Day One - In which we meet the Vauns.
He remembered a time when every day had been humdrum. Perhaps not humdrum, exactly, but stable, predictable. Now it was all different, and he wished it would go back to how it had been before.
Daniel Vaun was, in his opinion, a pretty normal guy. He was also the only man he knew who actually wanted to be a stay-at-home dad, and yet wasn’t. Someone had to earn money to support his family of four, and he was the only one who seemed to be volunteering. His ex-wife wasn’t, that was for sure. Sometimes he suspected she was trying to force him to work himself into some kind of breakdown, so she could get the kids from him. Or maybe he was just terribly paranoid, and more than a little bitter.
And so, Daniel Vaun stood in the kitchen, eating toast and trying to keep the crumbs off his tie, in preparation for a long day’s slog as a graphics designer in an advertising agency. Around him the sounds of his kids getting ready for school made him worry that the neighbours might complain again:
“Liss-eeeeeee!”
“Huuh?”
“Have you seen my English book?”
“Um…. no?”
“Don’t lie! I saw you taking it from my room yesterday, I need that! You’d better not have drawn on it!”
“But it wasn’t colourful!”
“It’s not meant to be colourful! Daad!”
He sighed, and brushed a few errant crumbs off his tie. “What’s wrong, Tracy?”
“Can you get my English book? Lissy won’t give it back!”
“Don’t worry, Trace, I’ll get it,” chimed in the last member of Daniel’s little family. A moment later, Lissy’s voice wailed, “Markuuus!”
Daniel sighed as a small herd of elephants came down the stairs, and turned out to be Markus with Lissy in heated pursuit.
“Trace!” bellowed the boy, playing keep-away with his little sister.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” The oldest sibling also came down the stairs, and claimed the English book with an air of satisfaction. Lissy pouted as it disappeared into Tracy’s messenger bag.
“Needed colours,” she muttered.
“Mine,” said her older sister firmly. “If I decide it needs colours, then it needs colours. If I think it’s fine, it’s fine.” She pecked her father on the cheek. “We’re going now, Dad, see you later.”
“Have a nice day at work,” added Markus with a smile.
“Love you!” said Lissy, hugging his legs.
Daniel hugged all of them, and wished he had more free time.
The walk to school was quite a long one, but unavoidable, since Daniel’s workplace managed to be in complete opposite direction. As they walked along, the Vaun siblings chatted amongst themselves. Today, the topic was Tracy’s book, and what had happened to it.
“I mean, you have enough things to colour in without starting on my stuff,” she was saying, turning over the pages to try and assess the damage. “Oh, look, a pink unicorn.”
“He’s there to inspire you to work harder,” grinned Markus, peering over her shoulder. Lissy nodded.
“The dragon is to eat you if you don’t,” she explained.
“And the pretty pink princess?”
“I like pretty princesses.”
Tracy sighed, and put the book away. “If my teacher gets mad, you’ll never hear the end of it, Liss.”
“She won’t, you have Miss Wills, she’s nice.”
They continued in silence for a while, and then Tracy asked, “So, Mark, what’ve you got coming up at school today?”
He shrugged carelessly. “Nothing much. Maths, history, science… stuff.”
“Nothing too interesting?”
“No, not really.”
“Hanging out with friends at lunch?” continued Trace, with an air of nonchalance. Markus glanced at her.
“Why all these questions?”
“I’m just asking,” she protested. “I mean, it’s not long since you started at the school, and it’s high school, and a big change from what you’re used to, and all that stuff. I’m just making sure you’re doing alright.”
“I’m doing fine, Tracy, just fine. So you can just stop asking. You’re always so nosy.”
“I’m not nosy!” she protested, hurt. “Well, maybe a little bit, but not very.” Giving up on her brother, she said to Lissy, “What about you?”
“Miss Plum is making us brownies!” beamed Lissy, unaware of the tension between her older siblings. “And she said if we like them she’ll show us how to make them and we can have a cooking lesson! And then I can make brownies for you and Markus and Dad and all my friends and Miss Plum and everyone, and they’ll all say what a good cook I am and then I’ll grow up and be a famous cook and everyone will buy my recipes and I’ll be the best cook ever in the who wide world!”
“That sounds like fun!” Tracy smiled, as her little sister regained her breath. “I can’t wait to try these brownies! Can you, Markus?”
“Huh?” he said, not listening. Tracy glared at him.
“You might be mad at me but that’s no reason to be mean to her,” she hissed under her breath. Markus blinked and glanced down at his little sister.
“Yeah, Lissy, I can’t wait…”
The little girl grinned happily and skipped along in front of them, blonde pigtails bouncing. The other two, after dropping Lissy off at her primary school, didn’t exchange another word for the rest of the journey.
Daniel spent an uneventful day at the offices of the ad agency, designing a poster for a new pimple cream. It wasn’t the most interesting or pleasant job he’d ever had, but it was work, and he was getting paid for it. Instead of thinking of pimples, he concentrated on the image of lots of money flowing into his bank account, and what could be done with that money.
Somehow, this turned into worrying about all the things which needed to be done around the house. He felt a little guilty for making Tracy and Markus do most of the housework - cleaning, dishes, cooking, everything except the occasional DIY job that needed doing. They had their own things to be getting on with, homework, social life… Markus had just started at Tracy’s school, so he probably had lots of new friends he wanted to spend time with, but couldn’t, because he had to do housework. Daniel remembered his own first days of high school; he had loved every minute of it, the new challenges, meeting new people and new friends. He had been able to spend all the time he wanted with them, and he wanted Markus to have memories like that as well.
Lissy worried him a little as well. She was still young and impressionable, and without a father there all the time she had to rely on her older siblings. But one day they wouldn’t be there any more, and he probably wouldn’t be there very much either, and then what would she do? She needed a mother figure, and that was a fact. Tracy was lovely, but she was a sister, not a mother, and she had enough on her plate with working on her A-Levels. Then, after that, she would be at university and have even less time to look after a demanding little sister. And Lissy did need a female touch. The whole house needed a female touch, other than Trace’s rather haphazard one.
But what could be done?
He was still puzzling over this question as he went home, and possibly as a result he missed the last bus home. Not letting this get on top of him, he continued to concentrate on his problem as he walked home.
The result of this was that he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going, and took a wrong turn somewhere. Then he took another wrong turn, and another… and then, before he could really get his bearings, he found himself in front of a building.
It wasn’t just a building, in fact; it was a Building. This Building had presence; it had personality. It reeked of worn and dusty splendour, with a red brick face streaked with damp and stucco panels on which moss was starting to creep. The doorway, which was dead in the middle of the front face, was the generic Gothic arch type arrangement. A plaster cherub on either side supported a banner on which strange looking letters were carved. Not even trying to read them, Daniel’s eye was caught by one of the stucco panels, which had been got at by vandals. Someone had stencilled a small angel caught in the act of spray-painting something on a wall; someone else had added, in black marker pen, what the angel was spray-painting. Grinning a little at the cheekiness of this, Daniel glanced back at the door.
He suddenly wondered why he’d thought the words on the banner were in some other strange language; they were in a quite obvious Gothic copperplate, easy enough to read if you had two brain cells to rub together. The words on the banner read:
All The Help You Need Hire Agency
The door was open, too. He hadn’t noticed that before, either. A slight chill ran down his spine.
Now faking nonchalance, he turned his back on the place and peered back the way he’d come. A word had just occurred to him, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. The word was nanny, and it seemed to be the answer to all of his problems - a feminine touch, help around the house, looking after the kids - but with one problem, and one big problem at that. Nothing in this life was free. And how could he afford a nanny? There was no way he could, unless she cost something like five pounds a week or something similar.
He who dares, wins. There was nothing stopping him from just having a look - and who knew? Maybe there would be some kind of deal, or maybe he was even eligible for free help with childcare… unlikely, but it was quite possible that stranger things had happened. He could spare a little money, he was sure.
Before he lost his resolve, he turned on his heel and strode up the three steps and through the open door.
