Free A Proper Family Christmas by Jane Gordon - Cumming Page B

All those bare boards and freezing corridors! It made boarding school seem positively luxurious. I can’t imagine why Stephen’s so keen to live here.” She patted the end of the bed for Frances, as there was no chair. “Sit down and tell us all the gossip.”
    â€œEr - I think perhaps I ought to check on Tobias,” said Frances, uneasily aware of Posy’s disappearance.
    â€œOh, he’ll be fine. Posy and he’ll be having a wonderful game somewhere. I must say, we wouldn’t have your job for anything! Aren’t Stephen and Ratso simply horrendous to work for?”
    â€œRatso..?” Frances blinked.
    â€œLesley. Everyone calls her Ratso - everyone in the family, that is - didn’t you know? …Oh, I suppose you wouldn’t!” Julia shook back her red curls and pushed a pillow up behind her. “Their last nanny only stuck it a fortnight, and she gave Ratso a real earful before she went - reading between the lines. We were hoping you’d be able to tell us all about it!”
    â€œNo, I..er..”
    â€œOh, we were counting on you! Couldn’t you make discreet enquiries?”
    â€œOh come on, Julia! I can’t see Ratso having intimate little chats with her nanny over the tea-cups. In fact, you can’t imagine Lesley being intimate with anyone - nor Stephen. It’s a family mystery how Tobias was ever conceived…”
    â€œSh, Tony! You’ll embarrass Frances! You can tell us, do they actually… - I mean, do they share a room?”
    â€œEr - yes.”
    â€œWith a double bed?”
    â€œNo way!” interrupted Tony. “Two chaste singles, pushed together once a year!” He sat up, and leant back dubiously against the single bed-head. “How on earth did you come to get saddled with that pair, Frances? Or rather, however did Stephen and Ratso manage to get hold of such a very classy nanny?”
    Frances, blushing, explained how the advertisement for a well-educated, ‘well-spoken’ nanny in The Lady , seemed to hold out the promise of a glittering new life among intellectual Oxford society.
    â€œAnd you found yourself landed with Lesley and Stephen and Tobias!” Tony chuckled. “I’m surprised you didn’t take the first train back.”
    â€œWell…it was a bit difficult.” She described the grand send-off, how her brother Joe had moved into her room, and what a fortune her salary as a full-time live-in nanny seemed compared with what she’d been earning at the doctor’s.
    â€œAnd that’s important to you?”
    â€œIt means I can help out at home…” Somehow, with these sympathetic listeners, her whole life-story came pouring out - how her father’s death had left her mother with four children to bring up on a small pension, her own decision to leave school instead of going to Art College, and how the new job would at last enable her to make a real contribution to the family income.
    â€œSo you’re absolutely trapped - how ghastly!” Julia rolled her eyes. “It’s like Jane Eyre, or something. In fact you do look a bit like Jane Eyre, doesn’t she, Tony? Sort of old-fashioned - Oh, in a lovely way, I mean! It’s having your hair up, and that long skirt - it is pretty! - and you’ve got those wonderful classical features one sees in old paintings…”
    Frances blushed again. She wasn’t used to being described in terms that suggested she was beautiful.
    â€œI suppose you’ve left a string of broken hearts behind you in… Where was it?”
    â€œLudworth. But I haven’t.” She could hardly count John Rowington, whom she’d dated since school, and who’d accepted the news of her departure with depressing equanimity.
    â€œWhat? No men in your life?” Tony raised his brows at Julia.
    â€œOh, what a change from darling Shelley! She’s man-mad. We never know who’s going