The Au Pair

by Emma Rous

  “Does she act like a proper mum, though—Ruth—when she’s at home?” She widened her eyes at me, waiting for my reply, her lips parted.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean, she always seems so—cold. Especially since she lost her other little boy. Does she blame Edwin for that? For distracting her? Does she still love him, do you think? I mean—really, deep down, like a proper mum?”

  I inhaled sharply through my nose, and turned away. When she realized I wasn’t intending to answer, she shrugged and wandered off to chat to someone else.

  Ruth and Vera were still out at lunch when Edwin and I got home. I settled him in front of his favorite cartoon video in the day nursery, and was in the kitchen when the phone rang.

  “Hello, Summerbourne?”

  “Hi, Laura, it’s Alex.”

  “Oh. Hi.” I stretched the spiral cord between my fingers. It was three weeks and five days since he’d tucked the flowers into my hair, leaning in so close to me, smiling his half smile at me. Had he been counting the days too?

  “I just wondered—is Ruth there?” he said. The telephone cord sprang back at me, bouncing briefly up and down with a rhythm like a laugh.

  “No, sorry,” I said. “She’s out.”

  “Ah. Would you mind giving her a message?”

  I picked up the pencil kept on the hall table for that purpose. “Of course.”

  “Could you tell her I’m at the cottage now until Sunday. If she wants to pop round before the weekend, she’d be very welcome. My neighbors tell me there’s a Halloween party on in the village tomorrow night—do you know if she’s thinking of going? Or perhaps I should wait until the weekend.” He paused. “Perhaps I should give Dominic a ring.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell her.”

  “Great. Thanks, Laura. And thanks for the trip to the beach the other day—it was fun.”

  I scored a deep gray groove into the pad of Post-it notes.

  “Yep. Okay. Bye.” I hung up.

  Alex at cottage, I wrote on the pad. Party tomorrow night?

  Ruth stalked into the day nursery to find us when she and Vera got back.

  “How was gym, darling?” she asked Edwin, bending to kiss him.

  “Good, Mummy.”

  She had bright red patches high up on her cheeks, and she narrowed her eyes at me over Edwin’s head.

  “Get rid of her, please,” she hissed.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “My mother. Persuade her to go home. She’s going on and on about us making a fresh start, moving into Winterbourne. I can’t bear to sit next to her at dinner. Please, Laura.” She gave Edwin another kiss and marched out of the room. I trailed after her.

  Ruth headed directly upstairs. Vera was leaning by the back doors in the kitchen, gazing out at the garden.

  “Is everything all right, Mrs. Blackwood?” I asked. She straightened and smiled at me.

  “Absolutely. Quite all right, thank you. I don’t think I will stay for dinner after all, though, my dear. Would you mind phoning for a taxi for me?”

  I went out to the hall. The block of Post-it notes displayed a fresh blank sheet.

  The following morning, Edwin and I had clomped into the hall from the garden, shedding wellies and coats and bundles of autumn leaves, before we realized we were interrupting Ruth on the phone. She held her hand over the mouthpiece and waited for us to take our finds through to the day nursery before she resumed talking. A while later she wandered through to admire Edwin’s collage.

  “Laura, I know I said I’d take him to the Halloween thing in the hall this afternoon, but I don’t suppose you’d take him for me, would you?”

  Edwin looked from her to me, his glue stick poised in midair.

  “Yeah, of course,” I said.

  “Oh, thank you. You’re a lifesaver. I want to nip into town and buy a costume for the village do tonight. Lots of the neighbors are going, apparently.”

  Edwin said, “Can I come?”

  “Tonight?” Ruth ruffled his hair. “No, darling. Sorry. It’s for grown-ups only. Laura will look after you here—maybe you could do apple bobbing or something?” Her vague tone sharpened as she met my eyes. “That is, if you don’t mind babysitting?”

  I shook my head. “That’s fine.”

  Edwin put his pirate costume on after lunch, and I drew him a curly mustache and dots of stubble with a black eyeliner pencil. I dropped a flashlight into my bag before we set off. It was the half-term holiday, and the village hall was overrun with children in fancy dress, from pillowcase ghosts to red-horned devils, and everything in between. Helen Luckhurst introduced me to Kemi Harris, Joel’s mum, recently returned from Nigeria. Kemi thanked me for the biscuits I’d helped Joel bake to welcome her home, but Edwin was tugging at my arm, so I left her chatting to Helen and accompanied him on a tour of the hall.

  He gripped my hand hard as he queued for games, his eyes wide as he watched the shrieking gangs of children rocketing around the echoing space. He had a turn at biting doughnuts hanging from strings, and then a go at sliding his hand into the lucky dip barrel where slimy toy bugs hid among the sawdust. Two little wizards who pounced on him turned out to be Joel Harris and Ralph Luckhurst, but Edwin hid his face in my cardigan and didn’t want to join in their play.

  I wrapped his scarf around his neck and pulled his hat tightly over his ears before we set off for home, but the sharp air crept underneath our layers and pinched at our skin. I stopped to wipe his nose as we passed the last house before our lane, and a car slowed to a halt. It was Ruth.

  “Good timing!” she said as we clambered in. I fumbled to do Edwin’s buckle up with my numb fingers. “How was the party, darling?”

  Edwin jutted his lower lip out.

  “I found the most marvelous witch costume,” she said. “And Alex has some floor-length black cloaks for us. It will go perfectly.”

  Later, when I had made cheese on toast for Edwin and bathed him and was reading him stories in bed, Ruth danced into his bedroom. She wore a pointed black hat and a maroon and black velvet dress, and when she spun around, the skirt whirled up into ripples. Her nails and lipstick were bloodred, her eye shadow was dark, and her eyes shone.

  “Don’t like it.” Edwin buried his face into my shoulder. Ruth stopped dancing.

  “It’s only Mummy, Edwin,” I said. “It’s just a costume. Isn’t it a pretty skirt?”

  Edwin shook his head without looking.

  Ruth put her hands on her hips. “Well, Alex is picking me up in a minute. Don’t wait up for me, Laura—just keep the annex door propped open. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Have a nice time,” I said.

  She swished out of the room, and Edwin rubbed his fists into his eyes.

  “I don’t like Mummy like that,” he said.

  “Me neither,” I whispered. “But she’ll be back to normal tomorrow, don’t worry.”

  I read him more stories, and sat with him afterward, stroking his hair until he fell asleep. Then I cleared up the kitchen, covering the top of the half-empty red wine bottle with a square of foil.

  I dragged my pillow and duvet onto a sofa in the day nursery to be closer to Edwin if he needed me, but my sleep was undisturbed. A gray mist swirled outside the curtainless windows when I woke, the sun barely breaking the horizon. In the hall, Ruth’s black boots lay on their side, shining wet. Beads of water glistened on the tiles in a pattern that suggested a larger pair of boots had recently stood next to them. I planned to make a cup of tea and retreat to the annex, but something caught my eye through the hall window on my way back to the kitchen. I took a couple of steps closer and peered out through the gloom.

  Something swayed under the trees at the entrance to the drive. Was that people out there? I stepped closer to the glass, blinking. Two figures hovered at
the corner of the lawn. All traces of sleep left me. I backed toward the phone, my heart thumping. Should I call the police? Should I wake Ruth? My feet grew chilled on the tiles while I hesitated. Perhaps I should go back to bed, wait for the sun to come up properly. Probably they were innocent neighbors and had already wandered away down the lane.

  A faint squeal cut through my indecision then—a high-pitched squeak that repeated itself twice more. It sounded familiar. I crept back to the window. Michael stood facing the figures, and he slowly lowered his wheelbarrow. There was something wrong with the swaying shapes, I realized—they weren’t people standing on the ground.

  I grabbed wellies from the cupboard, hauled my coat onto my arms. My hands shook as some instinct made me press the door handle down before looking for the keys. The door swung open. My stomach lurched. I stepped outside.

  Michael watched me approach, his expression grim. The rising sun was beating back the mist, and it was clear now that the two figures were shapes hanging from the branch of one of the ash trees. I stepped closer.

  “They’re not real,” I whispered. Michael made no response but stood with his gaze fixed on me, as if waiting for me to do something. I stretched out trembling fingers and felt velvet—wet black velvet. The cloaks that Alex and Ruth had worn to the party, hung up by their hoods.

  I made a noise like a laugh, from relief rather than humor, but when I turned to Michael, his face was more severe than ever.

  “That ent right,” he said. He shook his head, no longer looking at me. I stumbled away then, back to the house, locking the front door behind me. I dragged my bedding back through to the annex and lay under my duvet until I heard Edwin’s cartoons blare out in the day nursery an hour later. When I looked out to the driveway in the gray daylight, the cloaks were gone.

  Edwin and I stayed indoors all morning. The yellow sports car announced itself with a scatter of gravel while we were making sandwiches for lunch. I pushed the sitting room door open and peered into the shadows.

  “Alex is here,” I said.

  Ruth sprang up, her hands on her cheeks. The doorbell rang. She whisked the curtains open and ran her fingers through her hair.

  “I told him not to come back,” she said. She straightened her shoulders. “It’s fine. Let him in.”

  He stood empty-handed on the doorstep, his gaze flicking past mine to search the hall behind me, his dark hair slick in the drizzle. I stepped back to allow him in, and nodded at the sitting room door. Edwin and I ate our sandwiches in the day nursery and watched cartoons all afternoon, not venturing into the main house again until the car had gone.

  Dominic arrived late that evening with bags of groceries in his trunk. He was dicing onion and crushing garlic the next morning when he asked, “So, what time’s Alex coming?”

  Ruth leaned against the sink with her back to us. I peeled Edwin’s banana for him and gestured for him to follow me out.

  “I’m not sure he is coming,” she said.

  Dominic paused with his knife poised. “Why not?”

  Ruth shrugged.

  A minute later Dominic strode into the day nursery, where Edwin was laying out fresh sheets of paper for painting.

  “Hey, Edwin. Fancy a trip into the village to see Uncle Alex?”

  Edwin scrambled off his chair. “Yes, yes!”

  Dominic gave me a flat smile. “It’s the weekend. You shouldn’t be working. I’m afraid we take advantage of you far too much.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  “Do you want to go out somewhere? I could drop you in town?”

  An image of my friends flashed into my mind. The four of us who used to spend our Saturdays hanging out at the shopping center, scraping money together for chips, gossiping about the other kids at school.

  “No, I’m good, thanks. I’ll—” I indicated the annex door with my head.

  “Okay.”

  I stood by the table after they’d gone, wondering what my friends were doing at that very moment. My throat ached with self-pity. Hazel would be taking notes in a Saturday morning lecture, I suspected; the first year of medicine was pretty lecture-heavy. Jo had joined the police, and I pictured her on a weekend shift, gulping down scalding coffee before dashing out to an urgent call. Pati would almost certainly still be asleep in her student apartment, unlikely to surface until midafternoon. They’d all have new friends by now, new in-jokes, new futures mapped out. I doubted they had time to spare a thought for me.

  A movement in the garden tugged me back to the present, and I stepped closer to the tall day nursery windows. Ruth was wandering out across the lawn in her baggy gray cardigan and slippers, seemingly oblivious to the November chill. She disappeared among the trees. I was alone in the house.

  In the kitchen, raw onion and garlic lay abandoned on a chopping board, filling the room with their odor. I plucked two paperbacks from the bookshelf in the sitting room and took them with a cup of tea to my annex.

  The sound of cartoons alerted me to Edwin’s return a couple of hours later. He didn’t acknowledge me passing behind his sofa, his eyes fixed on the screen. I filled the kettle, but tiptoed to the doorway with it in my hand, holding my breath. Dominic’s voice floated from the sitting room.

  “. . . thinking of selling it,” he was saying. “After such a short time. It’s ridiculous. He knows it’s a good investment even if he doesn’t want to use it himself.”

  I couldn’t make out Ruth’s reply.

  “Well something has upset him, that’s for sure,” Dominic said.

  Ruth said something like, “. . . his own life.”

  “You’ve picked a fight with him again, haven’t you? Made him think we want him here, then told him you don’t. Well, I hope you’re satisfied.” I heard the creak of the sitting room door, and I dashed across the kitchen, clattering the kettle onto its base.

  “He should move into Winterbourne,” came Ruth’s voice. “With you and my mother. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You and Alex. You could suit yourselves then.”

  I abandoned the kettle and crept back to my rooms.

  Dominic headed back to London on the Sunday morning. Ruth kept to herself that week, and I took Edwin out of the house as much as possible. Michael introduced me to quinces, another fruit I had never encountered. Edwin and I picked some and I hacked them into pieces to stew with apple, but it was their fragrance that attracted me the most: an aroma that reminded me tantalizingly of Turkish delight jellies and the Earl Grey tea that Vera drank. I kept a couple on my windowsill in the annex, stroking their fuzzy yellow skins when I passed them, inhaling their beguiling scent as if it was an antidote for the tense atmosphere in the main part of the house.

  Dominic and Ruth argued again the following weekend, and Dominic sought me out on the Sunday afternoon.

  “I’m really sorry about all this, Laura,” he told me, his lips tugged downward. “I think Ruth could do with getting away from here for a little while. Is there any chance you’d consider looking after Edwin full-time for a few days? I might book a minibreak for her to go on with Vera.”

  I nodded. “Of course. Whatever helps.”

  He pressed his lips into his flat smile.

  “God, I don’t know what we did to deserve you. Thank you. I’ll pay you at double rate for all the extra hours, overnight, all of it,” he said.

  I opened my mouth to protest. That would be a ridiculous amount of money for the minimal extra work it would entail. He held up a hand.

  “Really—it’s the only way I can justify it,” he said. Edwin whizzed down the slide and ran head on into his father’s midriff. “It’s danger money,” Dominic added, his smile reaching his eyes this time.

  The weekday atmosphere in the house lightened after that. Ruth told me she and Vera were going to stay at a luxury country house hotel for a few days, and she began to eat meals with us ag
ain. She asked Edwin questions about his morning activities, and sometimes she took him out with her in the afternoons so that I could study. Often, she walked down to the beach with Edwin in the early evenings, saying it helped clear her head. She asked me to babysit on Saturday nights, and she and Dominic went out together, coming home late. I dozed in the day nursery until they came in, and then took myself off to the annex.

  But as the date of her mini holiday approached, she withdrew again, her behavior distracted and restless. I did my best to reassure her that Edwin would be fine with me, but she barely listened: that didn’t seem to be the source of her anxiety. I knew Dominic thought she was miserable about not being pregnant again, and Vera thought she was ill with depression and ought to see a doctor, but I wasn’t convinced about either of these theories. If Dominic was right about Alex putting his cottage back on the market, I guessed that Ruth was feeling guilty about pushing him away. I wondered if she missed him, and if she might attempt to entice him back to Summerbourne. I was torn between wanting to see him again and hoping I never would.

  I checked the clock constantly on that last morning. Dominic had taken the day off work to collect both women and chauffeur them to the hotel. I wondered if Ruth was building up to a refusal to go.

  However, she seemed resigned to the trip by the time Dominic arrived, and she gave Edwin a fierce hug before joining Vera on the back seat of the car. It was a gray Thursday afternoon, spitting lightly with a cold rain, and Edwin and I huddled in the doorway to wave them off. Edwin’s bottom lip wobbled as the car purred away.

  “Is Daddy coming back after?” he asked. We gazed down the lane together.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  13

  Seraphine

  ONE HUNDRED AND forty miles of road lie between Alex Kaimal’s office and Summerbourne. Questions run through my head in a relentless loop as I allow the GPS to guide me home. Why did Alex look so shocked when I told him my name? Was he telling the truth when he denied contacting Laura? Why did he say I was impossible?