The Nanny

43. Ash

I feel like the dog's breakfast if that had been both simultaneously vomited up and shat out. There's no other way to describe this awful feeling. When Imogen left, I had my anger as a coping mechanism, but with Paige, I've got nothing. I couldn't find the right words last night, and now I've got this horrendous hole in my chest that makes it hard to breathe. That's all I've got. Absence.

Paige left for work so early this morning that I didn't even see her. At first, I thought maybe she'd slept in, but when I knocked on her door, I discovered her room empty. The smoothie I make her went uneaten in the blender until I finally dumped it in the rubbish.

As though Imogen can sense blood in the water, she's already texted me this morning to see whether I've thought about her dinner and evening as a family plan. She's not pushing for the reunion, just the steps that she thinks will lead in that direction. I leave her message sitting on my home screen, unread.

The rest of my day goes about as well as the start. In my distracted state, I burn breakfast. The kids are both stroppy and uncooperative all morning no matter what I suggest or try to do. My patience is thin, and I end up trying to put them down for an early nap. Doesn't work.

In fact, they both end up wailing in their rooms while I contemplate locking myself in the bathroom and having a rant or a cry of my own. Few days have left me defeated since me and Paige got together. At the end of the day, I knew she'd be home, and we'd have a good laugh over how terrible everything had been. Might have been shit in the moment, but with her, even no good very bad days were infinitely better.

By the time a cab makes its way down the lane after dinner, I've had about enough of the nanny life. But a small jolt of fear streaks through me that something has happened to Paige or her car that a cab is arriving at the time she'd normally be home. I go outside to greet it, expecting a petite blonde to climb out of the back, and instead I'm met with the slightly taller brown-haired sibling of the woman I expected to see.

"Gwen?" I frown. "Paige didn't tell me you were coming?"

"There are some things that are best left as a surprise," she says breezily while she tries to tug two giant cases from the boot. "And other things that should not be a surprise."

The cab driver tries to help remove her cases, and he can't manage them either.

With a sigh, I go over and hoist them both out.

"How long are you staying?" The last time she arrived was terrible timing as well.

"I don't know. When are you moving back in with Imogen?"

I rear back, and my frown deepens. "What?"

"Flew standby after Paige called me last night."

"I never said I was going back to Imogen." I don't know what I'm doing, but I can see how that might appear to be what I implied. Starting that conversation when I didn't understand where I wanted it to go was a bad idea. But there's never been anything I couldn't talk to Paige about.  I've never had to mind my words or consider my phrasing. She's always understood what I meant before, often even before I did. "Definitely never said I was moving in with her."

"Newsflash, Nanny Ash," Gwen says, wheeling one of her giant cases toward the front entrance. "That's not what she heard. Get the other suitcase, will you?"

"We've dropped the nanny part. It's just Ash." My brain feels like it's two steps behind. Paige called in Gwen as a buffer? That's the only explanation here. Fuck me.

"I hear you've dropped lots of things." She eyes my trousers, and I'm tempted to cover my bits with my hand or my arm while I wheel her case with the other.