Perfect Little Children

by Sophie Hannah

  “Fair enough. What’s happening there, Beth?”

  “I’ve spoken to Lewis and Flora,” I tell him. “They’ve told me a story, and for all I know it’s true, but . . . it’s not the story.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I think Kevin Cater and Yanina are harming the children at Newnham House. That’s what Lewis and Flora are scared I’ll find out. I don’t know why they want to protect two mistreaters of children—their children—but I think they do.” This was the conclusion I came to, running back from the beach. “There’s a whole other long story about Georgina, but . . .” I don’t have the energy to explain it all now, and I know Dom won’t mind if I don’t. “Can I speak to the kids?”

  “They’re both out.”

  “Where?”

  “Zannah’s at Murad’s, and Ben’s with Lauren at the cinema. Reluctantly. He’d have preferred to stay at home and play Fortnite, he said.”

  “Then he needs to convey that message to her, not you.”

  “That’s what I told him. Oh—that woman rang for you.”

  “Who?”

  “Lou Munday, from the school. She rang about ten minutes ago.”

  “The landline?”

  “Obviously. She doesn’t have my mobile number, does she? I told her she might get you on yours.”

  “I’d better go, then. She might be trying to call me now.”

  “Hang on. I want to hear about—”

  “I’ll call you back later. Love you. Look after the kids. I’ll take care and be safe, I promise.”

  Once I’ve pressed the red button to end the call, I inspect my phone. There’s no evidence of Lou having tried to ring me while I was talking to Dom. Luckily, I have her number stored. I take a bottle of Diet Coke from the minibar in my room, open it and go and sit out on the balcony.

  Lou answers on the second ring. “That’s so weird,” she says. “I was just—”

  “I know. My husband told me. Has something happened?”

  “Kind of. I took a call today at school, from a woman calling herself Jeanette Cater.”

  “You mean Flora? I mean . . . the woman you know as Jeanette, with the English accent?”

  “No. That’s what was so odd. It sounded like someone putting on an English accent.”

  “Yanina, then?”

  “I think so. I’m almost positive.”

  “Go on.”

  “She was phoning to give notice for Thomas. He wasn’t in today, and apparently he won’t be coming back to school at all. And Emily, who was due to start with us in September, now won’t be coming.”

  My heart is pounding. I lay my palm flat on my rib cage, as if that will make any difference. Why would this happen today of all days? What have they done to Thomas? Have they only taken him out of school, or have they done something worse?

  “Did you tell her that you knew she was lying? That you knew she wasn’t Jeanette Cater?”

  “No. I wasn’t sure letting her know that I knew was a good idea.”

  If Yanina’s planning to harm those two kids . . .

  This is all happening because of me, because I couldn’t leave things alone.

  “Beth, are you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you okay?”

  I’m not. I’m terrified that, by trying to protect Thomas and Emily Cater, I’ve placed them in greater danger. I take deep breaths and try to calm down.

  “What else did she tell you?” I ask Lou.

  “That they’re leaving the country. Moving to America.”

  “When?”

  “In the summer. She didn’t say where they were going more specifically. Just said America.”

  “If they’re leaving in the summer, why take Thomas out of school now? Why not let him finish the term?”

  “Exactly. That’s what I thought,” says Lou.

  If Thomas remains at school, other people can observe his behavior, and the behavior of anyone who goes there to drop him off or collect him. And that’s the last thing they want.

  “There’s more,” Lou says. “I told her—Yanina, assuming it was her—that she needed to talk to the head teacher about something as important as that. I can’t just cancel school places and take children off lists without it going via the head teacher. There’s all kinds of things to do with notice and fees that need to be dealt with. She said, okay, she’d ring the head. Then the phone rang again, straight away, and I answered it, and it was him: Mr. Cater. ‘I believe you just spoke to my wife?’ he said.”

  “Go on.”

  “He then tried to tell me the same thing. It was as if he thought it might work better if it came from him. I thought he was going to quibble about money and the notice period, try and save himself a term’s fees, but he didn’t.”

  “Why did you think he would?”

  “He’s complained about the fees before, many times—which got me thinking. Most parents pay as soon as they receive the bill, but some don’t. A handful always wait until we send our final demand. I’m talking every term. I don’t know what they think will happen. Maybe they hope that one day we’ll forget to chase them about it.”

  “Are the Caters part of this late-paying group?” I ask, trying not to spill Coke as I press the cold bottle against my forehead. It’s too bright. I can’t stay out here for much longer.

  “Yup,” says Lou. “Anyway, I told Mr. Cater the same as I’d told Yanina—that he’d need to speak to the head. Then I emailed the head and the bursar and told them what had happened, the nanny pretending to be Mrs. Cater, and the bursar sent a reply saying exactly what I’d thought: that there would probably be some wrangling over the notice period in a last-ditch attempt to save some cash, and then she said something else—one line that leaped out at me.”

  “What line?” I ask.

  “Let me get it up on my screen,” Lou says. “Here it is: ‘I don’t know why the Caters complain about cost—it’s not like the money’s coming out of their accounts.’”

  “They don’t pay Thomas’s school fees? Then who does?”

  “That’s what I wondered. I emailed right back and asked.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She had no idea. As long as the fees arrive, no one questions whose account they come from. Sometimes it’s a grandparent paying the fees. In this case . . . well, it doesn’t sound like that’s what’s going on here, given what you’ve told me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Thomas Cater’s school fees so far, and Emily’s deposit to reserve her a place, have all been paid from a bank account based in Florida.”

  “What’s the name of the account?” I ask, thinking the answer to my own question at the same time.

  As if she’s reading my mind, Lou says, “Lewis Braid.”

  * * *

  An hour later I’m sitting on the floor in the middle of my hotel room, waiting for my swirling thoughts to arrange themselves into some kind of recognizable order. The sun’s edging away from me inch by inch, as if it doesn’t want to get involved in whatever mess I’ve got myself embroiled in. There’s a hollow feeling in my stomach. I should probably order something to eat, but every time I try to think about where I might have put the room service menu, my brain slides back to what it prefers to think about.

  Lewis Braid. Lewis is paying the school fees of Thomas and Emily Cater.

  That could make sense. They’re his children, and he has plenty of money. There’s only one problem with this explanation, and it’s a significant one: according to Flora, Kevin Cater doesn’t know Thomas and Emily are Lewis’s. He believes they’re his. Doesn’t he wonder why his wife’s ex-husband is willing to pay the school fees of her children from her second marriage?

  Is it possible he doesn’t know that Lewis pays the fees? Perhaps Flora has told him they’re coming out of a separate bank account she’s got that her parents have put money into, or something like that. Or maybe Kevin knows that Lewis plans to pay for Thomas and Emily’s scho
oling, doesn’t care why, and is simply happy to be spared the expense.

  None of these theories satisfies me. I think about my encounters with Kevin and Yanina—not what I’ve been told about them by anyone else, only what I’ve witnessed and experienced myself. The confident way they produced the photograph of two completely different children . . . Toby and Emma. And then they told PC Pollard they’d given those names because they were afraid I was a dangerous obsessive.

  I shake my head, though there’s no one here to see me do it. Kevin and Yanina weren’t afraid of me. They knew I was no danger to the children at Newnham House. They were attempting to manipulate me, and confident they’d succeed. I know this is true, because I was there.

  I trust my senses, my instincts and my judgment. I always have, but since that first Saturday on Wyddial Lane, I trust myself even more.

  What does your judgment say about Kevin and Yanina?

  I’ve been so busy puzzling over Flora, Lewis and the children that, until now, I haven’t spent much time thinking specifically about Kevin and the nanny. She might not be a nanny—that’s the first thing that occurs to me. A Ukrainian nanny with a foreign accent is so easy to believe in. It’s a familiar stereotype, and people rarely question those. More likely, Yanina is a woman who happens to have an accent that isn’t English, and who’s in the house for some other reason, not to look after Thomas and Emily.

  What kind of nanny collects a child from school and doesn’t even make eye contact with him? And why would anyone—Lewis, Kevin, any person in charge of children—invest in full-time live-in child care when they won’t spend a much smaller amount on new school shoes to replace ones that are literally falling apart?

  The more I focus on them, the more convinced I am that Kevin and Yanina are central to whatever’s happening at Newnham House. They aren’t just two minor players in a drama created by Flora and Lewis, a drama they don’t fully understand because many of the details have been kept from them. Flora lied about that, like she lied about Kevin being happy not to pry into the details of her past life. Of course he’d want to know what had made his wife feel she had to rush off to Florida with almost no notice to be with her ex-husband. Any husband would. Most, I think, would raise significant objections.

  Kevin Cater didn’t mind at all. He was in his element when I met him, all ready to pretend the nanny was his wife for the benefit of anyone who happened to drop by. He played the part of the innocent, inconvenienced family man brilliantly. They could have told Dom and me then that Yanina was the nanny, but they decided, probably after discussing it with Lewis, that it would be more effective to have her play the part of Jeanette Cater. The hope, the assumption, was that I’d then think she must have been the dark-haired woman I’d seen outside the house with the two children. She thought she and her partners in deception were going to deal with me easily, neutralize the threat, persuade me to doubt my own perceptions and believe the lies instead, believe that my mind was playing tricks on me. Lewis will have said to them all, “Don’t worry about Beth Leeson. We can handle her, as long as we all stick to the script.”

  In the car park that day in Huntingdon, Yanina didn’t flinch. She played her part so convincingly, fully believing in her assured victory. She was the outraged, innocent car owner, shocked to find a stranger in her car. Except she wasn’t shocked at all. The four of them will have agreed that she should return to the car park dressed in Flora’s clothes, to make me think I was losing my mind. Yanina might not have known she’d find me inside the Range Rover, but she knew I’d be there.

  They must all have been prepared for me to say, “Why are you wearing Flora’s clothes? I’ve just seen her wearing those same clothes. Don’t tell me I haven’t.” Yanina was trusted, evidently, to be convincingly aghast and uncomprehending if I reacted in that way.

  Lewis had no worries about Kevin and Yanina. That’s why they were allowed to invite me and Dominic to Newnham House. Flora, Lewis decided, was the only possible weak link, the one who couldn’t necessarily be trusted not to let something slip. Better to move her to a different country, to be on the safe side. Meanwhile, he knew he could trust Kevin and Yanina to take charge of all the lying that needed to be done in England, while he and Flora lied with a matching confidence and determination in America—determination to win, to make sure that what they’ve all hidden so successfully remains hidden.

  The terrible secret. What could it be? If I’m right about everything I think I’ve worked out so far, then someone might be in prison . . . but who? And for what?

  The crime involved, because it has to be a crime, must be worse than what Lewis and Flora told me—worse than Flora accidentally killing Georgina and disowning her family, worse than her and Lewis misleading the authorities about the cause of Georgina’s death. No one trying to hide their guilt would invent something more likely to land them in jail than the truth. Lewis Braid is hardly an ordinary person, but I can’t see any reason why even he would do that.

  Which means the truth must represent a greater threat than the story he and Flora told me. And Kevin Cater and Yanina know exactly what it is. There’s no detail they don’t know. They’re not being deceived, like me, or even partially deceived. They’re fully informed and trusted participants in the deception. Whatever’s going on, they and Flora and Lewis are equal partners.

  Great. Good luck convincing PC Pollard of all this, or anyone else who can do anything about it.

  My stomach rumbles. I tell myself I can find the menu and order food any time. I don’t need to do it right now. There’s still so much I need to think through . . .

  Flora in the background when Lewis first phoned me, saying that she was lucky. She wasn’t in Florida then. It was the day before I saw her in the car park in Huntingdon. Which means Lewis had a recording of her voice saying, “I’m lucky,” because there’s no way she was there with him in Delray Beach at the time.

  Why would he have that on tape? It seems too much of a coincidence that he’d record her saying the very same words I heard her say outside Newnham House. Though a bigger question, maybe, is why she would arrive home on a Saturday morning and have that particular conversation while getting out of the car. If Flora needed to talk to someone and say not what I thought I heard her say at first but what I now believe I heard her say that day, then why wouldn’t she wait until she was . . .

  My heart starts to thud as another answer slots into place.

  Nobody’s in prison. No one at all.

  Adrenaline combined with an empty stomach makes me feel light-headed. It’s so obvious, once you think of it. It’s only taken me this long to see it because of an assumption I made, a stupid one. Then, immediately after leaping to the wrong conclusion, I found plenty of evidence that seemed to prove me right. It wasn’t evidence of anything, though. I just chose to believe it was.

  Now I know what was really going on. But what does it mean? How does it alter or add to the overall picture? I still don’t know that.

  I need to talk to Flora again. Whether she wants to talk to me or not, she’s going to have to. And she will because . . .

  Because people can make Flora do things she doesn’t want to do. Lewis can, Kevin and Yanina can, and you can too.

  If the answer that’s just come to me is right, and it has to be, then Flora can’t be playing her part in all this by choice. Can she?

  No. You know she isn’t. You saw her face. You know her. She’s your best friend.

  I pick up my phone and ring Lou back. “Can you access school records from home?” I ask her.

  “I’m not at home—” she starts to say.

  “Can you access the records from wherever you are?”

  “Only my emails and the main school Web site, which is public. Why?”

  “Could you get into the building if you went now?”

  “Yes, I’ve got the code for the—”

  “I need you to go. I need the mobile number you’ve got on record for Jeanette Cater. That�
��ll be on a database somewhere, won’t it?”

  “It should be. We encourage all parents to give us all their contact numbers. We require it, actually. Doesn’t mean all of them do it, though.”

  “I need that number,” I tell her.

  “Is it so important that it can’t wait till tomorrow?” she asks. “You can say if it is.”

  I don’t know how to answer. Will anything terrible happen tonight if I don’t make Lou interrupt her evening?

  “It is, then,” she says, when I fail to answer. “It’s fine. I’ll go in now. Sit tight. I’ll let you know, soon as I can.”

  I pace up and down the room, turn on the TV and mute it immediately like Zannah and Ben do at home. I press the Channel Plus button on the remote control until I find something I can bear to look at: a kitchen. Two men are sitting at a table while a large older woman, a redhead with her hair pulled back into a ponytail, walks around behind them. I stare for a few seconds, then switch the TV off again.

  I have no idea how to pass the time between now and when Lou rings me back. The desire to eat has left me completely. I don’t think I can stay in the room either.

  I grab my phone and key card and head downstairs and outside. I walk around the building, through the lush greenery of the gardens toward the pool terrace, where I soon realize I can’t stay. Everyone here looks far too relaxed, sprawled out on sunbeds with their eyes closed, cocktails in fruit-decorated glasses on tables next to them.

  I walk around to the front of the hotel and cross the road, planning to go back to the beach, but halfway along the narrow, roped-off path I change my mind and turn back.

  Finally I admit it to myself: I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going. This isn’t good. I need to get my head together if I’m going to speak to Flora again. Instead of running around frenetically, I need to keep still and focus.

  I force myself to walk slowly back to my room, breathing even more slowly. By the time I get back, I feel a little more composed. As if to reward me for sensibly taking myself in hand, my phone starts to buzz in my pocket as I push open the door to my room.

  “Lou!” I hope it’s her. I didn’t stop to look.