The Au Pair

by Emma Rous

  “Did you notice the engraving on Laura’s locket?” Edwin asks.

  Danny and I shake our heads.

  “It has three hearts with zigzag lines across. Like—broken hearts, I guess. But why three?”

  “Who cares?” Danny says, and springs up from the sofa, waving away any further talk about Laura. He retrieves the old family photo album from the bookshelf, and as he passes it to Edwin, it falls open at the empty double page. Edwin quickly flips to the next page, and all three of us lean in to study it in silence.

  Danny and I were always told this was the first picture taken of us after all those months lost to grief when we were born. It’s a bright winter scene, the ground blanketed in snow, and five-year-old Edwin wears a navy blue duffle coat and bright blue mittens and no hat. The bare branches of the Summerbourne orchard are visible behind him, and he holds a carrot and stands next to a noseless snowman. Instead of looking at the camera, his eyes are fixed on two babies propped up in an old-fashioned baby carriage.

  I have a sudden memory of Dad telling me this was the brief stage when Danny and I were the same size; when he’d just caught up with me, before he surged ahead and left me forever the smaller one. We wear red pom-pom hats, almost certainly knitted by Vera, and we’re zipped into quilted snowsuits, wedged in next to each other, and we stare out at the world—at the snow, the sky, our big brother—with matching startled expressions.

  I run my thumb over a smudge in one corner that I never noticed before: something yellow poking up through the snow—an abandoned toy, perhaps, or early daffodils?

  “I can almost remember it being taken,” Edwin says quietly.

  Danny grunts. “What is it you remember exactly—the chocolate cake they gave you afterward to warm you up?”

  Every time something makes me smile, fresh tears slide down my cheeks. It’s exhausting. My thoughts are disjointed. I don’t want to think about Vera and her crimes. The fact that she imagined she was in some way protecting us, protecting me, even as she wrote that warning on my bathroom mirror to frighten me. And I don’t want to think about Alex tonight, and yet how can I not? He’s my father. But I’m still mourning Dad.

  We talk, and cry, and talk some more, until the room is in darkness. A thin crescent gleams in the sky outside the window like a glint from a silver locket.

  “We’re still family, us three. Aren’t we?” I say as we head upstairs.

  “Absolutely,” Edwin says firmly.

  Danny rolls his eyes. “Whatever you say, sis.”

  I pad away to my bedroom. The night is cooler than we’ve been used to, and I drag my sheets and duvet from the floor and make myself a nest on the bed, sighing as I curl up inside it to wait for the new day. We are still family, us three. I am still Seraphine.

  EPILOGUE

  Seraphine

  Early December 2017

  EDWIN HELPS LAURA out of her coat as Joel bounds up the steps and joins them in the warm Winterbourne hallway. Steam from the kitchen wafts up the stairs, carrying the aroma of rosemary and garlic to the turn of the staircase where I hover in the shadows, watching them. Edwin kisses Laura on both cheeks. Joel declines to take his coat off.

  “I’ll get going to the station,” Joel says. “It’s a long enough journey down from Leeds. Much nicer if I can pick Kiara up, rather than her getting a taxi. Especially if she’s by herself.”

  He glances up the stairs then, although he doesn’t give any indication he’s seen me.

  Laura says, “Thank you, Joel,” and then, “This smells so good,” as she follows Edwin into the kitchen. They’re discussing goose fat and oven temperatures as they pull the door closed behind them.

  I dash down the stairs to catch Joel before he leaves, and he’s still standing by the grandfather clock, a half smile on his face, as if he was waiting for me all along. I haven’t seen him often enough since I moved into Winterbourne three months ago—I have a long commute to work in the week, and he’s been doing weekend shifts while he looks for a permanent position. He looks well today, his eyes shining, his freshly shaved skin glowing above his scarf. I stand close enough to feel the cold December air drift from his coat.

  “Hi,” he says. “How are you?”

  “Good,” I whisper, and then the slow widening of his smile knocks whatever else I was intending to say out of my mind. We study each other as the clock ticks.

  “It’s great you managed to talk Danny into agreeing to this,” he says eventually.

  “It was Brooke, really. She’s good for Danny, I have to admit. She told him he has to give Laura a chance. He has to be here to support Kiara.”

  Joel glances at the kitchen door. “But Alex is still refusing to speak to Laura?”

  I’m grateful that Joel still calls him Alex. I’m still prickly about Alex being referred to as my father, even though we have been talking, making tentative steps toward forming some kind of a relationship.

  “He’s struggling,” I say. “He told himself all those years he’d done the right thing, and now—he feels guilty about my mother, guilty about me. He and Kiara are okay, I think, but the fact that Laura knew he was taking the wrong baby . . . It’s just easier for him not to see her at the moment.”

  Joel nods. “And you’re feeling okay about today? Having Kiara and Laura here?”

  “Well. As Brooke says, we’re all related one way or another. And we might actually like each other, if we give it a chance.”

  “True.” He’s so close to me I could reach up and stroke the scar on his jaw if I wanted to.

  “Edwin said you’ve been looking at houses in the village?” I say. “To be closer to Michael?”

  “Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that, actually.”

  “Oh?”

  He pulls a face. “The old Collisons’ place is up for sale. Alex’s old cottage.”

  I consider this. “Where Alex set up a nursery for me, and ended up taking Kiara.”

  “Yeah.” He shakes his head. “It’s too weird, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter. Something else will come up.”

  “I’m going to move back into Summerbourne,” I say. “Vera’s solicitor wrote to me a couple of weeks ago. She wants me to have the house after all.”

  Vera is still in custody, awaiting her trial for the attempted murder of Laura. Only Edwin visits her. She continues to maintain that she knocked the stone onto Laura’s head by accident, and was then too shocked to rush down the staircase to help Joel carry Laura back to the house. She continues to insist that Dad was fit and well when she left him, that our mother committed suicide in front of her.

  Joel watches me. “You okay?”

  I nod.

  I’m coming to terms with the idea that we might never know the true extent of Vera’s guilt or innocence. The Crown Prosecution Service has decided not to proceed with the other charges—Martin says there’s not enough evidence in the case of Dad’s fall, and really none at all in the case of our mother.

  Joel’s pupils are large in the dim hallway. “Will Danny mind if she gives you the house?”

  I smile. “Can you imagine Brooke living out in the sticks? He’s fine with it. And I’m going to put it in both our names anyway—if and when it ever does legally become mine.”

  He dips his head closer to me. “I’d better go. I don’t want Kiara leaping in a taxi before I get to the station. Do you want to come with me?”

  “No, I want to talk to Laura, actually, before anyone else gets here.”

  “Okay.” He doesn’t move. His gaze slips from my eyes to my lips and back again.

  “Joel,” I say. The wool of his coat over his chest is faintly damp under my hands. He runs his thumb lightly across my cheek.

  “Seraphine.”

  We kiss then. I’m still getting used to this delicious feeling of being wanted by him. Like I said, I haven’t seen him often
enough in the last three months. He claims he’s been in love with me for as long as he can remember, and whenever he says this, I tell him I don’t believe him, and then he smiles his slow smile at me, and then I forget that it might not be true and decide to believe him after all.

  The clock chimes, and we pull apart.

  “I have a better idea for where you could live in the village,” I say.

  He laughs softly. “Oh yes?”

  “At Summerbourne. With me.”

  The laugh is still on his lips, and I kiss him again. We’re interrupted by the kitchen door opening, and Laura exclaiming, “Oh, excuse me,” before she ducks back inside.

  Joel draws back, smiling. “I really should go.”

  “You’ll think about it?”

  “I’ll think about it,” he says.

  I stand for a couple of minutes after he’s gone, waiting for my heart rate to settle, trying to synchronize it with the solid ticking of the clock. When I enter the kitchen, Edwin is shifting pans around on the cooktop and waves a spatula at me.

  “Seph, for goodness’ sake, can you let Laura get to the cloakroom if you’ve finished canoodling with Joel?” He grins as he turns back to the stove.

  There’s something in particular I want to ask Laura about, and I examine her in brief glances once she returns to the kitchen. She makes small talk with Edwin about the meal he’s preparing, but she checks her watch frequently, and I suspect she’s more nervous of hearing the doorbell ring than I am. She offers to do some washing up, but I step in front of the sink, blocking her access.

  “Let me show you the Winterbourne garden,” I say. “Before the others arrive. There’s something I think might interest you.”

  We grab our coats, and she looks curiously into the other rooms as we pass them on our way to the back door, but she doesn’t ask any questions. We shove our hands into our pockets as we stroll down the long central garden path, past the winter-flowering cherry trees with their frilly pink blossoms. Autumn colors linger in the borders, and it’s remarkably peaceful away from the traffic on the street.

  “Thank you for this, Seraphine,” Laura says. “For inviting me here.”

  There’s a tension around her eyes. She’s about to sit down to a meal with both her children after twenty-five years of them not knowing she was their mother. Impulsive actions are rare for me, but I’m still floating from seeing Joel, and I tug one hand out of its pocket and hook my arm through hers. She did help my mother give birth to me, after all. She did tell me my mother’s words, when nobody else could.

  She’s taller than me, and I smile up at her briefly, and we walk along together quite comfortably.

  “Edwin thinks it’s a nice way to mark his birthday,” I say. “New beginnings and all that. Kiara wants to get to know you, doesn’t she? And Danny—well . . .” I’m not sure quite what to say about Danny. After weeks of emotional withdrawal, he has become fierce in his insistence that the revelation about our genetic identity won’t damage our sibling bond, but I see him bristle every time Laura’s name is mentioned. I blow out a puff of air. “Danny will get there. You can’t rush him.”

  She nods, pressing her lips together. She glances at my necklace—a tiny gold angel on a delicate chain. “This is pretty.”

  “Brooke gave it to me. Because of my mother.” I sigh. “She’s a good influence on Danny. She’s told him he has to at least say hello to you today. Try talking to you.”

  I flash her a quick grin, and she shakes her head, but there’s a flicker of amusement in her eyes.

  “Poor Danny,” she says. “And you? Have you been talking to Alex?”

  I still experience a dull jolt in my abdomen whenever his name is mentioned. I did consider cutting Alex off, telling him I wanted no contact between us, and at my lowest moments I wondered if he might actually be relieved if I did this. But I find myself drawn to Kiara, entranced by the myriad ways in which she reminds me of Danny. And I can see that Kiara loves Alex. He’s been a good father to her.

  I’m glad he left me behind. Of course I am. I’m glad I grew up with Dominic as my dad. Nothing that happens with Alex will ever change that. But we’ve met up several times now, and when we push all the complications of our family to one side, I think we do actually like each other. It surprises me how disappointed I am that he doesn’t want to join us today. I realize Laura is watching me, and I grimace.

  “Yeah, we’ve been talking. I went up there last week, actually. Saw both of them. It was okay.”

  “Good,” Laura says. “But he’s not coming today because of me.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  “He needs time,” I say, but I’m not sure she’s listening.

  “I wish—” She shakes her head, as if acknowledging the pointlessness of such thoughts when it’s all too late. “I wish somehow I’d managed to—”

  My tone is firm. “It’s done. It made us who we are. We can’t change it.”

  A bright-eyed sparrow tilts its head at us as we approach the final section of the garden and the structure I want to show Laura. Four curved stone benches stand in a circle, looking in toward a large sundial on a raised stone platform.

  “It was made to tie in with the folly at Summerbourne,” I say. “On a smaller scale, obviously.”

  Laura releases my arm and circles the sundial, examining the writhing stone sea serpents and the Latin inscription.

  “Fruere hora,” she reads aloud.

  “Enjoy the hour,” I say.

  “No cannon.”

  “We’re a bit more restrained at Winterbourne.”

  She rests a hand on the sundial and closes her eyes. I use the opportunity to lean closer and peer at the locket just visible between the lapels of her coat.

  “Laura?”

  She opens her eyes.

  “Your locket’s pretty too,” I say, stuttering slightly. “Are they three broken hearts? What does it mean?”

  Her hand reaches for it. “I used all the money I saved at Summerbourne to buy this,” she says quietly.

  I raise my eyebrows. “But you could have used that money to move out sooner, into your own place.”

  She looks back at the sundial and shakes her head.

  I take a deep breath. “Why a locket? What’s inside it?”

  She frowns faintly, and I half expect her to claim it’s empty, but then something shifts in her expression, and I’m gripped by the conviction that I’m right: there is something inside it, and it has something to do with Summerbourne.

  Her eyes search mine. I have a feeling she’s trying to reach a decision. She lifts the locket and passes it backward over her head, tugging the chain loose from her hair.

  “It was so long ago,” she says, and she stares down at the locket in her hand. “It’s silly, of course, to be so sentimental. I should let it go.” She presses the tiny button on the edge of the oval, and nothing happens. “I never opened it, ever,” she says, “after I put it in.”

  She presses again, and suddenly, the front pops up, and she pries it open. I bend closer in the chill air to peer at the contents. Overlapping paper-thin shapes: pressed flower petals, the color of pale tea with a tinge of purple.

  “Sea lavender,” Laura says. “From the beach at Summerbourne.”

  “You kept it all this time?”

  “Alex gave it to me.”

  I gaze down at the fragile shapes until Laura suddenly flicks her wrist. The petal remnants flutter into the breeze, spinning and disintegrating into tiny shreds of papery dust. There’s a low hedge of sweet box behind the sundial seating area, and Laura considers the empty locket for a moment and then tosses it into the dense greenery. It slithers between glossy dark leaves and disappears.

  “I messed everything up,” she says. “My whole life. I got pregnant in sixth form, and my boyfriend wanted nothing to do with it. He kic
ked me out. Beaky made me have an abortion.”

  I stare at the hedge. “The three hearts?”

  She nods. “I was never a mother to any of them.”

  Tiny white flowers nestle in the hedge, and their sweet scent rises with the breeze and drifts around us.

  “I was really ill afterward,” she says. “I missed my exams. And then Beaky made me take the au pair job, to see how hard it was to look after a child. To teach me a lesson.”

  I picture the form from the au pair agency: “difficult circumstances at home.”

  She looks at me then, almost smiles. “But it wasn’t hard. I loved it. Looking after Edwin. And then . . .”

  I reach out hesitantly, touch her sleeve. “Alex?” I say.

  “I wasn’t enough. I couldn’t compete.” She swallows and gives me an apologetic look. “And then Dominic . . . I’m so sorry, Seraphine. I messed it all up. Alex—he can’t even bear to look at me now. I messed up your life, and Danny’s and Kiara’s. I’m so sorry.”

  Her focus shifts, and I turn to the house to follow her gaze. Voices erupt from the back door as figures emerge, doing up coats and rubbing hands together and exclaiming.

  Laura grasps my arm. “I can’t do this. I can’t. I need to go.”

  “Wait, no. We need to do this, Laura.”

  She grips on to me, and I catch hold of her free arm, and I try to summon up a courage that I can somehow transmit to her.

  “You’re Danny and Kiara’s mother,” I say. “They’ve come here to see you.”

  We both look across the lawn. Edwin and Joel stand on the back step. It’s too far away to be certain, but I’m pretty sure Joel is looking directly at me. Danny and Brooke set off, hand in hand, down the path toward us. Following close behind them are two more people, and I’m surprised to find my cheeks rising in a smile. Behind Danny and Brooke are Kiara and the guest who said he wasn’t coming: my father. Alex has decided to join us at Winterbourne after all.