by Ruth Ware
The thick white catering string had gone. Not just untied, or snipped and thrown aside, but gone completely.
Someone had undone my careful precautions.
But who? And why?
The thought nagged at me as I walked slowly back up the hill to where Petra was still sitting, growing increasingly fretful, and it continued to nag as I pushed the buggy laboriously back up the hill, to where the house was waiting.
* * *
By the time I reached the front door, Petra was cross and grizzling, and looking at my watch I saw that it was long past her snack time, and in fact getting on for lunch. The buggy’s wheels were caked with mud, but since I had left the key to the utility room on the inside, I had no option other than the front door, so at last I got her out of the buggy, folded it awkwardly with one hand, holding Petra against my hip with the other to stop her from running off in search of more puddles, and left it in the porch. Then I pressed my thumb to the white glowing panel, and stood back as the door swung silently open.
The smell of frying bacon hit me instantly.
“Hello?”
I put Petra down cautiously on the bottom stair, shut the door, and prized off my muddy boots.
“Hello? Who’s there?”
“Oh, it’s you.” The voice was Rhiannon’s, and as I picked up Petra and began to make my way through to the kitchen, she came out of the doorway, holding a dripping bacon sandwich in one hand. She looked terrible, green around the gills and with dark shadows under her eyes as if she’d slept even less than me.
“Oh, you’re back,” I said unnecessarily, and she rolled her eyes and stalked past me to the stairs, taking a great bite of sandwich as she did.
“Hey,” I called after her as a blob of brown sauce hit the tiled floor with a splat. “Hey! Take a plate, can’t you?”
But she was already gone, loping up the stairs towards her room.
As she passed though I caught a whiff of something else—low and masked by the scent of bacon, but so odd and out of place, and yet so familiar, that it stopped me in my tracks.
It was a sweet, slightly rotten smell that jerked me sharply back to my own teenage years, though it still took me a minute to pin down. When the association finally clicked into place, though, I was certain—it was the cherry-ripe reek of cheap alcohol, leaching out of someone’s skin, the morning after it’s been drunk.
Shit.
Shit.
Part of me wanted to mutter that it was none of my business—that I was a nanny and had been hired for my expertise with younger children—that I had no experience with teenagers, and no idea of what Sandra and Bill would consider appropriate. Did fourteen-year-olds drink now? Was that considered okay?
But the other part of me knew that I was in loco parentis here. Whether or not Sandra would be concerned, I had seen enough to worry me. And there were plenty of red flags about Rhiannon’s behavior. But the question was, what should I do about it. What could I do about it?
The questions nagged at me as I made myself and Petra a sandwich and then put her down for her nap. I could go and question Rhiannon—but I was pretty sure she’d have a ready excuse, assuming she deigned to talk to me.
Then I remembered. Cass. If nothing else, she would be able to explain the exact sequence of the night’s events to me, and maybe give me an idea of whether I was ascribing more to this than I should. A bunch of fourteen-year-old girls at a birthday party . . . it wasn’t impossible Cass had supplied some alcopops herself, and Rhiannon had just drunk more than her fair share.
Cass’s return text was still in my list of messages, and I scrolled down until I found it, and pulled out the number. Then I waited while it rang.
“Yup?” The voice was rough, and Scottish, and very male.
I blinked, looked at the phone to check I had dialed the right number, and then put it back to my ear.
“Hello?” I said, cautiously. “Who is this?”
“I’m Craig,” said the voice. It didn’t sound like a kid, the voice had to be someone at least twenty, maybe older. And it definitely didn’t sound like anyone’s mum, or dad for that matter. “More to the fucking point, who the fuck are you?”
I was too shocked to reply. For a second I simply sat there, mouth open, trying to figure out what to say.
“Hello?” Craig said, irritably. “Hellooo?” And then, beneath his breath, “Stupid cunts wi’ their fucking wrong numbers.”
And then he hung up.
I shut my mouth and walked slowly through to the kitchen, still trying to figure out what had just happened.
Plainly, whoever that number belonged to, it wasn’t Elise’s mum. Which meant . . . well it could have meant that Rhiannon had written it down wrong, except that I had texted that number and got back a confirmation, supposedly from “Cass.”
Which meant that Rhiannon had been lying to me.
Which also meant that very probably, she hadn’t been out with Elise at all. Instead, she had very likely been with Craig.
Fuck.
The tablet was lying on the kitchen island, and I picked it up and tried to compose an email to Sandra and Bill.
The problem was, I didn’t know what to begin with. There was too much too say. Should I start with Rhiannon? Or Maddie’s behavior? Or should I lead with my concerns about the attic? The noises, and the way Jack and I had broken in, and the crazy writing?
What I wanted to tell them was everything—from the dead, rotten smell that still hung in my nostrils, and the broken shards of the doll’s head in the rubbish bin, right through to Maddie’s scribbled prison-cell drawing, and my conversation with Craig.
Something is wrong, I wanted to write. No, scrap that, everything is wrong. But . . . how could I tell them about Rhiannon and Maddie without seeming like I was criticizing their parenting? Let alone, how could I say what I had seen and heard in this house without being dismissed as just another superstitious nanny? How could I expect to persuade someone who hadn’t even seen the inside of that creepy, demented room?
The subject line first then. Anything I could think of seemed either hopelessly inadequate or ridiculously dramatic, and in the end I settled on An update from Heatherbrae.
Okay. Okay. Calm and factual. That was good. Now for the body of the email.
Dear Sandra and Bill, I wrote, and then sat back and nibbled at the fraying edge of the bandage on my finger, trying to think what to put next. First of all, I should tell you that Rhiannon arrived back this morning safe and sound, but I have a few concerns about her account of her trip to Elise’s.
Okay, that was good. That was clear and factual and nonaccusatory. But then how to segue from that into
Stupid cunts wi’ their fucking wrong numbers.
Let alone from that to
we hate you
There angry
GO AWAY
We hite you
Most of all, how to explain that I would not—could not—sleep in that room again, listen to those footsteps pacing above, breathe the same air as those rotted dusty feathers.
In the end I just sat there, staring at the screen, remembering the slow creak . . . creak . . . on the boards above me, and it was only when I heard Petra’s cranky wail coming over the intercom and looked at the clock that I realized it was time to pick up Maddie and Ellie from school.
Gone to get the girls I tapped out on the messaging screen to Rhiannon, we need to talk when I get back. And then, leaving the email unsent on the tablet, I ran upstairs to change Petra and bundle her into the car.
* * *
I didn’t think of the email again until nearly 9:00 p.m. The afternoon had been a good one—Maddie and Ellie had both been delighted to see Rhiannon, and she’d been touchingly sweet with them—a far cry from the glossy, entitled private school brat she played with me. She was visibly hungover, but she played Barbies with them in the playroom for a couple of hours, ate some pizza, and then disappeared upstairs while I did battle with baths and bed and then tuck
ed the girls in with a kiss and turned out the lights.
When I came downstairs I was gearing myself up for the promised discussion, trying to imagine what Rowan the Perfect Nanny would have done. Firm but clear. Don’t lead with sanctions and accusations, get her to talk.
But Rhiannon was waiting in the kitchen, tapping her nails on the counter, and I did a double take at what she was wearing. Full makeup, heels, miniskirt, and a midriff-baring top that showed off a pierced navel.
Oh shit.
“Um,” I began, but Rhiannon forestalled me.
“I’m going out.”
For a second I had no idea what to say. Then I pulled myself together.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, I do.”
I smiled. I could afford to smile. It was growing dark. I had the keys to the Tesla in my pocket, and the nearest station was the best part of ten miles.
“Are you planning to walk in those heels?” I asked. But Rhiannon smiled back.
“No, I’ve got a lift coming.”
Double shit.
“Okay, look, Rhiannon, this is very funny and everything, but you do know there’s absolutely no way I can let you do that. I’ll have to call your parents. I have to tell them—” Oh fuck this, fuck accusations, I had to say something to make her realize she’d been rumbled. “I have to tell them you came home stinking of alcohol.”
I expected the words to act like a punch to the gut, but she barely reacted.
“I don’t think you should do that,” was all she said.
But I had already picked up my phone.
I hadn’t checked it since before supper, and to my surprise, there was an email icon flashing. It was from Sandra.
I pressed it, in case it was something I should know about before I spoke to her, and then blinked in puzzlement as the subject header came up.
Re: An update from Heatherbrae
What? Had I sent the email without meaning to? I had logged into my personal Gmail on the children’s tablet, the one they used for playing games, and had a horrible feeling that I had forgotten to log out. Could Petra or one of the girls have accidentally pressed send?
Panic-stricken, I opened up Sandra’s reply, expecting something along the lines of ?? What’s going on? but it was totally different.
Thanks for the update Rowan, sounds good. Glad Rhiannon had a fun time with Elise. Bill is off to Dubai tonight, and I’m at a client dinner, but do text if anything urgent and I’ll try to FaceTime the girls tomorrow. X
It didn’t make sense. At least, it didn’t until I scrolled down a little further and looked at the email I had supposedly sent, at 2:48 p.m., a good twenty minutes after I’d left to collect Maddie and Ellie.
Dear Bill and Sandra, just an update from home. All is good, Rhiannon is back safe and sound from Elise’s house, and she seems to have had a great time.
We’ve had a very nice afternoon and she’s a credit to you both. Maddie and Ellie both send love.
Rowan.
There was total silence and then I turned to Rhiannon.
“You little shit.”
“Charming,” she drawled. “Is that the kind of language they expected at Little Nippers?”
“Little—what?” How did she know where I’d worked? But then I pulled myself together, refusing to be derailed. “Look, don’t try to change the subject. This is utterly unacceptable, and stupid to boot. First of all, I know about Craig.” A look of shock flickered across Rhiannon’s face at that. She recovered herself quickly, her expression back to bored indifference almost instantly. However, I had seen it and I couldn’t stop a triumphant smile from spreading across my own face. “Oh yes, didn’t he tell you that? I rang ‘Cass.’ Obviously the first thing I’m going to do is call your mum and explain that you sent that email, and the second thing I’m going to do is tell her about this Craig person and explain that you propose waltzing out with this guy I’ve never met, in a top that barely comes to your navel, and see what she has to say on that subject.”
I don’t know what I had expected—perhaps a show of temper, or even for Rhiannon to start crying and begging to be let off.
But her reaction was neither of those things. Instead, she smiled, rather sweetly, in a way that was totally unnerving, and said, “Oh, I don’t think you’ll do that.”
“Give me one good reason why not!”
“I’ll do better than that,” she said. “I’ll give you two. Rachel. Gerhardt.”
Oh fuck.
The silence in the kitchen was absolute.
For a second, I thought my knees were about to give way, and I groped my way for a barstool and slumped down on it, feeling my breath catch in my throat.
I was cornered. I realized that now. I just didn’t know quite how tight that corner was going to get.
Because this is where it gets very, very bad for me, doesn’t it, Mr. Wrexham?
This is where the police case on me shifted from being someone in the wrong place at the wrong time, to someone with a motive.
Because she was right. I couldn’t ring Sandra and Bill.
I couldn’t do that, because Rhiannon knew the truth.
It will be no surprise to you, Mr. Wrexham, not if you’ve read the newspaper pieces.
Because you will have known right from the outset that the nanny arrested in the Elincourt case was not Rowan Caine but Rachel Gerhardt.
But to the police, it was like a bombshell. Or, no, not a bombshell. More like one of those exploding piñatas that showers you with gifts.
Because I had handed them their case on a plate.
Afterwards they focused very hard on how I managed to do it, as if I were some kind of criminal mastermind, who had plotted all this in exhaustive detail. But what they couldn’t seem to understand was how temptingly, laughably simple it had been. There had been no forgery, no elaborate identity theft or manufactured papers. How did you obtain the fake identity papers, Rachel? they kept asking, but the truth was, there had been no fake papers. All I had done was pick up my friend Rowan’s nannying paperwork from her bedroom in our shared flat, and show it to Sandra. Background check, first aid certificate, CV, none of it had any photographs. There was absolutely no need for me to fake anything, and no way of Sandra knowing that the woman standing in front of her was not the person named on the certificates she was holding out.
And, I tried to tell myself, it wasn’t much of a deception. After all, I really did have those credentials—most of them, anyway. I had a background check and a first aid certificate. Like Rowan, I had worked in the baby room at Little Nippers, albeit not quite as long as she had, and not as supervisor. And I had done nannying beforehand, though not as much, and I wasn’t sure that my references would have been quite as gushing. But the basics were all there. The name thing was just a . . . technicality. I even had a clean driving license, just as I had told Sandra. The only problem was that I couldn’t show it to her because of the photo. But everything I had told her—every qualification I had claimed—it was all true.
Everything except for my name.
There was luck involved of course too. It had been lucky that Sandra had agreed to my request and hadn’t contacted Little Nippers themselves for a reference. If she had, they would have told her that Rowan Caine had left a couple of months back. Lucky that she never pushed me on the driving license.
And it had been lucky too that she used a remote payroll service, so that I never had to present Rowan’s passport in person and could simply forward the scan she had left on her computer desktop along with our shared bills.
The biggest piece of good fortune was that banks, slightly incredibly, didn’t seem to care whose name was on a bank transfer, as long as the account number and sort code matched up. That had been something I’d never expected. I had lain awake wondering how to figure that part out. Claim that my account was in a different name? Ask for cash, or checks made out to R. Gerhardt and cross my fingers Sandra didn’t ask why? I’d practically la
ughed when I found out that none of that mattered, that if you paid by transfer you could put Donald Duck in the payee box, and it would go through. It seemed unbelievably careless.
But the truth was, to begin with, I hadn’t even looked past that first stage. All I had focused on was getting that interview, standing in Heatherbrae House, looking Sandra and Bill in the eye. That was all I had wanted. That was the only reason I had answered the ad. And yet somehow, the opportunities had kept presenting themselves, like temptingly wrapped gifts on a plate, begging me to pick them up and make them mine.
I shouldn’t have done it, I know that now, Mr. Wrexham. But can’t you see—can’t you see what it must have been like?
Now, standing in the kitchen with Rhiannon laughing in my face, I felt a great wave of panic break over me, followed by a strange sense of something else—almost of relief, as if I had known this moment was coming, and was relieved to have it over and done with.
For a moment I thought about bluffing, asking her what she meant, pretending I had never heard the name Rachel Gerhardt. But only for a moment. If she had got far enough to discover my real name, she was not going to be thrown off the scent by an indignant denial.
“How did you find out?” I asked instead.
“Because, unlike my dear parents, I bother to do a little digging when a new girl turns up out of the blue. You’d be surprised what you can find out online. They teach it in school now, you know, managing your digital footprint. I guess they didn’t do that in your day?”
The barb was palpable, but I didn’t bother to respond. It scarcely seemed important. What mattered was how far she had dug, and why—and what exactly she had found out.
“It didn’t take me long to track down Rowan Caine,” Rhiannon was saying. “She’s pretty boring isn’t she? Not much ammunition.”
Ammunition. So that was what this was about. Rhiannon had been digging around online for any little indiscretion she could use as leverage. Only she had stumbled on something much, much bigger.
