The Cinderella Factor Read online

  ‘You can’t pay me to do that,’ said Jo, disappointed.

  ‘Oh, I’ve done all the revising. Nanny Morrison saw to that.’ He tapped his teeth with the little coffee spoon. ‘And now I want to get me some trouble before it’s too late and I have to go back to school.’ His face fell suddenly. ‘Nanny Morrison. I’d forgotten. Blast and botheration.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My brother Patrick doesn’t employ women,’ said Crispin simply. ‘On principle. Nanny doesn’t count. But nothing under fifty need apply.’

  ‘That’s illegal,’ said Jo, affronted.

  Crispin shrugged. ‘Patrick’s house. Patrick’s law.’

  Jo bristled. ‘Nobody is above the law.’

  Crispin gave a crack of laughter. ‘You should meet my brother Patrick.’

  ‘He sounds extremely arrogant,’ she said crushingly.

  ‘Yup. Arrogant, bullying, absolutely no feeling for a young man in his prime, and a hotshot wizard at just about everything.’

  ‘Revolting,’ she said, from the heart.

  ‘Yes, but he’s a good guy really,’ said Crispin, changing tack with surprising suddenness. ‘He likes his own way, but he’s not mean with it. Last year he was up for some big award—the Ajax Prize, or something—and when he got it my ma wanted him to go off with a load of big cheeses to celebrate. But he said he didn’t get to the States often and he wanted to spend time with his brother. So he came out clubbing with me and the boys instead.’ He smiled reminiscently. Then his face darkened. ‘Pulled all the talent in sight, too. Me and the boys didn’t stand a chance.’

  Jo sniffed. Patrick Taylor-Harrod could be a love god in person. She would still detest him. His stupid prejudice stood between her and the job of a lifetime.

  ‘But it’s so unfair. I could do this job.’

  ‘Well, nobody argues with Patrick,’ said Crispin fatalistically. ‘Nanny Morrison would have you out in minutes. She reports to Patrick about everything.’

  ‘Ah. I wondered how she’d got you to revise,’ said Jo unwarily.

  He chuckled, unoffended. ‘Oh, well. It was a nice idea while it lasted. Drive me to the garage? Then you can meet her. She’ll probably ask you up for tea and a swim. Grab it. Her teas are worth it.’

  Jo laughed and went with him. But there was a little sting in the invitation as well. Crispin had made it plain that he was desperate for a girl to flirt with—and Jo didn’t even figure on his radar. He liked her. He was grateful to her. He was happy to throw one of Nanny’s teas in her direction, with the careless hospitality of the inherited rich. But she was not flirt-worthy.

  Oh, well, it only confirmed what she already knew, she told herself.

  And worse was to come. Or better, depending on which way you looked at it.

  Mrs Morrison, who looked more like a jobbing gardener than a nanny, wore substantial cotton shorts and a shirt, and, more importantly, huge bottle-bottom glasses. As Crispin had predicted, she took one look at his companion and said, ‘Would you like to bring your friend back to the house for lunch, Crispin?’ And then, not at all as he had predicted, and stunning Crispin and Jo alike, ‘He would be very welcome.’

  Crispin barely faltered. ‘That would be great, Nanny. He’s at a loose end right now,’ he said smoothly.

  Jo was not as quick as he was. Her mouth opened and shut. No sound came out.

  He?

  He?

  ‘Work with me here,’ breathed Crispin.

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll show you the cars,’ he said loudly. ‘You’re going to love them.’ Then he was shoving her into the back of an old truck. ‘Don’t argue. This could be just what we need.’

  ‘But—’

  He thrust an industrial-sized bag of flour at her. ‘Shut up.’ He raised his voice. ‘Ready when you are, Nanny.’

  The truck rattled off at speed. They lurched and clung to the sides.

  ‘Hell’s teeth, she shouldn’t be driving this thing,’ said Crispin, momentarily side-tracked. ‘If she thinks you’re a boy she must be as blind as a bat.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jo hollowly.

  ‘But, as she does, she’s not going to be bleating to Patrick about you.’

  ‘But other people will know I’m a girl.’

  ‘The only other person around is old George, her husband. He’s in a wheelchair. You can keep out of his way easily enough.’

  ‘What if your brother comes back, though?’

  That gave Crispin pause, but only for a moment. ‘He’s off war-reporting at the moment. Won’t be home any time soon. And when he does get leave he goes to London or Washington or Paris. Definitely one for metropolitan amusements, my brother Patrick. Not a run-down château in rural France. It is so very rural. Besides, even the wine isn’t up to his standard here. Not a premier cru in sight.’

  ‘Then why on earth did he buy it?’ said Jo, unreasonably annoyed with the unknown Patrick all over again.

  ‘Didn’t. Also inherited,’ said Crispin absently. ‘Look, the way I see it, you just fill in here for me for a month. I’ll pay you cash. So your name never gets into the books. No one will ever know.’

  ‘A month?’

  He grinned. ‘I’ll be all partied out by then. If Patrick does visit it will be at the end of the vacation to check that I’ve followed orders. I’ll be back from my babe and beach fest by then. You can slip off. He need not know you even existed.’

  ‘It sounds wonderful,’ said Jo, with longing.

  A month would give her time to look round for a proper job, not just waiting tables or scrubbing floors. A month in this heavenly place, where poppies bobbed in the hedgerow and the long evening shadows were warm and smelled of herbs!

  ‘Done,’ said Crispin.

  But she still held out. It seemed nasty, lying to Mrs Morrison because the poor woman couldn’t see properly. But, then again, Mrs Morrison wasn’t the one who had set up this stupid interdiction on female workers. Patrick Taylor-Harrod positively deserved to be lied to.

  And then she saw the Bugatti. She was old and dusty, and her front number plate hung off at a crazy angle. She was beautiful. It was love at first sight.

  She could just about resist the scented nights and poetic turrets, thought Jo wryly. The unloved car was irresistible.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s just hope arrogant Patrick stays where he is, that’s all.’

  ‘No worries,’ said Crispin blithely. ‘He won’t be back home until the war is over. Once Patrick is onto a hot story, he never gives up.’

  Jo banished her misgivings and tried a joke. ‘I’ll just have to make sure he never sees me as a hot story, then.’

  Crispin went on laughing at that for a long time.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT WAS a heavenly day and a heavenly place. Jo stopped in the middle of the little eighteenth-century bridge and looked around. She sighed with pleasure.

  The willows almost met over the stream below. Bees murmured in the wild roses that clustered at the end of the decorative stone bridge and tumbled down the slope of the bank. The warm scented air was still. Only the occasional plop of some insect hitting the water disturbed the perfect silence. She was quite alone.

  Jo shut her eyes, hardly daring to believe it was real. Less than a month ago she had been trawling for extra work among Manchester’s cleaning agencies and late-night pizza bars, always worried about Mark. And now Mark was safe and she was in France.

  France!

  A France, what was more, that was straight out of the fairytales. A France where there were fields of lavender and hillsides of sunflowers, their big faces following the sun as it crossed the sky; fortified medieval towns on the hilltops, like something out of a Book of Hours; little fast silvery rivers that fed the great golden swathe of the Garonne; grass that was so green it hurt the eyes. Warmth. Light.

  Jo sighed. The summer sun filtered through the leaves and lay soft against her bare arms. It touched all her vulnerable places—under
her hair, behind her ear, the base of her throat where the pulse beat. Touched then with the tiny assured kisses of a lover. When she closed her eyes it warmed her eyelids. All the locals wore sunglasses to protect them against the glare, but not Jo. For her the sun was a treasure.

  Warmth, light and safety.

  She opened her eyes. The fairytale landscape shimmered a little in the heat haze but it did not disappear. She breathed in the soft scents of summer: hot herbs, an elusive honeysuckle perfume on the breeze, grass.

  ‘I am happy,’ she said aloud. ‘I am so happy.’

  She recalled the heady perfection of the roses George had brought her this morning. He had wheeled himself into the neglected rose garden to cut them himself, and had brought them to her with the dew still on their softly crowded petals.

  ‘Well, almost happy.’

  There was a hint of wormwood in the perfect mix, of course. All her own fault, too. The lie that she had told seemed nastier every day. For the Morrisons had taken her to their hearts as if she were family.

  At first Jo had followed Crispin’s advice and tried to stay away from them. But Mrs Morrison cooked her little treats and left them on the work bench in the garage. And George, tooling round the grounds in his wheelchair, showed her all the neglected walks and copses of the place that he could reach. When he said how much he loved fishing, and how sad he was that he could no longer get his chair to the river, it had only been civil to find a path and wheel him down there.

  Well, that was what Jo had told herself. The truth was, of course, that she was beginning to love the Morrisons. She loved the way Nanny’s face lit up when Jo scratched shyly on the kitchen door. She loved the way George wheeled himself to meet her, full of some discovery he had made during the day. They liked her. After the superior expert from Rouen had arrived, shuddered, and left again, they had formed a sort of club. Jo basked in it as much as in the sunshine.

  More and more, she wanted to tell them the truth. But how could she?

  Hey, guys! Guess what? I was a girl all the time!

  It was impossible, even for the sake of her conscience. She might just as well say Nanny was blind and George was stupid. So she kept quiet.

  And most of the time she could forget it. She ran a grubby hand through her ragged chestnut hair, newly chopped by herself into a boyish crop. There were compensations, she reminded herself. Lots of them. A place of her own—and no shared bathroom or metered heating. Unbelievably, a job she was good at, and getting better at by the day! Even—oh, blissful thought—a library.

  At the thought, Jo felt her lips stretch in a grin that was pure childish glee. A whole library to play in! This place was heaven.

  She sometimes thought that the worst thing about her years as a runaway was how far it had kept her from books. She had never owned a book. Except for The Furry Purry Tiger, of course, she thought, with a choke of sudden laughter.

  She said aloud, ‘Tiger said, in his furry purry voice, “Look into my eyes, my dears. How can you resist me?”’ She gave a little skip of pure delight.

  No, notwithstanding her own stupidity, the lie was only a slight shadow over her bliss.

  ‘Blow nearly. I am completely happy,’ she said aloud.

  The sound of her own voice brought her up short. She looked round, embarrassed. But the birds sang undisturbed. The cicadas scissored away. And the landscape, under its shimmer of afternoon heat haze, was deserted.

  ‘Still, that’s no reason to go on standing in the middle of the road,’ she scolded herself, adding with wry self-mockery, ‘You never know when life is going to zap you again.’

  Laughing, she went to the elegant parapet and leaned her elbows on the warm stone. Below her, a dragonfly was skimming the gold-shot water. Jo gave a deep, delighted sigh.

  ‘But just at the moment I’ve got nothing left to wish for.’ She breathed in the warm, scented air. ‘Better enjoy it while it lasts.’

  The little parcel Mrs Morrison had asked her to collect from the farm bumped against the stone as she moved. Jo made a face, reminded. Well, perhaps there was something to wish for.

  She could wish that she knew exactly where Patrick Taylor-Harrod was—and that he would not pop up like the demon king in a pantomime and spoil everything.

  Crispin made him sound very demon king-ish: casual, arrogant, and quite without heart. Even Mrs Morrison, who was as fond of him as only a former nanny could be, admitted that no woman was safe from her Mr Patrick’s charm. Though she also claimed that was largely their own fault, because they flung themselves at him.

  Not that Jo would have flung herself at him. Or that arrogant elder brother Patrick would have taken her up on her offer if she had, Jo thought dryly.

  At the thought, her eyes lit with sudden laughter. Maybe there were some advantages to being a sexless maypole, after all. It sounded as if arrogant Patrick was used to an altogether higher class of sexual harassment than she could offer.

  She peered over the edge of the bridge at her reflection. Years of living from hand to mouth had left her with dramatic hollows under her cheekbones and a chin as pointed as a witch’s, she thought disparagingly.

  The water did not do justice to the depth and expressiveness of the strange greeny-brown of her eyes, of course. Nor did it reflect the long curling eyelashes or the exquisite softness of her skin. Jo would not have noticed if it had. All she saw was what she always saw when she could not avoid looking at her reflection. A stick-thin scarecrow with shoulders like a wardrobe. Carol had been right about that, at least.

  Jo surveyed the dark rippling mirror dispassionately. She could not blame anyone for thinking she was a boy, she thought. And a boy she must stay—until Crispin came back.

  She shook her shoulders and leaned further over the edge of the warm stone. The water looked inviting. And the sun was like an animal, a big friendly puppy, butting gently against the bare skin of her arms, saying, Come and play.

  She had no swimsuit with her. She had not even owned one since primary school. But the little river was on private land, and the landscape was deserted. Wheelchair-bound Mr Morrison was resting, Mrs Morrison was waiting indoors for a phone call. Crispin was somewhere off the coast of Spain.

  And it was a day made for swimming. Jo had not swum for years. Even then it had been in a municipal pool that smelled of chlorine. She had never swum in a river, with bees humming and the air full of the scent of grass and wild flowers.

  It was irresistible.

  Under a tangle of hazel bushes Jo found the narrow stone steps that spiralled down from the bridge. They were old and worn, covered in moss and lichen. She took off her shoes, feeling the warm moss under her toes in delight. Then she slipped down the curved stairs to the bank.

  She lodged her package between the roots of a willow in deep shade, then quickly stripped off her clothes and left them where they fell. Her body was white and thin in the dappled shade. Thin, but tough, Jo thought cheerfully, shaking out her arms and dancing her bare feet in delight on the moss. Then she took a little run at the water and dived cleanly.

  The dive made hardly a sound. But it was enough to alert the man.

  He was leaning up against the bark of a willow on the opposite bank, completely hidden under the umbrella of its drooping branches. He had his hands in his pockets and his head bent. He was wearing a grim, bitter expression. At the faint splash, he looked up in quick offence.

  This bridge was on private land! Nobody should be here! Behind his dark glasses, annoyance flickered uncontrollably.

  Jo was unaware of the watcher. She was utterly caught up in the delight of the moment. She swam and turned and somersaulted in the water, laughing aloud with pleasure.

  The man in the shadows watched, suddenly arrested.

  She batted the surface of the water with her hands, making rainbow droplets fly up like a fountain. She shook her face in them, revelling in the sensation. Then she submerged completely and swam through the arch of the bridge.

 
The man took his hands out of his pockets and came to the edge of the bank, looking keenly after her. The fall of the willow would still have hidden him from Jo even if she had suspected that he was there. But she was enjoying herself too much to sense that she was being watched.

  She streaked down to the bend in the river, where it was deeper and the water flowed faster. Then she turned in a neat dive and stroked lazily downstream again, on her back, looking at the clear sky through the tracery of overhanging leaves. She turned her head on the water to watch the bank dreamily. There were little patches of green-gold, where the sun streamed through unimpeded, areas of black shadow, like the cool place where she had left her clothes, and long stretches where the sun filtered through the trees as if it was creeping in round the edge of a mask, printing a sharp, delicate pattern of black lace on the turf.

  She drew a deep breath, did a backward somersault into the weedy depths and disappeared. Instinctively, the man stepped out of the curtain of the willow, scanning the unbroken surface of the water.

  Still unaware, Jo came up, shaking the water out of her hair and eyes, laughing. And it was then that she saw the bird, in a flash of emerald and blue, skimming the surface of the stream and flying away into the trees.

  Jo went quite still. She stood where she was, the water up to her waist, tilting her head to watch the little creature. It had found a branch and was sitting there with whatever it had caught. She could make out the flash of a beady eye and the amazing jewel colours of the feathers.

  She had heard of kingfishers. Seen pictures. But nothing had prepared her for this—this living iridescence, so small and yet so brilliant that it hurt the eyes. She held her breath.

  Behind her, a voice said harshly, ‘Have you hurt yourself?’

  Jo was so absorbed she was not startled, much less embarrassed by her nakedness. She was hardly aware of it, she was concentrating so hard.

  ‘Hush,’ she said, the softness of her voice failing to disguise the clear note of command. ‘That has to be a kingfisher.’