The house is amazing. Or, if I’m going to start being American about it, it’s totally awesome. It’s like something from that old TV show Dawson’s Creek. Crossed with Anne of Green Gables. It’s wooden and painted dove grey and it has this beautiful white veranda running around it. They call it a deck. And to complete the whole olde-worlde effect it also has shutters, painted an egg-white colour.
Right now, at this second, I could be at home in South London, trying to figure out a way to get through the summer without seeing either Will or Bex. But the fates, and my mother, intervened and bam, I’m not in the delightful suburb of Bromley staring at my Facebook friend list and deleting slash untagging photographs while waiting for my A level results to blast through the letterbox like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.
No. I’m in Nantucket. Thirty miles off the coast of Massachusetts. Nantucket island. The far away land. Home of Moby Dick. Or at least some of the whalers who chased him all over the Atlantic. Now home to a lot of wealthy Americans who summer here and who require nannies to do their dirty diaper work for them.
I didn’t need much persuading. I would have taken a job herding yaks in Outer Mongolia if it would have got me out of London for the summer but this seemed too good to be true and now, even taking into account the nappy episode, I’m still reeling from just how good and how true the situation is.
My bedroom is gorgeous. I have a double bed, layered with quilts. There’s an antique writing desk topped with a three-way mirror, a chest of drawers and a little armchair beside the picture window. Brodie leads me to it and climbs on the arm. ‘Those are salt flats,’ she says, pointing at the marshy low land that stretches almost as far as the eye can see. ‘And that,’ she says, still pointing, ‘is the Sound.’
‘The what?’ I ask.
‘The ocean,’ Brodie says, still pointing. I squint at the thin strip of blue that I can see glimmering invitingly just beyond the flats. ‘It’s called the Sound,’ Brodie repeats, and then turning to me she adds solemnly, ‘People die there all the time.’
I blink. ‘O-Kay,’ I say slowly. ‘Good to know.’ I am assuming she means that maybe people have drowned in that stretch of water or boats have been shipwrecked and I make a mental note to neither step foot in the water nor onto a boat while I'm here. (And also to Google shark attacks, though I’m fairly certain that this far north it’s too cold for sharks.) Brodie, done with showing me the view, jumps off the chair. I turn back to admire the room and let out a long and happy sigh.
I want to live here forever. That is how it feels at this moment in time. I want this to be my house. I even wouldn’t mind having Brodie for a little sister.
‘Ren.’
I turn. Mr Tripp is standing in the door. ‘We’re heading out to the club for lunch, you’re welcome to join us.' He sees my suitcase, still unpacked, standing by the bed, ‘Unless you want some time to settle in?'
I glance around the room. I would like time to unpack my books and my clothes, listen to some music and maybe send a few emails to my mum and Megan, but I think it might be rude to turn him down so, ‘Yeah, OK,’ I say, ‘that sound’s good.’
‘Great,’ Mr Tripp says and then heads for the stairs.
I follow after him and climb beside Brodie into the back seat of their enormous, space-age style car. Carrie straps Braiden into his car seat beside me.
‘Do you have your licence?’ she asks me.
For a moment I think she’s asking me if I have some kind of childcare licence and then I realise she’s talking about driving. ‘Um, yes,’ I answer. I only just got it, after failing the first time (for not using my mirrors – Megan laughed at the irony) and I’m still wrangling with my mum over use of the car so I haven’t driven a whole lot. But, on the upside, I did learn on the streets of south London and there can be no finer training ground.
