The Au Pair

by Emma Rous

  “Perfect,” he said.

  I swayed toward him, convinced he was about to kiss me, my heart jumping at the nearness of him, my scalp tingling from his fingers settling the flower stalk in my hair. His lips parted.

  “Laura!” Edwin called from above. We swayed apart. I dragged my gaze to where the boys waited ten steps up the cliff. “You’re s’posed to be right behind.” Edwin’s purple-stained lower lip jutted out, a mix of crossness and anxiety in his expression.

  Alex gestured to me to start climbing. “We’re right here,” he told Edwin. “Good job, boys. Keep going now, nice and steady.” He continued to chat to the boys on the way back to the house, and I kept my gaze on the ground, wishing I understood whether it meant something or nothing—the flower, the leaning toward, the pulling away.

  My mood sank further as we reached the lawn and saw the kitchen doors were open. Ruth appeared in the doorway and watched us approach.

  “Mummy!” Edwin yelled, running toward her. Alex kept his chin high, his focus directly on Ruth, no sideways glance at me. I tugged the flowers from my hair and slowed my stride.

  Ruth kissed the top of Edwin’s head. “Go and wash your hands and face, darling, and take Joel with you. You can play inside then until your lunch is ready.” When she straightened, her gaze was fixed on Alex.

  “Ruth. You look wonderful.” Alex opened his arms as he walked up to her. She allowed him to kiss her on each cheek, her expression taut. I hesitated on the patio, turning to look out at the garden.

  “Are we still on for our lunch date?” he asked her, and I could tell he wasn’t confident of her answer.

  “Why not?” she replied after a heartbeat’s pause, and then, “Laura, please make sure Edwin eats a sandwich before any more fruit, won’t you?” By the time I had turned to acknowledge this, they were walking away side by side, and I heard Alex’s car engine start up a minute later.

  There was a bird-pecked apple on the patio table, and I picked it up and examined it. I thought of Ruth saying “at his beck and call,” and I pressed my thumbnail through the wrinkled green skin into the spongy flesh. Alex didn’t deserve someone who made him wait, who made him feel guilty when he hadn’t done anything wrong. He deserved someone who would race with him on the beach in the wild wind and laugh at the sky. He deserved someone who loved him—someone who was free to love him.

  In the kitchen I prepared ham sandwiches for myself and the boys. I sliced two unblemished apples into perfect crescents, and arranged them on a plate alongside a mountain of chocolate fingers. Afterward, while Edwin and Joel were pushing trains around a wooden track in the day nursery, I escaped to the annex and slid the wilting purple flowers that Alex had given me between pages of my heaviest textbook and pressed them flat.

  11

  Seraphine

  I LOVE WAKING up at Winterbourne. I love lying with my eyes closed and listening to the soft rumble of traffic outside, the snatches of phrases from cyclists whizzing by, the leisurely comments drifting up from neighbors as they emerge from their houses. This morning there is high-pitched yapping from a little dog, and then the clatter of the trash truck as it begins its stop-start progress down the street. I trace the familiar embroidery pattern on the bedspread with my fingertips like I used to on childhood visits to Granny Vera. Even the scent of the wood polish on the mahogany bedside table takes me back to being seven years old again, and for a moment I pretend that all is well and my dad is still here, pottering around in the kitchen downstairs, brewing his coffee and reading his newspaper.

  By the time I descend to the kitchen, Edwin has left for work. Danny is frying bacon, yawning.

  “How many are coming?” I ask, eyeing the panful.

  “Funny. I need energy. Brooke’s taking me on a walking tour of the city with some friends of her parents.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Friends of her parents? How serious is this?”

  He ducks his head. I’m not used to seeing Danny embarrassed, and it gives me a little jolt of amusement, alongside some other more protective emotion. He shrugs.

  “I like her, that’s all,” he says. “Listen, sis. I was thinking, about last night. That letter. And Dad’s accident.” He looks at me, hesitating.

  “Hm?”

  “Dad said something a few days before he died. When I first got back. He said he had something he wanted to tell us, when we were all together.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, pouring milk onto my muesli.

  “I don’t know. He said he was glad we were all going to be together that weekend, our birthday weekend. There was something he wanted to tell us.”

  I pause with my spoon halfway to my mouth.

  “Well, what was it?” I ask, then see his expression and add, “Okay. You don’t know.” I put my spoon down slowly.

  Dad’s accident happened on a Thursday, the day before Danny and I turned twenty-five. He’d driven over to Summerbourne to start preparations for the family party we had planned for the Saturday. We think he might have been trying to rescue one of the farm kittens from the garage roof. He fell off the ladder onto the driveway and hit his head and died.

  Edwin and I were at work that day—Edwin in London and me in Norwich—but Danny was freshly returned from working abroad and was catching up with friends in the village, so he was the first of us to arrive at Summerbourne and find him. It was Danny who had to watch the paramedics shake their heads. It was Danny who had to talk to the police, phone the rest of us, ward off the curious neighbors, pick me up off the gravel when I got home.

  “Did Dad say anything to Edwin about this?” I ask eventually, but Danny shrugs.

  “I’d forgotten about it until this morning. Do you think it means anything? No one was there when he fell.” He looks down then, blinking at the bacon he’s laid out on his bread. “That’s what I keep thinking. No one was there. How can we be sure it was an accident?”

  “Danny!” I push my chair back and get up, walk to the sink, turn around, and walk back. “The police said it was an accident.”

  “I know.”

  I can tell that, like me, he is remembering our conversation last night: the implication in the letter that Dad’s death was far from an accident, and my insistence that this was a hollow threat. I attempt to summon back that certainty now, but there’s a tremor in my voice.

  “You can’t think—someone killed him? Murdered him? Because of this thing he was going to tell us?” I concentrate on breathing, trying to push the distressing image from my mind. “Please, Danny. It’s not true. It can’t be true.”

  We hold each other’s gaze, and I feel as though I’m waiting for him to leap up and grab me by the shoulders and tell me it is true, it’s horribly true. But as he’s just pointed out, no one was there; how can we be sure either way?

  Danny breaks eye contact first. “I’m sure you’re right, sis.” He sighs. “This is probably a normal reaction. Looking for someone to blame, or whatever. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  He takes a bite of his bacon sandwich. I tip my muesli into the sink, flushing it down the waste disposal. Through the window I glimpse a slim figure with white-blond hair gliding past the railings and pushing open the Winterbourne gate. I turn back to Danny.

  “But you think he might have been going to tell us something about all of this?” I say, waving my hand toward the dining room. “This weirdness. Laura.”

  The doorbell rings. My twin brother sits and looks at me for another moment, and then gets to his feet, still holding his sandwich.

  “I don’t know what to think anymore,” he says, and pads out to the hall with me close behind. He turns to me as I start to climb the stairs.

  “What are your plans for the day?” he asks. “Are you going back to Summerbourne?”

  “Yep.”

  He gives me a long look.

  “Don’t do anyth
ing stupid, will you?” he says. The doorbell rings again.

  “What, like going on a walking tour of the city on the hottest day of the year?”

  He pulls a face at me, and I dash up out of sight before he swings the front door open. From the privacy of my bedroom, I ring Alex Kaimal’s work number, and a friendly sounding man assures me that he’s in the office all day. The address is on an industrial estate in a suburb south of Leeds. I hope Alex is going to prove easier to talk to than Laura.

  I shower and dress and wait upstairs until I hear Danny and Brooke leave, and then I set off. Roadwork stretches the journey to over four hours, and when I eventually switch my engine off in front of Alex’s steel-framed block of a workplace, I realize my stomach is growling. I can’t afford to mess this up. I need to get on with it. I brush my hair, apply lipstick, and attempt to smooth the creases from my dress before I leave the car.

  At one end of the low-ceilinged reception area is a horseshoe arrangement of chunky padded chairs in sherbet colors, and a water dispenser. At the other end, a woman and a man murmur into phones behind the reception desk. I catch the man’s eye as he hangs up.

  “I’d like to see Alex Kaimal, please,” I say. “Quite urgently. Could you ask him to come down and meet me?”

  The man smiles. “Sure. Is he expecting you?”

  “No, I—I did mean to e-mail him, but—” What can I say? I was afraid if Alex saw my name on the e-mail he’d refuse to see me? After the reception Laura gave me, I’m not confident that Alex is going to welcome me wholeheartedly.

  The receptionist is unruffled. “Who shall I tell him . . . ?”

  I swallow. “Seraphine.” He holds his smile as I press my lips down on my surname at the last moment. “Harris,” I say. I grip the counter.

  After a murmured conversation into his phone, he cups his hand over the mouthpiece and tilts his head at me. “I’m sorry. Mr. Kaimal’s in a board meeting. His secretary says you can make an appointment for next week if you like?”

  I fight the urge to snatch the phone from his hand and force myself to smile, as if it doesn’t matter in the least. “It’s fine,” I manage, and I turn away as he replaces the handset. I feel light-headed and walk over to the water dispenser, glancing at the elevator as I pass. Could I march confidently into it without being challenged? The receptionist is busy again, paying me no further attention; I think I could. Could I open every door on each floor and peer inside without someone stopping me? I grit my teeth. Probably not.

  I press a jet of chilled water into a plastic cup, and choose a seat with a view of the elevator doors. I’ll wait. I know what Alex Kaimal looks like, and I’ll catch him as he leaves the building. I browse through several magazines over the next hour, and nobody says a word to me. Around half past four, a young woman with a pink streak in her dyed black hair walks in and smiles at me, but she takes a seat at the far end of the horseshoe and concentrates on her phone.

  I count thirty-four people out of the elevator before it opens to reveal the man I’m waiting for. He’s slightly heavier in the face, clearly older than in the company photo, but this is definitely Alex Kaimal. I get to my feet, but the woman with the pink and black hair is closer to him, and she rises between us and says, “Hi, Dad.”

  “Kiara,” he says, smiling.

  They embrace briefly. They’re oblivious to me.

  I follow them outside.

  “Mr. Kaimal,” I say, but it comes out as a croak, and he doesn’t hear me.

  “Mr. Kaimal!” I call, louder. The daughter turns first.

  When Alex Kaimal finally swings round to look at me, we stand facing each other wordlessly. Cold needles prickle down my neck and arms. His frown deepens as he stares at me. The girl looks curiously from one of us to the other.

  “Can we help you?” she asks me. I can’t tear my gaze from his face.

  “I’m Seraphine Mayes,” I manage to say. “I’m Dominic and Ruth Mayes’s daughter. I think you were a friend of my parents.”

  His demeanor changes then. His eyes widen, he draws in two deep quick breaths, and he takes a step backward, holding his hands up as if to defend himself.

  “Dad?” his daughter asks, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me.

  “You can’t be,” he says eventually. “You can’t be. Ruth died.”

  I step forward, warily.

  “I know. She died on the day I was born,” I say.

  He starts to shake his head, slowly at first and then more violently.

  “No. No, it’s impossible,” he says.

  “Dad?” his daughter says again, and he reaches for her hand without breaking eye contact with me.

  “We need to go,” he says, taking another step backward.

  “My brother Edwin remembers you,” I say.

  An expression of pain distorts his face.

  “Why do you say it’s impossible?” I ask.

  He shakes his head, his mouth slightly open, no sound emerging.

  “Have you been in contact with Laura?” I ask. “Did you send her a letter?”

  “Laura?” he blurts. “No. What?”

  Then he regains some composure and takes a step toward me, and then another, his eyes stretched wide, his face thrust forward.

  “Who are you?” he demands, and I’m convinced that at any moment he’s going to snarl at me. I stumble backward. The young woman tugs at his hand, pulling him away.

  “Dad, stop it. We need to go. Please, let’s just go,” she says.

  He relaxes slightly and examines me all the way down to my feet and back up again in a swift moment.

  “I don’t know who you are,” he says, his voice gravelly, “and I don’t want to talk to you. Stay away from me. Stay away from both of us.”

  They cling on to each other as they hurry away from me, crossing the car park and climbing into a car. Several men and women have stopped outside the building and are eyeing me curiously. I’m shaking. Impossible, he said. It’s impossible that I’m my parents’ child. The conviction that this man is right claws at me, firing off the same three words over and over again in a staccato rhythm at the back of my brain. Who am I?

  12

  Laura

  October/November 1991

  WHEN ALEX DROPPED Ruth home after their lunch date, she went directly to her bedroom claiming a headache. I’d been making flapjacks with Edwin and Joel, and I chewed on a crispy corner piece as I watched the yellow car glide away down the lane. I guessed from Ruth’s headache that her outing with Alex hadn’t been a success.

  That night, Dominic arrived at Summerbourne in a jolly mood, but the following morning he came off the phone and into the kitchen with his mouth in a flat line.

  “That was Alex. He can’t come for lunch after all. He’s got to go back up to Leeds right away—some crisis at work.”

  Ruth shrugged. “Oh well. All he could talk about yesterday was the work he’s having done on the cottage. It got boring. I wish he’d just ring you when he’s in that sort of mood—he’s your friend.”

  Dominic frowned. “Come on, you’ve known him as long as I have. Have you upset him again? I got the feeling this work crisis thing was an excuse.”

  “Well, if informing him that I’m not his employee, I’m not at his beck and call to sort out his interior decorating problems counts as upsetting him, then yes. Maybe. It’s his own fault.”

  My jaw tightened. I was in the kitchen to fetch a cup of water for Edwin, and I kept my eyes down and padded back out toward the day nursery. But I hovered out of sight in the utility area between the two rooms.

  “For God’s sake, Ruth. He doesn’t need your help. He’s just excited. He just wants to include us in his project.” There was a sharp edge of exasperation in Dominic’s voice. “Why do you always do this?”

  “You have no idea what it’s like for me stuck out h
ere in the week. Do you think it’s all fun and games? I gave up my career for this.”

  I held my breath. Ruth had told me about the banking career she left when she had the twins; about how much she loved it, how much she missed it. I gripped the door handle of the day nursery, upset at how dismissive she was about the days she shared with Edwin and me.

  “So let’s move into Winterbourne, then,” Dominic said. “Get Edwin into the school the Mellard kids go to. You could pick up some part-time hours, see how it suits—”

  There was a scrape of chair leg on tiles.

  “I’m not taking Edwin away from Summerbourne,” Ruth said. “Never.”

  I slipped into the day nursery and kept Edwin out of their way for the rest of the morning.

  Ruth remained preoccupied even after Dominic returned to London that Monday. Edwin and I fell into a routine of playing outside every morning—in the garden or at the beach, or at the playground in the village if we fancied a walk and a trip to the shop. We’d return to the house for lunch, and then choose a project for the afternoon: creating models from cardboard boxes, baking biscuits, designing treasure hunts. There was no part of me that minded working longer hours than I was supposed to; the busier I was, the less chance I had to feel lonely or to dwell on what had and hadn’t happened with Alex at the base of the cliff steps.

  Ruth often drifted into the kitchen as Edwin and I were eating lunch, and she seemed to enjoy Edwin’s happy chatter as he told her what we’d been up to, but for three weekends in a row she complained of a headache when Dominic was home. I didn’t hear either of them mention Alex’s name.

  Vera phoned on a Tuesday toward the end of the month. “Would you mind awfully taking Edwin to his gym class tomorrow afternoon, Laura? I’d like to come down and take Ruth out for lunch. Have a proper chat with her.”

  “Of course,” I replied. “No problem.”

  “Thank you, my dear. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  Edwin wasn’t fazed by having to walk to his gym class. Helen Luckhurst was there with her solemn son, Ralph; her new baby daughter, Daisy, muffled in a sling against her chest. She bought me a polystyrene cup of gray coffee, and quizzed me about daily life at Summerbourne while we watched the children wobble along beams.