Almost Gone (The Au Pair—Book One)

by Blake Pierce

  “Really? You too? That’s awful. What did you do?”

  Marnie’s face hardened. “I was so surprised at the time, I did nothing,” she said. “Then afterwards, I felt so furious I could have killed her. Never, ever have I had an employer treat me that way. But I didn’t complain, because she fired three of the household staff after a piece of jewelry went ‘missing.’ I don’t think it went missing at all. I think she sold it and Pierre noticed it was gone.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. Pierre controls the money and what she spends. If they fight, the purse strings are closed. Or at any rate, that is what I understand, from the loud arguments I have overheard.”

  “How do you feel about being in this situation?” Cassie asked, eating a piece of cheese. The conversation was strangely comforting. At least she didn’t feel like Margot’s only enemy anymore.

  “Everyone working here hates her, and none of us want to stay. I’m looking for another job,” Marnie confessed. “I already have one offer, from a guesthouse in a neighboring village. At the end of the month I will decide where to go and hand in my notice.”

  “I don’t blame you. I feel the same way, and I’ve only been here three days. I also want to quit, and I think I’m going to.”

  Marnie nodded in sympathy. “It’s not easy here. Nobody can blame you for leaving. The au pair who worked here before you walked out after a month for the same reasons. And now I had better leave you to get some sleep. Let’s forget we had this conversation and not mention it again, or it will not go well for either of us in this household.”

  She gave Cassie a conspiratorial smile as she left.

  Cassie decided that Marnie’s words had cemented her own decision. She was not prepared to stay in a home where this level of violence could, and would, happen regularly. She was an emotional and physical wreck already, and she’d now found out her only friend would be leaving at the end of the month.

  Cassie resolved that for her own sanity, she would have to quit in the morning.

  She spent an hour carefully packing her bags. She didn’t care about Ella’s pleas, or Pierre’s threats. She wasn’t going to think about the career implications of this decision. She was going to take care of herself and her own well-being, and she could only hope the rest would fall into place.

  When everything was packed and ready to go, Cassie climbed into bed but found she couldn’t sleep. Her back was bruised and aching, she’d wrenched a shoulder muscle during the tussle with Margot, and those were just the physical injuries.

  Since she left home, she’d gone out of her way to avoid a repeat of what she’d had to suffer as a child.

  She’d actively shunned conflict. She’d broken up with Zane the first time he’d raised a hand in anger. She’d chosen friends who were gentle people, who lived the way she aspired to, and she’d tried to choose jobs where she’d have the minimum of friction in her workplace.

  Now it felt as if a Pandora’s box of memories had been opened. She remembered the times her father had hit her. That had started as the occasional push and slap, and escalated to full-on beatings, as if he couldn’t control his inner rage at the sorry turn his life had taken, and so he let it all out on her.

  Cassie recalled, now, that there had been other fights with Elaine. And she vividly remembered the time she’d caught one of Elaine’s friends in her bedroom, rummaging through her drawers. Her only weapon had been the house keys she’d been holding. She’d attacked the short, middle-aged man with them, and he’d ended up running out of the room with a cut on his face.

  But he had come back, later at night.

  “Hey, little honey. Are you there, girlie?”

  Cassie shivered. She remembered the choking panic she’d felt hiding away from him, knowing that if he found her there, he wasn’t just looking to get payback for the hurt she’d caused him—but planning to do something worse.

  With shaking hands, she opened the packs of tablets she’d gotten from the pharmacy. This was not a time for half-doses; she took one of each. She had just enough water left in her glass to swallow them down.

  Then she huddled onto her pillows, aching and traumatized, waiting for the pills to work so that she could finally fall asleep.

  But as she waited, Cassie realized she could hear a noise coming from the other side of her bedroom door.

  Cassie climbed out of bed, tiptoeing over to the door as soundlessly as she could. She listened carefully, waiting for a lull in the gusty breeze that was rattling her window.

  Then she heard it unmistakably—the soft, continuous sound of breathing.

  Someone was standing outside her room.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Cassie’s hand shook as she turned the key in the bedroom door. She tried to do it quietly, but it made an audible click, and then jammed. She could hear footsteps swiftly walking away.

  Cassie wrestled with the lock and finally it turned. She flung the door open and stared down the corridor.

  There was nobody in sight.

  Who had been outside her room? Pierre? Margot?

  Righteous anger led her feet of their own accord down the corridor to Pierre’s bedroom. As soon as she rounded the corner, she could hear raised voices and realized they were arguing behind the closed bedroom door. So it couldn’t have been either of them. It sounded like a heated and acrimonious debate and she wondered if Margot, too, had smelled the perfume on Pierre’s skin, or whether they were still fighting over the way she’d behaved to Cassie earlier.

  Cassie was curious to know, but the words weren’t clearly audible from the other side of the door. She felt nervous about going near that bedroom again. She’d been there twice and both times it had ended badly. She didn’t want to risk being discovered a third time—although in the back of her mind, she fantasized about busting open the door and walking in on their argument and demanding that they hear her side.

  At least she would have had her say before she left.

  As she stood undecided in the corridor, the voices stopped abruptly, and Cassie hurried back to her room.

  She turned out her light and, to calm herself, took another of the tablets from the blister pack and swallowed it without any water at all. If drowsiness was a side effect, she was happy to take double the recommended dose. It was the only way she would be able to get to sleep after the trauma of the day.

  As she was on the brink of sleep, she heard a scream from down the corridor that jolted her wide awake again.

  Cassie sat up and turned on her bedside light, listening anxiously, wondering what was happening, and if she had remembered to lock her door when she’d returned to her room. When she heard the scream a second time, she recognized Ella’s voice. The young girl must be having another nightmare, and regardless of Pierre’s order to stay in her room, Cassie needed to go and comfort her.

  She rummaged in her suitcase for her dressing gown, in case she ended up spending some time with Ella, and then hurried to her bedroom.

  “Ella, it’s me. You’re OK, don’t worry. I’m here.”

  Quickly Cassie switched on the light and closed the door in case Ella’s cries alerted Margot. The last thing she needed was another late night confrontation with the deranged blonde.

  “Were you having a bad dream?”

  Ella was still in the throes of her nightmare. Her small fists battered Cassie and she cried out in her sleep.

  “Stop it! Stop hurting me!”

  Concerned about what might have caused this nightmare, Cassie gently prodded her awake.

  “Everything’s all right,” she soothed her. “Look, here’s your teddy. Do you want to sit up for a while so you can be sure you won’t go back into the dream?”

  Ella was boiling hot, and her back felt damp with sweat. She’d been almost buried under the covers, which would have been enough to overheat her, but Cassie hoped she wasn’t running a fever too.

  “Are you feeling ill?” she asked in concern.

  “I had an
awful dream,” Ella sobbed. “I couldn’t breathe, Cassie. Someone was choking me. It was horrible. I thought I was going to die!”

  “Oh, Ella, that must have been so scary. I’m sorry you had that dream. But it didn’t happen. Look, you’re all right now. I think you might have been battling to breathe under all the covers. I don’t like sleeping with covers over my head, either. Shall I open your window to let in some air?”

  When Ella nodded in assent, Cassie went over to the window and opened it just a sliver, so that a breath of cool air filtered in from outside.

  Standing up made her feel dizzy and disoriented, as if she were watching herself open the window from somewhere distant. She guessed it was due to the aftermath of stress.

  “I’ll stay with you till you fall asleep,” she promised, smoothing out Ella’s pillow and then helping her get comfortable again.

  “What about tomorrow?” Ella asked plaintively. “Will you be here tomorrow? Or will you be gone by the time I wake up?”

  Cassie wondered if Ella had been the one standing outside her room. She could have been able to see through the keyhole if she stood on tiptoes. Or perhaps she had simply been waiting outside, and heard Cassie put her suitcase on the floor followed by the sounds of packing. Either way, her guess was disconcertingly accurate and Cassie knew she would have to tell a soothing lie.

  “Of course I’ll still be here,” she reassured the young girl, knowing guiltily that she planned to leave as soon as it was light.

  The least she could do was wait until Ella had fallen into an untroubled sleep, so Cassie read her a story, choosing the one Ella said was her favorite. After the story, Ella seemed much calmer and Cassie hoped she’d forgotten her earlier dream.

  Cassie sat on the edge of Ella’s bed and waited until she was sure she was deeply asleep. She brushed a lock of hair away from her face, in case it fell over her mouth and made her dream that she was choking again.

  Then she frowned, peering down. Was that a shadow on her neck, or something else?

  Looking closely, Cassie saw the faint but unmistakable outline of a developing bruise.

  Anger filled her as she stared at it. Somebody—and she could guess exactly who—had done this to Ella, perhaps only a few hours ago.

  She could imagine the confrontation, how Margot might have screamed at Ella to shut up and start listening to her. When she hadn’t listened or obeyed, the blonde woman must have grabbed her neck.

  Perhaps she’d already been drinking by then. It seemed she was only too quick to get physical when she was angry.

  Ella must have been completely traumatized by the experience. No wonder she’d been crying when Cassie had come home. She had probably erased the incident from her mind but in sleep, her subconscious had remembered, and tried to cast out the demons.

  Cassie felt a surge of rage so powerful it frightened her.

  As the youngest child, Ella was by far the most vulnerable to this type of abuse, and it would leave the deepest scars.

  Cassie resolved that before she left France, she was going to report the family to the relevant authorities. Hopefully, Margot’s abuse could be investigated and stopped. It would be the last thing she could do to help Ella, before she turned her back on the Dubois family forever.

  *

  Cassie returned to her room, still feeling as if she were having an out-of-body experience, and unable to rid herself of the anger still smoldering inside her. She didn’t think she could get to sleep in this state, but knew that she’d need all her wits about her if she was going to manage to leave first thing. A sleepless night would do her no good.

  She wondered if she should take a third tablet, seeing the second one had only succeeded in making her feel dizzy. Before she could think too hard about it, she took it out of the pack and dry-swallowed it. She guessed she would feel groggy in the morning but at least, for now, she could calm down and get some rest.

  After what felt like an hour of uncomfortable shifting on the mattress and feeling sleep would never come, Cassie slipped straight into a nightmare.

  She was following her older sister, Jacqui, through the woods. The trees were very dark, their gnarled trunks growing close together and no clear path in sight. The day—or it felt more like evening—was damp and cold, and Cassie wanted to turn back, because she had a strong sense that wherever they were heading was worse than what they were leaving behind.

  “Don’t be silly,” Jacqui told her. “Of course we must keep going. You don’t want to go back and live with Dad again, do you? Remember what happened to you there.”

  “But this place is dangerous,” Cassie begged her sister. “We can’t live in these woods. It’s cold and dark, we haven’t packed any clothes, there’s nothing to eat. It feels scary here.”

  Jacqui just turned and raised an eyebrow, the way she liked to do when she was right and Cassie was wrong.

  “I’m not staying there so that those people can hurt me. You can go back if you want.”

  “But now I’m lost. I don’t know which way is out.”

  Cassie stared around her in panic because the trees were closing in, their cold, dark branches forming a cage around her.

  “Please help me, Jacqui. Let’s go back together.”

  And then, to her dismay, Jacqui began to taunt her.

  “Poor little scared girl. Look at you. You can’t stand up for yourself at all. You’re weak, and you deserve to be left here on your own. I’ll keep going, I’m not afraid. You stay here and see how you like it.”

  Jacqui started laughing, an unpleasant, high, silvery sound, and Cassie ran at her in a rage.

  The trees opened up to reveal a deep ravine behind her. Cassie could have stopped, but she didn’t. She shoved Jacqui with all her might and watched her hair fly out, her limbs flailing, as she tumbled to the bottom.

  Staring into the gloomy depths of the ravine, Cassie saw her sister’s body lying there, unmoving.

  She woke, stifling a scream.

  Where was she? She wasn’t in bed.

  Disoriented, Cassie stared around her. It was almost completely dark, but there was a sliver of light shining from under the door. She hadn’t sleepwalked for years, but then again, she hadn’t been so stressed for ages. She’d done it periodically during difficult times, when she was younger. It had always left her feeling completely disoriented, as if she’d been dumped back into life after being snatched out of it, and had missed out on something important along the way.

  She had never been able to shake this feeling even after the doctor explained to her that her conscious mind was inactive during sleepwalking, as it occurred during the deepest part of her sleep.

  She reached out, confused by the object gleaming ahead of her, and found herself grasping a shiny brass doorknob.

  Cassie snatched her hand away from the cold metal, suddenly realizing where she was. She’d sleepwalked the whole way to Pierre’s bedroom door. Perhaps, in her dream, she had been trying to take her longed-for revenge on Margot. It would have gone so badly for her if she’d opened the door. She could imagine the scene Margot would have made if she’d walked into the bedroom.

  Quickly she turned away, finding it weird to retrace a route she’d walked in sleep and had no memory of. She realized that with Marnie’s late night visit and everything that had happened that evening, she’d been too preoccupied to lock her bedroom door and that was why she had been able to leave the room so easily. If she had remembered to lock the door, and put the key on her bedside table, she was sure she would never have walked this far.

  Her dream had felt so real. She remembered how the smugness on Jacqui’s face had morphed to terror as she realized what Cassie was about to do. And Cassie hadn’t stopped. It hadn’t even crossed her mind to show compassion and give Jacqui a chance.

  She felt deeply ashamed, as if she’d tapped into a seam of evil inside herself that she hadn’t realized was there.

  Back in her bedroom she turned the light on and, with the c
omfort of its glow to break the darkness, managed to sleep again eventually. She thought she had other dreams, but her sleep was too deep to remember what they were.

  The chorus of birdsong told her that dawn was approaching, even though the sun was no more than a faint orange glow on the horizon. Cassie checked the time on her phone and saw, with a thrill of nerves, that it was nearly seven a.m. She needed to go. She wasn’t sure if Pierre would be up yet, but if he wasn’t she would wake him.

  She tied her hair back and packed her cosmetics bag away after deciding not to put on any makeup for her confrontation with Pierre, even though she looked very pale. There was a visible bruise on her cheek from the struggle with Margot, and a deep graze on her wrist that was stinging badly. She stared at it, puzzled, realizing she hadn’t even noticed it last night. When had that happened?

  “I am leaving,” she said to herself in the mirror. She tried again, this time with more resolve.

  “Pierre, I am leaving. I’m not prepared to work another day in this household. I’d like to use the phone in your study to call a cab, please.”

  If he said no, she would simply take her bags and march out—she knew where the nursery down the road was, and she was capable of wheeling her suitcase that distance. Pierre wasn’t going to stop her. She wouldn’t let him.

  She’d make sure to be gone before Ella woke, which would probably be in about half an hour’s time. That meant it was time to act now.

  She put her passport in her jacket pocket, ready to go.

  She felt slightly nauseous and very thirsty, but told herself that was probably due to the triple dose of medication she’d taken. Surprisingly, the higher dosage hadn’t helped with sleep. As she packed her tablets away—the last items she had to put into her bag—she realized why.

  Confused by the unfamiliar packaging, she’d reached for the wrong set of pills. Instead of taking the tablets that caused drowsiness, she’d taken three of the ones the doctor had warned her about, cautioning her to take just half a tablet daily, because more than that could cause psychotic episodes.