Madame Doubtfire Read online

  Miranda Hilliard, Managing Director of Hilliard’s Lighting Emporium, appeared in the doorway. She was dressed smartly from top to toe in glossy black and purest white. Her thick and luscious hair, piled high on her head, was held in place by one small and strategically placed diamante clip. In her three inch heels, she was taller than Daniel.

  ‘Good evening, Dan.’

  ‘’Evening, Miranda.’

  ‘Your front door’s a little bit sticky.’

  ‘It was locked.’

  ‘Oh, was it?’ She glanced back over her shoulder along the hall at the hole freshly gouged in the wallpaper by the door handle, and the flakes of ceiling plaster sprinkled all over the floorboards.

  ‘Well, never mind,’ she offered vaguely.

  ‘No, never mind,’ Daniel agreed, as pleasantly as he could. But she’d lost interest anyway. Already she was gazing round the room, sizing up dangers: frayed electrical wires trailing across the floors, a pair of garden shears lying, open-jawed, on a stool at knee height; and taking in all the small details of disorder: what was piled on the surfaces, what was chipped or broken, what would have benefited from a thorough wiping.

  ‘One of your oven rings not working properly?’ she enquired, glancing towards the gas stove.

  Before he could prevent himself, Daniel cried out in astonishment:

  ‘How did you know?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Obvious,’ she told him. ‘It’s not quite so impacted with grease as the other three.’

  She stepped a little further into the room, her skirt swinging. Atop her frilly blouse, she wore a skimpy velvet bodice that Daniel remembered with affection from the old days. It always intrigued him to see which items of her wardrobe he still recognized. His former wife had the capacity, he’d recently realized, to make her clothes last for ever and, in an unguarded moment, he’d made the mistake of telling her so. ‘It’s called looking after them properly,’ she’d countered sharply. So Daniel no longer dared remark upon what she wore. But he noticed.

  ‘What’s this thing here?’

  She was pointing inside the quail’s cage.

  ‘That? That is Hetty, Christopher’s quail.’

  ‘Really? I don’t remember it looking like that.’

  ‘It’s wearing a different cage now,’ explained Daniel.

  Miranda ignored this. She was regarding the quail with the deepest suspicion.

  ‘Does it make very much mess? I can’t remember.’

  ‘Not very much,’ Daniel defended Hetty. There was, he knew from past experience, no point in waiting for Christopher to speak up. All three children were in the habit of falling silent when both their parents were in the same room. It was almost as if they felt they no longer counted beside something larger, longer running, much more dangerous.

  ‘There’s plenty of mess on the floor by its cage.’

  ‘That’s because I haven’t swept that side of the kitchen for several days,’ Daniel confessed.

  ‘Judging by all the bits of bread on the floor under the table, you haven’t swept the other for even longer.’

  Daniel tried hard to muster an agreeable smile. It surfaced as a contorted grimace.

  Miranda poked her fingernail between the cage bars, and prodded the sleeping quail.

  ‘Does it make noise?’

  Daniel lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘What do you mean, does it make noise? You must remember what noise it makes. You lived with it for months. It peeps.’

  ‘Peeps?’

  She prodded Hetty again, a little bit harder. Courteously and cooperatively, Hetty jumped up and down in her cage, and peeped.

  ‘Is that the noise?’

  ‘Yes,’ Daniel said. ‘That’s the quail, peeping.’

  Miranda flicked wisps of soiled quail bedding off her skirt as she swung round.

  ‘That’s fine, then,’ she said. ‘We’ll take it.’

  ‘Take what?’

  ‘That quail.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Daniel. He could feel his son’s accusing eyes on his back. ‘This is not a pet shop, Miranda. This is a home.’ He leaned his face closer to that of his former wife, and spoke to her very loudly and slowly, as if she were both hard of hearing and slow in wits. ‘A – home. Do – you – understand – me? People live here. I do for one. And, from time to time, Christopher here, for another. It is his quail. You – cannot – buy – it.’

  A hint of pink rose in Miranda Hilliard’s cheeks.

  ‘Don’t be so foolish, Daniel,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want to buy it. I want to take it. I think it would be very nice for Christopher if there was something to put in the empty cage at home, to make up a little for his dead hamsters.’

  ‘And what do you suggest we put in this empty cage here,’ asked Daniel between clenched teeth. ‘To make up a little for his missing quail?’

  Miranda shrugged her shoulders. The bodice lifted.

  ‘Oh, heavens, Dan! Don’t be so awkward. The poor boy’s just lost his hamsters! Can’t you stop standing on your rights for once, and try to be a tiny bit less selfish and thoughtless and inconsiderate?’

  ‘Selfish and thoughtless and inconsiderate? Me?’

  Daniel was outraged.

  ‘And there’s no need to make a big drama about it. I simply haven’t the time to listen.’

  She turned to the children.

  ‘Now gather up your things. We’re in a hurry.’ She took an envelope from her handbag. ‘I have to drop this in at the newspaper office on the way home.’

  ‘Is that the advert for the cleaning lady?’ Lydia asked her mother. It was the first time any of the children had spoken since her arrival. It was a hint to Daniel, and he knew it. He was supposed to stand up to her now.

  Unable to think of anything else to say, he asked:

  ‘Can I read it?’

  Miranda sounded surprised.

  ‘If you like.’

  She handed the advert over. It was written on a printed newspaper coupon in the form of a grid. Inside the little blank rectangular boxes above the number of the credit card to be debited, Miranda had printed:

  RELIABLE NON-SMOKING CLEANING LADY

  REQUIRED. SOME CHILD CARE

  DAILY AFTER SCHOOL. OTHER

  HOURS NEGOTIABLE. PHONE 43184

  FOR INTERVIEW

  Before he had even read to the end, Christopher had snatched it, and Natalie was begging to be told what it said. Daniel finished reading over his son’s shoulder. Then he realized Christopher had turned, and was looking up in his face with a beseeching expression reminiscent of some of the more anguished illustrations in Natalie’s colourful Best Bible Stories. Lydia, on the other hand, was regarding him with a look that, to his disturbance, might have been laced with cynicism.

  Natalie’s face was easy to interpret. It was brimful of hope. His younger daughter, at least, was banking on him.

  He could not bring himself to let her down. He summoned all his reserves of courage.

  ‘Miranda!’ he began, bravely enough. ‘About this advertisement. You don’t need to go to all this trouble and expense hiring a cleaning lady or a housekeeper. Why don’t the children simply stop off here after school, and you can pick them up on your way home from work.’

  Miranda was barely listening. She was cramming the large bag of quail food inside her handbag.

  ‘I don’t think so, thank you, Daniel,’ she said, adding indifferently after a moment: ‘Nice of you to offer, though.’

  ‘I’m not offering,’ explained Daniel gently. ‘I’m asking.’

  ‘Asking?’

  The voice was frigid. Miranda’s eyes were suddenly cold, hard, little snowballs. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped several degrees.

  ‘Asking?’ she repeated, in frosted tones.

  He tried to say: ‘Demanding’. Or even: ‘Insisting’. He tried his hardest. But though he could feel the children’s eyes on him as well as hers, he could not do it. It was, he thoug
ht in desperation, a bit like being in one of those cheap paperback books Christopher was always reading, where you have to make endless choices to build your own story.

  Alone, you face the wicked witch. The peaceful little villagers have begged you to stand up to her on their behalf. They have been terrorized for years, and now stand round in little clumps, watching. But the witch transfixes you with her steely gaze.

  ‘Asking?’ she says.

  Do you:

  A: Answer in ringing tones: ‘No! Demanding! And I will brook no argument!’ and turn to page 94 where the witch collapses, defeated. Or:

  B: Answer weakly: ‘Well, hoping really…’ and turn, defeated yourself, to page 104, where all the little villagers bow their heads in shame at your faintheartedness.

  ‘Well, hoping really…’

  Miranda snapped her handbag shut so fiercely that little jets of excess quail food sprayed out and ricocheted against the wall.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, in tones that made it crystal-clear that she wouldn’t.

  Once again, Daniel felt all the failure, self-disgust and despair that shadowed him the morning he left home for good, and made the mistake of turning at the garden gate to see three set, unsmiling faces watching him from an upstairs window. The same three faces watched him now. Their disappointment was intense. A glistening tear tracked slowly down Christopher’s cheek, and dropped on the newspaper coupon, flooding and blurring the telephone number.

  Christopher rarely cried, and this was the second time within hours that Daniel had seen tears on his face. Daniel felt terrible. He turned away, and, as he did so, his eyes fell on yet another of the letters he was writing so hopefully to all the actors’ agencies he knew about, listing the parts he had successfully played on the stage, and asking if they had any likely openings.

  An idea suddenly came to him – an idea of inordinate daring and brilliance.

  ‘Here,’ he said hastily, reaching out for the coupon. ‘I’ll fix that smudge for you.’

  Turning his back on all of them, he flattened out the coupon on the table.

  ‘I’ll paint it out with correction fluid,’ he said, reaching for the tiny white bottle. He unscrewed the brush top, and dabbed at the coupon. ‘There, that’s better. And it’s dry already. Now I’ll just put your telephone number in again, shall I? Four-three-one-eight-four,’ he intoned carefully and clearly as he wrote on the freshly painted space in the grid, equally clearly and carefully: Six-six-seven-one-six, his own number.

  ‘There,’ he said triumphantly. ‘That’s a lot better.’

  Before anyone could stop him, he had thrust the coupon into its envelope, licked the flap, pressed it down, and run his thumb along to seal it.

  Natalie let out a little wail of disappointment. It was traditional that licking the flaps of envelopes was her job.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Natty,’ Daniel apologised. ‘Not at all like me to forget you.’

  He turned to his former wife.

  ‘Stamp, Miranda?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Miranda shook her head. ‘Christopher can hop out of the car and drop it through the newspaper office letter box as we go by.’

  ‘Right-ho,’ Daniel said cheerfully, patting his son on the back.

  Angry and disappointed, Christopher stepped out of reach, and turned reproachful eyes on his father. ‘Traitor’, the look on his face said plainly. Then he turned to his mother, clearly about to try to do better himself.

  ‘Mum!’ His voice was petulant. ‘Why did we have to be picked up so early today?’

  ‘Early?’ Miranda glanced at the wall clock. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Christopher. It’s five past seven already. Now pick your coat up off the floor. Daniel, I wish you wouldn’t let them leave their clothes lying about like this. Coats are expensive, you know.’

  She moved towards the door.

  ‘You’ll let us borrow the cage, won’t you? Just to get the quail home.’

  ‘The quail is home,’ Christopher muttered with all the insolence of remaindered rebellion.

  Miranda ignored him. So Christopher turned his back on her, and picked up his grave marker from the table.

  ‘Leave that horrid mess of wood shavings and glue behind here, would you, darling?’

  She looked around.

  ‘I think that’s everything. Well, goodbye, Daniel. The children will see you on Saturday morning. I’m not quite sure when, but just as soon as we have finished our shopping.’

  Daniel reached out his arms to each child in turn as they filed past. Christopher’s hug was perfunctory. Lydia used Hetty’s cage as a shield to protect herself from him. Even forgiving Natalie’s hug was brief.

  Daniel nodded coolly at Miranda as she herded them out, one by one. He waited until they had walked down the hall and left his flat, shutting the door behind them, before he moved. Then he sprinted along the passage and swung the front door open again, so he could listen to their departing footsteps echoing in the high space of the stairwell.

  The sound of clattering heels grew fainter. Daniel inspected his lock. The side that housed the dead bolt was hanging off. The whole thing would need unscrewing and replacing.

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed. Stealthily, he reached inside his shirt, and drew out an imaginary hand grenade. Pulling out the imaginary pin with his teeth, he waited only until he was quite sure his children had disappeared safely through the heavy main entrance door into the street before he hurled it, with all the force he could muster, down the stone stairwell after his former wife.

  Then, satisfied, he leaned back against the ruined door. A smile of pleasure spread over his face, and, for the first time that afternoon, he seemed at peace.

  He was listening to the imaginary explosion.

  Chapter Four

  A good interview technique can work wonders

  Miranda Hilliard expected to receive a lot more than four telephone calls in response to her advertisement in the Chronicle & Echo. But there could have been no mistake in the printing. She hadn’t actually seen the advertisement herself: mysteriously, her evening paper was not lying in the porch as usual when she came home from work, and the newsagent on the corner could not sell her another.

  ‘It always happens that way,’ he assured her. ‘The very day one of my regulars especially wants a copy, some long, thin fellow I’ve never even seen before dives in and buys the lot.’

  But the advertisement must have been printed correctly, for there were the four enquiries. The first came just as Miranda was dishing up the evening meal. The caller’s voice was high-pitched, hoarse even, as if the woman had a throat problem. It also sounded deeply suspicious.

  ‘Children, you said. Children after school…’

  ‘That’s right,’ Miranda confirmed. ‘Three children.’

  ‘Three? That’s a lot. What sort are they?’

  ‘What sort?’

  Miranda looked at them, baffled.

  ‘Boys or girls?’

  ‘Oh! Two girls and a boy.’

  There was stony silence.

  ‘Something wrong?’ asked Miranda, a little unnerved.

  The voice spun down the line, taut, high and querulous.

  ‘Yes. Don’t like girls. Sorry. Goodbye.’

  There was a click. Miranda stared at the receiver.

  ‘Well!’ she gasped. ‘Good job we don’t like you, either.’

  The second call, too, came while they were eating. No throat problems here. The voice was rich and mellifluous.

  ‘Hello? Is that 43184? The advert?’

  ‘That’s right, yes,’ said Miranda.

  ‘Child care, you mentioned.’

  ‘Yes, just a little. After school.’

  ‘Girls, are they?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miranda, looking at Lydia and Natalie. ‘Two of the three. And the third is a boy.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  The voice rang with disappointment.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ asked Miranda.


  ‘Oh, dear me, yes. Can’t do with boys. No. Sorry.’

  The caller hung up. Miranda gritted her teeth.

  ‘I’m not,’ she told the silent telephone.

  The third call came only a few minutes later, over the apple tart.

  ‘’allo?’

  ‘Hello?’

  Miranda’s voice was becoming wary, the children noticed.

  ‘’allo. I phone regarding the advert.’ This voice was soft and buttery and foreign. ‘’ow many children?’

  ‘Three. Two girls and one boy.’

  ‘’ow old?’

  Miranda began to rattle off their ages. Before she’d even worked her way as far around the table as Natalie, the woman had rung off.

  ‘Too old,’ she’d said. ‘Don’t care for old. Only care for little.’

  Miranda banged the receiver on its cradle.

  ‘No problem!’ she snapped. ‘Don’t care for you much, either.’

  The last call came three hours later, just as Miranda was wondering if it were hopeless. Milk for the bedtime cocoa was rising in the pan as the phone rang. Miranda flew at the stove to rescue the milk, then at the telephone which mercifully kept ringing.

  The voice at the other end was rumbling and cheerful, if a little bit muffled, as if the woman had just wiped her nose and not yet lowered her handkerchief to speak in the mouthpiece.

  ‘I’ve been attached to the same children now for years and years. They do grow older, don’t they? And now I find I have the time to think of taking on your little nestful during the afternoons.’

  Miranda said, without much optimism:

  ‘I’m afraid I do have two girls…’

  The voice replied in a somewhat bracing fashion:

  ‘Lovely, dear. Girls are precious gems.’

  But Miranda was still apologetic.

  ‘And there’s a boy…’

  ‘A boy! I don’t need to see him to know he’s a fine lad!’

  Scarcely believing that her luck was holding, Miranda embarked on detailing their ages, only to find herself at once interrupted.

  ‘All ages are the nicest, I say.’