What the Nanny Saw Read Online Free PDF Page A

was wrecked off the coast of East Anglia on his first voyage? It could have been his inspiration.”
    A couple of years earlier she would have unself-consciously joined in this discussion. Now it felt incredible that she could ever have been part of it. She put out a hand on the table to steady herself, grateful for the heavy oak surface that spoke of steadiness and longevity, both attributes missing in her own life at the moment.
    It was difficult leaving the house, because as long as she was inside, Ali felt there were incontrovertible truths about her life. She was both loved and in love. She was indispensable. She was witness to an event of historic importance, or at least she was unwittingly immersed in a news story that had captured the national mood. And yet as soon as she set foot outside the front door this was replaced by a sense of vertiginous uncertainty, because she could just walk away from it all and no one would follow her or even notice her absence.
    “Did anyone tail you?” Felix asked, sensing her agitation but mistaking its cause.
    “I’m just the loyal nanny,” Ali said, and shrugged. “They’re not really interested in me.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “Thankfully,” in case it sounded as though she was resentful about the lack of attention. In fact, an enterprising tabloid reporter had walked down the street with her, pressing her for information about what was going on behind the closed doors of Holland Park Crescent. But she had followed Bryony’s instructions and kept her head down and her mouth shut, and eventually he had given up.
    Felix hadn’t said anything on the phone about why he wanted to see her. Ali assumed his agenda was self-serving. He was a journalist. She was a source. She even suspected that he might have been responsible for removing the photograph that had appeared in today’s paper. She had read enough tabloids over the past month to know that anyone associated with the Skinners was potentially corruptible.
    The personal trainer who had come to the house every day for the past two years had sold a story about Bryony’s beauty and health rituals, including quarterly coffee enemas and chemical peels. Malea had been interviewed in a piece about the life and style of bankers’ wives that failed to mention that Bryony had a successful career of her own. Instead it focused on the weekly deliveries from Net-a-Porter, the decorator who arrived each month to paint over finger marks on the walls coated in un-child-friendly shades of off-white, and the fact that Bryony had spent more than a thousand pounds in the Portland Hospital on a photograph album of the twins just after they were born. Thankfully the unnamed live-in nanny who acted as the children’s tutor warranted just a sentence at the end.
    Then there was a feature in a weekend magazine that quoted “a family friend” describing the Skinners as “an accident waiting to happen.” All families were an accident waiting to happen, Ali had thought, as she skim-read the piece. There were insinuating anecdotes about parties attended by Jake and Izzy where there was underage sex and conspicuous drug consumption. There was a photo of Izzy at her thinnest, and yet again the one of Jake smoking dope in the garden of his Oxford college. The alleged “family friend” also suggested that Nick had an eye for younger women. In the next sentence it mentioned how one of his closest friends had an affair with the twenty-seven-year-old nanny who looked after his children. Foy was described as a “party animal,” which was a euphemism for a multitude of sins.
    “How’s Bryony?” Felix inquired.
    “She’s okay.”
    “And the children?”
    “It’s obviously difficult, but they are fine.”
    “You know that Bryony is an old friend of mine?”
    “I know that you went out with her before she met Nick.” A waitress came over and brought Ali a cup of tea.
    “I introduced her to Nick.”
    “I think I knew