by Ruth Ware
“I couldn’t understand it,” she said, a little smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “It all matched up—the name, the date of birth, the time at that nursery with the stupid twee name—Little Nippers,” she said mockingly. “Ugh. But then suddenly there were all these pictures from Thailand and Vietnam. And when I saw you on the driveway, I began to think I’d fucked up, that maybe I did have the wrong person. It took me a few hours to track down the real you. Must be losing my touch. Shame for you she doesn’t keep her friend list private. Or that you didn’t bother to delete your Facebook profile.”
Fuck. So it had been as simple as that. As simple as scrolling down a list of Rowan’s Facebook friends and picking out the face I had so obligingly posted up for all the world to see. How could I have been so stupid? But truthfully, it had never occurred to me that anyone would join the dots so assiduously. And I hadn’t been setting out to deceive, that’s the thing. That’s what I tried to explain to the police. If I had really been setting up a fraudulent second life, wouldn’t I have bothered to cover my tracks?
Because this wasn’t fraud, not really. Not in the way the police meant. It was . . . it was just an accident, really. The equivalent of borrowing your friend’s car while they’re away. I never meant for all this to happen.
The problem was, the thing I couldn’t tell the police, was why I had come to Heatherbrae under an assumed name. They kept asking me and asking me and digging and digging, and I kept floundering, and trying to come up with reasons—things like, Rowan’s references were better than mine (which was true) and she had more experience than me (true again). I think at first they thought I must have some deep, dark professional secret—a lapsed registration, or a conviction as a sex offender or something. And of course none of that was the case, and as hard as they tried to find something, there was nothing wrong with my own papers.
It looked very, very bad for me, I knew that, even at the time. But I kept telling myself, if Rhiannon hadn’t discovered why I had come here, then perhaps the police wouldn’t either.
But that was stupid, of course. They are the police. It’s their job to dig.
It took them some time. Days, maybe even weeks, I can’t totally remember. The interrogation starts to run together after a while, the days blurring into one another, as they picked and picked and prodded and probed. But eventually they came into the room holding a piece of paper and they were smiling like Cheshire cats, while simultaneously somehow trying to look grave and professional.
And I knew. I knew that they knew.
And I knew that I was sunk.
But that was afterwards. And I’m getting ahead of myself.
I have to tell the other part. The hardest part. The part I can’t quite believe even now.
And the part I can’t fully explain, even to myself.
I have to tell you about that night.
After Rhiannon walked out, I stood for a long moment in the hallway, watching the lights of the van disappear down the drive, and trying to figure out what I should do. Should I phone Sandra? And say what? Confess? Brazen it out?
I looked at my watch. It was just half past nine. The line from Sandra’s email floated into my head—Bill is off to Dubai tonight, and I’m at a client dinner, but do text if anything urgent.
There was no way I could ambush her with all this in the middle of a client dinner, still less, text it through.
Oh, hi, Sandra, hope all is good. FYI, Rhiannon has gone out with a strange bloke, and I applied for this job under a fake name. Speak soon!
The idea would have been laughable if the whole situation hadn’t been so serious. Shit. Shit. Could I email her and explain the situation properly? Maybe. Though if I were going to do that, I should really have done it earlier, before Rhiannon sent that fake update. It would be even harder to explain myself now.
But as I pulled the tablet towards myself, I realized I couldn’t really email. That was the coward’s way out. I owed her a call—to explain myself, if not face-to-face, then at least in person. But what the hell could I say?
Shit.
The bottle of wine was there on the kitchen counter, like an invitation, and I poured out a glass, trying to steady my nerves, and then another, this time with a glance at the camera squatting in the corner. But I no longer cared. The shit was about to hit the fan, and soon whatever footage Sandra and Bill had on me would be the least of my worries.
It was deliberate self-sabotage, I knew that really, in my heart of hearts, as I filled the glass for the third time. By the time there was only one glass left in the bottle I knew the truth—I was too drunk to call Sandra now, too drunk to do anything sensible at all, except go to bed.
* * *
Up on the top landing, I stood for a long time, my hand on the rounded knob to my bedroom, summoning up the courage to enter. But I could not do it. There was a dark crack at the bottom of the door, and I had a sudden, unsettling image of something loathsome and shadowy slithering out from beneath it, following me down the stairs, enveloping me in its darkness . . .
Instead, I found myself letting my hand drop and then backing away, almost as if that dark something might indeed come after me if I turned my back. Then, at the top of the stairs, I turned resolutely and all but ran back downstairs to the warmth of the kitchen, ashamed of myself, of my own cowardice, of everything.
The kitchen was cozy and bright, but when I shut my eyes I could still smell the chilly breath of the attic air coursing out beneath my bedroom door—and as I stood, irresolute, wondering whether to make up a bed on the sofa or try to stay awake for Rhiannon’s return, I could feel the throb of my finger where I had sliced it on that vile broken doll’s head. I had put a bandage over it, but the skin beneath felt fat and swollen, as if infection was setting in.
Walking over to the sink, I pulled off the dressing, and then jumped, convulsively, as there was a thud at the back door.
“Wh-who is it?” I called out, trying not to let my voice shake.
“It’s me, Jack.” The voice came from outside, muffled by the wind. “I’ve got the dogs.”
“Come in, I’m just—”
The door opened, letting in a gust of cold air, and I heard his footsteps in the utility room, and the thud of his boots as he pulled them off and let them drop onto the mat, and the barking of the dogs as they capered around him while he tried to hush them. At last they settled into their baskets, and he came into the kitchen.
“I don’t normally walk them so late, but I got caught up. I’m surprised you’re still awake. Good day?”
“Not really,” I said. My head was swimming, and I realized afresh how drunk I was. Would Jack notice?
“No?” Jack raised an eyebrow. “What happened?”
“I had a . . .” Jesus, where to start. “I had a bit of a run-in with Rhiannon.”
“What kind of a run-in?”
“She came back and we—” I stopped, unsure how to put this. It felt completely wrong to put the full picture to Jack before I confessed to Sandra, and I was pretty sure I would be breaking all sorts of confidentiality guidelines if I discussed Rhiannon’s problems with someone who was not her parent. But on the other hand, I felt that I might go crazy if I didn’t confide at least some of this in another adult. And perhaps there was history here, for it was becoming clearer and clearer that not everything had been included in that big red binder. “We argued,” I said at last. “And I threatened to call Sandra and she—she just—” But I couldn’t finish.
“What happened?” Jack pulled out a chair, and I sank into it, feeling despair wash over me again.
“She’s gone. She’s gone out by herself—with some awful unsuitable friend. I told her not to, but she went anyway, and I don’t know what to do—what to tell Sandra.”
“Look, don’t worry about Rhiannon. She’s a canny wee thing, pretty independent, and I highly doubt she’ll come to any harm, much as Sandra and Bill might disapprove.”
“But what if she does
? What if something happens to her and it’s on my watch?”
“You’re a nanny, not a jailer. What were you supposed to do—chain her to her bed?”
“You’re right,” I said at last. “I know you’re right, it’s just— Oh God,” the words burst out of me of their own accord. “I’m so tired, Jack. I can’t think, and it doesn’t help that my hand hurts like a bastard every time I touch anything.”
“What happened to your hand?”
I looked down at it, cradled in my lap, feeling it throb in time with my pulse.
“I cut it.” I didn’t want to go into the hows and whys now, but the thought of that grinning, evil little face made me shudder, involuntarily.
Jack frowned.
“Can I take a look?”
I said nothing, just nodded, and held out my hand, and he took it very gently, angling it towards the light. Very lightly, he pressed the puffy skin either side of the cut, and made a face.
“It doesn’t look too good, if you don’t mind me saying. Did you put anything on it, when you cut it?”
“Just a bandage.”
“I didn’t mean that, I meant, antiseptic. Anything like that?”
“Do you think it really needs it?”
He nodded.
“It’s deep, and I don’t like the way it’s puffed up like that, looks like it could be getting infected. Let me go and see what Sandra’s got.”
He stood, pushing back his chair with a screech, and walked through to the utility room, where there was a small medicine cabinet on the wall. I had found the bandages in there earlier, and hadn’t noticed anything like antiseptic or rubbing alcohol, just a jumble of Peppa Pig bandages and bottles of children’s liquid paracetamol.
“Nothing,” Jack said, coming back through into the kitchen. “Or at least, nothing except six different flavors of Calpol. Come back to mine, I’ve got a proper first aid kit in the flat.”
“I—I can’t.” I straightened up, pulled my hand away, curled my injured finger to my palm, feeling it throb with pain. “I can’t leave the kids.”
“You’re not leaving anyone,” Jack said patiently. “You’re right across the courtyard, you can take the baby monitor. Sandra and Bill sit out in the garden all the time in the summer. It’s no different. If you hear a peep you can be back there before they even wake up.”
“Well . . .” I said slowly. Thoughts flickered through the back of my head, their edges softened and blurred by the amount of wine I’d drunk earlier. I could ask him to bring the first aid supplies back here, couldn’t I? But a little part of me . . . okay, no, a big part of me . . . that part was curious. I wanted to go with Jack. I wanted to see inside his flat.
And, to be completely truthful, Mr. Wrexham, I wanted to get out of this house.
If you really thought there was a threat, how could you leave the kids to deal with it? It was the woman police officer who asked me that, barely trying to conceal her disgust as she asked the question.
And I tried to explain. I tried to tell her how the kids had seen nothing, heard nothing. How every little bit of malevolence had seemed to be directed solely at me. I had heard the footsteps. I was the one who had read those messages. I had been kept awake, night after night, by the noises and the doorbells and the cold.
None of the others, even Jack, had seen or heard what I had.
If there was something in that house, and even now I only half believed that there could be, in spite of everything that had happened, if there was, then it was out to get me. Me and the other four nannies who had packed up and left in a hurry.
And I just wanted five minutes out from its influence. Just five minutes, with the baby monitor in my pocket and the tablet with its surveillance cameras under my arm. Was that too much to ask?
The police officer didn’t seem to buy it. She just stood, shaking her head in disbelief, her lip curled with contempt for the stupid, selfish, careless bitch sitting opposite her.
But do you buy it, Mr. Wrexham? Do you understand, how hard it was, shut up there, night after night with nothing but the sound of pacing footsteps? Do you understand why just those few yards across the courtyard seemed like both nothing at all, and everything?
I don’t know. I’m not sure if I’ve managed to convince you, to explain what it was like, what it was really like.
All I can tell you is that I picked up the monitor, and the tablet, and I followed Jack as he crossed the kitchen and held open the back door for me, shutting it behind us both. I felt the warmth of his skin, as he shepherded me across the dark, uneven cobblestoned courtyard to the stairs up to his flat. And I mounted the stairs after him, watching the flex and shift of his muscles under his T-shirt as he climbed.
At the top he pulled a key out of his pocket, twisted it in the lock, and then stood back to let me pass inside.
Inside, I expected Jack to fumble for a panel or pull out his phone, but instead he reached out, flicked something, and as the lights came on, I saw a perfectly ordinary light switch made of white plastic. The relief was so absurd, and so great, that I almost laughed.
“Don’t you have a control panel?”
“No, thank God! These were designed as staff accommodation. No point in wasting technology on the likes of us.”
“I suppose so.”
He flicked on another light, and I saw a small, bright sitting room, furnished with good basics and a faded cotton sofa. The remains of a log fire smoldered in the little stove in the corner, and I could see a kitchenette on the far side. Beyond was another door, that I supposed was his bedroom, but it didn’t seem polite to ask.
“Right, sit here,” he said, pointing at the sofa, “and I’ll be back with a proper dressing for that cut.”
I nodded, grateful for the sense of being taken care of, but mostly just content to sit there, feeling the warmth of the fire on my face and the reassuringly cheap and cheerful Ikea cushions at my back while Jack rummaged in the kitchen cupboards behind me. The sofa was exactly like the one Rowan and I had back in our flat in London. Ektorp, it was called, or something like that. It had been Rowan’s mum’s before she handed it down to us. Guaranteed to last for ten years, with a washable cotton cover that had once been red, in Jack’s case, but had faded to a slightly streaky dark pink with sun and repeated launderings.
Sitting on it was like coming home.
After the luxurious split personality of Heatherbrae, there was something not just refreshing, but endearing about this place. It was solidly built, and all of a piece—no sudden disorienting switches from Victorian opulence to sleek futuristic technology. Everything was reassuringly homey, from the mug stains on the coffee table, to the medley of photos propped on the mantelpiece—friends and their kids, or maybe nieces and nephews. One little boy cropped up more than once, clearly a relative from the family resemblance.
I felt my eyes closing, two sleep-deprived nights catching up with me . . . and then I heard a cough and Jack was standing in front of me, a dressing and some disinfectant in one hand, and two glasses in the other.
“D’you want a drink?” he asked, and I looked up puzzled.
“A drink? No, I’m fine, thanks.”
“Are you sure? You might need something to take the edge off when I put this stuff on. It’s going to sting. And I think there’s a wee bit of glass or something still in there.”
I shook my head, but he was right. It did sting like fuck, first when he dabbed it with antiseptic, and then again when he pushed a pair of tweezers deep inside the cut, and I felt the sickening grind of metal against glass, and the sting of a forgotten shard sliding deeper into my finger.
“Fuck!” The groan slipped out without my meaning to voice it, but Jack was grinning, holding something bloodstained up at the end of his tweezers.
“Got it. Well done. That must have hurt like a bastard.”
My hand was shaking as he sat down beside me.
“You know, you’ve stuck it out longer than the last few.”
&
nbsp; “What do you mean?”
“The last couple of nannies. Actually, I tell a lie, Katya made it to three weeks, I think. But since Holly, they’ve come and gone like butterflies.”
“Who was Holly?”
“She was the first one, the one who stayed the longest. Looked after Maddie and Ellie when they were wee, and she stayed for nearly three years, until—” He stopped, seeming to think better of what he had been about to say. “Well, never mind that. And number two, Lauren, she stayed nearly eight months. But the one after her didn’t last a week. And the one before Katya, Maja her name was, she left the first night.”
“The first night? What happened?”
“She called a taxi, left in the middle of the night. Left half her things too; Sandra had to send them on.”
“I don’t mean that, I mean, what happened to make her leave?”
“Oh, well . . . that, I don’t really know. I always thought—” He flushed, the back of his neck staining red as he looked down at his empty glass.
“Go on,” I prompted, and he shook his head, as if angry at himself.
“Fuck it, I said I wouldna do this.”
“Do what?”
“I don’t bad-mouth my employers, Rowan, I told you that on the first day.”
The name gave me a guilty jolt, a reminder of all that I was concealing from him, but I pushed the thought aside, too intent on what he had been about to say to worry about my own secrets. Suddenly I had to know what had driven them away, those other girls, my predecessors. What had set them running?
“Jack, listen,” I said. I hesitated, then put a hand on his arm. “It’s not disloyalty. I’m their employee too, remember? We’re colleagues. You’re not shooting your mouth off to an outsider. You’re allowed to talk about work stuff to a colleague. It’s what keeps you sane.”
“Aye?” He looked up from his contemplation of the whiskey glass, and gave me a little wry smile, rather bitter. “Is that so? Well . . . I’ve said half of it already, so I might as well tell you the whole lot. You’ve maybe a right to know anyway. I always thought what scared them off—” He took a breath, as if steeling himself to do something unpleasant. “I thought it was maybe . . . Bill.”
