by Ruth Ware
The truth was, I didn’t know what I’d do if it didn’t work out. And before I could finish the thought there was a beep and I heard Sandra’s clipped plummy accent, sounding tinny through the little speaker.
“Oh, hello, Rowan. Sorry not to speak to you in person—I expect you’re at work. Well, I’m delighted to say that I’ve discussed it with Bill and we’d be happy to offer you the job if you can start on June seventeenth at the absolute latest, earlier if you can. I realize that we didn’t discuss the exact terms and the bonus I mentioned in the letter. The plan would be for us to issue you with an allowance of a thousand pounds a month, with the remainder of the salary to come at year-end in the form of a completion bonus. I hope that’s acceptable—I realize it’s a little unconventional, but given you’ll be living with us you won’t have many day-to-day expenses. If you could let me know as soon as possible if you’d like to accept, and oh, yes, lovely to meet you the other day. I was very impressed with how the children warmed to you, particularly Maddie. She’s not always the easiest child, and—well, I’m rambling, so I’d better cut this short, but we’d be happy to have you on board. Looking forward to hearing back from you.”
There was a click, and the message ended.
For a minute I couldn’t move. I just stood there, the phone in my hand, gaping at the screen. And then a huge rush of exhilaration raced through me, and I found I was dancing, hopping in circles, punching the air and grinning like a lunatic.
“Bloody hell, what’s got into you?” a smoke-roughened voice said over my shoulder, and I turned, still grinning, to see Janine leaning against the door, a cigarette in one hand, lighter in the other.
“What’s got into me?” I said, hugging myself, full of a glee I couldn’t even try to suppress. “I’ll tell you what’s got into me, Janine. I’ve got a new job.”
“Well . . .” Janine’s expression as she flicked open the lighter was a little sour. “You needn’t look so triumphant about it.”
“Oh, come on, you’re as fed up with Val as I am. She’s screwing us all, and you know it. Ten percent she put up fees last year, and us assistants are barely getting minimum wage. She can’t keep blaming the recession forever.”
“You’re just pissed off that I got made head of the baby room,” Janine said. She took a drag of her cigarette, and then offered me the packet. I was trying to give up to improve my asthma (well, officially I had given up) but her words had hit home, and so I took one and lit it slowly, more as a way of giving myself time to rearrange my expression than because I actually wanted to smoke. I had been pissed off that she’d got promoted, when honestly I thought I had the better shot. I’d applied thinking I was a shoo-in—and the shock when the position had gone to Janine had been like a punch to the gut. But as Val had said at the time, there were two candidates and only one job. There was nothing she could do about that. Still, it had rankled, particularly when Janine had begun throwing her weight around and issuing orders in that grating drawl.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now,” I said, handing the lighter back with a sweet smile and exhaling the smoke. “Onwards and upwards, eh?” The slightly patronizing smile she gave made me add, a little maliciously, “Very much upwards, in fact.”
“What do you mean?” Janine said. She narrowed her eyes. “Are we talking more than thirty K?”
I made a rising movement with my hand, and her eyes widened.
“Forty? Fifty grand?”
“And it’s residential,” I said smugly, watching her jaw drop. She shook her head.
“You’re having me on.”
“I’m not.” Suddenly I didn’t need the cigarette anymore. I took a final drag, then dropped it to join the mush of dead butts in the yard and ground it out under my heel. “Thanks for the fag. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to phone up and accept a job.”
I dialed Sandra’s number, listening as it rang, and then clicked through to voice mail. In a way I was relieved, I didn’t want to get grilled about my start date in front of Janine. If she knew it was a make-or-break condition, she might well tell Val, who could deliberately make life difficult for me.
“Oh, hi, Sandra,” I said, when the beep had sounded. “Thanks so much for your message, I’m thrilled, and I’d be delighted to accept. I need to sort a few things out this end but I’ll email you about the start date. I’m sure it won’t be a problem. And . . . well, thanks, I guess! I’ll be in touch. Let me know if there’s anything you need from me to get the ball rolling.”
And then I hung up.
I handed in my notice to Val that same day. She tried to act pleased for me, but in truth, she looked mostly pissed off, particularly when I informed her that the amount of leave I had stacked up meant that I would be finishing on the sixteenth of June, rather than the first of July, as she had assumed. She tried to tell me that I needed to work my notice and take the leave as pay, but when I more or less invited her to see me in court, she caved.
The next few days passed in a whirl of activity and practicalities. Sandra did all her payroll remotely through a company in Manchester and wanted me to contact them direct with payment details and ID rather than sending all the paperwork up to Scotland. I had expected the process to be a major stumbling block, maybe even requiring me to travel to Manchester for an interview in person, but in the end it was surprisingly, almost disconcertingly simple—I forwarded them Sandra’s email with a reference number, and then when they replied, I sent the passport scan, utility bills, and bank details they requested. It went through without a hitch. Like it was meant to be.
The ghosts wouldn’t like it.
The phrase floated through my head, spoken in Maddie’s reedy little voice, its childlike quaver lending the words an eeriness I would normally have shrugged off.
But that was bollocks. Utter bollocks. I hadn’t seen a whiff of the supernatural the whole time I was in Carn Bridge. More likely it was just a cover story seized on by homesick au pairs, girls barely out of their teens with poor English, unable to cope with the isolation and remote location. I’d seen enough of them working at places in London to know the drill—I’d even picked up some emergency work when they scarpered in the night with the return half of their plane ticket, leaving the parents to pick up the pieces. It wasn’t uncommon.
I was considerably older and wiser than that, and I had very good reasons for wanting to make this work. No amount of alleged “haunting” was going to make me turn this chance down.
I look back, and I want to shake that smug young woman, sitting in her London flat, thinking she knew it all, had seen it all.
I want to slap her face and tell her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
Because I was wrong, Mr. Wrexham. I was very, very wrong.
Less than three weeks later, I was standing on Carn Bridge station platform, surrounded by more cases and boxes than it seemed possible for one person to carry.
When Jack came striding up the platform, car keys jangling in his hand, he actually broke into a laugh.
“Christ, how did you get all that across London?”
“Slowly,” I said honestly. “And painfully. I took a taxi, but it was a bloody nightmare.”
“Aye, well, you’re here now,” he said, and took my largest two cases, giving me a friendly shove when I tried to take the smaller one back off him. “No, no, you take those others.”
“Please be careful,” I said anxiously. “They’re really heavy. I don’t want you to put your back out.”
He grinned, as if the possibility was so remote as to be laughable.
“Come on, car’s this way.”
It had been another glorious day—hot and sunny—and although the sun was beginning to sink towards the horizon and the shadows were growing longer, the gorse was still popping audibly as we drove silently through the wooded lanes and moorland roads towards Heatherbrae. The house, as we drove up the drive, was even more beautiful than I had remembered, basking in evening sunshine, the door
s flung open and the dogs running everywhere, barking their heads off. It suddenly occurred to me, with a little jolt, that I would presumably be in charge of the dogs as well as the kids, when Sandra and Bill were away. Or maybe that was Jack’s job too? I would have to find out. Two children and a baby were in my comfort zone. A teen as well, I could just about manage. At least, I hoped I could. But add in two boisterous dogs, and I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed.
“Rowan!” Sandra came running out the front door, her arms outstretched, and before I was fully out of the car she had enveloped me in a maternal hug. Then, she stood back and waved her hand at a figure standing in the shadows of the porch—a tall man, balding slightly, with close-shaven hair.
“Rowan, this is my husband, Bill. Bill—meet Rowan Caine.”
So this—this was Bill Elincourt. For a moment I couldn’t think of what to say; I just stood there, awkwardly conscious of Sandra’s arm around me, not sure of whether I should break away from her grip to go and greet him or—
I was still frozen in indecision when he solved the issue by striding towards me, sticking out his hand and giving me a quick, businesslike smile.
“Rowan. Good to meet you at last. Sandra’s told me all about you. You have a very impressive résumé.”
You don’t know the half of it, Bill, I thought, as he picked up one of the cases from the boot and made his way back to the house. I took a deep breath and prepared to follow, and as I did, my hand went nervously to my necklace. But this time, instead of tracing its familiar grooves, I slipped the pendant inside the neck of my shirt, and hurried after them.
Inside the kitchen we had coffee, and I sat nervously on the edge of one of the metal breakfast stools while Bill quizzed me about my qualifications, feeling on edge in a way that I never had when Sandra had interviewed me. I wanted . . . I don’t know. I wanted to impress him, I suppose. But at the same time, as he droned on about his punishing schedule and the difficulties of recruiting staff in the Highlands, and the inadequacies of his previous nannies, I increasingly wanted to shake him.
I don’t know what I had imagined. Someone successful, I guess. I had known that from the advert and the house. Someone fortunate—with his beautiful kids and accomplished wife and interesting job. All that, I had taken for granted. But he was so . . . so comfortable. He was padded—every inch of him. I don’t mean he was fat, but he was cushioned, physically, emotionally, financially, in a way that he just didn’t seem to grasp, and it was his very ignorance of the fact that made it even more infuriating.
Do you know what it’s like? I wanted to shout at him, as he complained about their gardener who had left to take up a full-time teaching job in Edinburgh, and the home help who had broken the £800 waste disposal unit in the sink and then run away because she couldn’t face telling them what she’d done. Do you understand what it’s like for people who don’t have your money, and your protection, and your privilege?
As he sat there, holding forth as if there was nothing in the world so important as his inconsequential problems, Sandra gazing adoringly into his face like she was happy to listen to him drone on forever, the realization came to me, painfully. He was selfish. A selfish, self-centered man who had barely asked me a single personal question—not even how my journey had been. He just didn’t care.
I don’t know what I had expected to feel when I met him—this man who hadn’t bothered to interview a woman he was planning to leave his children with for weeks at a time—but I hadn’t expected to feel this level of hostility. I knew I had to get a grip on myself, or it would show in my face.
Perhaps Sandra saw something of my discomfort, for she gave a little laugh and broke in.
“Darling, Rowan doesn’t want to hear about our domestic travails. Just make sure you don’t go putting cutlery down the grinder, Rowan! Anyway, quite seriously, all the instructions are here”—she patted a fat red binder at her elbow. “It’s a physical copy of the document I emailed you last week, and if you’ve not had a chance to sit down and read it yet, it’s got everything from how to work the washing machine, right through to the children’s bedtimes and what they do and don’t like to eat. If you’ve got any concerns at all, you’ll find the answers here, although of course you can always ring me. Did you download Happy?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Happy—the home-management app. I emailed you the authorization code?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, the app, yes, I downloaded it.”
She looked relieved.
“Well that’s the main thing. I’ve set up your Happy profile with all the permissions you’ll need, and of course it stands in as a baby monitor, though we’ve got a regular one for Petra’s room as well. Just in case, you know, but the app is very good. What else . . . oh, food! I’ve done you a menu planner here”—she pulled out a loose sheet from a plastic wallet on the first page of the binder—“which is full of stuff they’ll eat fairly reliably, and bought all the ingredients, so you’re absolutely set for the first week. Plus all the passwords are in there for Waitrose online and so on, and here is a credit card for any household expenses. The statement comes direct to me and Bill, but obviously do keep receipts—a quick snap on your phone is fine, you don’t need to keep the physical bit of paper. Um . . . what else . . . I expect you’re full of questions?”
She said the last in a slightly hopeful tone, though I wasn’t completely certain whether she was hoping I would prompt her or hoping I’d say no.
“I did read the email,” I said, though in truth, since the document was about fifty dense pages, I’d only skimmed through the pages. “But it’ll be brilliantly helpful to have a printout of course—it’s always so much easier to flick through a physical copy. It was impressively comprehensive. I think I’ve got a handle on everything—Petra’s routine, Ellie’s allergies, Maddie’s . . . um—” I stopped, unsure how to phrase what Sandra had called her daughter’s explosive personality. It sounded as though Maddie was quite the handful, or could be.
Sandra caught my eye and saw my predicament, and gave a little rueful smile that said, Yup.
“Well, yes, Maddie really! Rhiannon is staying at school this weekend for end-of-term celebrations. She’ll be coming home next week, and I’ve sorted out her lift and everything so you’ve nothing to worry about there. What else . . . what else . . .”
“I don’t think we completely sorted out when you’re leaving,” I said tentatively. “I know you said in your email that you had the trade show coming up next week—when does it start, exactly? Is it next Saturday?”
“Oh.” Sandra looked taken aback. “Did I not say? Gosh, that was a bit of an oversight. That’s the . . . um . . . well, that’s the only issue really. It is Saturday, but not next Saturday, this one. We leave tomorrow.”
“What?” For a moment I thought I hadn’t heard properly. “Did you say you’re leaving tomorrow?”
“Yeess . . . ,” Sandra said, her face suddenly uncertain. “We’re on the twelve thirty train, so we’ll be leaving just before lunch. I . . . is that a problem? If you’re not confident about coping straight out of the box, I can try to reschedule my early meetings . . .”
She trailed off, and I swallowed.
“It’s fine,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t completely feel. “I mean, I’d have to hit the ground sometime; I really don’t think it’ll make much difference whether it’s this weekend or next.”
Are you mad? a voice was screaming inside my head. Are you crazy? You barely know these children.
But another part of me was whispering something very different—Good. Because in a way, this made things considerably easier.
“We can play it by ear,” Sandra was saying. “I’ll keep in touch by phone—if the children are too unsettled, then I can fly back midweek perhaps? You’ll only have the little ones for the first few days, so hopefully that’ll make the transition a little bit easier . . .”
She stopped again, a little awkwardly this time, but
I was nodding. I was actually nodding, my face stiff with the effort of holding in my real feelings.
“Well,” Sandra said at last. She put down her coffee cup. “Petra’s already in bed, but the girls are through in the TV room watching Peppa Pig. I don’t want to delegate my last bedtime with them to you completely, but shall we do it together, so you can get a feel for their routine?”
I nodded and followed her as she led the way through the darkened glass cathedral towards the concealed door to the TV room.
Inside the blinds were drawn, the floor was still carpeted with scattered Duplo and battered dolls, and two little girls were curled up together on the sofa, wearing flannel pajamas and clutching soft, worn teddy bears. Maddie was sucking her thumb, though she took it swiftly out of her mouth as her mother came in, with a slightly guilty jump. I resolved to look that one up in the binder.
We perched on the arms of the sofa, Sandra fondly ruffling her fingers through Ellie’s silky curls while the episode wound its way to the close, and then she picked up the remote control and shut down the screen.
“Oh, Mummeeeee!” The chorus was immediate, though slightly half-hearted, as if they didn’t really expect Sandra to acquiesce. “Just one more!”
“No, darlings,” Sandra said. She scooped up Ellie, who wrapped her legs around her waist and buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. “It’s super late. Come on, let’s go up. If you’re very lucky, Rowan will read you a story tonight!”
“I don’t want Rowan,” Ellie whispered into the crook of her mother’s neck. “I want you.”
“Well . . . we’ll see when we get up there,” Sandra said. She hitched Ellie into a more comfortable position and held out her hand to Maddie. “Come on, sweetie. Up we go.”
“I want you,” Ellie said doggedly as Sandra began to climb the stairs, me trailing after her. Sandra gave me a little eye roll and a smile over her shoulder.