The Au Pair

by Emma Rous

  “This is divine,” Kiara says, of the risotto. “And I wish I didn’t have such a strange reason for being here. But can you tell me why you came to see my father?”

  She looks directly at me, and I put my fork down carefully, wipe my mouth.

  “The day that Danny and I were born,” I say, “our mother had a mental breakdown. We don’t know quite what happened, but she ended up committing suicide, jumping from the cliffs behind the house. We were only a few hours old.”

  Kiara brings one hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah. Well, our dad only ever worked part-time after that, and we had our grandmother and various nannies here to look after us, so—it was okay.” I try to smile. “I mean, we had one another, you know? But then Dad had an accident last month. He fell off a ladder and—and he died. A freak accident.” Danny is sitting next to me, and he slides a hand over mine under the table.

  I realize all three of them are watching me, and that my brothers are waiting for my explanation with as much wariness as Kiara. Why did I go to see her father?

  I draw in a deep breath. “I think our mother might only have had one baby that summer. I found a photo of her holding just one baby. And people always said . . . there were always rumors when we were growing up that something odd happened. And there was a girl working here at the time—Laura Silveira—who I thought might be able to tell us . . . Do you know the name?”

  Kiara shakes her head slowly. “She’s the woman you accused Dad of sending a letter to?”

  “I didn’t accuse him. I asked him.”

  “But he didn’t,” Kiara says.

  “Someone sent Laura a letter after our dad died, saying that if she spoke about Summerbourne to anyone, her daughter would be in danger,” I say.

  “Who is her daughter?” Kiara asks.

  We all look at her. At her willowy frame, her cheekbones, the texture of her hair. I’ve seen Laura’s olive skin, and Alex’s brown, and this young woman is paler than either of them, but what does that prove?

  I shake my head. “We don’t know.”

  “You think it might be me?” Kiara asks, frowning. “Or you?” she adds, staring at me. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll get the photo,” I say. “Hang on.”

  I rise and head to the kitchen, and for a moment I contemplate the doors that stand open to the garden. I could walk out right now, escape to the cliffs, abandon any further conversation with Kiara, set my sights on rescuing my old life. What’s left of my old life. A faint waft of humid air reminds me that it’s even hotter out there than it is here in the house.

  I turn to the sink and run my wrists under cold water until my head feels clearer, and then I return to the dining room with the photo, and pass it to Kiara.

  “That’s our mother, with one of us, presumably—me or Danny. With her new baby, anyway. Apparently, she was convinced before she died that someone was trying to steal her baby.” I give a short laugh. “And yet they ended up with two of us.”

  Kiara scrutinizes the picture. “You look like her,” she tells me. “You look like your mother.” I feel tears well up suddenly.

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  Danny shifts on his chair. “So what did your dad tell you about your mum?” he asks Kiara. “When were you born?”

  She passes the photo back to me carefully. “Twenty-first of July 1992,” she says.

  The three of us stare at her.

  She stiffens. “What?”

  “That’s . . .” Danny shakes his head.

  Edwin pushes his chair back a little, putting his hands on the table as if about to get up, but then he stays in that position, his face turned away.

  I manage to start breathing again. “That’s our birthday,” I say eventually. “Danny and I were born that day too.”

  Kiara looks around the room, up at the ceiling, back down again. “Oh.” There’s a long silence.

  “Okay,” Danny says eventually. “So we were all born on the same day. What do you know about your mum?”

  Kiara closes her eyes for a moment. “She died soon after I was born,” she says, her tone flat, as if she’s reciting. “In India. My dad brought me to England when I was very young, used my Indian birth certificate to get me a British birth certificate, since he’s British. I’ve looked at both the certificates, many times, but my mother’s name on the Indian document is smudged, illegible, and the British document says ‘unverified.’ He says he loved her, but it hurts too much to talk about her.”

  Edwin turns to stare at her, his eyes wide.

  “Was she Indian?” Danny asks. “Your mother?”

  “No, British too.”

  “So why were you born there?” Danny asks.

  Kiara shrugs. “I wonder sometimes whether I really was. It seems a convenient story.”

  Edwin says, “I used to call your father Uncle Alex. I’m sure he used to visit us here the year you were born. I remember him being here with Laura. He never brought a girlfriend or a wife here that I remember.”

  “He was friends with Laura,” I say. “They took you to the doctor once, Edwin, when you cut yourself, do you remember? Pamela Larch told me.”

  Edwin looks at me blankly, but Kiara sits forward.

  “Is that why you wanted to talk to him? Because he was a friend of Laura’s?” she asks.

  I nod. “I thought Laura might have told him something about us after she left here, or they might still be in touch and maybe he could persuade her to talk to me. I thought he might know something. I didn’t know he had his own daughter, and his own secrets.”

  “So, let’s get this straight,” Kiara says, and we sit up a little in our chairs in response to her tone. “Your mother had a baby on the twenty-first of July 1992. So did my mother. Your mother believed someone wanted to steal her baby. You were brought up as your mother’s twins, but you don’t think you can be.”

  We’re all watching her. I’m holding my breath.

  She pauses. “Okay. All three of us were born on the same day. Your parents had one baby, but acquired a second one. Or, possibly, your mother had one baby that was stolen, then acquired two more. Both of our mothers died around the same time. Unless your mother was my mother?”

  She looks from me to Danny.

  “But I look nothing like the lady in the photo, and that would leave both of you with no known parents, and yet you do both look like your parents . . .”

  Her shoulders slump. She shakes her head in defeat.

  “Well. I’m glad we sorted that out,” Danny says.

  I glare at him, and then Kiara pulls a face, and then Edwin snorts, and suddenly, we’re all kind of laughing, united in our bafflement.

  “We could be triplets?” Kiara says. “Your mum’s baby was stolen, and my mum gave her two of her triplets?” She’s holding up her hands now, searching for inspiration. “Was there a pregnant neighbor? A distant relative? An orphanage nearby?”

  “I know we’re old-fashioned out here in the countryside, but we weren’t born in the nineteenth century,” Danny protests. “There’s no workhouse in the village.”

  Kiara smiles, then shrugs. “I give up then.”

  Edwin stands up. “Can you hear something?”

  We listen, and I do hear someone shouting. Behind the house somewhere. We follow Edwin out, through the kitchen, and onto the patio. Two figures stumble from the trees at the back of the lawn.

  “It’s Joel,” Edwin says, and starts to run. Danny and I follow at a trot, leaving Kiara standing on the patio. I’m halfway across the lawn before I realize that the person Joel is supporting is Laura. What on earth is she doing here? As I get closer, I see blood on her head and her blouse, and blood on Joel’s shoulder and hands.

  “Call an ambulance,” Joel shouts. I stumble as I look down at my dress; no p
ockets, no phone. Edwin, who is closer to them, turns toward us, and Danny nods at him, spins around, and sprints back toward the house.

  “What happened?” I ask as I reach them. Edwin supports Laura on her other side, and the two men lift her between them and carry her toward the house. Laura’s eyes are almost closed, but she’s moving her lips. She’s dazed and distressed, and not fully conscious.

  “I found her by the folly,” Joel says, panting with the effort of supporting her. He has a smear of blood on the side of his face. “Head trauma. Need to get her to hospital.”

  “It’s Laura,” I say to Edwin, stupidly, keeping pace with them.

  He grimaces, looking as if he might say something and then shaking his head.

  Danny finishes speaking into his phone as we reach the patio, and he and Kiara lift a table to one side so that Joel and Edwin can maneuver Laura around into a sitting position on one of the sofas. Laura’s eyes are more open now, and she’s making an effort to focus on our faces, her head smearing blood across the cream cushion as she turns it from side to side.

  “Can you get me a clean tea towel?” Joel asks, and I run and grab one from the kitchen drawer.

  “Shh. Keep still,” Joel says to Laura, folding the fabric and holding it over her wound.

  Laura has fixed her gaze on Edwin now. She says his name questioningly, but it’s a raspy croak.

  He kneels down in front of her. “Laura.” He tries to smile. “What happened?”

  She shakes her head and winces. “I don’t know. I think . . . something fell on me from the top of the tower?” She looks around, and her fingers twitch toward me. “Seraphine.” I take her hand and squeeze it gently.

  “What are you doing here, Laura?” I ask, but she doesn’t respond. She’s gazing at Danny and Kiara, who are standing side by side behind the table. A fresh trickle of blood runs down her cheek as she tries to sit forward, and my heart thumps painfully. “Stop asking questions or lose your family.” Someone attacked this woman just behind our house. Is this the danger I have put my own family in? Could Edwin or Danny or Vera be next? Or me?

  A single strident note sounds from the lane, and Joel hurries into the house to open the door for the paramedics. Laura moans and leans her head back against the cushion. One hand closes over the silver locket hanging around her neck.

  The rest of us exchange wide-eyed looks.

  “Who did this?” I ask. Edwin, Danny, and Kiara shake their heads with bewildered expressions.

  Joel returns with the paramedics, and we stand back as they bustle around, easing Laura onto a stretcher, asking her gentle questions. She murmurs something, but she doesn’t open her eyes again. As they start to carry her away, I pick up a folded piece of paper that has fallen from her trouser pocket, holding it out toward their retreating backs, but there’s no point trying to give it to Laura in this state. I decide to keep it and return it to her when she’s recovered.

  I hear Joel offering to accompany her in the ambulance, but they say no, the police are on their way and will want to talk to him. We all stand and watch as the ambulance pulls out of the drive and rumbles off down the lane.

  Joel turns to me then, calm despite the blood that covers him.

  “Do you mind if I get cleaned up?” he asks, and I gesture to the stairs. Edwin goes up with him to lend him some clean clothes.

  As I trail after Danny and Kiara, who are wandering back to the patio, I unfold the note from Laura’s pocket. My eyes skip down to the name at the bottom, and my heart jolts painfully. I read it through twice, quickly, trying to make sense of it.

  Dear Laura,

  I desperately need your help. Please will you meet me at midday on Saturday at the folly at Summerbourne? I will explain everything then, but you know I would not ask unless I really needed you. Come the back way, from the boat hire place. I’ll meet you by the tower.

  Yours,

  Edwin

  Edwin, my big brother, who is upstairs finding clean clothes for his best friend, Joel. His best friend, Joel, who would do anything for him, and who left our house before midday today and returned covered in Laura’s blood.

  22

  Laura

  March to July 1992

  THE GARDEN, THE lane, the village—wherever I walked that March, I was faced with the nodding yellow heads of daffodils promising more cheerful times to come. Everyone in the village predicted that Ruth would start to bloom soon—surely, they said, she deserved a few months of radiant well-being before this pregnancy was over. They were wrong. She suffered aches and twinges; she slept badly by night and napped resentfully by day; she was prone to outbursts of tears and occasionally hysterical laughter. Meanwhile, Edwin’s behavior deteriorated, with frequent tantrums and wild declarations that nobody loved him. Even on good days he took to whining when he didn’t get his own way.

  All three of us had coughs and colds again through April, and much as I wanted to get Edwin outside to play every day, it was frequently impossible due to either wet weather or the fact that we felt too unwell. We baked biscuits and cakes when we felt up to it, the warm, steamy atmosphere in the kitchen soothing our symptoms as we waited for the oven timer to ping. Even a stroll into the village to collect a prescription, or to choose treats to cheer ourselves up, felt like an effort.

  There was no further mention of Edwin attending preschool after Easter, but as the weather grew warmer in May and Michael increased his hours in the Summerbourne garden, we began to see more of Joel again. Only Joel could bring that deep chuckle out of Edwin and make his blue eyes sparkle with mischief, and I begged Michael to bring him over as often as he could. Kemi, Joel’s mother, wanted him with her on the days she didn’t work, but this left us with a pattern of three days a week where Joel spent the afternoon with us, and Edwin’s mood improved enormously.

  I withdrew from most of their family activities at weekends, claiming that I wanted to study for my exams. I returned to Mum’s for the exam fortnight, and for once Beaky left me in peace to concentrate on my final preparations. I’d dreamed of a career in scientific research since I was at primary school, and I needed an A and two B grades to get onto my chosen biochemistry degree course. The math and biology papers went well, and the chemistry practical wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. I headed back to Summerbourne cautiously confident that I’d achieve my grades.

  Despite no longer having the studying excuse, I continued to avoid family meals at weekends. On Saturdays, I caught the bus into Norwich, spending some of my accumulated pay on clothes and makeup, and going to the cinema by myself. When I grew bored of this, I sat in the city library and immersed myself in a novel for hours without interruption. It was refreshing to see different faces around me, even if they were all strangers.

  It was during one of those library visits that I hunted out a book with a lunar calendar. Sure enough, June had two new moons that year—one on the first of the month, which I had already missed, and then another on the thirtieth of the month—the black moon that Dominic had mentioned. It was only when I examined the diagrams that I understood there would be nothing to see. A new moon has its sunlit face turned completely away from us: it would indeed appear black in the dark night sky—as invisible up there as I frequently felt down here on the ground.

  The black moon was on my mind as I made a second round of toast for myself and Edwin on that last day in June. The sky was a glorious blue, the sun cheerful, and I felt better than I had done in months. We devoured several slices of toast and marmalade between us.

  “Guess what?” I said. “It’s a special day today. Something’s going to happen that doesn’t happen very often.”

  His gaze traveled around the kitchen as he munched on a huge mouthful of toast. He shrugged, spraying crumbs across the table. “What?”

  Something tightened inside me suddenly, and I drew a deep breath. It was a bad idea to mention the black
moon to Edwin. What if he said something to Dominic at the weekend? I didn’t want Dominic to think I was dwelling on what we’d done that evening—or worse, to think I was talking to Edwin about it.

  “Oh, just look outside. It’s a proper summer’s day at last. I think we should walk into the village and buy some sweets. What do you think?”

  Edwin nodded, dropping his last crust onto his plate. “Can we go to the play park?”

  “Of course.”

  “And look through the fence? See if Joel’s there?”

  A few weeks earlier, we had stood outside the preschool field, watching the children participating in a sports day with their sacks and Hula-Hoops and sit-on bouncy balls.

  “Yep. We can do that too.”

  Ruth preferred to rest at home, so Edwin and I set off together. The sickly smell from the rapeseed fields had faded now that most of it had been harvested, and the scent of lavender from the front gardens of the flint cottages stayed with us all the way into the village. As the village green came into sight, Edwin and I spotted the low yellow car at the same time.

  “Hey, isn’t that . . . ?” Edwin tugged on my hand, pointing. I stared. It was almost eight months since we’d last seen that yellow car at Summerbourne. Eight months is a long time for a child who’s not yet five. But Edwin liked cars, and Edwin liked Alex.

  “It’s Uncle Alex’s car!” Edwin shouted.

  I felt like a clockwork figure, as though someone had wound me up with a key months ago, kept hold of it tightly until this precise moment, and then let go. Whirring cogs drove my heart in a thud-thud-thud rhythm. All I could think was: Has he missed me? Has he missed me? Edwin and I looked up and down the street and across the green, but Alex was nowhere in sight.

  “The shop, Laura?” Edwin tugged on my hand.

  The bell jingled as we pushed the door open, warm bread and coffee smells greeting us. And there he was, down at the far end of the right-hand aisle, the top of his hair just visible over the rows of tins. My clockwork heart kept drumming.

  Edwin trotted down the middle aisle, and then there was a squeal of delight and an exclamation of surprise, and Alex was walking toward me, his arms outstretched.