Chapter Nine
‘It’s an ambush!’ Frank said, beaming. ‘I didn’t trust you to come back and stretch on your own!’
He had showered and changed into jeans and a V-neck sweater, worn without a T-shirt underneath, the scent of ferns and bergamot from his body wash rising from his warm golden skin.
‘I feel so awful,’ Caroline whimpered. ‘I can’t breathe and I’m all sweaty.’
‘Great – that means you really did it – you went for it! Good girl! Go have a quick shower and put on something loose. Even pjs are fine if you don’t have a change of workout gear. I’ll wait for you in the gym to show you some basic stretches, otherwise you’ll stiffen up like a piece of board. I’ll give you fifteen minutes. Don’t make me come up there and get you!’
Only a man as well-intentioned and as much in love with his own wife as Frank could have threatened, even jokingly, to haul a young woman staying in his house out of her own bedroom. He stood back and watched her crossing the hall to the lift, looking back in mortification to say:
‘I can’t go up the stairs . . . it hurt so much coming up the entrance ones . . .’
Frank threw back his head and laughed, a full-throated laugh that held no hint of mockery.
‘We’ve all been there!’ he said reassuringly. ‘Feel like you’ve got iron rods shooting up into your bum cheeks every time you take a step?’
‘That’s exactly what it feels like,’ she said as the lift doors opened.
‘Don’t worry,’ Frank said. ‘We’re going to stretch out your glutes. It’ll really help. And I can teach you how to do it on your own after a run if I’m not around.’
Caroline was horrified at the sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. She did cry a little as she stripped off her sodden clothes. The mottling on her face reached down her neck all the way to her collarbones, and her hair had frizzed up unattractively. She looked like a madwoman, a bag lady, and the fact that her bra, under extreme stress, had partially given up the struggle to support her breasts only added to that impression. At least she could change into a fresh one after the shower, and she tightened the straps to pull her boobs as high as was feasible . . .
‘Okay!’ Frank said, as she limped out of the lift and into the gym. ‘You’re in pain, but that’s fine. It’s normal. No pain, no gain. We just have to minimize it as much as we can, and work on your flexibility so you don’t tear anything. You’re bound to stiffen up, and that’s where you’re most at risk of damaging yourself. Let’s start with that glute stretch.’
Caroline promptly found herself lying on her back on an exercise mat, the ankle of one leg crossed over the knee of the other, the leg folded as if in a half-lotus yoga position; her other foot was resting high up on Frank’s thigh, pressing firmly into it as he stood in front of her. Her foot was close enough to his crotch that she couldn’t even look at it; Frank had anchored it there without a hint of embarrassment, as befitted a professional sportsman who had spent decades being stretched out by a whole bevy of coaches and physios.
‘Okay,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m going to lean in. I want you to take the stretch in your bum and hip as much as you can bear it. If it goes into your knee, tell me and we’ll back off. Knee bad, bum good. Got it?’
‘Yes,’ Caroline said in a tiny voice, staring at her own boobs to avoid looking at him.
Frank started to walk a little forward and she realized exactly what he had meant. As his thigh pressed harder against her foot, the buttock of that leg was forced further downwards, into the mat, and the fibres of its gluteal muscles, which had tautened up with the effort of walking and running on damp sand, were required to stretch out again. The hip joint screamed in pain as it opened up.
‘Ow!’ she yelled.
‘Bum or knee?’ Frank said mercilessly.
‘Bum,’ she admitted, wishing she had the nerve to lie.
He kept going. She wailed. He stopped, but held the position, letting her body, which had tensed up against the pain of the stretch, adjust, realize that it wasn’t going to rip apart, let it happen.
‘Breathe in,’ he said. ‘Then breathe out loudly.’
It was a trap. He was a bastard. As soon as she exhaled, he pushed a little further, and to her horror, Caroline heard a stream of curses, mostly ‘fucks’, pouring from her mouth at the pain of the stretch.
Frank laughed again, his hands on his hips for balance.
‘Like I said, we’ve all been there!’ he said cheerfully. ‘And I’ve heard everything, don’t you worry! Some of the lads make death threats to their physios, turn the air blue. You swear as much as you want – it’s water straight off my back.’
To her eternal relief, he eased off now, stepping back slowly. It hurt, in quite a different way; and then he was nodding at her to switch legs. Simply taking the crossed leg off the other one, setting up for the stretch on the other side, was horrendous in itself.
‘I feel like I’ll never walk again,’ Caroline said helplessly.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Frank said sympathetically. ‘You were pretty ambitious there with that beach jogging. Good for you. After this you should go and get in a hot bath with lots of Epsom salts. Tomorrow it’ll be worse. I’m not going to lie to you. But if you’ve got the guts to keep going, you’ll be surprised how much better it gets.’
The sight of her face when he mentioned going back to Studland tomorrow to repeat the agony of today was enough to set him off again.
‘I hope you don’t think I’m laughing at you,’ he said contritely. ‘It’s just the faces you pull. I can’t help it. You should be doing comedy on the telly – you’d have everyone in stitches.’
‘I’m glad my suffering amuses you,’ Caroline managed, as the door of the gym swung open and Laylah’s high, piping voice asked:
‘Daddy, what are you doing to Caroline? Do me next! Do me!’
Laylah threw herself down by Caroline on the mat, crossing her legs in imitation of Caroline’s contorted position.
‘It’s so easy for kids, isn’t it?’ Frank said to Caroline, and she couldn’t help a half-smile, half-grimace; it was exactly what she had been thinking, Laylah’s rubbery, bendy little legs were instantly able to fold into any shape she wanted.
‘No, me! Daddy, do me!’ London insisted, following suit.
‘I have to finish stretching Caroline,’ Frank said patiently. ‘She’s done a really cool thing today – she’s started to jog on sand, which, let me tell you two, is not an easy thing at all. Laylah, why don’t you be me and stretch out your brother, and London, you can be Caroline?’
‘I don’t want to be the girl,’ London said sullenly, shaking back his dark head of curls, so like his father’s, even as Laylah leaped to her feet, excited to follow her father’s suggestion.
‘London! We’re not sexist in this house!’
Frank knuckled his fists and put them on his waist, staring down at his son with a deep frown.
‘Girls can do anything boys can!’ Laylah said, sticking her tongue out at London. ‘Like Corinne in Barbie and the Three Musketeers! They told her she couldn’t be a musketeer but she could, and her friends were ones too!’
‘That’s a stupid film,’ London muttered.
‘Oh yeah? So why do you watch it all the time? And Barbie: A Mermaid’s Tale too? You watch that again and again and again and again—’
Laylah’s voice was rising ominously; Caroline fought the impulse to clap her hands over her ears. London threw himself at his sister in an attempt to silence her, going straight for the throat.
‘Shut up, shut up!’ he yelled. ‘I hate you!’
‘GUYS! STOP IT AT ONCE!’
But Frank’s yelled command did nothing to stop his children fighting. They were struggling madly; Laylah tried to push London off and he fell to the ground, taking her with him, his hands tightly clasping the collar of her blouse. They rolled over and over each other on the mats. Caroline had to scramble clumsily to her feet to avoid their thrashing feet as Frank stood impotently over them, begging them to pack it in, unable to get a grip on them to separate them: by now they were a mass of tossing curls and writhing limbs. Though only four, London clearly took after his father in build. He was a stocky, solid child who was more than able to give his skinny nine-year-old sister a run for her money in a wrestling match.
Every morning the housekeeper brought a fresh pitcher of filtered water down to the gym, as the environmentally conscious Frank was very keen on avoiding plastic bottles where at all possible. Caroline, heroically ignoring the agony in her legs and buttocks, strode over to the table on which the pitcher and several glasses stood next to a pile of neatly folded hand towels. Peeling off the lid of the pitcher, she went back to the kidfight. London’s hands were now wound in his sister’s hair; she was shrieking with pain, pulling her knees up to her chest and wriggling to get the right angle to kick him in the balls. Frank was almost sobbing with frustration.
Leaning over, Caroline dumped the entire contents of the pitcher onto the two squirming and screaming children. Absolute silence descended on the gym for a long moment as Laylah and London froze in shock. Then they started spluttering for breath, their hands coming up to wipe the water off their faces. This gave Frank the opportunity to bend down and grab both by the scruffs of their necks, hauling them to their feet.
‘I hope you don’t mind –’ Caroline stammered, shocked by what she had just done. It completely exceeded the bounds of any normal guest behaviour. ‘My mum used to do it when we were scrapping and it always works, but . . .’
Frank turned to her, a child practically depending from each big hand, holding them as far apart as possible so nothing could start up again.
‘Genius,’ he said simply. ‘Genius. Wish I’d thought of it myself. Kids, say sorry now to Caroline for kicking off like that in front of her.’
‘Sorry,’ Laylah and London mumbled in unison. London sneezed, a very cute little cat-like sound that made both Laylah and Caroline giggle.
‘The water went up my nose, Daddy,’ he said in a small voice. ‘It hurts.’
‘You deserved it,’ Frank said sternly. ‘Where’s Lina? Why’s she letting you two run around like wild animals?’
‘She said she had a headache,’ Laylah said, beginning to wriggle. ‘She picked me up from school and she said London was naughty at his Monty Saury and she was already cross, and then when we got home she said she had to go and take a pill for her headache.’
Lina was not the nanny whom Caroline had met on her first visit to Sandbanks, just a few weeks ago; the children apparently went through caregivers as fast as they consumed the contents of a tube of Smarties. She had initially seemed a phlegmatic, unemotional young woman, but the task of dealing with Laylah and London seemed to have defeated her only a short time into her job.
‘Is Carmen around?’ Frank asked hopelessly. ‘Could she look after you if Lina’s not feeling well?’
‘No, Carmen doesn’t like us,’ Laylah said pertly, wriggling free of her father’s clasp. ‘She says we’re loud and annoying and make a mess.’
‘Well, she’s got a point there,’ Frank muttered.
‘She only likes cats,’ London added. ‘But she likes me better than Laylah. She told me so.’
‘She didn’t!’ Laylah stamped her foot. ‘She said she doesn’t mind you as much! She didn’t say she likes you!’
‘Look, Laylah,’ Caroline said, seeing that Frank had no ability to control his own children’s behaviour, ‘I have to go and have a bath because I just went for a run and I hurt all over. But would you like to watch a film with me afterwards in my room? I’ve finished work for the day now. You can pick which film. We could make it a pyjama party.’
Laylah shrugged.
‘Yeah, okay,’ she said ungraciously. ‘Not a Barbie one though. I’m too old for them now. They’re for little kids like—’
‘UGH!’
London tried to wrestle free to throw himself bodily on his sister once more.
‘Could you take her upstairs with you and tell Lina to do her bloody – um, the job that we pay her good money to do?’ Frank asked Caroline, looking hapless. ‘I’m sorry, I just think we need to keep ’em apart at the moment . . .’
‘Of course,’ Caroline said. ‘Come on, Laylah. Let’s go find Lina.’
She held her hand out to Laylah, who, to her surprise, considering that Caroline had just showered her with water, took it without hesitation. Caroline was not one of those people who particularly like the company of children, but the feeling of Laylah’s small hand trustingly closing around hers was very pleasant.
‘You need to do your nails,’ Laylah said, looking at Caroline’s fingers. ‘I could do them for you if you want. I have a whole nail polish wall in my room.’
‘That sounds great,’ Caroline said quite sincerely; her nails could definitely do with some help.
‘London bit another little boy at Monty Saury,’ Laylah confided as they left the gym, Frank shooting Caroline a look of such gratitude that it made her feel warm all over. ‘Don’t tell Daddy. And then he bit Lina too when she made him get in his car seat.’
Caroline pulled a face.
‘I won’t tell him, but I’m sure Lina will,’ she said, pressing the button for the lift. ‘The nursery will want to know what your mummy and daddy did about it.’
‘They won’t,’ Laylah said airily. ‘’Cause the lady who runs it gets all googly when she sees Daddy. She complained about London last year and Mummy said that if they didn’t want him there, she’d move him to another nursery and the lady got upset because she likes Daddy, so she said it was okay and he could stay. Mummy told me in the car coming home. She was laughing. She said London could flush another kid’s head down the loo and that lady still wouldn’t make him leave.’
The lift came, and Caroline was grateful, as she was so taken aback at Lexy talking so frankly to her small daughter that she couldn’t muster up the right words to say for a minute or so.
‘I’m sure Mummy was just joking,’ she managed eventually.
‘No, she meant it,’ Laylah assured her. ‘The lady goes bright red whenever she sees Daddy and she starts forgetting her words. Mummy says it’s hilarious as she’s so old and fat that Daddy’d never want to kiss or cuddle her.’
‘Um, it’s not really nice to call people fat, or old, especially if it’s in a mean kind of way . . .’ Caroline said as the lift rose up.
She couldn’t help but take this comment personally. Lexy would doubtless categorize Caroline as too fat to interest Frank. Caroline had noticed that, though the previous nanny and Lina were in their early twenties, neither of them could be considered in any way attractive: the one she had met on her first visit had been as limp as a wet noodle, while Lina had a positive moustache. And Carmen, though she was young and striking with her thick mane of curly black hair and flashing dark eyes, had such a paralyzingly direct manner of expressing her thoughts that ninety-nine men in a hundred would be much too terrified of her to make a pass.
Caroline was sure that Lexy had hired them all with a view to avoiding the classic mistake made by a lot of wives – installing a young, pretty woman under her roof, a caring, apparently sweet-natured creature to whom the husband would naturally turn for sympathy when he had the inevitable fight with his wife. It was a lesson painfully learned by both Gwen Stefani and Jennifer Garner, whose husbands had notoriously had flings with their children’s nannies. Jude Law had cheated on Sienna Miller with his kids’ nanny; Robin Williams and Ethan Hawke had even married theirs.
Frank didn’t remotely seem the type to cheat, but still, Lexy wasn’t taking any chances. Did that mean she would have refused a ghostwriter who looked like a younger version of herself? For all Caroline knew, that might have been the reason Lexy rejected the other candidates. Maybe the agent had assumed that Lexy would want someone who was young and pretty, chic and trendy, someone with whom Lexy might be able to identify, who would render Lexy’s stories of drinking and partying and being the prettiest girl in the room with extra accuracy because she shared the same kind of experiences.
Instead, Lexy had selected a dowdy Plain Jane who would always be inferior to her, whom she had nicknamed Ghost Mouse the first day they met. One to whom she could even play Lady Bountiful – because Lexy had not only paid for Caroline’s consultation and facial at Skin3, she had thrown in the vitamins and omega-plus fish oils which Davina had recommended Caroline take daily, bought her a starter kit of cleanser, toner and facial oil, and told them to schedule Caroline for a monthly treatment on Lexy’s account while she was writing the book. That first facial had been transformative, disconcerting though it had been to lie there under the heavy mask, feeling the electrical current running through it; Caroline genuinely felt her skin was already smoother, her rosacea less irritated.
But what if she’s just being generous because she looks down on me from such a great height? Caroline thought bitterly. She can afford to help me sort my skin out, because she knows that even when I do, I’ll never be her equal!
I thought she was so nice saying I could live in the guest suite during the week. But what if Lexy only feels okay with me staying in her house because I’m overweight and not that pretty?
The questions were coming thick and fast now.
Has she noticed my crush on Frank? Does she laugh at me behind my back and say it’s hilarious, like she does with the poor woman who runs the Montessori?
As Caroline stared at her bare, un-made-up face in the mirrored doors of the lift, she realized that resentment towards Lexy was slowly building inside her, displacing the sheer gratitude she had felt up until this moment.
How I wish that in one way, even a very small one, Lexy would see me as some sort of a rival . . .
It was the first time this idea had ever entered Caroline’s mind. But it would most definitely not be the last.