. His sexual presence is such that he’d turn heads in a room with a thousand people in it.

  ‘Hi!’ I say, trying to read his face as he sets eyes on his newly pristine kitchen.

  As he walks past I’m enveloped in an aroma that almost makes me faint, subtle but unmistakable, of booze, perfume and cigarette smoke. The whiff of a big night out.

  ‘Did you get much done?’ I ask, heart thudding. ‘At work, I mean.’

  ‘Hmm?’ he says absently, opening the fridge.

  ‘You were going to work,’ I remind him, wishing he’d turn round.

  ‘Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I did. Thanks for asking,’ he replies. I can’t help noticing his speech is slightly slurred.

  ‘Um, the children had a bit of trouble settling before bed,’ I inform him. I walk over to the table and lean across it to draw attention to its gleaming surface.

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ He shuts the fridge door, leaving the beer, and takes a bottle of whiskey out of a cupboard instead.

  ‘I think they were overtired,’ I offer.

  ‘Sure.’

  I stand up straight, fold my arms and frown. Ryan is utterly uninterested in this conversation and the state of the kitchen.

  ‘They really didn’t want to go to bed,’ I persevere. ‘It was a bit of a struggle.’

  ‘Yeah. They get like that sometimes.’

  He fills his glass with whiskey. It’s the sort of amount that would put the Jolly Green Giant ten times over the limit.

  ‘Right. Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to try putting them to bed a bit earlier tomorrow.’

  He shrugs. ‘Whatever you think. I already said that, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes. But . . . Yes, I suppose you did.’

  There’s another long silence.

  ‘Well, I think I’ll go to bed,’ I say. But I don’t move. I wait. And wait. And wait. I wait for him to say, ‘My God, Zoe, the house is amazing, truly unrecognizable. It was barely fit for human habitation before, but now it’s like something the Sultan of Brunei wouldn’t mind crashing out in. And I’ve got you to thank, you wonderful, wonderful woman.’

  When he finally looks up, his eyes skim across my face, as if he’s taking in my features properly for the first time. He doesn’t say anything but the attention sends my stomach into freefall. ‘Sure,’ he replies, and gulps his whiskey.

  Chapter 12

  The minor fixation I seem to have developed with my new boss’s body is juvenile, difficult to ignore and baffling. While I haven’t known Ryan long enough to form a detailed judgement on his personality, I have seen enough to want to remind myself that I am not – and have never been – one of those women who are attracted to bastards. The idea appals me.

  The only conclusion I can come to, therefore, as I undress and jump under my duvet, is that this is another example of how being jilted on my wedding day has left me mentally unstable. Jilted. Now there’s a word no prospective bride ever thinks she’ll use in relation to herself. Oh, how wrong I was.

  With hindsight – a word I’ve used so often since – I should have heard certain alarm bells ringing in the run-up to the wedding. I’m only talking little bells – travel clocks as opposed to Big Ben. One of the things that has nagged at me is when Jason asked me to marry him. I don’t think he ever actually did. Certainly there was no dramatic moment when he got down on one knee with a ring that I spent the next twelve months brandishing at friends, family and anyone else who’d look. Somehow we just slipped into it. We both assumed we’d eventually take the plunge.

  At the time I didn’t think anything of this. If anything, I saw it as a positive affirmation of the extent to which we were on the same wavelength. I felt I didn’t need some showy proposal because it was obvious we both wanted the same thing.

  The earliest recollection I have of us talking about our wedding was just after Jason’s best friend Neil and his fiancée Jessica threw an engagement party. Poor Jessica’s mum had slaved for days over the catering, but twelve hundred mushroom vol-au-vents (or canapés, as she insisted Jess’s dad refer to them when he offered them round) didn’t provide much in the way of variety. Jason and I decided to join a couple of others in a curry house on the way home and I remember him turning to me as he passed me a bowl of lime pickle and asking, ‘Where do you think we should get married?’

  Yet, now I think about it, that can’t have been the first time it was mentioned because I wasn’t shocked by the question. In fact, at the time it had barely registered because ‘getting married’ was something we’d always known we’d end up doing.

  So assumed was this state of affairs that, with only six weeks to go before the big day, I had to point out that I didn’t possess an engagement ring. Jason agreed we should buy one using some of the loan we’d taken out to pay for the wedding – I’m convinced it was bigger than the mortgage on a small stately home. I’d envisaged paying it off over five years. In fact, I got rid of the outstanding balance all at once by selling our house after everything went pear-shaped.

  The house was one thing, but getting rid of everything else proved slightly more of a challenge. When you’ve purchased 122 silk bags of sugared almonds, twelve table centrepieces and a three-tiered white-chocolate gateau, believe me, you’re stuck with them.

  And while I was happy that my cousin Tanya and her new boyfriend Darren enjoyed our five-star honeymoon in Mauritius, I would have preferred a cash contribution to the knock-off Ralph Lauren T-shirt she sent me to say thanks.

  But none of that compares with the horror of what happened on the day itself.

  We’d wanted to follow tradition and spend the night before the wedding apart. When Jason kissed me goodnight on my mum’s doorstep, I had no doubt that he intended to go through with it.

  I’m not saying he wasn’t nervous. He clearly was. But aren’t pre-wedding nerves as normal a part of it as ructions over the guest list and the bridesmaids being guaranteed a snog?

  Perhaps the fact that he hugged me so hard I couldn’t breathe should have told me there was more turmoil in his head than in a Middle Eastern war zone. But it didn’t.

  The wedding was booked for two o’clock at St Michael’s, Woolton, the church where, as a child, I’d spent many a Sunday morning, tucked away with the other kids attempting to re-create the nativity scene with bits of newspaper and a Fairy Liquid bottle.

  The really strange thing is that the first ha
lf of that day was one of the most enjoyable times of my life. If what happened later hadn’t happened, I would still be reminiscing about it.

  I woke at four thirty, after a fitful night in my mum’s spare room – so small and stuffy it was like trying to sleep in the airing cupboard. Dropping off again proved impossible so I resorted to skimming through the only book I could see – a dog-eared children’s Bible that had been printed in the early seventies, judging by how strongly Jesus resembled David Cassidy.

  Later, my hairdresser told me that all the brides she ‘did’ had a terrible night before their big day, and advised, if I was ever in that situation again, to try a Temazepam (which apparently works a treat, although it can have unwanted side-effects the next day if you go at the champagne too early).

  It was at the hairdresser’s that we really got into the swing of things. Jessica, my matron of honour, my bridesmaids, Heather (old friend from school) and Win (my cousin), and I were curled and sprayed so much our hair follicles must have been close to meltdown.

  When we got back to Mum’s, we were ushered to the kitchen table and Dad brought out massive plates of breakfast – scrambled eggs piled high with smoked salmon. That moment, when we were sitting around the table, merry with Buck’s fizz and happiness, was one of the most perfect of my life.

  Desy had just done my mum’s makeup. After an intensive three-week training programme from his sister Caroline – who works on the Clinique counter at Boots – he was an expert at applying light-reflecting foundation and high-definition mascara. She joined us still wearing her Juicy Couture dressing-gown and a head full of pink Velcro rollers that looked like the insulated pipes in an alien spacecraft. My dad was already in his tails, which he’d put on at about six fifteen that morning.

  Then there was me: excited, elated, nervous – and with not a shred of doubt that I was doing the right thing. Jason was the man I loved, with whom I’d effortlessly spent the last seven years and would happily spend ten times that.

  That was the thought going through my mind as the car pulled up outside St Michael’s on one of the hottest April days ever recorded. Dad squeezed my hand and tried to hide a tear as I stepped out of the car, careful not to let the hem of my dress touch the dusty ground. The sun warmed my shoulders as I gazed into the cloudless, cornflower-blue sky and smiled.

  ‘Right, Zoe, let’s have one of you and your dad,’ called the photographer, as he attempted to prop up Dad’s already wilting buttonhole.

  But as we laughed and posed, I couldn’t help noticing that something didn’t look right. Andrew, one of Jason’s ushers, was pacing up and down next to the church door, his phone glued to his ear, his face white.

  When he turned to us, I frowned.

  His eyes widened and he glanced around as if he was searching for somewhere to run.

  ‘You okay?’ I mouthed.

  He hesitated before he headed towards us. ‘Can you . . . just give us a minute?’ he asked the photographer.

  The photographer recognized the look in his eyes and backed away.

  ‘Listen, Zoe,’ Andrew began, his neck red with nerves. ‘There’s been a bit of a – a hiccup.’

  ‘A hiccup?’ I asked calmly.

  ‘What do you mean, a hiccup?’ added Dad.

  Andrew gulped.

  ‘Oh, God, don’t tell me the flowers didn’t turn up!’ I said. The colour-blind church housekeeper had been determined to provide them and I’d had visions of a gaudy array of fit-inducing hydrangeas.

  ‘No, nothing like that,’ said Andrew, loosening his collar.

  ‘The organist? Oh, shit – Jess warned me he was a bit of a pisshead but I thought—’

  ‘No, Zoe. Stop!’ said Andrew. ‘It’s nothing like that.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘It’s – it’s Jason.’

  My mind went blank. I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. ‘He’s . . . been in an accident?’

  ‘No,’ said Andrew. ‘He’s fine. I mean, he’s not fine . . .’

  ‘What, Andrew?’ I said, suddenly impatient. ‘What is the matter with Jason?’

  ‘He’s not coming,’ said Andrew, lowering his eyes. ‘Zoe, he’s not coming.’

  Chapter 13

  ‘Zoe! Wake up, Zoe!’

  It’s a nightmare. It must be a nightmare.

  ‘We want our breakfast, Zoe!’

  I roll over and put a pillow over my head, willing myself to go back to a semi-erotic dream involving Jason, a plush hotel room and a six-pack of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs.

  ‘Zoe! Come on!’

  The voice is soft and not particularly loud. But what it lacks in volume it makes up for in insistence.

  ‘Zo-eeeeee!’

  I open one eye and see Ruby and Samuel standing there, perky as two little bunnies on a spring day. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Um, not sure,’ says Ruby, unconvincingly.

  ‘You could tell the time last night,’ I point out.

  ‘Um, six twenty-five,’ she replies sheepishly.

  I groan. ‘You shouldn’t be up yet.’

  ‘But we always get up at this time,’ says Ruby.

  ‘Oh, goody.’ I rub my eyes. ‘Excellent news.’

  I turn to look at them. ‘You’ve only had a few hours’ sleep,’ I remind them. ‘You’ll be exhausted today.’

  ‘We’re not exh– exh– tired,’ says Ruby, as Samuel stands behind her, yawning.

  ‘I want SpongeBob,’ he says, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘Not sleep?’ I ask, hopefully.

  ‘Uh-uh,’ they confirm.

  As I hobble out of bed, I can’t help reflecting that I’m supposed to have Sundays off. And, while I know I’ve only just got here, part of me had hoped that would apply today so I could at least try to get over my jet-lag. Problem is, Mr Talkative and I never got round to discussing that.

  ‘Come on, Zoe!’ the children shout.

  I head downstairs in my dressing-gown, holding Samuel’s hand and looking, I suspect, like a Victorian charlady after a forty-two-hour shift. We go into the kitchen, where Ruby puts on the TV – yes, there’s one in there too.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, trying to sound upbeat. ‘What do you normally have for breakfast?’

  ‘Hmm, we had Hershey’s yesterday,’ Ruby tells me.

  ‘Isn’t that a chocolate bar?’ I frown.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ says Ruby, as if that was the most reasonable thing in the world.

  ‘Now, come on, I can’t believe your daddy would let you ha—’ I begin. ‘No, hang on, maybe I can believe it. Okay, what did your last nanny give you for breakfast?’

  ‘French toast,’ declares Ruby.

  My heart sinks. I was hoping for something no more taxing than a bowl of Cheerios. ‘How about cereal?’ I ask, hopefully.

  ‘Whatever.’

  I’m about to look for some cereal, when I stop myself. What am I thinking? This is an opportunity to win the kids over, especially after last night’s dramatics. Of course they can have French toast. It’s virtually a speciality of mine. And, besides, there’s no way I’m refusing them something a previous nanny gave them.

  ‘Okay,’ I reply jauntily. ‘Seeing as it’s you two, French toast it is.’

  I have visions of the children greedily tucking into my home-cooked breakfast and viewing me as some sort of Nigella Lawson figure, primed to rustle up a luscious culinary delight from nothing more than half a pound of self-raising flour, a couple of pistachios and the odd free-range vanilla pod.

  I head for the fridge to seek out what Nigella would refer to as the ‘store-cupboard ingredients’ required for this particular dish: a couple of nice fresh eggs, a little butter and some thick-cut bread, preferably the organic wholegrain kind with super-healthy nutty bits and bobs.

  Then I open the fridge.

  The only consumables inside it are alcoholic. Although there are several items of food, the majority are so old they could be classed as Jurassic. There’s a semi-decomposed tomato in the salad
tray, several crusty-lidded sauce jars on the top shelf and a piece of cheese so hard Roger Federer could have served an ace with it.

  There are certainly no eggs. And a quick glance in the bread bin confirms there is no bread, unless you count one amorphous lump of carbohydrate with enough mould spores on it to provide an entire hospital with antibiotics.

  ‘I’m afraid it’ll have to be cereal,’ I tell the children.

  But, sadly, when I open the cupboard I realize it isn’t going to be cereal either.

  ‘Well,’ I say, spinning round. This is the sort of challenge that nannies like me can rise to without a second thought. ‘Where’s the nearest shop?’

  Ruby giggles. ‘You mean store, don’t you?’

  I can see I’m going to be a source of some amusement round here.

  Chapter 14

  I’d assumed Ryan was sleeping off his hangover while I dressed the children, stocked the fridge with half the contents of the local 7/11 and made sure the place remained so immaculate that an OCD sufferer would have eaten their dinner off the floor.

  Apparently not. I hear the door slam at ten thirty, followed by footsteps bolting up the stairs.

  ‘Is that your daddy coming in?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s been for a run,’ Ruby informs me proudly. ‘He runs a lot.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ I’m reluctantly impressed. Actually, amazed is probably a better word. After the bender he went on yesterday, I can’t believe he’s managed to roll out of bed at all, let alone go for a jog.

  ‘He does ten miles every morning,’ adds Ruby.

  Fifteen minutes later – long enough for me to have satisfied a mysterious urge to dash to the bathroom and apply a slick of mascara and nude lip gloss – Ryan enters the kitchen.

  He smells deliciously clean and his hair is so wet from the shower that it’s still dripping, moistening the skin on one side of his now clean-shaven jaw. Despite that, he still has the rough-round-the-edges quality and has obviously thrown on the first pair of jeans he could find. But he’s so glamorous somehow that I feel embarrassed to be in the same room. I get a flash of paranoia that my subtle makeup is fighting a losing battle against the bags under my eyes, which, when I glanced into the mirror earlier, were of a colour best described as ‘ecclesiastical purple’.