The doctor, however, took an altogether more serious view of the situation.
‘Mrs Cassidy, I’m afraid we’re going to have to get you into hospital,’ he said when he had completed his examination.
‘Mais c’est impossible!’ Veronique cried, her fluent English deserting her in her weakened state. Wes enfants But it wasn’t a suggestion, it was a statement. An ambulance was called and by midnight Veronique was being admitted to the neurological ward of one of Bristol’s largest hospitals. The hotel manager himself, she was repeatedly assured, was contacting her husband in New York and had in the meantime assumed full responsibility for her children who would remain at the hotel and be well looked after for as long as necessary.
By the time Guy arrived at the hospital twenty-seven hours later, Veronique had lapsed into a deep coma. As the doctors had suspected, tests confirmed that she was suffering from a particularly virulent strain of meningitis and although they were doing everything possible the outlook wasn’t good.
‘Mummy said we were going to see a nice man,’ said Josh, his dark eyes brimming with tears as Guy eased the truth from him ‘But he wasn’t nice at all, he was horrid. He shouted at Mummy, then Ella was sick on his shoes. And when we came back to the hotel Mummy wasn’t very well. Daddy, can we go home now?’
It was as Guy had suspected. He didn’t contact his father. And when Veronique died three days later without regaining consciousness, he saw no reason to change his mind. Oliver Cassidy might not have caused Veronique’s death but he had undoubtedly ensured that her last few waking hours should have been as miserable as possible. For that, Guy would never forgive him.
Chapter 7
Guy watched from the kitchen window as Maxine’s Jaffa-orange MG screeched to a halt at the top of the drive. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking doubtful. ‘I’m still not sure about this.
Somebody tell me I’m not making a big mistake.’
Berenice followed his gaze. The girl climbing out of the car was wearing white shorts and a sleeveless pale grey vest with MUSCLE emblazoned across her chest.
She also possessed a great deal of gold-blond hair and long brown legs.
‘Just because she doesn’t look like your idea of a nanny,’ she replied comfortably. Then, secure in the knowledge that by this time tomorrow she would be a married woman, she added with a slight smile, ‘She certainly doesn’t look like me.’
There really wasn’t any diplomatic answer to that; the differences between the two girls were only too evident. But Berenice had been such relaxing company, thought Guy, and it had never occurred to anyone who’d met her that there might possibly be anything going on between the pair of them.
The arrival of Maxine Vaughan, on the other hand, was likely to engender all kinds of lurid speculation.
‘I don’t care what she looks like.’ His expression was deliberately grim. Above them came the sound of thunderous footsteps as Josh and Ella hurled themselves down the staircase. ‘I just want her to take care of my kids.’ He was about to continue but his attention was caught by the scene now taking place on the drive.
‘OK,’ Maxine was saying, leaning against her car and surveying the two children before her. ‘Just remind me. Which one of you is Ella and which is Josh?’
Josh relaxed. She wouldn’t, he was almost sure, force them to eat cold porridge. He had high hopes, too, of being allowed to stay up late when his father was away. Berenice had always been a bit boring where bedtimes were concerned.
‘I’m Ella,’ said his sister, meeting Maxine for the first time and struggling to work out whether she was being serious. ‘I’m a girl.’
‘Of course you are.’ Maxine grinned and gave her her handbag. ‘Good, that means you can carry this for me whilst I get my cases out of the boot. Isn’t your dad here?’
‘He’s in the kitchen,’ supplied Josh. ‘With Berenice.’
‘Hmm. Nice of him to come out and welcome me.’ With a meaningful glance in the direction of the kitchen window, she hauled the heavy cases out of the car and dumped them on the gravelled drive. She’d been so serious about the live-in aspect of the job that she’d been up to Maurice’s flat in London to collect all her things. ‘Well, he can carry them inside. That’s what men are for.’
By the time Janey arrived at Trezale House in the van, Maxine appeared to have made herself thoroughly at home. Her enormous bedroom, flooded with sunlight and nicely decorated in shades of pink, yellow and cream, was already a mess.
‘Berenice has given me a list of dos and don’ts,’ she said, rolling her eyes as she tossed an armful of underwear into an open drawer and kicked a few shoes under the dressing table. ‘She seems incredibly organized.’
‘Nannies have to be organized,’ Janey reminded her.
‘Yes, well. I pity the chap she’s marrying.’
‘And you’re going to have to be organized,’ continued Janey remorselessly. ‘If these children have a routine, they’ll need to stick to it.’
Maxine gazed at her in disbelief. ‘We never did.’
This was true. Thea, engrossed in her work, had employed a cavalier attitude to child rearing which involved leaving them to their own devices for much of the time, whilst she, oblivious to all else, would lose herself in the wonder of creating yet another sculpture. Janey, in the months following her own marriage, had traced her love of domesticity and orderliness back to the disorganized chaos of those early years when she had longed for order and stability. It had never seemed to bother Maxine, however. More adventurous by nature, and less interested in conforming than her elder sister, she positively embraced chaos. Janey just wished she could embrace the idea of work with as much enthusiasm.
‘That’s different,’ she said sternly. ‘At least we had a mother. Josh and Ella don’t. It can’t be easy for them.’
‘It isn’t going to be easy for me.’ Maxine looked glum and handed over the list, painstakingly written in neat, easy-to-read capitals. ‘According to this they get up at six-thirty.
And I’m supposed to give them breakfast!’
‘Oh please,’ sighed Janey, exasperated. ‘You wanted this job! You were desperate to come and work here. Whatever’s the matter with you now?’
‘I wanted to work for Guy Cassidy.’ Maxine stared at her as if she was stupid. ‘But he’s just been going through his diary with me and from the sound of it he’s going to be away more often than he’s here. Whilst he’s leaping on
