by Aria Ford
The diminutive lady in the hallway looked up at me again, more blankly this time. I realized I had been babbling and cleared my throat.
“Emma Blunt,” I said, holding out my hand and making a rather sickly attempt at a grin. “You were expecting me, I think?”
The older woman cleared her throat. “I’m Paula Laroche, the charlady. Mr. Carring said to expect visitors. You want to come in?”
“Yes!” I said, weak with relief. “I’m looking after the children. Um, Jack and…Camilla? I’m going to be here for a month.” I asked, reaching awkwardly for the sheaf of notes he sent with me to check I had the names right.
“Yes! Yes.” The woman nodded, face lighting up as I said the names of the children. “Come this way. They’re upstairs.”
“Thank you.”
Feeling grateful to Paula, I followed her upstairs. The stairs seemed to go on forever and I looked around as we went, marveling at the stylish understatement of the house. The stairs were laminated wood with a wrought-iron balustrade, something between delightfully vintage and insanely modern at the same time. The walls were cream, the stairs pale wood, the whole house scented with some subtle perfume. I was already falling in love with the place.
“Here.” she said, stopping outside a painted wooden door. The floor had changed again: here it was carpeted, the carpet so soft and silky it absorbed all sound. She knocked once, then opened it.
“Paula!” I heard a childish voice cry out happily, and a second later a little boy cannoned into my newfound guardian angel, embracing her knees.
“I have a visitor for you,” she said gently. Her long, knotted fingers stroked the gilded softness of his hair. Two wide green-brown eyes stared up at me solemnly.
The little boy, Jack, was looking up at me like a diminutive angel. He had a soft face, wide eyes with long lashes, and slightly curly gold hair. His body was somewhere between the softness of childhood and the start of teenage growth. He was, according to my list, nine years old. I felt my heart stir with something that I could swear was awe—or the beginning of love.
I smiled down at him. He gazed at me. He kept his hand resolutely in Paula’s, and moved so that she was between himself and I. He kept out of sight for a second, and then peered up again, to see, I guessed, if I was still looking. I grinned at him again and he smiled back, shy, hand wringing his shirt.
“You’re Jack, yes?” I asked gently. “Hi, I’m Emma.”
He shot behind Paula, not saying a word. He was shy it seemed. Paula chuckled.
“Come now, master Jack. Miss Emma wanted to say something to you,” she said, voice still laughing.
“Don’t want to come out,” Jack said firmly.
I smiled. He seemed a little hesitant, almost as one younger than himself would be. But no one said he had to march boldly out and greet me, now did they? And far rather a shy angel than a wounded, violent child, any day.
“Okay, Jack,” I said gently. “Now let’s go and find your sister. Okay?”
Jack looked up at me, eyes like saucers. “Cammi’s not playing.”
“Oh?” I asked. I looked inquiringly at Paula, who shrugged.
“Miss Cammi’s probably upstairs, Miss Emma,” she said carefully. “She’s very…” she made a gesture with her hands that I took to mean unhappiness, or nerves. I nodded.
“We’ll give her some time,” I nodded. “Isn’t that right, Jack?” I asked. He looked at me with those soft eyes and grinned.
“You like cars, Emma?”
I couldn’t help smiling at his candidness, his enthusiasm. “Yes!” I nodded. I do like cars. At one time, my guilty pleasure was the Grand Prix on TV. I haven’t watched for years, but I still followed the news.
“Come and see my cars!” Jack said. He took my hand and led me across the room, which I assumed—rightly, it seemed—to be some activity room for the children. It had an uncarpeted, high-polished laminate floor, long windows blazing with sunshine and a strange absence of all but the most basic furniture. He went to a wooden box and lifted the lid. Inside were cars. Beautiful models, made to scale—priceless, probably. I stared.
“An’ this one’s a BMW, and this one…” Jack was busy scratching round in the box, producing a bright red one with a rearing-horse insignia in tiny paintwork on the bonnet, “this one’s my favorite!” he said proudly. “It’s a Ferrari!”
I smiled, noting Paula disappeared somewhere during the interaction. “It’s beautiful.”
He had it on the floor, making car noises.
“Vroom, vroom! Eeee…” he made the cornering noise, pushing it along on two wheels. The wheels—real rubber, I noted—left a slight stain on the pristine pale-wood flooring.
I reached out to touch the stain, wondering if I could take it off with a toothbrush. He jerked his hand away from the car and looked up at me, eyes swimming.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. He hastily began to gather up the cars, and I felt my heart twist achingly.
“No, Jack,” I said gently. “What’s the matter? We don’t have to stop playing.”
“We don’t?” He put the car in carefully as I came to join him at the trunk.
“No,” I said gently. “What’s up? Did you think I was mad because of the mark on the floor?”
He nodded, a tear running down his face. I swallowed hard, feeling suddenly angry. If there is one thing I hate more than anything, it is people who spoil their kids—often as compensation—and then fly off the handle when they accidentally break or damage something by playing with it. If they didn’t want to buy something expensive, they shouldn’t have.
“Jack,” I said, gentle but firm. “It’s rubber. It’ll come off the floor. It doesn’t matter. Your daddy bought these for you. He didn’t want you to just look at them, now, did he?”
Jack swallowed hard. “I dunno!” he wailed. “Daddy gets so angry sometimes and…and it’s not my fault I break things sometimes. He doesn’t understand.” His lip wobbled dangerously and he looked at his shoes.
I swallowed hard, trying not to let my anger show. I wasn’t angry with Jack. I was angry with Alexander Carring. Of all the arrogant, emotionless…
“It’s okay,” I said gently. “It’s okay. Daddy’s got his own problems, I’m sure. But if we want to play cars properly, I have much better ones.”
“You do?” he looked up at me, eyes round.
“Yes,” I said firmly. We’d be making our own cars, out of whatever junk I could find. At least he could play properly with those. “But first,” I said, “let’s find your sister. Camilla. She might want to play too.”
“Cammi doesn’t like playing anymore. She’s sad all the time.” He looked somewhat frustrated, if anything. I bit my lip. What the hell is going on here?
“Is she in her bedroom?” He nodded. “Is she sad now?”
He nodded again.
“Can we go find her?”
“Okay.”
I followed him out of the sunny room and down the hallway, back on the soft carpets again. We reached a tall painted wooden door and I stopped, looking at him questioningly.
He nodded, then retreated a pace. I knocked. “Camilla?”
No answer.
“Camilla?”
I waited and felt a tug on my hand. Jack was standing next to me. I looked down into his earnest green-brown gaze. “Ca-meel,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Not Camilla,” he corrected patiently. “Camille.”
“Oh. Camille?”
Still nothing. I paused. I have a rule with children: Never intrude into their private space unless you have to. Children have dignity, too, all the more fragile for being stepped on so often.
“Jack? Would Camille mind if I walked in?”
Jack didn’t say anything. He just walked up to the door and dragged it open. I felt a bit shocked, and suddenly, on the threshold, a bit awkward, but I peered in anyway. It was dark in there. It smelled of the kind of perfume people buy for little girls, sweet an
d floral. I walked in across the soft carpet, reached for the curtains and opened them. Jack had already disappeared into the hallway and I let him go. Meeting his six-year-old sister would probably be better with just the two of us there. I breathed out, settling myself.
“Camille?”
Somewhere on the bed, something moved fractionally. I looked around to give her time. The room was done in lurid pink, the furniture was cottage-style, wooden, and white. The bed covers were black and pink pinstripes. I focused on the movement on the upper of the bunk beds. As my eyes came into focus, I saw the figure of a small girl. She also had pale hair, more strawberry toned than the sunny hair of her brother. She was dressed in cream and she had a bow in her hair. She was huddled so I could not see her face.
“Camille?”
The bundle inched inward, curling up on itself. Camille clearly didn’t want to know anything about me. I reached up, tempted to touch her on the shoulder, but something told me I should be ultracareful. I withdrew.
“I just want to tell you that I’m here. Your brother and I are going to go and play outside. We’re going to make cars. If you want to join in, you can, but if you don’t want, that’s also fine. You can stay here until lunchtime if you want.”
I waited a moment or two, then turned and walked slowly out.
“Daddy?”
The little voice on the bed made me turn around suddenly in the doorway. It was so heartbroken, so wracked, that it compelled me. I looked up at the bed.
A small dainty face, plump cheeks streaked with tears, was looking up at me. Her blond hair was disarrayed, curls sticking to her face where tears had soaked it. Her mouth was already wobbling with misery. I breathed out, feeling suddenly heartbroken.
“Yes?”
“Where’s Daddy? I want to see him.”
I sighed. “Daddy left this morning. To Chicago. He’ll be back on Wednesday night.”
Camille started crying brokenly. “But he didn’t say goodbye! Why did he just go? Is he mad at me?”
She started crying again and I felt my blood boiling. How could her father just walk out, without even telling her he had gone? What kind of father just leaves, without saying goodbye, or without any assurance he’ll come back soon? I sat down on the pink-and-black cushion of a wooden chair. Looked up at her. She sneaked to the end of the bunk to look down at me, curious despite tears.
“Camille,” I said. “Your daddy wasn’t mad at you. I saw him before he left. He told me you’re the most special little girl in the whole world, and that I must take very good care of you.” More or less.
“Really?” Camille breathed. The pure wonder on the little angelic face stabbed my heart. I wanted to cry too.
“Yes, really.”
“Oh!” She suddenly looked happy again. I cursed Alexander Carring for having just left her like that, with no word or explanation or even a kiss. She slid across the bed, heading for the rails.
“Who are you?” she asked, foot on the railing, suddenly suspicious. “Why would Daddy tell you that?”
I sighed. “He left me to look after you,” I said gently. “He wanted to know you were safe.” That part was absolutely true. He seemed fanatical about his childcare’s physical safety, which, for a man who seemed entirely ignorant of their emotional states, was odd.
“He didn’t tell me that,” Camille said, squinting at me mistrustfully. I half expected her to call the police and have me thrown out. Of the two siblings, though the younger, she seemed far more worldly.
“He didn’t?” I asked. I was not pretending to be surprised. I really did think he would have thought to tell them something. Even if it was just, “be good for auntie Emma,” or something like that; something my own family would have done. But evidently he hadn’t.
“No,” Camille said. “He just sneaked off.”
“Well,” I said brightly, “maybe he wanted it to be a surprise. We’ll have lots of fun. We’re going to go and play cars. You coming?”
“Not if it’s Jack’s stupid cars,” Camille said, suddenly sulking. “He doesn’t want to let me touch them.”
She was retreating to her corner again and I stood, feeling desperate to reach out to her. “It’s not Jack’s cars,” I said quickly. “We’ve got a better idea. Do you like makeup?” I asked. The room was furnished with a tiny dressing table with its own oval mirror.
“No,” Camille said shortly. “Makeup’s for ladies. I don’t want to be a lady.”
“Oh?” That reply stumped me.
“No.”
“Okay.”
I walked across the carpet, deciding Camille needed time alone.
“Are we going outside?” she asked suddenly as I was halfway across the room.
“Yes.”
“Yay!”
She scrambled to the end of the bed and slipped her feet along the ladder-rungs, jumping down.
I collected Jack from the other end of the hallway. We went outside. The sunlight was dazzling. The lawn was like a carpet of a shade of emerald I have never actually seen outside of the movies. Jack took off across the lawn, arms making an airplane.
“Vrooom….”
I laughed, watching the children transform from hesitant, nervous creatures into happy, playful kids in an instant. They gamboled about on the lawn, and even Camille forgot her sadness temporarily and consented to wrestle with Jack, both of them collapsing in a giggly heap on the lawn.
I laughed with them, then sat down in the shade of a small tree.
“Cars!” Jack came running over to me, face flushed and expectant. I swallowed.
“I need to go and get some things,” I said, suddenly desperate that there would be something to make cars out of. There must be empty toilet-rolls, even in a mansion? Jack looked disappointed.
“It’s okay,” he shrugged, standing up. “You didn’t have to mean it. We’ll play something else.”
I swallowed, seeing how he instantly excused my oversight. I got the feeling his father said he would do things and then forgot them. Again my rage burned.
“We’re doing this!” I said brightly. “I just need a minute. You kids can play until I get back here, right?”
“Yes!”
Camille amazed me by launching herself at Jack. She grabbed his knees in a good approximation of a football tackle, and he, laughing and seemingly more surprised even than I was, collapsed onto his back while the small fury wrestled with his downed body.
I headed quickly inside.
“Paula?”
She appeared after a moment.
“Yes, miss?”
“Paula! Toilet rolls. Empty ones. And bottles. And glue?”
She looked at me blankly, then she nodded. “Making things?” she smiled.
“Yes!” I wanted to kiss her for understanding. “Do you have glue?”
“Try the master’ office,” she advised sagely. “And toilet rolls? We recycle. There’s dozens of inners in the cellar downstairs. I’ll get them.”
“Thanks!” I squeezed her hand then ran for the stairs. “Where’s the office?”
“Upstairs, second room on the right. Careful of the carpet.”
“Okay!”
Finding the office was easy. I walked in on the pristine white carpet and looked round quickly.
I had to be fast, I knew that. But the place made me curious. This was his office. Alexander Carring. His private space. Being in it gave me a delicious tingle down to my toes. I couldn’t help snooping, just a little.
The place was white, with a dark-wood desk and a smart Japanese-style blind over the windows. There was a set of shelves on the far wall and a tall leather office-chair behind it. On the shelves were three photographs, framed in tasteful silvery frames. One was Jack, gap-toothed and about six years old, dressed in a fancy school uniform. One was Camille, curly-haired and perhaps two years old. The third was a woman with blond hair.
I swallowed hard, looking down at the soft white carpet. I was surprised to feel a strange mix o
f jealousy and inadequacy swamp me. The woman, laughing and beautiful, was every inch the glamorous, stylish siren I wished I could be.
Come on, Emma! You’re here as an au pair. He wouldn’t look at you anyway. Remembering my place, I turned my attention to raiding the drawers.
In the second drawer from the bottom, I found what I wanted. Proper office-glue. Transparent, fluid and the best make. I smiled and pocketed it. As I crossed the hallway and headed out, I suddenly thought that I hadn’t checked whether or not I had left footmarks on his carpet. I was almost entirely sure that I had.
It can’t be helped. Maybe Paula would clean it up.
We got started as soon as I returned with a box of cardboard bits and some glue. Paula had provided scissors.
“Look at my car!” Jack exclaimed. He had found two toilet-roll inners and a box to work from.
“It’s great.”
“I’m also making a car,” Camille explained happily. “I’m making room for people. See?”
I saw she had carefully torn a hole in the box and had folded other cardboard to make something like triangles, laid on their backs.
“That’s very clever,” I said. She grinned up at me. Outside, I noticed, her eyes were blue, like the sky.
“I told Jack that,” she said. I laughed.
Jack pouted. “Mine’s clever,” he said stiffly.
“It is,” I agreed.
Half an hour later, triumphant and grinning, the two kids returned indoors with their creations, whooping and making car-noises. Or at least Jack was. Camille was carrying hers carefully, weaving it through the air almost as if it were a plane. She looked more relaxed than she had all day.
While the kids had lunch, I chatted to Paula, who explained that, even though it was holidays for the kids, they had lessons. Jack in arithmetic, Camille in dance. Sure enough, at one o’clock, exactly, two students turned up. The elder, a girl called Carey, took Jack upstairs to tutor and the younger, a bright-faced girl in her late teens called Millie, took Cammi to another room for her lessons. The lessons at least gave me time to go home and collect my things—some clothes for the next while and my laptop.
My room—when Paula took me to it—was yet another surprise. On the same floor as the rooms of the kids and, presumably, the master of the house. It was a delight. Small and meant for guests this place might be, but it was easily the most sumptuously-appointed place I had been in before.
