The Turn of the Key

by Ruth Ware

  “Er . . . yes, that’s right,” I said.

  “And she couldn’t say enough good things about you. I hope you don’t mind me taking up references before the interview, but I’ve been bitten a few times with unsuitable candidates, and I think there’s no point in wasting everyone’s time dragging you up here only to fail at the last fence. But Grace was positively gushing about you. The Harcourts seem to have moved, but I also spoke to Mrs. Grainger, and she was very complimentary as well.”

  “You didn’t contact Little Nippers, did you?” I said slightly uneasily, but she shook her head.

  “No, I completely understand. It’s not always easy job hunting in an existing post. But perhaps you could tell me about your employment there?”

  “Well, it’s pretty much like I explained on the CV really—I’ve been there for two years, in charge of the baby room. I wanted a change from one-family nannying, and a nursery seemed like a good option. It’s been excellent experience having a bit more managerial responsibility and having to organize staff schedules and stuff, but quite honestly I’ve found I miss the family feel of nannying. I love the children, but you don’t get to spend as much one-on-one time with them as you do with a private position. What was stopping me making a change was the idea of taking a step backwards in terms of pay and responsibility, but your post seems like it might be the challenge I’m looking for.”

  I had rehearsed the speech inside my head, on the train on the way up, and now the words rattled out with a practiced authenticity. I had been to enough interviews to know that this was the key—to explain why you wanted to leave your current post without running down your existing employer and looking like a disloyal employee. But my—slightly massaged—version of events seemed to have done the trick, for Mrs. Elincourt was nodding sympathetically.

  “I can quite imagine.”

  “Plus, of course,” I added, this on the spur of the moment, for I had not thought this particular line through, “I’m keen to get out of London. It’s so busy and polluted, I guess I’m just looking for a change of scenery.”

  “That I can quite understand,” Mrs. Elincourt said with a smile. “Bill and I had the same long night of the soul a few years back. Rhiannon was about eight or nine and we were beginning to think about secondaries. Maddie was a toddler, and I was so sick of pushing her around dirty parks and having to check for needles in the sandpit before I let her play. This just seemed like the perfect chance to break away completely—build a new life, find a really super independent school for Rhi.”

  “And are you glad you made the move?”

  “Oh, totally. It was tough on the children at the time, of course, but it was definitely the right thing. We adore Scotland—and we never wanted to be that kind of family who buys a second home and then puts it on Airbnb for nine months of the year. We wanted to really live here, become part of the community, you know?”

  I nodded, as though second-home dilemmas were part of my everyday existence.

  “Heatherbrae House was a real project,” Sandra continued. “It had been totally neglected for decades, lived in by a very eccentric old man who went into a care home and then allowed it to fall into disrepair until his death. Dry rot everywhere, burst pipes, dodgy electrics—it was a case of really stripping it back to the bones and completely revamping it. Two years of absolute grind, reconfiguring the rooms and doing everything from rewiring to putting in a new cesspit. But it was worth it—and of course it made a wonderful case study for the business. We have a whole folder of before and after, and it really shows that good architecture can be as much about bringing out the spirit of an existing house as creating a new one from scratch. Though we do that too, of course. Our specialty is vernacular architecture.”

  I nodded as though I had a clue what this meant and took a gulp of wine.

  “But that’s enough about me and the house—what about yourself?” Sandra said, with the air of getting down to business. “Tell me a bit about what attracted you to nannying?”

  Wow. That was a big question. About a dozen images flashed through my mind, all at once. My parents, shouting at me for getting Play-Doh in the carpet tiles at age six. Age nine, my mother, shaking her head over my report card, not bothering to hide her disappointment. At twelve, the school play no one bothered to come to. Age sixteen, “What a shame you didn’t revise more for history,” instead of congratulations on the As I got in maths, English, and science. Eighteen years of not being good enough, not being the daughter I was supposed to be, eighteen years of not measuring up.

  “Well . . .” I felt myself flounder. This was not part of the story I had practiced, and now I cursed myself for it. It was an obvious question, one I should have prepared. “Well, I suppose . . . I mean . . . I just like kids.” It was lame. Very lame. And also not completely true. But as the words left my mouth, I realized something else. Sandra was still smiling, but there was a certain neutrality in her expression that had not been there before, and suddenly I understood why. A woman on the cusp of her thirties, going on about how much she likes kids . . .

  I hurried to repair my mistake.

  “But I have to say, I’m in awe of anyone who wants to be a parent. I’m definitely not ready for that yet!”

  Bingo. I could not miss the flash of relief that crossed Sandra’s face, though it was quickly suppressed.

  “Not that it’s an option right now anyway,” I said, feeling confident enough for a little joke, “since I’m firmly single.”

  “So . . . no ties to London then?”

  “Not really. I have friends of course, but my parents retired abroad a few years back. In fact, once I’ve sorted things out with Little Nippers there’s really nothing keeping me in London. I could take up a new post almost straightaway.”

  I carefully avoided saying your post, not wanting to seem like I was making assumptions that I would get the job, but Sandra was smiling and nodding enthusiastically.

  “Yes, as you can probably tell from our talk earlier, I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a significant factor. We’re coming up to the summer holidays, and we absolutely must get someone in the position before the schools break up or I’ll be sunk. Plus there’s a really, really important trade fair in a few weeks, and both Bill and I really need to be there.”

  “What’s your deadline?”

  “Rhi breaks up towards the end of June, which is what . . . about three or four weeks? But the trade fair begins the weekend before she breaks up. The truth is, the sooner the better. Two weeks is doable. Three weeks is . . . well, just about okay. Four weeks would be starting to get into disaster zone. You said your notice period is four weeks?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but I was figuring it out while I unpacked, and I have at least eight days holiday owing, so I can definitely get it down to just over two weeks, if I factor in my leave, and maybe even less. I think they’ll be prepared to negotiate.”

  In actual fact, I had no idea how helpful they would be, and my suspicion was, not very. Janine, my boss and current head of the baby room, wasn’t my biggest fan. I didn’t think she’d be particularly sorry to see me go, but I didn’t think she’d bend over backwards to help me. However, there were ways and means—nursery workers weren’t allowed to come into work for forty-eight hours after a vomiting bug. I was prepared to have a lot of vomiting bugs around the middle of June. Again, though, I didn’t say that to Sandra. For some reason, no one wants a nanny with a flexible moral code, even when she’s flexing it to help them out.

  As we ate, Sandra ran through a few more interviewing-by-numbers questions of the kind I had come to expect—outline your strengths and weaknesses . . . give me an example of a difficult situation and how you handled it . . . all the usual suspects. I had answered these before in a dozen other interviews, so my responses were practiced, just slightly tweaked for what I thought Sandra in particular would want to hear. My standard answer to the question about a difficult situation concerned a little boy who had come to his set
tling-in day at Little Nippers covered in bruises—and the way I had dealt with the parents over the subsequent safeguarding concerns. It went down well with nurseries, but I didn’t think Sandra would want to hear about me snitching on parents to the authorities. Instead, I gave a different story, about a little bullying four-year-old at a previous post, and the way I had managed to trace it back to her own fears over starting primary school.

  As I talked she looked through the papers I had bought with me, the background check, the first aid certificates. They were all in order, of course; I knew that, but I still felt a little flutter of nerves beneath my ribs as she reviewed them. My chest tightened, though whether that was down to nerves or the dogs, I couldn’t quite tell, and I pushed down the urge to pull out my inhaler and take a puff.

  “And the driving license?” she asked as I finished my anecdote about the four-year-old. I put down my fork onto the smooth polished concrete top of the table and took a deep breath.

  “Ah, right, yes. I’m afraid that’s a problem. I do have a full UK driving license and it’s clean, but the actual card was stolen last month when I lost my purse. I’ve ordered a new one, but they wanted an updated photo and it’s taking an age to come through. But I promise you, I can drive.”

  That last part was true after all. I crossed my fingers, and to my relief she nodded and moved on to something about my professional ambitions. Did I want to get any additional qualifications. Where did I see myself in a year’s time. It was the second question that really mattered; I could tell that from the way Sandra set down her wineglass and actually looked at me as I answered.

  “In a year’s time?” I said slowly, frantically trying to figure out what she wanted to hear from me. Did she want ambition? Commitment? Personal development? A year was a funny length of time to choose; most interviewers said five years, and the question had thrown me. What was she testing?

  At last I made up my mind.

  “Well . . . you know I want this job, Sandra, and to be honest, in a year’s time I would hope to be here. If you were to offer me this position, I wouldn’t want to uproot myself from London and all my friends just for a short-term post. When I work for a family, I want to think it’s a long-term relationship, both for me and the kids. I want to really get to know them, see them grow up a little bit. If you’d asked me where I saw myself in five years . . . well, that’s a different question. And I’d probably give you a different answer. I’m ambitious—I’d like to do a master’s in childcare or child psychology at some point. But a year—any post I took now, I would definitely want to think of it lasting longer than a year, for all our sakes.”

  Sandra’s face broke into a huge grin, and I knew—I just knew that I had given the right answer, the one she had been hoping for. But was it enough to get me the post? I didn’t honestly know.

  We chatted for about another hour or so, Sandra refilling my glass along with her own, though at some point after the second or third top-up I had the sense to put my hand over the goblet and shake my head.

  “Better not. I’m not really much of a drinker; wine goes straight to my head.”

  It wasn’t completely true. I could hold my wine as well as most of my friends, but I knew that another glass would probably see me throw caution to the wind, and then it would be harder to keep my answers diplomatic and on message. Stories would get tangled, I’d get names and dates in a muddle, and I’d wake up tomorrow with my head in my hands wondering what truths I’d let slip and what terrible faux pas I had made.

  As it was, Sandra looked at the clock as she topped up her own glass and gave a little gulp of shock.

  “Heavens, ten past eleven! I had no idea it was so late. You must be shattered, Rowan.”

  “I am a bit,” I said truthfully. I’d been traveling all day, and the fact was starting to catch up with me.

  “Well, look, I think we’ve covered everything I wanted to ask, but I was hoping you could meet the little ones tomorrow, see if you click, and then Jack will drive you back to Carn Bridge to catch your train, if that’s okay? What time does it leave?”

  “Eleven twenty-five, so that works fine for me.”

  “Great.” She stood up and swept all the crockery into a stack, which she put beside the sink. “Let’s leave that for Jean and call it a night.”

  I nodded, wondering again who this mysterious Jean was, but not quite wanting to ask.

  “I’ll just go and let the dogs out. Good night, Rowan.”

  “Good night,” I said back. “Thank you so much for a delicious supper, Sandra.”

  “My pleasure. Sleep well. The children are usually up at six but there’s no need for you to get up that early—unless you want to!”

  She gave a little tinkly laugh, and I made a mental note to set my alarm for six, even while my eyes felt heavy at the thought.

  As Sandra shooed the dogs into the garden, I made my way back into the old part of the house, with the same strange sense of jolting dislocation I had felt before, going the other way. The soaring glass ceiling abruptly lowered to wedding-cake-style frosting. The echoing sound of my kitten heels on the concrete floor changed to the soft click of parquet, and then the hush of carpet as I began to make my way up the staircase. At the first landing I stopped. The door closest to me, the baby’s room, was still ajar, and I couldn’t resist—I pushed it open and stepped inside, smelling the good, warm smells of clean, contented baby.

  Petra was lying on her back, her arms and legs thrown out froggy-style. She had kicked off her blanket and, very gently, I drew it back over her, feeling her soft breath stirring the fine hairs on the back of my hand.

  As I tucked it around her, she startled, flinging up one arm, and for a moment I froze, thinking that she was about to wake and cry. But she only sighed and settled back down, and I padded quietly from the room and up to my luxurious, waiting bedroom.

  * * *

  I tiptoed around cautiously as I washed and brushed my teeth, listening to the floorboards beneath my feet quietly creaking and not wanting to disturb Sandra below. But at last I was ready for bed, my alarm set, my clothes for tomorrow neatly set out on the plump little sofa.

  Then I realized, I had not drawn the curtains.

  Wrapping my dressing gown around myself, I walked across the room and tugged gently at their fabric. They didn’t move.

  Puzzled, I tried harder, then stopped, peering behind them in case they were somehow fake, ornamental drapes, and I was really supposed to use a blind. But no, they were real curtains, they had real runners. Then I remembered—Sandra pressing something on the wall, and the curtains swishing closed, then open again. They were automatic.

  Shit. I walked across to the panel beside the door and waved a hand in front of it. Instantly it lit up with that confusing configuration of squares and icons. None looked like curtains. There was one that might have been a window, but when I pressed it, cautiously, a blast of jazz trumpet split the silence, and I hastily stabbed it with a finger.

  Thank God it cut off immediately, and I stood for a moment, waiting, poised for a wail from Petra, or for Sandra to come pounding up the stairs demanding to know why I was waking the children, but nothing happened.

  I returned to studying the panel, but this time I didn’t press anything. I tried to remember what Sandra had done earlier. The big square in the center was the main light, I was fairly sure of that. And the mishmash of squares to the right presumably controlled the other lights in the room. But what was that spiral thing, and the slider to the left? Music volume? Heat?

  Then I remembered Sandra’s comment about the voice settings.

  “Shut curtains,” I said in a low voice, and somewhat to my shock, the curtains whisked across with a barely audible swoosh.

  Great. Okay. That only left the lights to figure out.

  The bedside light had a switch, so I knew I’d be able to handle that one, and the others I managed to figure out by trial and error, but there was one lamp by the armchair that I could
not manage to extinguish.

  “Turn off lights,” I tried, but nothing happened. “Turn off lamp.”

  The bedside lamp extinguished.

  “Turn off armchair lamp.” Nothing happened. Bloody hell.

  In the end I traced the cord back to an oddly shaped plug socket on the wall, not like a normal appliance socket, and pulled it out. The room was plunged instantly into darkness so thick, I could almost feel it.

  Slowly I groped my way back across the room to the foot of the bed and crawled into it. I was just snuggling down when I remembered, with a sigh, that I hadn’t plugged my phone in to charge. Shit.

  I couldn’t face contending with the lights again, so instead I switched on the torch on my phone, got out of bed, and began to rummage through my case.

  The charger wasn’t there. Had I taken it out already? I was sure I’d packed it.

  I tipped the bag upside down, letting my possessions tumble out onto the thick carpet, but no electrical wire came snaking out with the other belongings. Shit. Shit. If I couldn’t charge my phone, I’d have the world’s most boring journey tomorrow. I hadn’t even brought a book—all my reading matter was on the Kindle app. Had I forgotten it? Left it on the train? Either way, it clearly wasn’t in my case. I stood there for a moment, chewing my lip, and then opened up one of the drawers in the bedside table, hoping against expectation that a previous guest might have left a charger behind.

  And . . . bingo. Not a charger, but a charging lead. That was all I needed—there was a USB port built into the socket.

  With a sigh of relief I untangled the lead from the leaflets and papers in the drawer, plugged it in, and attached my phone. The little charging icon illuminated, and I got thankfully back into bed. I was about to turn off the torch and lie back down when I noticed that something had fallen out of the drawer onto my pillow. It was a piece of paper, and I was about to screw it up and throw it onto the floor, but before I did, I glanced at it, just to check it was nothing important.