What the Nanny Saw Read Free Page A

pages. So it was another night of insomnia.”
    They stood in companionable silence and surveyed the scene on the table before them. It reminded Ali of an elaborate tombola. Except that there was nothing random about any of the items, and instead of cheap soaps in pastel colors and bubble bath that made your skin go red, there was expensive-looking jewelry and silverware that Ali had never seen before. There was a diamond teardrop-shaped pin with a handwritten label attached that said “Cartier, 1920s,” and a Franck Muller watch.
    “Quite a spread,” said Foy, frowning. “It will keep the wolves from the door, at least. They’ve frozen their bank accounts. Did Bryony tell you?”
    “I read it in the paper,” said Ali.
    “They’ve got to live off three hundred fifty pounds a week.” Foy snorted.
    It was, Ali agreed, a ludicrous proposition. She noticed that Foy’s forehead had developed an intricate network of horizontal and vertical lines. It was a hard-fought battle between anger and self-pity, thought Ali, before turning her attention to the table again. A thin shard of sunlight seeped through the window and highlighted a gold bangle with two green enamel frogs on either end. The frogs had emerald eyes and tiny diamond warts encrusted on their backs. Beside them sat a pair of matching earrings. Ali was puzzled. Bryony would never wear something so gaudy, and Nick was too cautious to buy something so exotic for his wife without her blessing. Not that cautious was an adjective many people would attach to Nick Skinner right now.
    Ali glanced over at the windows to check that the curtains were closed. Then she picked up the bracelet and closed it around her wrist, running a finger across the diamond warts. It made her shiver in the same way that it did when the twins ground their teeth at night or Izzy picked at the skin around her fingernails until it bled. She held the bracelet up to the light and slowly turned her wrist from one side to another, wondering when anyone would wear something so ugly.
    “Take it, Ali. You deserve it,” Foy said gruffly. Ali wondered what he was talking about and then realized that she had wandered to the other side of the table with the bracelet still on her wrist. “I got it for Bryony when she got engaged, but she never wore it. It’s a David Webb animal suite. The sort of thing that was popular in the seventies. I thought the frog was a good symbol of my first success persuading a British supermarket to stock smoked salmon.” Ali looked confused.
    “Well, it’s an aquatic animal,” Foy continued, misinterpreting Ali’s silence. “If they’d done a diamond-encrusted salmon I would have bought that. It was symbolic.” He didn’t understand. It was the egocentricity of the present that amazed her, the fact that even at the beginning of Nick and Bryony’s relationship it had been all about him rather than them.
    “It’s probably worth about fifteen thousand pounds, and I can’t see how you’ll get paid for the next six months. Take it in lieu of salary,” Foy insisted, “or as a wedding present when you finally get hitched.”
    “I don’t have a boyfriend,” Ali said primly.
    “You don’t have a boyfriend?” repeated Foy in mock horror.
    “The job wasn’t conducive to relationships,” Ali explained, noting that she was talking about it in the past tense, “and the bracelet isn’t really yours to give away.”
    “I bought it,” said Foy petulantly.
    “It was a present,” Ali insisted.
    “That’s the problem with you, Ali,” Foy said, and sighed. “You’re incorruptible.”
    “What are you trying to give away, Dad?” Bryony had come into the room. She was breaking her own rules and padding across the carpet in a pair of Ugg boots, leaving a thin trail of mud that would insinuate itself into the thick pile. Her hair was pulled off her face and tied into a rough ponytail at her nape. A few strands had already escaped. She had a kind of bruised