By the time of their arrival at the station, Véronique’s head was pounding and she was feeling sick with apprehension, but there was no backing out now. For the sake of Josh and Ella she struggled to maintain a bright front. At their hotel, overlooking the Clifton Suspension Bridge, she treated them to ice-cream sundaes on the sweeping terrace and said gaily, ‘Eat them all up, and don’t spill any on your clothes. We’re going to see a very nice man and he might not be so impressed with chocolate ice-cream stains.’

Josh, six years old and enjoying the adventure immensely, said, ‘Who is he?’

But Véronique, whose headache was worsening by the minute, simply smiled and shook her head.

‘Just a very nice man, my darling, who lives not far from here. You’ll like him, I’m sure.’

Josh wasn’t so sure he would. The big house to which his mother took them was owned by a man who didn’t look the least bit pleased to see them. In Josh’s experience, very-nice-people smiled a tot, hugged you and, perhaps, gave you sweets. This man, with fierce grey eyebrows like caterpillars, wasn’t even saying hello.

‘Mr Cassidy,’ said Véronique quickly. It was an unpromising start and her palms were sticky with perspiration: ‘I have brought Josh and Ella to see you . I thought you would like to meet them ... your family--’

Oliver Cassidy didn’t like surprises. Neither did he appreciate emotional blackmail. A man who seldom admitted that he might be in the wrong, he saw no reason to revise his opinion of his only son’s French wife. In her flowered dress and with her straight blond hair hanging loose around her shoulders, she still looked like a teenager, which didn’t help. And as far as he was concerned, the fact that she thought she could simply turn up out of the blue and expect some kind of fairytale reunion proved beyond all doubt that she was either stupid or staggeringly naïve.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said coldly, eyeing her white face with displeasure and ignoring the two children at her side. His gesture encompassed both the Georgian house and the sloping, sculptured lawns. ‘Afraid they’ll miss out on all this when I’m gone?’

‘No!’ Appalled by her father-in-law’s cruelty, Véronique took a faltering step backwards.

‘No,’ she cried again, pleading with him to understand. ‘They are your grandchildren, your family! This isn’t about any inheritance snapped Oliver Cassidy as Ella, clinging to her mother’s hand, began to cry. ‘Because they won’t be seeing any of it anyway.’

‘I feel sick,’ Ella sobbed. ‘Mummy, I feel—’

‘And now, I have an urgent appointment.’ He glanced at his watch in order to give credence to the lie. Then, with a look of absolute horror, he took an abrupt step sideways.

But it was too late. Ella, who had eaten far too much chocolate ice-cream, had already thrown up all over her grandfather’s highly polished, handmade shoes.

It wasn’t until they were back at the hotel that Véronique realized she was ill. The headache and nausea which she had earlier put down to nervousness had worsened dramatically and she was aching all over.

By early evening a raging fever had taken its grip and she was barely able to haul herself out of bed in order to phone downstairs and ask for a doctor to be called. Summer flu, she thought, fighting tears of exhaustion and the shivers which racked her entire body like jolts of electricity. Just what she needed. A fitting end to a disastrous visit. Had she been superstitious she might almost have believed that Oliver Cassidy had cast a malevolent jinx in order to pay her back for her impudence.

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!’ Véronique 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 Véronique 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, Véronique 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 Véronique died three days later without regaining consciousness, he saw no reason to change his mind. Oliver Cassidy might not have caused Véronique’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 planes and jetting off all over the world, I’m going to be stuck here in the wilderness with the kids like some frumpy housewife.’ She paused then added fretfully, ‘This wasn’t what I had in mind at all.’

Guy emerged from his study as Janey was putting the finishing touches to the flowers in the hall. Crossing her fingers and praying that it wouldn’t pour with rain overnight, she had garlanded the stone pillars which flanked the front entrance to the house with yellow and white satin ribbons, and woven sprays of mimosa and gypsophila between them. Together with the tendrils of ivy already curling around the bleached white stone they would provide an effective framework for the bride and groom when they stood on the steps to have their photographs taken by none other than one of the country’s best-known photographers.

‘It looks good.’ Standing back to survey the overall effect with a professional eye, he nodded his approval. ‘You’ve been working hard.’

‘So has the hairdresser,’ Janey observed, as a car drew up and Berenice stepped out, self-consciously shielding her head from the light breeze coming in off the sea. Her mousey brown hair, pulled back from her face and teased into unaccustomed ringlets, bounced off her shoulders as she walked towards them.

‘How are you going to sleep tonight?’ said Guy, and Janey glimpsed the genuine affection in his eyes as he admired the rigid style.

Berenice, turning her head this way and that, said, ‘Upright,’ then broke into a smile as she inspected Janey’s work. ‘This is gorgeous; it must have taken you hours!’

‘I think we all deserve a drink.’ Placing his hand on her shoulder, Guy drew her into the house. When Janey hesitated, he added, ‘You too.’

Berenice said, ‘Where are the children?’

‘Upstairs with the new nanny.’ He grinned. ‘And a pack of cards. I heard her saying she was going to teach them poker.’

‘Enjoying yourself?’ asked Guy, coming up to Janey in the sitting room the next day. She was perched on one of the window seats overlooking the garden, watching Maxine flirt with the best man.

‘It was nice of Berenice to invite me,’ she replied with a smile. ‘And even nicer for her, being able to have the reception here. She’s terribly grateful -- she was telling me earlier that otherwise they would have had to hold it in the skittle alley at the Red Lion.’

He shrugged. ‘No problem. Weddings and bar- mitzvahs a speciality. And forty guests is hardly over the top.’