A Nanny For Keeps. Liz Fielding
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grown-ups pay for the pleasure of wearing whatever they want to work. Wouldn’t you like to wear your princess outfit to school instead of your uniform and raise some money for a good cause at the same time?’
‘I don’t go to school.’
‘You don’t?’
‘I have a home tutor.’ Then, ‘Is that why you’re not wearing a proper uniform? Because you’re dressing down for charity?’
Jacqui, who had never worn a uniform, proper or otherwise, pretended she hadn’t heard as she busied herself brushing down the back seat, retrieving a couple of toffee papers from the floor before she tossed in the white linen holdall next to her own bag and said, ‘OK, Maisie, hop in and I’ll buckle you up.’
Maisie stepped aboard, like a princess boarding a Rolls-Royce, and spread her skirts carefully across the seat. Only when she was satisfied with the result did she permit Jacqui to fasten her seat belt.
‘So,’ she said, in an effort to move the conversation along a little, make a connection. ‘Are you planning to be a model when you grow up? Like Mummy?’
‘Oh, please,’ Maisie said, giving her a look that would have withered nettles. ‘I’ve already done that and it’s sooo boring.’
‘I’d heard that,’ Jacqui said, getting behind the wheel and starting the car.
‘When I grow up, I’m going to be a doctor just like…’
‘Like?’ she prompted, checking the road and pulling out. But Maisie didn’t answer, she had already got out her personal CD player from the bag containing her ‘Stuff’ and clamped the headphones to her ears, plainly indicating that she had no further interest in conversation.
It was fine, Jacqui told herself. She’d got used to journeys without endless kindergarten chatter. Eventually. You could get tired of making up new verses for ‘The Wheels on the Bus’.
‘We’re nearly there, Maisie,’ she said, as she took the exit from the roundabout marked Little Hinton.
‘No, we’re not,’ Maisie replied, without bothering to look up. It certainly made a change from the more usual, ‘Are we there yet…? Are we there yet…? Are we there yet…?’
But then there was nothing ‘usual’ about Maisie.
Unfortunately the child knew what she was talking about.
The village itself was nearer ten miles than six from the motorway, but it was easy enough to find and it certainly lived up to its name. There was a village shop with a post office, a pub, a garage and a small school, where a group of children were playing a skipping game in the playground, and a scattering of houses huddled around an untidy patch of grass masquerading as a village green. It took all of five minutes to check them all out, but it didn’t come as a complete surprise to discover that High Tops was not among them.
The clue, of course, was in the name.
The village nestled in a small valley. Behind it rose a range of hills that were mostly obscured by low cloud. It didn’t take a genius to work out where a house called High Tops was likely to be.
‘So much for the “minor” in diversion,’ she muttered, pulling up outside the village shop. ‘You can forget the postcard, Vickie Campbell,’ she muttered to herself.
‘I told you we weren’t nearly there,’ Maisie said.
‘So you did.’
‘It’s miles and miles and miles. Up there,’ she added, pointing in the direction of the mist-covered hills.
‘Thank you for that, Maisie. Please don’t move while I ask for directions.’
‘I know the way. I told you, it’s up there.’
‘Lovely. I won’t be long.’
The child shrugged and clamped the headphones back in place.
‘High Tops? You’re going up to High Tops?’ The doubtful look she received from the woman behind the shop counter was not reassuring.
‘If you could just point me in the right direction?’ she prompted.
‘Are you expected?’
The city girl in Jacqui resisted the urge to enquire what possible business it could be of hers; this was, after all, deep in the country, where, according to folklore, everyone considered it their right to know everyone else’s business. Besides, she really needed directions.
‘Yes, I’m expected,’ she said.
‘Oh, well, that’s all right, then. Could you take their post for me?’
The woman didn’t wait for her to reply, just handed her a carrier bag full of mail.
‘Right, well,’ she said, ‘if you can give me directions. I’m running a bit late.’
‘All the same, you city folk. Just don’t go racing up that lane. You never know what’s on the road up there. I saw a llama once.’ She didn’t wait for an answer, which was just as well, since Jacqui couldn’t hope to top a stray llama, but led the way out of the shop to point her in the right direction. ‘It’s simple enough. Carry along here, take the first turning left past the school and keep going until you get to the top. It’s the only house up there. You can’t miss it.’
‘Thank you so much. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘Just be careful how you go. The cloud’s low today and that lane is so full of ruts and potholes it really isn’t fit for anything but a Land Rover.’ She gave the VW a doubtful look and then did a swift double take as she caught sight of Maisie sitting in the back. ‘Is that…?’ Then, obviously deciding that it was, ‘Proper little doll, isn’t she? Her mother was just the same at that age.’ Then, ‘Well, obviously not the same…’ Perhaps realising that she was treading a dangerous line, she said, ‘She always looked like a little princess, too. I swear if she’d fallen in a midden she’d have come out smelling of roses.’
Jacqui thought that extremely unlikely, but didn’t say so. Instead she smiled and said, ‘Well, thanks for the directions. And the warning. I’ll watch out for the potholes. And the llama.’
She was definitely watching. Easing carefully over another deep rut as the wipers swatted away the moisture clinging to the windscreen, she gritted her teeth and continued to inch her way up the lane in low gear.
‘Nearly there,’ she said reassuringly, although more to herself than Maisie, who was ignoring the jolting with as much composure as a duchess. A lot more composure than she felt, as the bottom of the car ground on the edge of a deep, water-filled pothole that stretched most of the way across the lane. A broken exhaust was the last thing she needed.
The torture continued for another half a mile, ratcheting up the tension and tightening her shoulders. Finally, when she was beginning to think that she must have missed the house in the mist or that she’d taken the wrong lane altogether, an old, lichen-encrusted gate that looked as if it hadn’t been opened in years loomed out of nowhere, blocking the way. On it were two signs. One might have once said ‘High Tops’ but was so old that only the odd letter was still clear enough to read. The other was new. It read ‘Keep Out’.
She climbed out, and doing her best to avoid the mud and puddles, lifted the heavy metal closure and put her weight behind it, anticipating resistance…and very nearly fell flat on her face as it swung back on well-oiled hinges.
Maisie didn’t say a word as Jacqui scraped the mud off her shoes and climbed back behind the wheel, apparently still totally enraptured by the CD she was listening to. But she was wearing a thoroughly self-satisfied little smile that betrayed exactly what she was thinking:
Little Princess, 1—Dumb Adult, 0.
Jacqui put the car into gear and a hundred yards or so further on the shadowy outline of a massive, ivy-clad stone