by Ruth Ware
“I was just trying—”
“Go away, you hurt me, I’m going to tell my mummy!”
I stood for a moment, irresolute over her angry, prone form, unsure what to do.
“Go away!” she screamed again.
At last, I gave a sigh and began to walk back up the drive towards the house. It felt wrong leaving her there, in the middle of what was, basically, a road, but the gate at the foot of the drive was shut, and it would be at least half an hour before Jack returned. Hopefully she would have calmed down long before then and I could coax her back into the house.
On my hip Petra had begun grousing, and I suppressed another sigh. Please, not a meltdown from her as well. And where the hell was Maddie? She had disappeared before her parents left, flitting off into the woods to the east of the house, refusing to say goodbye.
“Oh, let her go,” Bill had said, as Sandra flapped around trying to find her to kiss her goodbye. “You know what she’s like; she prefers to lick her wounds in private.”
Lick her wounds. Just a silly cliché, right? At the time I hadn’t dwelt on it, but now I wondered. Was Maddie wounded? If so, how?
* * *
Up in the house I sat Petra in her high chair, strapped her in, and checked the red binder in case it gave instructions for what to do if the children disappeared off the face of the earth. The whole thing must have been at least three inches thick, and a cursory flick-through after breakfast had told me that it contained information on everything from how much Calpol to give and when, through to bedtime routines, favorite books, nappy-rash protocol, homework schedules, and which washing capsules to use for the girls’ ballet uniforms. Virtually every moment of the day was accounted for, with notes ranging from what snacks to serve, right through to which TV programs to choose, and how much they were allowed to watch.
The one thing it didn’t cover was total disappearance—or at least, if it did, I couldn’t find the page where it was mentioned, but as I skimmed down the carefully annotated “typical weekend day,” I saw that Petra was overdue for lunch, which might explain her irritability. I didn’t really want to start preparing food before I’d tracked down Maddie and Ellie, but at least I could give Petra a snack to tide her over and stop her grumbling.
6:00, the page began. All the younger ones (but particularly Ellie) are prone to early wakings. To that end, we have installed the sleep-training “Happy bunny clock” in the girls’ room. It’s a digital clock with a screen image of a sleeping bunny that soundlessly switches over to an image of a wide-awake “Happy bunny” at 6:00 a.m. If Ellie wakes before this, please gently (!) encourage her to check the clock and get back into bed if the bunny is still asleep. Obviously use your judgment regarding nightmares and toilet accidents.
Jesus. Was there nothing in this house that wasn’t controlled by the bloody app? I scanned the page, skipping past suggested outfits and wet-weather clothes, and acceptable breakfast menus, down to midmorning.
10:30–11:15—snack, e.g., some fruit (bananas, blueberries, grapes—QUARTERED for Petra, please), raisins (sparingly only—teeth!), breadsticks, rice cakes, or cucumber sticks. No strawberries (Ellie is allergic), no whole nuts (nut butters are okay, but we only buy the sugar-/salt-free kind), and finally Petra is not allowed snacks containing refined sugar or excess salt (older girls are allowed sugar in moderation). This can be hard to police if you are out, so in that scenario I suggest taking a snack box.
Well, at least the app didn’t prepare the snacks. Still, I’d never encountered anything like this level of detail at any other nannying job—at Little Nippers the staff handbook was a slim pamphlet that concentrated mostly on how to report staff sickness. Rules, yes. Screen time, sanctions, red lines, allergies—all of that was normal. But this—did she think I had spent nearly ten years in childcare without knowing you had to cut up grapes?
As I closed the scarlet folder and pushed it away from me across the table, I wondered. Was it the unsettling changes of staff that had made Sandra so controlling? Or was she just a woman desperately trying to be there for her family, even when she couldn’t be physically present? Bill, it was clear, felt no compunction about leaving his children alone with a comparative stranger, however well qualified. But Sandra’s binder spoke of a very different type of parent—one very conflicted about the situation she was in. Which begged the question of why, in that case, she was so determined to be with Bill rather than at home. Was it really just professional pride? Or was there something else going on?
There was a huge marble fruit bowl in the center of the concrete table, freshly stocked with oranges, apples, satsumas, and bananas, and with a sigh, I ripped a banana off the bunch, peeled it, and placed a few chunks on Petra’s tray. Then I went into the playroom to see if Maddie had returned. She wasn’t there, nor was she in the living room, or anywhere in the house, as far as I could tell. At last I went to the utility room door, the one she had left by, and called out into the woods.
“Maddie! Ellie! Petra and I are having ice cream.” I paused, listening for the sound of running feet, cracking branches. Nothing came. “With sprinkles.” I had no actual idea if there were sprinkles but at this point I didn’t care about false advertising, I just wanted to know where they both were.
More silence, just the sound of birds. The sun had gone in, leaving the air surprisingly chilly, and I shivered, feeling the goose bumps rise on my bare arms. Suddenly hot chocolate seemed more appropriate than ice cream, in spite of the fact that it was June.
“Okay!” I called again, more loudly this time. “More sprinkles for me!”
And I walked back into the house, leaving the side door open a crack.
In the kitchen I did a double take.
Petra was standing up in her high chair on the far side of the breakfast bar, triumphantly waving a chunk of banana at me.
“Fuck!”
For a moment all feeling drained out of me, and I stood, frozen to the spot, looking at her precarious stance, the unforgiving concrete beneath her, her small wobbly feet on the slippery wood.
And then, regaining my senses, I ran, stumbling over a stray teddy, staggering around the corner of the breakfast bar to snatch her up, my heart in my mouth.
“Oh my God, Petra, you bad, bad girl. You mustn’t do that. Jesus. Oh, Jesus Christ.”
She could have died—that was the long and short of it. If she’d fallen and struck her head on the concrete floor, she would have been concussed before I could reach her.
How could I have been so stupid?
I’d supervised toddlers a million times before—I’d done all the right things, pulled her chair away from the counter so she couldn’t push herself backwards with her feet, and I was sure, certain in fact, that I’d done up those clips. They were far too stiff for little fingers.
So how had she got free?
Had she wriggled out?
I examined the clips. One side was still fastened. The other was open. Shit. I must have not pushed one home quite hard enough, and Petra had worked it loose and then managed to squirm out of the other side of the restraint.
So it was my fault after all. The thought made my hands feel cold with fear, and my cheeks feel hot with shame. Thank God it hadn’t happened when Sandra was here. That kind of safeguarding stuff was pretty much nannying 101. She would have been within her rights to sack me there and then.
Though, of course . . . she still could, if she was watching over the cameras. In spite of myself, my eyes flicked up to the ceiling, and sure enough there was one of those little white egg-shaped domes in the far corner of the room. I felt my face flush and looked away hastily, imagining Sandra seeing my guilty reaction.
Fuck. Fuck.
Well, there was nothing I could do, apart from hope that Sandra and Bill had better things to do than pore over the footage of their security cameras every hour of the day and night. I was pretty confident that Bill hadn’t so much as glanced at the app since leaving, but Sandra . . . somehow that b
inder spoke of a level of intensity that I had not quite anticipated from her relaxed, cheerful manner at the interview.
But with any luck they would be in a mobile black spot, or even in the air by now. Did the footage record? How long was it stored for? I didn’t know, and somehow I doubted whether that information was in the binder.
The realization was unsettling. I could be being watched, right now.
It was with a strange performative feeling that I hugged Petra tightly to my chest and dropped a shaky kiss on the top of her head. Beneath my lips I felt the gentle flex of her fontanelle, the fragility of a baby-soft skull almost, but not quite, closed over.
“Don’t do that again,” I told her, firmly, feeling the adrenaline still pulsing through me, and then, with an effort at restoring normality, I lifted her up and took her over to the sink, where I wiped her face. Then I looked at my watch, trying to breathe slowly and normally, and remember what I had been doing before Petra scared the life out of me.
It was just gone one. The binder had said Petra ate lunch twelve thirty to one and then went down for a nap at two. But in spite of that, she was grousing and rubbing her eyes crossly, and I found myself mentally adding up timings and trying to figure out how to handle this. At the nursery they’d gone down straight after lunch more or less, around one.
I didn’t want to mess with her routine so early in the day, but on the other hand, stretching out a tired, cranky baby until the specified time wasn’t a great idea either, and would probably result in a bad night’s sleep if she was the type of child who got more wired the more exhausted she became. I stared doubtfully down at the top of her head, trying to decide. Suddenly, the idea of a quiet hour or so to round up Maddie and Ellie was very appealing. It would definitely be easier without a fussy toddler in tow.
Fretfully Petra scrubbed a balled-up fist at her eyes and gave a tired sob, and I made up my mind.
“Come on, you,” I said aloud, and took her upstairs to her room.
Inside, the blackout blinds were already drawn, and I switched on the illuminated mobile as the binder had instructed and put her gently down on her back. She rolled over onto her tummy and rubbed her face into the mattress, but I sat quietly beside her, one hand on her wriggling spine, while the soft light show played over the ceiling and walls. Petra was grumbling to herself, but her cries were getting farther apart, and I could tell she was ready to go under at any moment.
At last, she seemed to be completely asleep, and I stood carefully and laid her rabbit comforter gently over one hand, where she could find it if she woke. For a moment she stirred and I froze, but her fingers only tightened onto the material as she let out a soft little snore. With a sigh of relief, I picked up the monitor that was hooked over the end of the cot, tucked it into my belt, and tiptoed out of the room.
The house was completely silent as I stood on the landing, listening for the sound of running feet or childish laughter.
Where the hell were they?
I hadn’t been in Sandra and Bill’s room, but I knew from the layout of the house that the window must overlook the drive, and holding my breath slightly, I turned the handle and opened the door.
The sight made my breath catch in my throat for a moment. The room was huge. They must have knocked together at least two other bedrooms to make it—maybe even three. There was an enormous bed piled high with plump cushions and white bed linen, and facing it a huge carved stone fireplace. Three long windows overlooked the front of the house. One was open a few inches, and muslin curtains fluttered a little in the breeze.
There were drawers left slightly open, and a closet ajar, and I felt a sharp tug of curiosity as I crossed the silver-gray carpet to the central window, but I pushed it down. For all I knew, Sandra and Bill could be watching me right now, and while I had an alibi for wanting to look out the window over the drive, I certainly had no excuse for rummaging in their cupboards.
When I reached the window, Ellie was nowhere in sight; the curve of drive where she had been lying was empty. I was not sure whether that was a relief. At least Jack wouldn’t run her over when he brought the Tesla back. But where on earth was she? Sandra had seemed remarkably relaxed about the children running off into the woods, but every bone in my body was screeching discomfort with the situation—at the nursery we’d had to risk assess everything, from a trip to the park through to messy play with porridge oats, and there were a billion risks I had absolutely no way of knowing. What if there was a pond within the grounds? Or a steep fall? What if they climbed a tree and couldn’t get down? What if the fencing wasn’t secure and they wandered out into the road? What if a dog—
I broke off my mental litany of worst-case scenarios.
The dogs. I’d forgotten to ask Sandra whether their routine was down to me, but presumably an extra walk couldn’t hurt, and surely they would be able to find the children. If nothing else, their presence would give me an excuse to go hunting in the woods without looking to the children like they were running rings around me. I had to establish myself as someone firmly in charge right from the outset, otherwise my authority was going to be shot to pieces, and I would never recover.
I pushed aside the unsettling thought of what would happen when Rhiannon returned and a teenager was added to the mix. Hopefully Sandra would be home by then to back me up. . . .
Downstairs the dogs were lying in their baskets in the kitchen, though they both looked up hopefully as I walked in carrying their leads.
“Walkies!” I said brightly, and they bounded over. “Good girl . . . er . . . Claude,” I said as I struggled to find the right attachment on the collar, though in truth I wasn’t sure if I had the girl or the boy. Claude bounded around me excitedly as I wrestled with Hero, but at last I had them both on leads and a handful of dog biscuits in my pocket in case of problems, and I set off, out of the utility room door, across the graveled yard, past the stable block, and into the woods.
It was a beautiful day. In spite of my growing anxiety about the children, I couldn’t help but notice this as I walked down a winding, faintly marked path through the trees, the dogs straining at their leashes. The sun filtered through the canopy above, and our movements sent golden dust motes spinning and whirling up from the rich loam underneath our feet, the sun gleaming off the tiny particles of pollen and old man’s beard that floated in the still air beneath the trees.
The dogs seemed to have a definite idea of where they were going, and I let them lead, conscious of the fact that they were probably puzzled about being kept on leashes in their own garden. They’d have to put up with it though. I had no idea if they’d come when I called, and I couldn’t risk losing them as well.
We were heading downhill, towards the bottom of the drive, though I couldn’t see it through the trees. Behind me I heard the crack of a twig and turned sharply, but there was no one there. It must have been an animal, a fox perhaps.
At last we broke out of the cover of the trees into a little clearing, and my stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch, for there it was—the thing I’d been fearing ever since the girls had disappeared—a pond. Not very deep, but plenty deep enough for a small child to drown. The water was peat-colored and brackish, an oily scum floating on the surface from the decomposing pine needles. I poked it doubtfully with a stick, and bubbles of stagnant air floated lazily to the surface, but to my relief the rest of the pond looked undisturbed, the water clear except for the swirls of mud my stick had stirred up. Or . . . nearly undisturbed. Walking around the far side I saw the imprints of small shoes on the bank, skidding as if two little girls had been messing around by the water’s edge. There was no way of knowing when they had been made, but they looked fairly fresh. The prints led down the bank, becoming deeper and deeper as the mud softened, and then turned and went away again, back into the forest. I followed them for a few meters until the ground became too hard to take a print, but there were two sets of shoes, and at least I knew now that they were probably together, and almost certa
inly safe.
The dogs were whining and straining against their leads, desperate to get into the muddy pond and splash about, but there was no way I was having that. I wasn’t bathing a pair of filthy dogs on my first day on top of everything else.
There was no path up through the woods in the direction the footsteps had been leading, but I followed in as near an approximation as I could, when suddenly a crackling scream split the air. I stopped dead, my heart thumping erratically in my chest for the second time that day, the dogs barking hysterically and leaping at the end of their leashes.
For a second I didn’t know what to do. I stood, looking wildly around. The scream had sounded close at hand, but I could see no one, and I couldn’t hear any footsteps over the noise the dogs were making. Then it came again, long and almost unbearably high-pitched, and with a stomach-lurching realization, I understood.
I pulled the baby monitor out of my pocket, and watched as the lights flared and dipped in time with the long, bubbling shriek of pure fear.
For a moment I just stood there paralyzed, holding the monitor in my hand, the dogs’ leads looped around my wrist. Should I try to access the cameras?
With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and pressed the icon of the home-management app.
Welcome to Happy, Rowan, the screen said, with agonizing slowness. Home is where the Happy is! And then, to my despair, Updating user permissions. Please be patient. Home is where the Happy is!
I swore, stuffed both the phone and the monitor back into my pocket, and began to run.
I was a long way from the house, down a slope, and my breath was tearing in my throat by the time I left the cover of the trees and saw the house in front of me. The dogs had broken away from me some way back, tugging their leads out of my numb fingers, and now they were leaping and gamboling in front and behind me, barking joyfully, convinced that this was all some kind of game.
When I reached the front door, it was standing ajar, in spite of the fact that I knew it had been closed when I left—I had used the utility-room door, leaving it open for Maddie and Ellie in case they returned, and for a second I thought I might be sick. What had I done? What had happened to poor little Petra?