by Ruth Ware
I was almost too frightened to stumble the last few steps up the flight of stairs to the nursery, but I forced myself, leaving the dogs in the hallway, tangled up in their own leads, and at last I was outside Petra’s door, sick with fear about what I was about to find.
It was closed, just as I’d left it, and I pushed down a sob in my throat as I turned the knob—but what I found there made me stop short on the threshold, blinking and trying to fight down my gasping breath.
Petra was asleep, in her cot, arms flung out to either side, sooty lashes sweeping her pink cheeks. Her bunny was clutched in her left hand, and she had plainly not stirred since I had put her down.
It didn’t make sense.
I had just enough self-control left to back out of the room, closing the door quietly behind me, before I sank to the floor in the hallway outside, my back hard against the knobbly banisters, my face in my hands, trying not to sob with shock and relief, feeling the wheeze in my chest as my lungs labored to take in enough oxygen to stabilize my pounding pulse.
With shaky hands, I pulled my inhaler out of my pocket and took a puff, then tried to make sense of it all. What had happened?
Had the sound not come from the monitor? But that was impossible—it was equipped with lights that illuminated to show when the baby was crying, in case you had the volume turned low for some reason. I had seen the lights. And the noise had been coming from the speaker, I was certain of it.
Had Petra had a nightmare and cried out? But when I thought back, that didn’t make sense either. It was not a baby’s cry. That was part of what had frightened me so much. The sound I’d heard was not the fretful wail I knew so well from the nursery but a long, throbbing shriek of terror, one made by a much older child, or even an adult.
“Hello?”
The voice came from downstairs, making me jump again, convulsively this time, and I stood, my pulse racing, and leaned over the bannisters.
“Hello? Who is it?” My voice came out not sharp and authoritative, as I had intended, but quavering and squeaky with fear. “Who’s there?” It had been an adult voice, a woman, and now I heard footsteps in the hall and saw a face below, peering up at me.
“You’ll be the new nanny, I dare say?”
It was a woman, perhaps fifty or sixty years old, her face ruddy and her body foreshortened by my perspective. She looked plump and motherly, but there was something in her voice and her expression that I couldn’t quite pin down. It wasn’t welcoming, that was for sure. A sort of . . . pinched disapproval?
There were leaves in my hair, and as I began to make my way down the flight of steps towards the ground floor, I saw that I’d left a trail of spattered mud on the thick carpet, in my headlong flight to Petra.
Two buttons had come adrift on my blouse and I fastened them and coughed, feeling my face still hot with exertion and fright.
“Um, hello. Yes. Yes, I’m Rowan. And you must be . . .”
“I’m Jean. Jean McKenzie.” She looked me up and down, not troubling to conceal her disapproval, and then shook her head. “It’s up to you, miss, but I don’t approve of keeping children locked out, and I dare say Mrs. Elincourt wouldna like it either.”
“Locked out?” I was puzzled for a moment. “What do you mean?”
“I found the poor bairns shivering on the step in their sundresses when I came to clean.”
“But wait”—I put out a hand—“hang on a second. I didn’t lock anyone out. They ran away from me. I was out looking for them. I left the back door open for them.”
“It was locked when I arrived,” Jean said stiffly. I shook my head.
“It must have blown shut but I didn’t lock it. I wouldn’t.”
“It was locked when I arrived,” was all she said, with a touch of stubbornness this time.
Anger flared inside me, replacing the fear I’d felt for Petra. Was she accusing me of lying?
“Well . . . maybe it came off the latch or something,” I said at last. “Are the girls okay?”
“Aye, they’re having a bite in the kitchen wi’ me.”
“Were you—” I stopped, trying to figure out how to phrase this without placing myself even lower in her estimation. Plainly, for whatever reason, this woman didn’t like me, and I mustn’t give her any ammunition to report to Sandra. “I came back because I heard a sound from Petra on the baby monitor. Did you hear her?”
“She’s not let out a peep,” Jean said firmly. “I’ve been keeping my eye on them all”—Unlike you, was the unspoken subtext—“and I’d have heard her if she was greeting.”
“Greeting?”
“Crying,” Jean said impatiently.
“Maddie then? Or Ellie? Did either of them come up?”
“They’ve been down in the kitchen with me, miss,” Jean said, a touch of real crossness in her voice. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to be getting back to them. They’re too wee to be left alone wi’ the stove.”
“Of course.” I felt my cheeks flush with the implied criticism. “But please, that’s my job. I’ll give them lunch.”
“I’ve given it to them already. The poor wee mites were ravenous, they needed something hot in them.”
I felt my temper, already frayed by the stress of the morning, begin to break.
“Look, Mrs. . . .” I groped for the name, and then found it, “McKenzie, I’ve already explained, the girls ran away from me; I didn’t lock them out. Maybe if they got a bit cold and scared waiting for someone to let them in, that’ll make them think twice about running off next time. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do.”
I pushed past her and stalked into the kitchen, feeling her eyes boring into my back.
In the kitchen Maddie and Ellie were sitting at the breakfast bar eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking juice, with what looked like the remains of a pizza on a plate by the sink. I felt my jaw tighten. All those foods were strictly on Sandra’s “occasional treat” list. I’d been planning to settle them down for a film in the afternoon with some cookies in the TV room. Now that was off the menu, Mrs. McKenzie was in their good books, and I would be the bitch nanny who locked them out and had to enforce a healthy supper.
I pushed down my irritation and made myself smile pleasantly.
“Hello, girls, were you playing hide-and-seek?”
“Yes,” Ellie said with a giggle, but then she remembered our earlier quarrel, and frowned. “You hurt my wrist.”
She held it out, and there, to my chagrin, was a ring of bruises on the pale skin of her stick-thin wrist.
I felt my cheeks color.
I thought about arguing with her, but I didn’t want to raise the issue in front of Mrs. McKenzie, and besides, it seemed like I’d done enough to antagonize them both today. Better to swallow my pride.
“I’m ever so sorry, Ellie.” I bent down beside her at the breakfast bar so that our heads were on a level, speaking softly so that Mrs. McKenzie wouldn’t hear. “I truly didn’t mean to. I was just worried you’d hurt yourself on the drive, but I really apologize if I was holding your arm too hard. It was an accident, I promise, and I feel terrible about it. Can we be friends?”
For a second, I thought I saw Ellie wavering, then she jerked and gave a little whimper.
Beneath the breakfast bar I saw Maddie’s hand whip back into her lap.
“Maddie,” I said quietly, “what just happened?”
“Nothing,” Maddie said, almost inaudibly, speaking to her plate more than me.
“Ellie?”
“N-nothing,” Ellie said, but she was rubbing her arm, and there were tears in her bright blue eyes.
“I don’t believe you. Let me see your arm.”
“Nothing!” Ellie said, more fiercely. She pulled down her cardigan and gave me a look of angry betrayal. “I said nothing, go away!”
“Okay.”
I stood up. Whatever chance I had had there with Ellie, I’d blown it for the moment. Or rather Maddie had.
M
rs. McKenzie was standing against the counter, her arms crossed, watching us. Then she folded the tea towel and hung it over the stove rail.
“Well, I’ll be away now, girls,” she said. Her voice, when she spoke to the children, was softer and far more friendly than the terse, clipped tone she’d used with me. She bent and dropped a kiss on top of each head, first Ellie’s blond curls, then Maddie’s wispy dark locks. “You give your wee sister a kiss from me, now, mind.”
“Yes, Mrs. M,” Ellie said obediently. Maddie said nothing, but she squeezed Mrs. McKenzie’s waist with one arm, and I thought I saw a wistful look in her eye as her gaze followed the woman to the door.
“Goodbye now, girls,” Mrs. McKenzie said, and then she was gone. Outside I heard a car start up and bump down the drive to the road.
Alone in the kitchen with the two little girls I felt suddenly drained, and I sank down on the armchair in the corner of the room, wanting nothing more than to put my face in my hands and bawl. What had I taken on with these two hostile little creatures? And yet, I couldn’t blame them. I could only imagine how I would have reacted if I’d been left for a week with a total stranger.
The last thing I could cope with was losing the children in the grounds again, so while they finished up their cookies, I crossed into the hallway and examined the inside of the big front door. There was no key—no keyhole even, as I’d observed the very first time I had arrived. Instead, the white panel I had noticed contained a thumb sensor—Sandra had programmed my thumbprint into her phone app earlier that morning, before she left, and shown me how to operate it.
There was a matching panel on the inside, and I gingerly touched it, watching as a series of illuminated icons sprang into life. One of them was a big key, and remembering Sandra’s instructions, I tapped it cautiously, and heard a grinding click as the deadlocks inside the door slid home. There was something rather dramatic, even ominous about the sound, almost like a prison-cell lock grinding into place. But at least the door was secure now. There was no way Maddie or Ellie could even reach the panel without a set of steps, let alone activate the lock, since I very much doubted Sandra would have programmed their fingerprints into the system.
Then I went into the utility room. The door there operated with just a regular lock and key—as if Sandra and Bill’s budget had run out, or as if they didn’t care about the servants’ entrance. Or maybe there was some practical reason one door needed to be traditionally operated. Something to do with power cuts or building regulations, perhaps. Either way, it was a relief to be faced with technology an average person could figure out, and it was with a feeling of satisfaction that I twisted the key firmly in the lock and then tucked it away on the doorframe above, just as the binder had instructed. We keep all keys for the doors operated by traditional locks on the doorframe above the corresponding door, so that they are handy in case of emergency but out of reach of the children, the paragraph had read. There was something comforting about seeing it up there, far away from little fingers.
Mission accomplished, I went back into the kitchen, my best and brightest smile firmly plastered on.
“Right, girls, what do you say we go through to the TV room and watch a movie. Frozen? Moana?”
“Yay, Frozen!” Ellie said, but Maddie butted in.
“We hate Frozen.”
“Really?” I made my voice skeptical. “Really? Because do you know, I love Frozen. In fact I know a sing-along version of Frozen where they have the words on the screen and I’m really good at joining in on all the songs.”
Behind Maddie I could see Ellie looking desperate but too scared to contradict her sister.
“We hate Frozen,” Maddie repeated stubbornly. “Come on, Ellie, let’s go play in our room.”
I watched as she slid down from her stool and stomped into the hallway, the dogs’ eyes following her with puzzlement as she went. In the doorway she paused and jerked her head meaningfully at her sister. Ellie’s bottom lip quivered.
“We can still watch it if you want, Ellie,” I said, keeping my voice as light as I could. “We could watch it together, just you and me. I could make popcorn.”
For a minute I thought I saw Ellie hesitate. But then something in her face seemed to harden, and she shook her head, slid from her stool, and turned to follow her sister.
As the sound of their footsteps faded away up the stairs, I sighed and then turned to put on the kettle, to make myself a pot of tea. At least I would have half an hour to myself, to try to figure out the situation.
But before I had even finished filling the kettle, the baby monitor in my pocket gave a crackle and then broke into a fretful coughing cry, telling me that Petra had woken up, and I was back on duty.
No rest for the wicked then.
What had I taken on?
I know I’m going on. And I know you must be wondering when the hell I’m going to get to the point—to the reason I’m here, in this prison cell, and the reason I shouldn’t be.
And I promise you, it’s coming. But I can’t—I can’t seem to explain the situation quickly. That was the problem with Mr. Gates. He never let me explain properly—to show how it all built up, all the little things, all the sleepless nights and the loneliness and the isolation, and the craziness of the house and the cameras and everything else. To explain properly, I have to tell you how it happened. Day by day. Night by night. Piece by piece.
Only that sounds as if I’m building something—a house perhaps. Or a picture in a jigsaw. Piece by piece. And the truth is, it was the other way around. Piece by piece, I was being torn apart.
And the first piece was that night.
That first evening . . . well, it wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t the best either, not by a long stretch.
Petra woke up from her nap cranky and fretful, and Maddie and Ellie refused to come out of their room all afternoon, even for supper, no matter how much I pleaded, no matter what ultimatums I laid down. No pudding unless you are downstairs by the time I count from five . . . four . . . three . . . no sound of feet on the stairs . . . two . . . one and a half . . .
It was when I said one and a half that I knew I had lost.
They weren’t coming.
For a moment I thought about dragging them out. Ellie was small enough for me to grab her round the waist and carry her forcibly downstairs—but I had just enough sanity left to know that if I started that way, I would never be able to dial it back, and besides, it wasn’t Ellie who was the problem, it was Maddie, and she was eight and solidly built, and there was no way I could carry a kicking, screaming, fighting child down that long, curving staircase all by myself, still less, force her to sit down and eat something once I got her into the kitchen.
In the end I capitulated and, after checking Sandra’s suggested menu plan in the binder, I took pasta and pesto up to their bedroom—though the memory of those meek little heads bent over Jean McKenzie’s chocolate chip cookies was bitter in the back of my head as I knocked on the door and heard Maddie’s fierce Go away!
“It’s me,” I said meekly. “I’ve got your pasta. I’ll leave it here outside the door. But me and Petra will be downstairs having ice cream if you want some pudding.”
And then I left. It was all I could do.
Downstairs in the kitchen, I tried to stop Petra from throwing her pasta on the floor, and I watched Maddie and Ellie on the iPad. My personalized log-in gave me permission to view the cameras in the children’s room, playroom, kitchen, and outside, and to control the lights and the music in some of the other rooms, but there was a whole menu of settings on the left that was grayed out and unavailable. I guessed I would have needed Sandra’s log-in to control those.
Although I still found it a little creepy to be able to spy on the children from afar like this, I began to appreciate how useful it was. I was able to watch from my seat by the breakfast bar as Maddie moved towards the bedroom door and then came back into view of the cameras, dragging the tray of food across the carpet.
There was a little table in the middle of the room, and I watched as she directed Ellie to one seat and put out their bowls and cutlery, and sat opposite her sister. I didn’t have the sound on, but it was plain from her actions that she was bossing Ellie around and telling her to eat up . . . probably making her try the peas I had mixed into the pesto, judging by Ellie’s gestures as she protested. My heart gave a funny little clench, of angry pity mixed with a kind of affection. Oh, Maddie, I wanted to say. It doesn’t have to be like this. We don’t have to be enemies.
But for the moment at least, it seemed like we did.
After supper I bathed Petra, listening with half an ear to the sounds of some kind of audio book coming from Maddie and Ellie’s room, muffled by the splashing of water, and then I put her to bed, or rather tried to.
I did exactly as the binder said, following the instructions to the letter, just as I had at lunchtime, but this time it wasn’t working. Petra groused and thrashed and ripped off her nappy, and then when I put her firmly back into it and buttoned her sleep suit up the back, so she couldn’t take it off, she began to wail, loudly and persistently.
For more than an hour I followed the binder’s instructions and sat there, with my hand patiently on her back, listening to the soothingly repetitive jingle of the mobile and watching the lights circle on the ceiling, but it wasn’t helping. Petra was getting more and more upset, and her cries were raising in pitch from irritated to angry, and from there to borderline hysterical.
As I sat there, stroking and trying not to let the tension in my wrist and hand convey itself to Petra, I glanced nervously up at the camera in the corner of the room. Maybe I was being watched right now. I could imagine Sandra at some corporate event, tensely sipping champagne as she followed the nursery feed on her phone. Was I about to get a call asking me what the hell I was doing?
The binder said to avoid taking Petra out of her cot after the lights were out, but the alternative, just leaving her there, didn’t seem to be working either. In the end I picked her up and put her over my shoulder, walking her up and down the room, but she wailed angrily in my arms, arching her back as though trying to tip herself out of my grasp. So I put her back in the cot and she hauled herself to her feet and stood, sobbing furiously, her little red face pressed against the bars.
