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‘On second thoughts, have this one on me,’ she replied. Then, giving her full attention to her unexpected charge, she said, ‘OK, Maisie, let’s go before my car gets clamped.’
‘Is this it?’ the child demanded, unimpressed, as they reached the street and she was confronted by a much cherished, but admittedly past its best, VW Beetle.
‘This is my car,’ Jacqui agreed, opening the door.
‘I never travel in anything but a Mercedes.’
At which point she began to understand Vickie’s anxiety not to be left alone with Miss Maisie Talbot for any length of time.
‘This is a Mercedes,’ she said, briskly.
‘It doesn’t look like one.’
‘No? Well, it’s a dress-down-at-work day.’
Maisie’s little forehead wrinkled as she considered this outrageous statement. Then she asked, ‘What’s a dress-down-at-work day?’
It was too late to wish she’d kept her mouth shut. Something to bear in mind, though, next time she thought of being smart with a six-year-old.
‘It’s a day when you’re allowed to go into work wearing jeans instead of a suit,’ she explained.
‘Why would anyone want to do that?’
‘For fun?’ she offered. Then, because Maisie’s idea of fun was dressing up, not down, ‘OK, well, sometimes, to raise money for charity, 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 house, towers at each corner, the crenellated roof suggesting a fortified stronghold rather than the home of someone’s grandma, appeared out of the swirling mist.
Despite the fact that she’d never been anywhere near High Tops before, it looked vaguely familiar and Jacqui felt an odd sense of foreboding. It was, doubtless, caused by the combination of mist and mud.
She might not be totally in the mood for sun, sand and sangria, but given the choice she knew which option she’d choose. She almost felt sorry for Maisie.
Totally ridiculous of course, she told herself. At any moment the vast door would be flung open and the child enfolded in a loving welcome from her grandma, who must surely be looking out for them.
The door remained closed, however, and rather than expose Maisie’s satin shoes to the elements unnecessarily she said, ‘You’d better wait here while I ring the doorbell.’
Maisie looked as if she was about to say something, but instead she just sighed.
Jacqui was enfolded in the cold, damp air as she ran up the steps to a pair of iron-studded front doors that offered no concessions to the twenty-first century. There was nothing as remotely modern as an electric bell. Just an old-fashioned bell pull.
As she lifted her arm the silver bracelet slid down and the heart caught the light and flashed brightly. For a moment she froze, then she tugged hard on the bell pull and a long way off she heard the jangle of an old-fashioned bell.
From somewhere a dog raised its voice in a mournful howl.
Jacqui looked around nervously, half expecting a near relation of the Hound of the Baskervilles to come bounding out of the mist. Ridiculous. This was not Dartmoor… But nevertheless she shivered and, grasping the bell pull rather more firmly, she tugged it again.
Twice.
Almost before she let go there was a thud as a stiff bolt shot back. Then, as one half of the door opened, she realised why the house seemed familiar. She’d seen it—or at least something very like it—in a book of fairy stories she’d been given as a child; the one with all those terrifying tales about witches and trolls and giants.
This was the house where the big bad giant lived.
He still did.
Half an inch short of six feet—without her socks—Jacqui was tall for a woman but the man who opened the door loomed threateningly above her. OK, she was a step lower than him, but it wasn’t just his height; he was broad, too, his shoulders filling the opening, and even his hair, a thick, dark, shaggy lion mane that clearly hadn’t been near a pair of scissors in months, was, well, big. Gold eyes—which might have been attractive in any other setting—and three days’ growth of beard only added to the leonine effect.
‘Yes?’ he demanded, discouragingly.
It was a little late to wish she’d stuck to her original plan; the one where, exhaust safely in one piece, she’d be heading down the motorway with nothing more challenging ahead of her than lying on a Spanish beach for two weeks.
Instead she did her best not to think about the giant in her book who’d scared her witless as he ground little kids bones to make his bread and, with what she hoped was a bright smile and a professional manner, she offered her hand in a friendly gesture.
‘Hello. I’m Jacqui Moore.’ Then, since he clearly required more information before he committed himself to a handshake, ‘From the Campbell Agency?’
‘Are you selling something? If you are I’m afraid you’ve risked your exhaust for nothing—’
‘More than risked it,’ she responded, a shade more testily than was professional as she let her hand drop, unshaken, to her side. There had been a throaty sound from the car’s rear in those last couple of hundred yards to the house, suggesting that it hadn’t quite cleared that last pothole. ‘Shouldn’t you do something about that lane?’
‘I rather think that’s my business, not yours. Be more careful on the way down.’ And he stepped back and began to close the door.
For a moment she was too shocked to do or say anything. Then, as the gap narrowed, she did what any resourceful nanny would do in the same situation. She stuck out her foot. It was just as well she was wearing ankle boots beneath her jeans. If her footwear had been less substantial, it would have been crushed.
The giant looked at her foot and then at her. ‘There’s something else?’ he enquired. ‘You didn’t just come to complain about the state of the lane?’
‘No, I’m not a masochist, neither am I selling anything. I’m a flying nanny.’
‘Really?’ He opened the door a little wider, releasing her foot. She didn’t move it, even when his predator’s eyes took their time over a toe-to-head inspection that under any other circumstances would have invited a slap. Even if she’d been feeling that reckless, one look at the hard line of his upper lip was all it took to warn her that taking such liberties would not be wise. Finally, he shook his head. ‘No. I’m not convinced. Mary Poppins wouldn’t have left home without her umbrella.’
OK, that was it. She was here as a favour to Vickie, as a kindness to a child. She had other places to be and she’d just about had it with the giant.
‘Could you please tell Mrs Talbot that I’m here?’ she replied, in her best I’m-so-not-impressed manner. ‘She is expecting me.’
‘I rather doubt that,’ he said. Nothing much happened to the upper lip, but a shift in his expression deepened the lines about his mouth, drawing attention to its lower, shockingly sensuous companion.
‘Yes…’ Momentarily mesmerised, she had to force herself to focus on the job. ‘I’ve, um, brought Maisie…’ She turned away, not so much to indicate the child as to give herself some breathing space.
The giant in her story book had never had that effect on her.
Maisie’s response to this attention was to slump down further in the seat until all that could be seen of her was the sparkly little tiara.
‘So I see,’ the giant responded unenthusiastically after the briefest of glances and instantly losing the almost smile. ‘Why?’
‘To stay. Why else?’
‘With Mrs Talbot?’
Now he sounded perplexed. Which might have been good, since it meant she had company, except, from the way he was looking at her—as if she were crazy—she was almost certain that it wasn’t good at all.
‘With Mrs Kate Talbot. Her grandmother,’ she elaborated with exaggerated patience. Maybe it was because he was so tall, but it seemed to be taking an inordinately long time for a very simple message to reach his brain. ‘I was engaged by the Campbell Agency, on behalf of Ms Selina Talbot, to bring her daughter to High Tops. I’m actually on rather a tight schedule so I’d be grateful if I could hand her over and get on my way.’
‘I’m sure you would, but that won’t be possible. I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey, Jacqui Moore.’ He didn’t sound one bit sorry. ‘My aunt—’
‘Your aunt?’
‘My aunt, Mrs Talbot, Maisie’s grandmother,’ he responded, in blatant mockery of her own earlier explanation, ‘is at present visiting her sister in New Zealand.’
‘What? No…’
Jacqui took a deep breath. Obviously there was some simple misunderstanding here.
‘Obviously there is some simple misunderstanding here,’ she said, in an effort to convince herself. Vickie might be devious but she wasn’t stupid and she took her business very seriously indeed. ‘Ms Talbot brought her daughter into the office this morning. I was there when she arrived.’
