The Au Pair

by Emma Rous

  She scrutinized my face.

  “You’re not homesick, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “You’re not bored? Missing your friends?” she asked.

  “I’m okay. Really.”

  “Well. Nevertheless, I shall remind my daughter not to take advantage of your good nature.” She sighed. “And how would you say Ruth has been? Edwin’s little accident gave her a shock, of course.”

  I was saved from replying by Dominic calling us through to the dining room for lunch.

  I didn’t talk to Ruth properly until the Monday, when Dominic and Vera had returned to London and she and I were sitting in the kitchen, trying to ignore the gray drizzle outside and planning our activities for the week.

  “My mother says I’m not to overwork you,” she said, looking at me sideways. I smiled.

  “Well, you haven’t so far, and I promise to tell you if you do,” I said, and she seemed satisfied with this. She pushed a leaflet across the table to me.

  “There’s some kind of indoor play center opened up, look,” she said. “I thought I’d take Edwin along this afternoon and see what it’s like. Let him burn off some energy. They do coffee and cakes.” She paused for a moment. “You might prefer to stay here and have some downtime, or study or whatever, but—” She looked at me. “If you fancy coming along to try the coffee with me, I’d be glad of the company.”

  A warm glow spread through my chest.

  “I’d love to come.”

  As it turned out, the place was dimly lit and overheated, and we had to talk over the noise of wailing babies and shrieking children. But Edwin thoroughly enjoyed the padded climbing structure with its slides and ball pool, and Ruth and I chatted for an hour and a half as if we were friends.

  The miserable weather persisted for the rest of the week, but Edwin and I were happy enough dividing our time between the day nursery and the kitchen.

  “My mum used to do lots of baking with me when I was your age,” I told him.

  “Did she let you do the whisking all by your own?”

  I smiled. “No. She always had to hold it too. But you can press the button if you like.” His little hands gripped the electric whisk under mine, his elbows jutting out on either side, a fierce determination on his face. The clatter of the metal beaters against the sides of the bowl triggered an unexpected swell of emotion in me: nostalgia, mixed with a powerless anger. Mum and I used to do this all the time before Beaky moved in. Beaky didn’t like mess in the kitchen; Beaky didn’t like children “traipsing around to the neighbors with cakes they’ll only throw in the trash.” I left enough mixture in the bowl for Edwin to scrape out and enjoy while the cakes rose in their tins in the oven.

  We pulled on coats and wellies on the Friday and splashed along the lane to see whether Joel was in the cottage with Michael, but no one answered the door, and we had to splash home again. On the Saturday, I agreed to babysit so that Dominic and Ruth could go out for dinner.

  They left their bedroom door ajar, and I couldn’t help but glance in after I’d settled Edwin to sleep. There was a single framed photo on the chest of drawers by the window. I tiptoed in. Two blond toddlers in stripy T-shirts, each with an arm over the other’s shoulder; the one that looked more like Edwin grinning at the camera, the other sticking his bottom lip out. It must have been taken not long before Theo’s accident, I thought. Ruth and Dominic must look at it every morning when they wake up, every evening as they go to bed.

  It was the following Monday morning, after Dominic had left, that Alex rang.

  “Oh, hello, Alex,” I heard Ruth say as she answered the phone.

  I hovered in the kitchen, where Edwin was finishing his Weetabix cereal.

  “This Friday?” I heard her say. “I might be.”

  I glanced at the calendar. The square for Friday was blank.

  “Yes, all right.” A pause, and then she gave a light laugh. “Absolutely. So easy. Come over when you’re ready.”

  I put the kettle back on to boil as she wandered in.

  “Tea?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, please. That was Alex. He wants to take me out for lunch on Friday.” She bent to drop a kiss onto Edwin’s head.

  I attempted a smile, but she shook her head suddenly.

  “I don’t know why he thinks I’m at his beck and call. Just because we’re out in the country doesn’t mean we don’t have plenty of other things going on in our lives.” She stroked Edwin’s hair, frowning. “I might have to keep you this size forever and ever, Edwin,” she murmured.

  I gritted my teeth. At the picnic on the beach a couple of weeks ago she was begging Alex to visit her during the week, to rescue her from boredom; now she was complaining about him. Edwin batted her hand away and jumped up to take his bowl to the sink.

  Alex wasn’t mentioned again until the Friday morning, and it was me who brought him up when I saw Ruth checking her lipstick in the hall mirror, and unhooking her raincoat from the cupboard.

  “I’m just popping out,” she told me. “Helen Luckhurst had her baby on Monday. A little girl. They think she has some problems. I’m going to take her some flowers—see if we can do anything to help.”

  I stared at her.

  “Isn’t Alex taking you out for lunch?”

  She laughed and waved the question away.

  “Oh, Alex—I’d almost forgotten. Well, he can jolly well wait for me to get back. I’ll only be an hour or so,” she said, and she picked up her bag and marched out of the house.

  I watched her car glide out of the drive, pausing alongside two figures for a minute as she wound down her window and said something, before disappearing toward the village. Michael and Joel ambled up the gravel, and I had the door open before they reached it.

  “Please may I play with Edwin?” Joel asked, craning his neck to peer behind me into the house.

  “Preschool’s closed,” Michael said to me, with a wiggle of his eyebrows. “He was coming with me to the Matthews’ place, but Ruth said you might not mind having him here for a bit instead. Don’t want to impose.”

  I swung the door open wide and beckoned Joel in.

  “It’ll make Edwin’s day,” I said to Michael, and we exchanged smiles at the shouts of glee that erupted from the kitchen.

  It was a blustery morning, and bright bursts of sunshine were interspersed with shade from the scudding clouds. I decided to let the boys play for half an hour in the day nursery, and if Alex hadn’t arrived by then, I would take them down to the beach for a run around on the sand. They always seemed particularly full of energy on windy days.

  I tried not to clock-watch, but I heard the crunch of Alex’s car while the boys were absorbed in their game, and I met him at the door. His expression was expectant.

  “Laura, hi. Is Ruth . . . ?”

  I chewed my lip. “She went out. I’m sorry. She left about twenty minutes ago, said she’d be an hour or two.”

  He looked so crestfallen, I stepped back without thinking. “Do you want to come in?” We walked through to the kitchen.

  “Do you know where she went?” he asked, his eyes roaming over the unwashed breakfast dishes, the paintings on the fridge, the wall calendar.

  I picked up his sunglasses from the windowsill. “You left these. At the picnic.” I handed them to him. “She’s gone to visit a baby in the village.”

  “Oh.” He opened the arms of the sunglasses, closed them again. “Right.” He thought for a moment, then glanced at me. “What are you and Edwin up to for the next hour?”

  “We were going to go down to the beach. Get the wind in our hair, you know. Would you like to come?”

  “Oh, I meant would I be in your way if I stayed here to wait?”

  “Oh right. No, of course not.”

  “But the beac
h does sound good,” he said, and then he was smiling, and there must have been a break in the clouds because the kitchen was suddenly flooded with sunshine.

  Edwin and Joel hurtled in.

  “Uncle Alex! Look, Joel’s here!”

  “Excellent,” Alex said. “I was hoping for two smart boys to show me where the blackberries grow on the way to the beach.” Within minutes I had locked up and we were heading toward the back gate.

  “No climbing this time, Edwin,” Alex called out, and Edwin shook his head vigorously as he ran ahead with Joel.

  “No way!”

  We paused at the folly, craning our necks to peer at the cannon jutting out from the top of the tower.

  “Can we go up?” Joel asked, batting his long lashes at me. I looked at Alex, and he looked at Edwin.

  “Do you want to, Edwin?” Alex asked, and Edwin nodded, skipping ahead into the stone circle and wrestling to turn the heavy iron handle on the door of the tower. Alex suggested that I climb the spiral staircase first, with Edwin and Joel following, and he would come last, to catch them if they fell. The steps were perforated iron, and our footsteps clanked and echoed as we climbed. It can’t have been more than six meters high, but my heart pounded as we wound our way up.

  The wind whipped my breath away as I emerged onto the platform, and I was immensely thankful for the stone parapet that encircled the small space. There was a central stone dais, decorated with carved sea serpents, and on top of it a large sundial, and a contraption with a glass lens, and the black cannon I had glimpsed from down below. The barrel of the cannon pointed out toward the sea, and the four of us shuffled around in an arc between the dais and the parapet so that Alex could show us where the gunpowder went and how the sun shone through the lens onto the powder at the critical moment. Joel was entranced, but Edwin spent more time peering down at the cliff top below.

  “Look for Theo,” he said suddenly, and Alex’s smile plummeted.

  “Hey, let’s go down again, carefully, and see if there are any blackberries left,” Alex said.

  Back on the ground, the boys went to search in the bushes, squealing when they found each blackberry, stuffing them into their mouths as if they hadn’t been fed for days. I gave Alex an inquiring look.

  “This is where they were when Theo fell,” he said quietly. “Ruth helped Theo up first to see the cannon. Then she brought him down and strapped him into the double stroller before getting Edwin out and taking him up. It’s something they did every week, but Ruth couldn’t manage the staircase with both of them—it’s too dangerous.”

  I stared at him, wide-eyed. I wanted to tell him to stop, to change the subject. But I also wanted to hear; I needed to know.

  “Theo must have unstrapped himself. Ruth was at the top with Edwin when she spotted him toddling toward the edge of the cliff.”

  I pressed my fingers over my mouth. Alex’s gaze was distant.

  “They think he was aiming for the steps, but missed his footing. He fell and hit his head. No other major injuries, remarkably. But he never woke up.” Tears brimmed in his eyes.

  “It’s awful,” I said. A surge of nausea made me turn away and shuffle to the stone wall, where I sat with my head hanging.

  Alex went to help the boys reach a cluster of berries above their heads, and he carried some back for me. They burst in my mouth with a tangy sweetness.

  “Sorry,” Alex said. I shook my head. At least now I knew what had happened. And I was practiced at keeping bad memories locked away.

  There was a Latin inscription next to the tower door, surrounded by a design of waves and sea serpents. I peered at it.

  “A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi,” I read haltingly. “What does it mean?”

  He perched next to me.

  “A precipice in front, wolves behind,” he said. “It’s like—being caught between a rock and a hard place. Or between the devil and the deep blue sea. No way out.”

  A strong gust of wind produced a tattered plastic bag out of nowhere, and sent it flapping across the stone circle. Under my coat sleeves, tiny hairs rose along my arms.

  “Why? Was someone trapped here?”

  Alex tipped his head back and rolled it left and right, stretching. “Dominic reckons the Summerbourne who built the house was involved in some dodgy moneymaking schemes. He made his fortune, and then lost it all again, promised some of the families in the village he’d help them get rich, but then made enemies of them when he couldn’t pay his bills. The villagers used to say Summerbourne was—I don’t know—not haunted, but unlucky in some way. Have you been into the village much?”

  I shook my head.

  “You should ask them,” he said. “Ask anyone in the village about Summerbourne. Their eyes light up—honestly. They were brought up on stories about this place. Not just the murky history of it, but fairy stories too. What do they call them here—sprites, is it?”

  “Yeah.” I’d heard Michael blame sprites when his seeds got mixed up in the greenhouse. Edwin was fascinated with the idea of seeing one, catching one. I pictured them rather like the gremlins from the movie I’d loved when I was eleven or twelve. “But fairy stories? A bit weird for adults to talk about, isn’t it?”

  “God knows what really happened here.” Alex grinned at me. “They never actually tell you that, of course—they probably don’t remember themselves anymore. My neighbor at the cottage told me to watch myself coming up here. I said, ‘I’m only going for a picnic.’ He virtually crossed himself.”

  I hugged my arms around my chest. “They’re probably just jealous. In the village. The people who lived here would always have seemed . . .”

  “More privileged?” Alex said. “You’re probably right.”

  I frowned at the inscription. “Still, a strange saying for that Summerbourne ancestor to pick. It sounds like he regretted his behavior, if it made him feel that trapped.”

  “I quite like it,” Alex said, leaning toward me a little as he dropped his voice. “It always strikes me as quite apt for the family. Don’t you think they’re a bit like wolves, our friends in the house there?”

  I glanced toward Edwin, but the boys were oblivious to our conversation, feasting on blackberries and giggling, their chins dripping purple.

  “What do you mean?” I liked the way his mouth curved upward on one side in a half smile.

  He leaned closer. “You know. Dominic thinks he’s the alpha male, out hunting in the city all week, returning triumphant on a Friday night to feed his pack. But everyone knows Vera’s the real alpha, with all the real money and power. She’s the one who oversees the pack, brings new blood in to make it stronger. I bet she turned up at your interview, didn’t she? To inspect you before Ruth gave you the job?”

  I licked my lips. “After Ruth offered me the job, actually. But, yes.”

  “There you go. She’s got half the village eating out of her hands, that woman—she’s always rescuing people, helping people out, and then she calls in the favor when she needs it, or when the family needs it.”

  “What are you then?” I asked. “New blood?”

  When he laughed, his elbow bumped against mine. “Hardly. I’m not obedient enough for that, anyway. No, I’m just a lone wolf, roaming through their territory. We circle around each other every so often, and then I go off and look for a more suitable pack.”

  “But you haven’t found one?”

  “Not yet.” His mouth half curved again.

  I turned to watch the boys for a minute, aware that our sleeves were still touching.

  “So what am I?” I asked.

  “Ah, you. You’re an omega. A lowly caregiver.” He squinted sideways at me. “You’re not a threat to them, so they treat you well.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “The pack always comes first,” he said. “It’s more important even
than the individuals in it. If you threaten the pack, you know what they’ll do to you.”

  I watched his mouth as he spoke, the flash of his teeth. He leaned toward me again, his gaze on my lips, his voice a whisper. “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  Edwin skidded to a halt directly in front of us. “Can we go to the beach now?”

  Alex eased away from me. My heart was jumping.

  “Are you sure you’ve had enough?” Alex asked Edwin. Dark purple juice stained all around both boys’ mouths and ran in streaks down the fronts of their coats.

  “My tummy’s full,” Edwin said, and behind him Joel clutched his abdomen dramatically and nodded.

  “Well then.” Alex launched into a passable Robin Williams imitation. “Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys! Let’s get down to the beach.”

  Edwin and Joel whooped, and we abandoned the folly and scrambled down the steps to the sand. The boys raced around in the wind, shrieking, stretching their arms out like airplane wings.

  I had brought nothing with me, and I suffered a twinge of self-recrimination, knowing that Ruth would have thought to bring a picnic blanket, a flask of tea. But seeing the boys run made me want to join in, so I knocked Alex’s arm with the back of my hand and shouted, “Race you to the rocks!” and set off at a sprint.

  “Hey!” I heard him shout behind me, and his shoes pounded the wet sand as he tried to close the gap, but I beat him.

  “God, I’ve got to get fit before I turn thirty,” he panted, hunching over with his hands on his knees for a minute. Then, “It!” and he whacked me on the arm and hared back toward the steps. Edwin and Joel joined in, and we played tag on the beach until we were all exhausted and the boys began to clamor for their lunch.

  “You can’t be hungry again already?” Alex asked them, laughing.

  I gave the boys the usual instructions to climb the steps carefully, one behind the other, holding on to the railing. As I was about to start after them, Alex caught hold of my wrist. He reached down and picked a spray of tiny purple flowers from the clump of sea lavender at the base of the steps, and he tucked it behind my ear.