Chapter 4
It was Monday morning. Jake spotted Faye driving into the school car park just as he was trying to fasten his tie. He was standing by his bike and noticed she chose a parking spot as far away from the push bike stand as possible. Jake sighed. She knew he cycled into work every morning. He hadn’t heard from her for the rest of the weekend. They still weren’t talking about what had happened on Saturday morning.
She walked in the direction of the school building. Jake hurried after her and discovered that any attempt to fasten his tie on the go was futile. For somebody who didn’t want to be a suit anymore, Jake wondered at the irony of changing his career to one where he felt obligated, in order to make a good impression with his students, to still wear a blasted tie.
He caught up with her in the lift. Fortunately, the school day hadn’t officially started, so no children had arrived. They had the lift, which travelled up to the floor where the staff room was located, to themselves.
Faye stood with her arms folded across her chest, watching Jake’s increasingly frustrated attempts to fasten his tie. Finally, he held out both ends at her in an I could do with some help here gesture.
He caught a look on her face and decided he wouldn’t be surprised if she had the impulse to tell him to go and hang himself with it. He gave up and turned away. She was still annoyed over what had happened on Saturday morning.
If Faye had talked to Natty about her father, then the situation on Saturday would never have arisen. She obviously didn’t believe what Yousaf had written in his letter, even though Jake thought he had sounded genuinely contrite, and very sorry for what his family had talked him into doing. Jake didn’t want to take sides, but he did understand, coming from a wealthy, influential family like the Rosses, how much control they could have over your life. It did make Jake wonder whether, if his parents hadn’t died, and he’d never been taken in by the Rosses, he would have gone straight into teaching. It was a career he felt much more in tune with, and it came with a life he enjoyed – staying put in one place and forging links with a school community. He’d never had that in the past. The cliché of living in an ivory tower was not lost on Jake in relation to his life with the Rosses.
The lift shunted to a stop on the first floor and the lift door opened. Jake and Faye both sighed, aware that the lift stopped at every floor, whether someone pressed the button for the lift or not.
The door closed and the lift started up again.
Faye turned to Jake and rolled her eyes. He was still having trouble with his tie. ‘Do you need help with that?’
Jake turned to face her. ‘I thought you weren’t speaking to me?’
‘I’m not,’ she said, taking both ends of his tie. It was unfair of her to blame him for what had happened on Saturday – she knew that. She’d been mulling things over and had realised the mistake was hers. She had a golden rule, and it was quite simple – Natty was not going to pay for her mistakes. Natty had friends whose mothers were single parents like herself. One mother seemed to change boyfriends as often as she changed her wardrobe, which, on her substantial spousal maintenance, was often. To be fair, some boyfriends did last longer than a ‘season’, but sadly, the longer they lasted, the more unfair it became on Natty’s friend to sever the ties with her potential new daddy. So, Faye’s golden rule had translated quite simply into no dating until Natty was eighteen. She hadn’t told her friends this. They had already been after her joining a dating website. If they’d known why she hadn’t, they’d have told her that she was mad – ten years would make her in her early forties, and as time went on, it would only become harder to meet someone, start a relationship, find her soulmate.
Of course, she knew all this, but Natty came first. That was why she had found a way round her own golden rule, so she could enjoy some adult company after work and maybe even start a relationship. Her intention to remain celibate for years just hadn’t worked out.
It had started innocently enough – a drink after work with her single female friends, sometimes a girls’ night out at the movies; but where there were single women, there were single men. A compliment – surprisingly welcome – had led to a little flirtatious patter, goaded on by her friends, and before she knew it, her friends had ditched her, and she was on a live date. Although that particular date hadn’t worked out, dating had not just been a one-off occurrence. She’d got back into the dating game.
She had not broken the golden rule; there was no instant family about to happen. This was strictly a Natty-free zone. And Natty accepted this arrangement. They were Mummy’s grown-up friends – she had thought this explanation through carefully beforehand. Just as Natty wouldn’t expect her mum to go and play with her and Annabelle at Annabelle’s house, Natty had to accept being babysat when Mummy wanted to go to a friend’s house to ‘play’. And just as she had anticipated, this arrangement had worked surprisingly well for the handful of guys she had dated so far. The trouble was that as soon as she had any notion that things might be getting more serious than a casual fling, that was always the end of it.
She did make Natty’s existence known from the start – how else could she explain her house being out of bounds? Of course, they all said they’d like to meet her daughter; it was only polite. When she refused point blank, only one had asked why. She imagined that a single young woman with a child was probably not what most single guys were expecting. She came with baggage.
But she wasn’t looking for commitment.
She was having fun.
She was having sex.
And she wasn’t hurting anybody.
No relationship had become serious enough to raise the issue of moving in together, which was just as well. She wouldn’t let things get that far. Love was never part of the plan. But if she were to cross paths with her soulmate, then she would have a dilemma on her hands.
Now, Faye had detected a flaw in this seemingly simple babysitting arrangement, and it was standing right in front of her. She had let someone into her little family, and into her heart. Faye was falling in love before she had even realised what was happening.
Jake attempted to look down at what she was doing.
‘Chin up,’ said Faye pushing his chin up perhaps a little too hard.
Jake lowered his eyes instead to look at Faye’s bent head. Her face was a mass of concentration as she flicked the ends of the tie this way and that. She wasn’t wearing make-up, and her face was scrubbed clean, but her cheeks were slightly flushed in the hot confines of the lift. Her hair was still a little damp from her morning shower, and he thought he could smell lavender.
A mental image of Faye in the shower crept up on him, forcing him to avert his gaze – this was his colleague, his mentor, he was thinking about, and it was inappropriate. Still, he couldn’t get the image out of his head of how she’d looked when he’d seen her on Saturday morning, fresh out of the shower.
The lift door opened on another floor.
‘Good morning!’
They both recognised the headteacher’s voice. Faye and Jake, standing in very close proximity to one another, Faye’s hands on Jake’s tie. They both turned to look at the head.
Faye and Jake both mumbled an awkward good morning, Faye instantly dropping the ends of Jake’s tie and stepping back.
The head eyed them as he got in the lift. ‘Good weekend?’
Jake and Faye immediately nodded their heads, ‘Yeah, good thanks,’ said Faye, hoping she sounded convincing. Jake echoed her sentiments. They both avoided eye contact with each other.
Faye noticed the head’s eyes lingering on them both. She hoped he didn’t think there was something going on between them. It didn’t help that the lift door had happened to open just as she was helping Jake with his tie. She hoped the head didn’t mention seeing them together in the lift on Monday morning to anybody else. It was all innocent enough, unless he read something into it, and the last thing she wanted was tongues wagging at their expense on a Monday morning at work.
The head got out at the next floor.
Faye sighed in relief and turned to Jake, surprising him when she reached for the tie.
Faye turned down the collar of his shirt. ‘There.’ She brushed the tie against Jake’s chest as he looked down at her handiwork.
‘Thanks.’
She studied the tie.
‘Still not speaking?’
She thought a moment, then shook her head.
They both turned to face the front of the lift. Faye thought back to the first time Jake had babysat Natty.
The sitter had unexpectedly cancelled. She wouldn’t have asked any of her other colleagues – they had enough commitments after work with their own families, and didn’t have time to look after someone else’s child. The young, single teachers had better things to do at the weekend than look after Natty – apart from Jake. She’d overheard a snippet of a conversation between another student teacher they’d recruited and a newly qualified teacher – both single, attractive young woman talking about Jake.
It was unprofessional, talking about a colleague behind his back. As the deputy head, she really should have reprimanded them on the spot when she’d realised who they were talking about. But Faye’s curiosity had got the better of her. It sounded as though they’d both tried some friendly banter with Jake when they’d discovered he was single. Faye wasn’t surprised by this. Jake was a good-looking guy. However, it sounded as though he was steering clear of them, to the point of being rude.
How could he not be interested? one had said with a flick of her hair. She was clearly under the impression she was god’s gift, Faye thought, which Faye decided was fair enough. They were both very attractive women. The other one had explained that Jake had lost his wife. They had both decided that they didn’t want that sort of baggage. Besides, they’d concluded he clearly wasn’t ready for another relationship, otherwise how could he have resisted either of them?
That was Faye’s take on the situation too, so she had approached him to see if he wouldn’t mind babysitting – just for one night while she went out on a date.
From the start of his employment, Jake had taken a genuine interest in Natty’s welfare during Faye’s conversations with him. So, despite some initial reservations – namely how Natty was going to get on with her new sitter – Faye had picked up the phone and dialled his home number. She’d rehearsed it. She was going on a dinner date, she’d be back by eleven-thirty at the latest, and it was an absolute one-off. Did she sound desperate? She hoped not. The meal had been planned for two weeks, and the sitter had let her down at the last moment. Thirty minutes later, Natty was ensconced on the sofa, cuddled up to Jake, listening to a story. She hardly gave a rather bemused Faye a second glance as she headed out of the door.
And that was how it had started. More dates had followed, but then she had started her headteacher training, and she’d no longer had time for pseudo-relationships.
Jake had become the back-up sitter, and then, before she knew it, the original sitter had become the back-up sitter, as she found herself reaching – at Natty’s insistence – for Jake’s number first.
And that was how, Faye had realised that morning, she had unwittingly let into Natty’s life that which she sought to keep out; namely a man who would in all probability not be around in the foreseeable future. At some point, he would meet someone, whether he was ready to start a new relationship or not, and understandably he would have other priorities. Looking after someone else’s child would go out of the window.
The question she was now asking herself was: should she wait for that to happen and let Natty’s obvious attachment to Jake grow? Or should she end the arrangement straight away?
The lift jerked to a halt unexpectedly, throwing Faye into Jake’s arms. She quickly extricated herself from his embrace. Not that she wanted to. And there was the crux of the problem. Natty wasn’t the only one whose attachment to Jake had grown over the course of the last few weeks.