A Nanny For Christmas

‘Would that be on the Midburton Road?’ the driver asked as he started the engine.

‘I don’t know,’ Phoebe confessed. ‘I’ve never been there.’ At least, I hope I haven’t, she amended silently. ‘Is it, Tara?’

‘I think so.’ The little girl didn’t sound any too sure.

‘Well, Fitton Magna isn’t exactly big. Reckon we’ll find it,’ said the driver.

It was a placid drive through the dark lanes, but, all the same, Phoebe could feel tension rising inside her. Beside her, Tara was very quiet. Perhaps too quiet?

I don’t really know anything about her, Phoebe realised ruefully. Certainly not enough to go charging in and taking over like this. Lynn was right. I should have stayed out of it. Handed the whole mess over to the police or Social Services.

What do I do if there’s no one at her home either? Why didn’t I think things through?

There was a muffled sound beside her, as if Tara was choking back a sob, and Phoebe reached out and took a small, cold, shaking hand, squeezing it comfortingly.

‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ she whispered. ‘Trust me.’

Knowing, even as she spoke, that in truth she could guarantee nothing.

They were coming to a scatter of houses, lights gleaming behind curtained windows, and Phoebe felt an icy fist clench in her stomach.

Any moment now, she thought, and she might find herself back at the place where the actual scenario of her nightmare had been played out.

But maybe that was what she needed—to go back and exorcise this particular demon once and for all. Let herself see that it was all in the past. That, even if it was the same house where she’d been so bitterly humiliated, the people had changed. Because Tara’s name was Vane, and no one called that had been involved.

I would, she told herself, have remembered that.

Ashton, she thought. Dominic Ashton. That had been his name. No Dark Lord of her overheated imagination, but a normal man caught off-guard and reacting furiously to a shameful, tasteless joke.

Who was now somewhere else, living his perfectly normal life, and who had probably never given the incident another thought. Whose biting mouth would twist sardonically in disbelief at the possibility that she could still be tormented by her memories.

It doesn’t matter any more, she told herself, drawing a deep breath. I can’t afford to let it.

‘Well, this is it,’ the taxi driver announced.

Leaning forward, Phoebe saw NORTH FTTTON HOUSE inscribed on the gate pillar, and, glancing up, the stone gryphon which crowned it. Quite unforgettably.

‘Yes,’ she said tonelessly. ‘This is the place. Could you drive up to the door, please, and wait for me?’

Tara was reluctant to leave the taxi. ‘They’re going to be so angry.’ Her voice caught on a sob.

‘But not with you,’ Phoebe said bracingly. ‘Or they’ll have me to deal with.’

She walked forward up the two shallow steps flanked by stone urns, bare now with the onset of winter. On her last visit they’d been a vibrant, sprawling mass of colour which had matched the light and warmth spilling out of the house and her own inner excitement about the party she’d been going to. The man she’d been going to see.

‘Sweet Phoebe.’ She could hear his voice whispering to her persuasively, overcoming her scruples. ‘Promise me you’ll be there.’

And I went, Phoebe thought as she rang the bell. Like a lamb to the slaughter.

After a pause, the door was opened by a stout, white-haired woman wearing a dark dress and a neat apron.

‘Good evening.’ She sounded surprised. ‘Can I help...?’ Her gaze fell on Tara, clinging to Phoebe’s hand, and her hand flew to her mouth.

‘Oh, my God, it’s the little one. You should have been home hours ago, you naughty girl. I was just going to take your supper up to the nursery. And where’s that Cindy, may I ask?’

‘You may indeed,’ Phoebe said quietly, leading Tara into the hall. ‘I’ve brought Tara home from the café where I work. There seems to have been some mistake over the arrangements to collect her.’

‘Mistake,’ the other woman repeated. ‘And what was Miss Tara doing in a café, I’d like to know? From school to her piano lesson, and then straight home. That’s her routine.’

‘Apparently not.’ Phoebe gave her a level look. ‘You mentioned supper, which is a splendid idea. Tara’s had rather a trying time, as you can imagine.’

‘Well, yes.’ The woman looked helplessly from one to the other. ‘I don’t know what to say, I’m sure.’

‘If you could take her upstairs, and see to her.’ Phoebe urged the child gently forward. ‘Go on, poppet, and I’ll come and say goodbye once I’ve spoken to your father.’ She turned to the other woman. ‘I presume he’s here.’

‘Yes, miss, but he’s working in his study.’ The woman glanced uneasily at a door on the right of the large hall. ‘Left strict instructions he wasn’t to be disturbed.’

‘I’m sure he did,’ Phoebe said with a lightness she was far from feeling. ‘But I think this is an emergency, don’t you?’

And she walked past them both, opened the study door and went in.

It was a room she remembered only vaguely, with its book-lined walls and the large desk standing in the centre of the room.

He was standing with his back to her, intent on a fax machine delivering a message on a side table.

When he spoke, his voice was clipped with impatience. ‘Carrie, I thought I said—’

‘It’s not Carrie, Mr Vane.’ The anger which had been seething in Phoebe came boiling to the surface. ‘I’ve just brought your daughter back from Westcombe, where she’d been abandoned, and I’d like to know whether you’re just totally selfish or criminally irresponsible.’

He turned slowly. The grey eyes travelled over her without haste. Like ice that burned. She had thought it then. She knew it now.

She gave a gasp, and stepped backwards.

‘I don’t know who the hell you are, bursting in and abusing me like this.’ Every word was like the slash of a whip. ‘But you’ve made a big mistake, young woman.’

He paused, taking in every detail from the top of the smooth brown head, down over her working uniform of white shirt and brief black skirt, to her slender feet in their sensible shoes. Registering it all, then dismissing it with the contempt that she remembered so vividly from six years before.

He said softly, ‘My name is Ashton. Dominic Ashton. Now, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t throw you out.’

CHAPTER TWO

PHOEBE wanted to run away, harder and faster than she’d ever done in her life. But for dazed seconds she wasn’t able to move, or think. She could only stare at him. At the nightmare made flesh, and standing in front of her.

He’d hardly changed at all. She was capable of recognising that, at least. The thick dark hair, untouched by grey, still waved untidily back from its widow’s peak. He would never be handsome. His nose was too beaky, his mouth and chin too firmly uncompromising, and the grey eyes under the cynically lifted eyebrows too piercing. But he was even more of a force to be reckoned with than at their last disastrous encounter.

She was the one who’d changed, she realised with a reviving jolt of the same anger which had driven her into this room. She wasn’t a naive, betrayed sixteen-year-old any longer.

The real vulnerable child was upstairs, and she was all that mattered in this situation.