was a short silence, and then Kate said harshly, ‘You know my views on marriage, Camilla. I’m a career woman who wants to earn her own security, not to receive it secondhand from a man who would walk out of my life whenever he chose.’
‘Oh, Kate.’ Camilla could have wept for her. Where did it come from, this deep, abiding fear of depending on anyone other than herself that made Kate so terrified of emotional commitment? Independence was fine, but it could be carried to extremes. ‘Kate, marriage needn’t be like that,’ she protested quietly. ‘Husband and wife can be equal partners, each loving and respecting the other…each mutually dependent on the other…’
‘Perhaps,’ Kate agreed after a long pause. ‘But it isn’t a risk I want to take.’
‘Well, then, your next best alternative is to follow the example of someone like Britt Ekland, and hire a male nanny,’ Camilla told her.
‘A what?’
‘A male nanny,’ Camilla repeated patiently. ‘They do exist, I promise you, and marvellous they are too, by all accounts. You’d be surprised how many single working mothers employ men to take care of their children, especially when they’re boys. Male patterning and all that. And apparently it works. There’s also the added advantage that there’s less jealousy between Mum and nanny when she’s a he, if you know what I mean. Less feeling that somehow or other someone else is taking your place with the baby.
Look, I know an agency that specialises in finding male nannies. Why don’t I give them a ring on your behalf and see what they can come up with?’ she suggested.
A male nanny! Kate frowned. Did she really want a strange young man sharing her home?And yet the suggestion had its good points. She had been conscious of rather more than mere covert disapproval from a couple of the girls she had been employing, as though they felt that she was somehow not doing her best for Michael by going out to work, and yet what alternative had she? If she didn’t work, she could not support herself. She had no money, no family, nothing to fall back on other than her own skills in the workplace.
‘Look, give it a try,’ Camilla urged her. ‘What have you got to lose? I’ll give the agency a ring, get them to send someone round, and if you don’t like them…Well, there’s nothing lost, is there?’
‘All right,” Kate agreed hesitantly. From upstairs she caught the sound of a small, fretful wail. ‘I’ll have to go. Michael’s just woken up.’
‘OK. Leave everything to me. I’ll sort something out. Oh, and by the way, how are you getting on with James?’
James Cameron owned, among other things, a chain of supermarkets spread throughout the country, and through Camilla’s good offices Kate had got the opportunity to take over his PR work. The supermarkets, for one reason or another, did not have a good image, and if Kate could get the contract to change this it would be a very healthy boost to her profits.
‘He’s taking me out to dinner next week. I’ve got to prepare a couple of presentations for him. He wants to start going up-market with the supermarket acquisition.’
‘Watch out for him, Kate,’ Camilla warned. ‘He regards himself as something of a stud.’
‘Don’t they all?’ was Kate’s grim response, and Camilla sighed at her tone of voice.
‘Some do,’ she admitted, ‘but there are others. Men who like and respect women as well as desire them. The problem with you is that because you prefer to think that all men are like the Jameses of this world, you deliberately close your eyes to the existence of the other sort. I’ve often wondered why.’
‘It’s safer that way,’ Kate told her, and then stopped abruptly. She was giving too much away. Betraying more about herself than was wise. Good friend though Camilla was, if she were to learn of Kate’s fear of committing herself emotionally to someone, and through that commitment being hurt as she had been hurt as a child, Camilla would, for the very best of reasons, try to change her outlook. And she didn’t want her outlook changing. She felt safer with it the way it was.
Their conversation over, she went upstairs and walked into Michael’s bedroom, switching on the light. She had purposefully put a soft light in this room, so that no brightness would distress the baby.
Michael had been premature, and was still slightly small for his age. He was wide awake and not crying now that he saw her. As she reached down into the cot, he raised his arms to her.
Kate picked him up, and comforted him automatically. She felt the dampness of his mouth where he sucked her shoulder and her silk shirt. Damn! She normally changed when she got home from work, but tonight, what with the rumpus with the nanny, she hadn’t had time.
He had thrown off his blankets and his hands felt cold. She reached down into the cot and picked one up, wrapping him securely in it. Thinking he was going to be put down, he started to cry, his small features puckering.
The social worker who had interviewed her following Alan and Jen’s deaths had warned her that for some considerable time Michael was going to feel insecure. So far this insecurity had manifested itself in bouts of tears in the middle of the night which had necessitated Kate getting up to take the baby into her own room, while his nanny slept on, apparently undisturbed by the noise.
Years of living with small children had given Kate an expertise she had not even realised she possessed until Michael came into her life. She was half appalled by her own inherent skill in looking after him, at least physically. Emotionally, she wasn’t anything like as sure that she would be able to cope with his needs.
She adjusted her stance to cope with his weight with an expertise that would have astounded most people who knew her, easily rocking her body so that its rhythm soothed his whimpers.
The tears had stopped now, but she knew from experience that the moment she tried to put him back in his cot they would start again; it was all too understandable, really, this defiant bid to claim her attention.
None of the nannies she had had so far had been pleased by her ruling that Michael was to remain upstairs. The house was only small, and the sitting-room and dining-room she had had so carefully furnished sometimes had to double as an extension of her office.
Clients sometimes visited her at home; she entertained them at small, elegant dinner parties, using the recipes she had carefully and meticulously learned at nightschool. She wasn’t an inspired cook, but she had the intelligence to realise that every tiny skill she added to her repertoire increased her chances of ultimate success.
A male client, dubious about dealing with one of the new breed of city career woman, could have his fears soothed by the production of a delicious home-cooked meal, thus restoring his innate belief that women, even career women, enjoyed pandering to men. It was because she had to look upon her sitting-room and dining-room as extensions of her office that Michael was barred from them. A scatter of toys and baby things, no matter how domestic, would not serve to enhance the image she was careful to project.
Instead she had given Michael the largest of the three bedrooms, and what was more she had decorated it herself—another learned skill.
Nor could she simply abandon her responsibility to him. Jen had been as close to her as if they were sisters. Closer in some ways. And she owed it to her friend to do the very best she could for Michael.
It would be easier once he was old enough to go to school…once she had her business
