‘This’, Alexandra said with dignity, ‘is the remains of our dinner. I have arranged for two tutors to come and teach the children. Your mother-in-law agreed it was a good idea. They arrived yesterday and I was too tired to do the washing up last night.’
‘Why is washing up your job? You are employed as a nanny, are you not? We have Mme Carrier for cooking, don’t we?’
She managed a smile, hoping it didn’t look as if she was complaining. ‘It’s just me at the moment. Would you like some soup?’
‘Just you?’ He looked at her intently, not for the first time. ‘What happened to Mme Carrier?’
Alexandra could hardly remember. ‘Her mother is ill, I think.’
‘You look far too young to be taking on all this.’
Alexandra was bitterly regretting lying about her age on her application form but then realised she probably wouldn’t have got the job if they’d known she was only twenty. ‘Would you like the soup?’ she asked again.
‘Yes, please,’ he said, and Alexandra went to the larder to fetch it.
When she came back with the pot in her hands, he was lighting the range.
‘I haven’t found the knack of keeping that in overnight, I’m afraid.’ She ladled some soup into a saucepan and took it to the small cooker. It was ‘French onion’ as taught by Mme Wilson, at her cookery school. But although Mme Wilson was French, Alexandra didn’t think her version of it would compare with the real thing, which her boss would be accustomed to.
She cleared a space on the table while Antoine was snapping bits of kindling and by the time he’d returned with some logs, she had a space on the table and a lot of the dirty dishes organised into a pile in the corner. She toasted some bread, piled grated cheese on it, and put it back under the grill.
The fire in the range was going well and the table more or less cleared before Antoine turned his attention to his supper. Alexandra put a bowl of steaming soup in front of him and next to that, a plate of cheese on toast.
‘Please remember I’m English when you’re eating it and don’t compare it to what you’re used to having.’ She wished she’d stayed silent. She was making excuses for herself before he’d even tried it.
‘This is good!’ he said, slightly surprised.
The soup had simmered on the range for a long, long time and the onions were dark brown. Alexandra had been aiming to impress David with it, although in the end they hadn’t had it with supper; David and Jack had filled themselves up with pâté and cheese and so they’d all gone straight on to the inevitable chicken casserole. Now, she thanked the god of English employees who had to cook for Frenchmen for this accolade.
‘Do you want anything to drink?’ she asked. ‘I could get you some wine …’
‘Cognac please. Do you know where it is?’
As she went to fetch it, Alexandra wondered if she should have pretended she hadn’t discovered it, and drank at least some of it. She was still wishing she hadn’t lied about her age. She must remember to tell David she was supposed to be twenty-five.
‘Bring a glass for yourself,’ Antoine said, ‘and tell me how my children are. Do you like them?’
‘I love them,’ Alexandra heard herself saying, when a moment’s thought would have made her more circumspect. ‘They are delightful. Stéphie and Henri are easier of course.’
‘But Félicité is more of a challenge? I am accustomed to governesses telling me she’s wilful and uncooperative.’
Alexandra was offended by this. ‘She is more of a challenge, but I sympathise with her. She’s too old for a nanny, really. She needs a companion.’ She remembered when she was promoted from having a nanny to having a companion. It had seemed a big thing at the time, an advantage, but really it hadn’t been that different. There were good and bad companions in the same way there were good and bad nannies; good ones were good, and the bad ones were bad.
‘She’s not “playing you up”? Is that how you say it?’
‘Not really. And why should she obey a young woman who’s not much older than herself? Not very much older, anyway,’ she added hastily. ‘It’s why I thought we should have tutors. It was after their grandmother came to say she was worried they weren’t getting an education. And their mother—’
‘Yes?’
‘She talked about sending Félicité and Henri away to boarding school in England.’
‘You know that little Stéphie isn’t …’
‘Yes. I was a bit shocked when your wife—’
‘Ex-wife.’
‘Appeared not to know her. I found out then that Stéphie is adopted.’ Alexandra paused. ‘She and I are very good friends.’ She didn’t tell him that Stéphie got into her bed in the mornings so they could read together and that someone had not paid enough attention to teaching her to read. She’d been quite happy muddling through her job as nanny, doing what seemed to work best. Now her boss was here she wished she was properly qualified. ‘The older children adore her, of course.’
