The Au Pair

by Emma Rous

  My cheeks and shoulders glow with the threat of sunburn, and I haul myself up. On the pale crescent of beach below, a man throws a ball for a black-and-white dog. A seagull swoops over the dog’s head, and although it’s too far away to catch the sound, I can see that the dog is barking. The carefree scene makes my lips tighten with a tug of envy, and I move around the tower to sit in its shade.

  If I let all of this go, if I stop asking questions, what will life be like? I will have the predictable, soothing routine of my job. I’ll have family dinners with Edwin, Danny, and Vera. I might never have to move out of Summerbourne, whether or not Vera gives it to Danny. I will have a photograph of the day I was born without knowing whether I’m the baby in it. Life will be calm and safe. Unresolved but safe.

  But what if Kiara can tell me something—some seemingly trivial fact, perhaps, about her father or my family—that provides the key to everything else making sense?

  I retrieve my phone from where it bakes in the dry grass, and scroll through Kiara’s message again. It seems reckless to agree to meet her without telling the police about the threats I’ve received. But as soon as I go to the police, a chain of events will be triggered, and they’ll have to question Alex. And that might frighten Kiara off, and ruin my chance of finding out the truth.

  When I eventually stand up again, the man and the dog have gone. I can turn a full circle without glimpsing another living soul in any direction. I brush the dust from my dress and make my way back to the house, bolting the heavy garden gate behind me, scanning the windows as I approach. Nothing moves.

  Indoors, I prowl through the rooms, one by one. The landline handset sits on the coffee table in the sitting room, flashing with a message from Joel. He recites his mobile number in the precise manner of a doctor speaking to a recalcitrant patient. “Call me if you need anything.” I listen to it several times.

  I come close to calling Edwin’s number again, but I’m afraid suddenly that he’ll insist I delete Kiara’s message and heed the warnings. I’m not sure I’m ready to make that decision after all.

  I stand in front of the lipstick message for a long time, the floor tiles sucking the heat of the day out of me through the soles of my feet. I don’t want to lose my family. But I do need to know what happened on the day I was born. I do need to know who I am.

  The china fragments clink together in the dust pan. I mop the tiles, and scrub smudges of coffee and blood from the carpet. Then I spray lemon-scented cleaner all over the mirror, and sigh as the angry red words dissolve with a gentle wipe. A soft sea breeze whispers through my bedroom window as evening falls, and I make my bed with fresh linen sheets before dropping into a dreamless sleep.

  No further threats appear overnight, and in the morning I carry my coffee out to the patio and reply to Kiara: Yes, please, let’s meet up. Could you come to Norfolk on Saturday? Midday for lunch?

  Ten minutes later she replies: Yes, ok. Let me know your address.

  I ask her: Do you mind if my brothers join us?

  I don’t receive a reply until late afternoon: That’s fine. I’m going to leave a note for my dad so he knows where I’ve gone. He’ll see it on Saturday evening.

  It occurs to me that she’s not sure she can trust us: she wants backup in case we’re luring her into something sinister. As I’m thinking this, I hear the rumble of tires on gravel, and I dash back into the house to peer through the hall window. An unfamiliar car completes a three-point turn at the entrance to our drive, and glides off down the lane. I glance at the phone on the hall table, thinking of the message Joel left yesterday.

  “Joel? It’s Seraphine.”

  “Oh, hi. Hang on a sec—” There’s a muffled noise in the background and I wonder whether he’s still at Michael’s cottage.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Are you okay? You got my message?”

  “Yeah. Thanks. Did Edwin ask you to check up on me?”

  “Well, yes.” I think I can hear a smile in his voice. “But also, I wanted to apologize for yesterday. Grandad. Those stories.”

  “It’s fine, really. It was my fault.”

  There’s a pause. “Did you—is there anything you need?” he says.

  I’ve wandered with the handset into the kitchen, and my gaze rests on my handbag, its buckle undone as usual.

  “You haven’t seen anyone suspicious in the lane recently, have you?” I ask.

  “No, why? What’s happened?”

  I hesitate. “Oh, nothing. I don’t know. I’m just feeling a bit jumpy, being here on my own, I guess.”

  I perch on the arm of a chair, tracing scratches in the wooden tabletop with my thumb.

  “Do you want me to come over?” he asks. I try to analyze his tone of voice. Not keen. Maybe reluctant, or maybe just wary. I swallow.

  “No, it’s fine. I’m going to ask Edwin and Danny to come down for the weekend. I’ll let you go. I’m fine. Everything’s fine, really.”

  He starts to say something, but I hang up, my heart thudding. I’m fine. I’m fine. We’re so polite to each other these days, so distant. I wish I’d never called him.

  I know I need to talk to Edwin, although I’m determined not to tell him yet about the lipstick warning or the burned grass. I want him to come and meet Kiara with me—both him and Danny. I want to present a united front to Alex’s daughter, in case she springs something on us we’re not prepared for.

  I stand under the hot water in my little en suite shower room until the temperature starts to fall, and then I pull on clean clothes. I can’t put it off any longer. I call Edwin’s mobile.

  “Hey, how’re you doing?” he says.

  “I’m okay. Can you talk?”

  “I’m just on my way to meet Danny and Brooke,” he says, and I can hear the rhythm of his breathing as he walks. “Thought we’d have a drink out, it’s such a nice evening.”

  I’m not sure why I feel so unsettled by Danny’s new girlfriend. He’s never been one for serious relationships, but this one seems different somehow. Brooke gives the impression she’s someone who gets what she wants.

  “Edwin, listen. I need to tell you something.”

  “Oh God, Seraphine. You haven’t been to see Laura again?”

  “No, of course not,” I say, and there’s a pause. I hear a heavier exhale as if he’s just sat down.

  “Okay. Talk,” he says. “I’m listening.”

  I push the image of the lipstick writing from my mind, and try to decide where to start.

  “You still there?” he asks.

  “I went to see Alex. Alex Kaimal.”

  “You what?” he says, his voice a sudden boom so that I have to tilt the phone away from my ear.

  I lean back on my bed as I wait for him to digest this.

  “Bloody hell, Seph. What did he say?” he asks.

  “He said I was impossible.”

  “What?”

  I sigh. “He knew Mum and Dad, but he didn’t know who I was. He said I couldn’t possibly be their daughter.”

  “Seraphine . . .”

  “Edwin. He had a girl with him. His daughter. She’s called Kiara.”

  “Seraphine, you can’t just approach strange men. It’s harassment.”

  “It was fine. The thing is—Kiara, his daughter, she wants to meet up with us. I’ve asked her down here for lunch on Saturday.”

  Edwin groans, the tail end of it sounding more like a growl. “Alex’s daughter? Seriously? Why?”

  “She just—she’d like to meet us. And—” I think about Kiara’s message; she lost her mother when she was a baby too. “You know, she might be able to tell us something. Will you and Danny come down and be with me when she arrives? I don’t want to do it by myself.”

  I wait, listening to my own breathing, gnawing at my lip.

  “I promised Gran we’d have a family wee
kend at Winterbourne,” Edwin says eventually. “She wants you to come too, Seph. I’ll do us a roast on Sunday. It’ll do you good.”

  “But Saturday? Please. I really need you here.”

  There’s another drawn-out silence, and eventually he sighs and says, “I suppose we could come. I’ll talk to Danny.” And then more softly, “We’ll come.”

  I close my eyes. “Thank you.”

  “Look, I’ll try to leave work early tomorrow, head straight to you. Just don’t do anything else crazy until we get there, okay?”

  I’m on my feet, looking out of my bedroom window down the lane toward Michael’s cottage.

  “Of course not,” I say. “Have a nice time with Danny and the Ice Maiden.”

  Edwin hangs up.

  I’m preparing cheese on toast a while later, shaving the hardened crusts off the block of cheddar, when the doorbell rings. Joel stands there: shoulders hunched, eyebrows raised as if he’s not sure of his welcome. My eyes flick toward the damage on the front lawn, but I’ve parked my car to shield it from this angle. He holds out a carrier bag of shopping—some bottles, bars of chocolate, fruit, biscuits.

  “I said I was fine,” I say, but I stand back and let him in. He walks through and puts the bag on the kitchen table.

  “Just checking,” he says. He glances at the cheese I’ve been hacking. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  “No, stay,” I say, pulling items out of the bag, keeping my back to him while I wait for my pulse rate to settle. “Thanks. It’s nice of you.” I offer him a bottle of beer, and he accepts. “Look, I’m going to toast this cheese, and then you can report back to Edwin that I’m cooking for myself.”

  He takes the chair at the end of the table, granting me the smallest of smiles. His stubble is gone, but he still has deep shadows under his eyes.

  “How’s Michael today?” I ask, keeping my tone light.

  Joel sighs. “Not too bad. Two more weeks ’til Mum and Dad get back. It’s easier when they’re here to share it.”

  “Does it mean you can’t work, while they’re away?”

  “No, I can do some. I’ve been taking a few shifts.” He rubs his eyes briefly. “I just check him before and after.”

  “You can’t get someone in? I wouldn’t mind sitting with him if you need help.”

  He smiles at me properly then, and my knife curves out of the block of the cheese too soon, making me jump.

  “Ah, thanks, but he’s all right by himself really. He doesn’t even try to cook anymore.” His eyes flick to my cheese shavings. “He just potters in the garden mostly, or takes a walk over the fields. It’s nice of you, though. I’d have thought you’d had enough of listening to him.”

  I shrug. “I’m tougher than I used to be.”

  Our eyes meet, and I have a disconcerting sensation that I’m fourteen again. He looks at me as though he can read my thoughts, and I force myself to turn away and sort out my food.

  The grill is heating up, but the handle of the grill tray is broken. Joel twitches the pair of oven gloves from its hook near his chair and passes it over to me, and I slide the tray under the heat.

  “I remember Edwin breaking that handle,” he says.

  I poke the tray in a little farther. “Really? When was that?”

  “Making toasties after school one day, when we were about ten, I guess.” He relaxes in his chair a little. “Freezing cold day. We put them under the grill and forgot to watch them, messing around. It was when you had that German nanny. The one who used to sing all the time. Do you remember?”

  I shake my head.

  “You must have been five or six. She was really nice. You don’t remember her?”

  “We had so many. I wasn’t like Danny. I tried not to get attached.”

  He blinks at me. “Well. Anyway, the toast caught fire—proper flames, it was pretty scary—and Edwin yanked the tray out and dropped it. Broke the handle. We got a huge telling off.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Joel’s gaze roams around the kitchen. I wash up a couple of plastic tubs with my back to him, keeping half an eye on his reflection in the window. He looks more at home here than I do. The tick of the kitchen clock seems louder with each minute of silence.

  “Do you remember Laura?” I ask him suddenly, turning to face him. “The au pair Edwin had before Danny and I were born?”

  He shrugs. “Yeah, vaguely, I think. She used to bake cakes with us.”

  “How about Alex? Alex Kaimal?” I ask.

  “No, who’s he?”

  “Do you remember Danny and me being born?”

  He gives me a long look.

  “Seraphine . . .” he starts, but I cut him off.

  “Oh, okay. Edwin’s said something, hasn’t he? What did he say? Keep an eye on poor Seraphine, she’s lost her marbles, thinks she’s a changeling?”

  “Seraphine,” he says calmly, “your toast is burning.”

  I jam my hands into the oven gloves and yank the tray out from under the grill, clattering it onto the chopping board. I throw the back doors open, and then I lean against the doorframe, facing the garden, swallowing down the lump in my throat as the smoke drifts past me to curl away with the breeze.

  “I don’t really remember you being born,” Joel says from his seat behind me. “Sorry. I remember it being me and Edwin, before we started school, playing here. Just happy memories really. And then after we started school, it was always—sad here, in your house: two screaming babies, your dad all spaced-out, Vera fussing all the time, new nannies starting and leaving. I mean, it got better, of course. Not that you screamed all the time, I don’t mean that.”

  I turn around, try to smile.

  “Oh, Gran always says I was a horrible baby, it’s okay,” I say.

  “You were pretty fierce back then. Do you remember Edwin and me teaching you and Danny to ride your bikes? Before you started school. Felt like it took us the whole summer holiday, and you had a huge tantrum every time you fell off. You’d stamp your feet and shout at us, blaming us.”

  I shake my head slowly. “I don’t remember that.”

  Joel pulls a face. “Probably just as well.”

  “I bet Danny was a dream to teach.”

  He doesn’t reply, but the corners of his mouth pinch up in confirmation.

  I reach for the chocolate biscuits he brought, and hold them out inquiringly, but he stands up.

  “Thanks, but I’ll get going. I just wanted to check you’re okay. I hope I haven’t made you feel any worse.”

  I walk as far as the front door with him, and as he steps outside, he turns to face me, not saying anything for a moment. There’s a faint sinuous scar just under his jaw—a pale indentation in his dark skin—and without thinking, I reach up and touch it with my fingertip.

  “How did you get this?” I ask.

  His pupils widen, and he takes hold of my hand, pulling it down gently.

  “From the glass, that day,” he says, his eyes searching mine.

  I look at him blankly. “What day?”

  “Seraphine.” He draws in a deep breath, still holding my hand. “That day I upset you by the pool, when the others started teasing you and you ran away. The glass you smashed—it cut me.”

  I’m shaking my head now, feeling cold.

  “No one . . . I didn’t . . .”

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Long forgotten. Except it made me realize just how harmful Grandad’s stories could be. I’m sorry. I tried to fix things afterward, but . . .”

  I stare at him. Is it true? How could I have hurt him and not known about it? The hairs on my arms rise, and the air around me seems to shift and relayer itself, as if Summerbourne itself is sifting through its memories.

  “You’re cold,” Joel says. “I’m sorry. You should go in.”

 
; He drops my hand and steps back, but I catch hold of his sleeve before he can escape.

  “Don’t go,” I say, and then he’s wrapping his arms around me and holding on to me as if he thinks I’m about to fall.

  “Hey,” he says. “What is it?” There’s a trace of wariness in his voice, and my heart thuds with the realization that he thinks I’ve lost the plot—him, Edwin; everyone thinks I’m going crazy.

  Maybe they’re right.

  But he doesn’t let go of me. We go into the sitting room and sit side by side on the sofa, and he keeps his hand over mine the whole time. “Tell me.”

  I’m not sure where to start, or how much he already knows from Edwin. I want to trust my instincts: that he won’t go behind my back to Edwin, that he’ll understand I need to talk to Kiara before getting the police involved, that he’ll be on my side. I barely know him anymore, but my desire to confide in him is overwhelming.

  He nods at me, his dark eyes serious.

  “Someone broke into the house,” I say, and it all spills out: Laura and Alex and Kiara; the message on the mirror, the word burned into the grass, the address stolen from my handbag, the dead bird on the doorstep. My fear that he’ll think I’m making it up. My fear that I really am making it up. He listens intently without interrupting, and when I finally finish speaking, my throat aches.

  “I believe you,” he says, and it’s like a warm blanket draping over my skin. I keep hold of his hand and lean back on the sofa, watching his face as he thinks, and I find myself marveling at how different he seems and yet how familiar.

  “Who has a key?” he asks, and I’m reminded of how practical he’s always been, how single-minded when confronted with a problem. “If you think you locked the doors on Monday and there’s no sign of forced entry, you have to make a list of all the people who hold a key to Summerbourne. The cleaners obviously do?”

  “Vera sorts that out. It’s not a regular contract. Sometimes it’s someone from the village, sometimes an agency.”

  “What about the plumber, electrician? Or the people who did the food after your dad’s funeral?” He squeezes my hand as he mentions my dad.