What the Nanny Saw Read Online Free Page A

incognito to Holland Park. But a few days ago the ladder mysteriously disappeared from their side of the fence.
    Bryony now suspected the Darkes were behind an anonymous neighborhood flyer that had appeared through letterboxes this week, demanding the Skinners retreat with their “media circus” to their country home. The idea that she could control the press had made Bryony laugh. “Clients pay me hundreds of thousands of pounds to do just that,” she had told Ali yesterday, “and I have known some of the people writing these stories for almost twenty years. But I can’t control what they say about my own family. Don’t you think that’s ironic?” Ali didn’t have the heart to point out that even after a year of renovations, the house in Oxfordshire was still unfit to live in.
    “Ali, any ideas on how they got hold of this?” Ali was aware that Bryony was talking to her again. She jumped as Bryony slid a newspaper across the table toward her. It landed on the floor.
    “You should complain. Your picture credit is so small you can hardly read your name,” she said. Ali picked up the paper from the floor. It took her a moment to recognize the photograph, because she had taken the original in color and this was reprinted in black-and-white: it was of the entire family in Corfu during the summer.
    “Absolutely no idea,” Ali said. She looked over toward a table to the left of the dining room door and saw a space where the picture used to stand.
    “Someone must have stolen it,” said Foy, shrugging his shoulders in disbelief. “This is my Conrad Black moment”—he laughed so hard that he started to wheeze—“except I’m dressed as a Greek peasant woman, not Cardinal Richelieu.”
    The picture was part of an elaborate joke conceived by Foy after a long lunch one afternoon during their summer holiday in Greece. He had recently purchased a twenty-acre olive grove adjacent to his estate in Corfu to celebrate his retirement, joking that he was becoming a gentleman farmer. The olive trees produced enough oil for about a hundred one-liter bottles, and Foy wanted to have a photograph of everyone dressed up as a Corfiote peasant family to print on the label on the front because it would amuse his friends.
    At the time it had seemed an inspired idea. He had borrowed a long black skirt, apron, and scarf from the Greek cook. Ali persuaded the twins to dress up in traditional Greek costume, no small feat, given this involved short pleated skirts and long white tights. The rest of them wore black trousers and shirts.
    Foy had one arm around Tita, who stood unsmilingly beside him, and the other around Hester. Her husband, Rick, was nowhere to be seen. The twins sat at their feet, holding a jar that contained a couple of dead crickets. At the end of the line, beside Jake and Izzy, stood Bryony and Nick. Nick was pulling Bryony toward him, away from the rest of her family, toward a couple of chickens that had wandered into the scene. Poor Nick, thought Ali. He never stood a chance. Beside the photograph was a picture of a bottle of Foy’s olive oil. And beside that a photo of Foy’s boat, The Menace , moored at the rocky beach at the foot of the estate.
    “Classic Chesterton Family Extra-Virgin Olive Oil,” the label on the bottle read. Underneath, in smaller lettering, it said: “Superior-category olive oil, obtained directly from olives and solely by mechanical means. Acidity 0.1–0.8%.”
    “With all this publicity I could sell the olive oil on eBay for a fortune, don’t you think, Ali?” Foy demanded. “Our current notoriety probably lends it a certain cachet.”
    “Stop worrying about money, Dad,” Bryony chastised. “Nick will take care of it all.”
    “If what they’re saying about him is true, then he could go to prison,” said Foy.
    “He’s got a good lawyer,” said Bryony, “and the FSA has a bad track record on prosecutions. Don’t believe everything you read.”
    “If he didn’t do it, then