The Chateau

by Catherine Cooper

  ‘Oh good. You’re still there, for now at least. Yes, Indy and Sorrel were firm friends. She adored him. Never shut up about him at home. He was always in the pictures she painted – she’d always point him out to me. Perhaps Indy was in his too. I imagine if you’d stayed in London longer, and oh, of course if she hadn’t died, we’d have eventually got them together for a play date. If you’d ever taken enough interest in your boys for five minutes to know what they wanted, that is.’

  Indy. It rings a vague bell. I try to take another breath, but breathing is becoming almost impossible and I can’t see a thing. My fingers touch the wall – the window is right above me.

  ‘Sorrel and Indy spent a lot of time together, according to the nursery staff. Playing Duplo was their favourite thing, did you know that? Sweet really – barely two years old and already with their own likes and dislikes and forming little friendships. Kids are amazing, aren’t they?’

  I pull on the windowsill to haul myself up. Every part of me hurts. My head is swimming and I feel the air get hotter and the smoke more dense as I lift my head, still sitting on the floor.

  ‘Indy never ceased to amaze me. She was so ill when she was tiny. She had cancer. Heart breaking, seeing her suffer like that. I’m sure you can imagine, though I doubt you’d care.’

  What is she on about? Of course I care. A child with cancer. How tragic. Maybe it was the stress of that which sent Helen mad? Which she clearly is. I pull myself up further and manage to touch the window handle, but the heat sears my hand and I have to pull it away. I take off my T-shirt and wrap it around my hand.

  ‘The way she got through the cancer – so stoic. Never complained. Rarely cried. And guess what? After several rounds of chemotherapy, she was in remission. She was going to be OK. It felt like a miracle. Kids are so hardy. At least, they can be.’

  Even with the T-shirt around my hand, I can feel the flesh burning as I finally manage to wrench the window open towards me.

  ‘When I told Indy she could go back to nursery, she was so excited! Such a sociable little girl – she loved it there. And even more so when she met little Sorrel. She always looked forward to seeing him.’

  I haul myself up further and try to push the ancient shutters open. I try and try, but they don’t budge. I want to scream in frustration but nothing comes out. I can’t breathe. I drop to the floor again, but it’s the same down there. It’s all smoke – no air.

  ‘You still there? I nailed the shutters closed earlier, in case you were thinking of getting out that way. If the investigators notice – though I doubt they’ll be able to tell, given how well this is going up so far – I’ll say you nailed them together for security, what with being freaked out by the weird stuff going on in the night. I did a few others too for authenticity. Clever, huh?’

  ‘Please …’ I whisper. ‘Please help me …’

  ‘But then Indy caught measles. Pretty much all the babies at nursery did, as you know. It didn’t take much investigation to work out it came from your kids – the nursery is ridiculously slack with their IT security and it was easy to hack the records.’

  I can’t see. I can barely hear. I don’t even have the strength to take another breath.

  ‘So most of the smaller babies at the nursery, too young for MMR, caught measles from Sorrel and Bay because you thought you knew better than science. Because you didn’t want to “pollute” your children’s bodies with things you don’t understand. No, something like vaccination isn’t good enough for you and your children. The nursery should have pulled you up on it when you didn’t get round to handing in their medical records, but sadly, they didn’t.’

  Everything feels like it’s closing in.

  ‘Indy had only just finished chemo and hadn’t yet had her MMR redone. So she was unprotected, like the babies not old enough for their jabs. They, thankfully, managed to fight it off, though I believe one has been left with some hearing damage. Indy, though, her immune system was too weak. Can you imagine what it’s like to watch your child die of encephalitis in hospital, Aura, when you know it was entirely preventable? When she’s already endured chemotherapy and fought off cancer? When her tiny little body has already been through that too? Can you? Can you imagine that? Aura, are you still listening?’

  84

  Helen

  I know everyone says this about their children, but I mean it when I say that Indy was my whole life. I’d given up on meeting the right man and decided to have her by myself, through IVF, before it was too late. It wasn’t a decision I took lightly. But my job was stable, I’d been there a long time and they offered a generous maternity package. I knew that once Indy was born I would need to return to work and she would need to go to nursery. As she was to be my only child, it would be good for her to socialize with other children anyway. But outside of working hours, I would devote my every waking minute to her. I figured that, in many ways, the absence of a partner could be a positive thing for a child. No one competing for my attention. She would be number one in my life and all my love could be lavished on her. She would never have to share.

  My second round of IVF was successful, which was better than the odds for my age. I had budgeted for five rounds. When you’ve managed to buy your house at the right time, live alone, have frugal tastes and don’t have much of a social life, it is easy to save.

  My pregnancy had its ups and downs and I imagine it would have been less tiring had I done it when I was younger. But I bore the nausea, back ache and puffy ankles without complaint because I knew this was exactly what I wanted. I couldn’t wait to meet my baby.

  She arrived two days after my due date and I fell in love with her immediately. The early months were tiring but I got her into a good routine quickly so that we could both enjoy our time together as much as possible before I went back to work. I breastfed her in bed in the mornings, watching her little rosebud mouth working away, stroking her hair and marvelling at her tiny nails, thinking how lucky I was.

  I went to antenatal classes because I wanted to be as informed as possible about how best to look after my baby but I was never one of these people that met up with the other mothers in Starbucks after the birth to moan about sleepless nights and block all the space between the tables with an enormous buggy. I relished my time alone with Indy, taking her to the park and feeding the ducks with her. Pushing her on the swings. We did some classes such as baby yoga and baby massage, but I only did these for her benefit – I wasn’t interested in socializing.

  I took endless photos of her. She was so beautiful. And then … one day I noticed a white glint in one of her eyes in a photo. I felt sick. I’d read about this. I knew what it might be. I took her straight to the doctor’s surgery – I begged and pleaded until they gave me an emergency appointment.

  There were tests, scans and more tests and a couple of weeks later, I got the diagnosis I’d been dreading. Cancer. Retinoblastoma. ‘But please try not to worry too much, Ms Summers,’ the doctor reassured. ‘It’s rare, but in the vast majority of cases, very treatable.’

  Six months of chemotherapy followed. Indy was in and out of hospital. It was awful seeing her so weak, so vulnerable. Heartbreaking to make her endure this treatment which so often seemed to be making her sicker.

  Work was amazing and gave me compassionate leave on full pay so I could be by her side. And after six months of chemo I got the news I was waiting for – she was clear. She’d need regular tests, but the doctors and the statistics indicated that she should be OK.

  But by that time I had no choice but to go back to work. I couldn’t take compassionate leave for a child who was no longer sick. Indy had started at nursery before she was diagnosed – I’d visited every single one in the area, and she was signed up to the best one I’d found. Montessori, with a friendly atmosphere and an excellent OFSTED report. I would rather have stayed at home with Indy indefinitely but financially that wasn’t possible. I wanted the best for her and hoped to send her to private school, but it w
as only me and her so I needed to earn money. I spoke to the doctors at the hospital, and they agreed that Indy was ready to go back to nursery and be with other children – it was important for her development.

  I cried the first day she went back. And the next, and the next. But she made a new friend, little Sorrel, and was always smiling when I picked her up, babbling away about the fun she’d had. As the days went by, it got easier. When we got home I would make her dinner, then we’d play for a little while before her bath and bedtime. It was so cosy. Such a lovely way to finish the day. The other mums at nursery were always moaning about having to do tea, bath and bedtime and how monotonous and stressful it was, but I loved it. I looked forward to it all day, every day.

  And then one day there was a notice on the door of the nursery when I picked Indy up. ‘There has been a case of measles in the nursery. Please monitor your children carefully and keep them at home if they show any symptoms.’

  My heart leapt into my mouth. Indy hadn’t yet been revaccinated – it was too soon after her chemo. I rang NHS Direct as soon as I got home and they told me not to panic but to keep a close eye on her. I could barely think of anything else.

  I rang into work sick the next day and kept Indy with me. I googled frantically so I knew what to look for. And for a few days she seemed fine. But then she was grumpy and tired. There was a rash. An earache. A high temperature which I couldn’t get down.

  I took her to A&E and she was put on a drip. She fell unconscious as her brain swelled. She was intubated. I held her hand. A few days later, she died. My little Indy was gone. I felt like my life was over.

  85

  Helen

  Nothing mattered anymore. I seriously considered suicide. After all, what was there to live for now? But then, I got angry. Indy had been taken away from me. She had beaten cancer, but this entirely preventable disease had taken her. Someone would pay.

  It was easy enough to find out which child at the nursery wasn’t up to date with their vaccinations – everyone already knew anyway. It was Sorrel.

  Aura by this time was a kind of local celebrity for all the wrong reasons, thanks to her pervy husband and the never-quite-proved stuff that went on with that schoolgirl. Lots of kids at the nursery had older brothers, sisters and cousins at the school where her husband taught, so I’d heard all the gossip. Even if Aura’s Facebook hadn’t already been open, I’d probably have known about her move to France from the local grapevine. But as it was, thanks to quietly stalking her on Facebook, I knew her moving date, and then following a bit of research on Google Maps, the exact house she was buying. I could find out pretty much everything but her bra size. Some people are so stupid.

  I sold my house and paid off the mortgage – without Indy I didn’t need a proper home. The not-inconsiderable equity left me with plenty of cash with which to travel. I joined all the various expat Facebook groups Aura was in using a fake profile with an image I’d downloaded off the internet and a new gmail account. When she started wittering on about the pros and cons of the HappyHelp site, I knew that was my way in. I booked a one-way flight to Toulouse and got a HappyHelp placement fairly local to Aura’s new house, so I’d have a reference to get me in with her. After that I kept an eye on the noticeboards. It didn’t take long before she was begging me to come and help. By the end of the summer, all the students have gone and volunteers happy to work for literally no pay are much fewer and further between. And she was clearly desperate.

  To start with, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do to her and her family. First, I thought I’d spook them a bit. I set alarms on the Astrid to make it play music in the night and later installed a device in the light switch to switch the lights off and on via an app. Hilariously Aura thought Seb was doing it all. Seeing how rattled she was made me feel better, but it wasn’t enough. I knew I needed to do more, but wasn’t sure what.

  At one point I thought I’d have my revenge by taking away one of her children as she had taken mine. Perhaps an unfortunate ‘accident’ – it would have been easy enough to arrange, with Aura begging me to take them off her hands at every possible opportunity. When I asked to borrow the car to drive them to soft play, I was planning to crash it or drive into a river. At that point after Indy’s death, I still didn’t care if I lived or died, and I would have been happy to give up my life in the interests of making Aura miserable.

  But once I was in the car with the two boys, it felt wrong to hurt them. They were sweet and innocent with their whole lives ahead of them, just like Indy. If I hurt them, that would make me as culpable as Aura. I couldn’t take their lives away from them. They didn’t deserve it. She, however, did.

  It was that sad old letch Frank – who was quite clearly listening in on Aura via the Astrid – who first gave me the idea of talking to Sorrel at night via a speaker hidden in the floorboards. I didn’t do it for long; my intention was to unsettle her, not him, and I like to think I made it up to Sorrel. We had a lot of fun together. Way more than he ever had with Aura, who was too wrapped up in herself to pay either of her sons any attention.

  And then Nick died, and Aura fell to pieces. All it took was a few crushed-up pills in her food and some gentle drip-drip suggestions from me about how hard her life would be in the crumbling chateau all on her own with the boys and how much easier life would be for all if it was gone. And the rest is history.

  86

  Six months later

  Helen

  ‘Lelen?’ Sorrel says. ‘I did dees for you.’

  He hands me a bunch of dandelions and I hold them to my nose, pretending to smell them.

  ‘They’re lovely, Sorrel, thank you,’ I say.

  He grins at me, picks up his squirrel and toddles off towards the beautiful house in the Home Counties where we now both live. He’s such an adorable little boy, and I feel so blessed to spend time with him and Bay every single day.

  After we’d ‘escaped’ from the chateau on the night of the fire, I walked to the nearest house with the two boys as slowly as I could (although there’s no option other than going slowly when you’re carrying two sleepy children) and called the police and fire brigade. Almost nothing could be saved from the chateau and Aura was formally identified from her dental records. I told the police how worried I’d been about her, how I thought she could be suicidal. That she’d talked about wanting to kill herself since Nick’s death, that I’d made her see a doctor and she’d been prescribed antidepressants. That I suspected she was taking too many. That I had been awoken by the smell of smoke, grabbed the boys and taken them outside. That I’d put them in the car, which had been left unlocked as usual, given the rural location, but the keys were in the flaming house. That I’d tried to go back in to get to Aura, but by then the flames were too intense. Obviously I didn’t tell them I’d posted the key to the snug back under the door once it was clear she was over by the window and unconscious. Such a sad turn of events, I’d reflected. Those poor little boys.

  In the absence of any other family or any will, it was inevitable that the boys would be taken on by Nick’s parents. We’d already met a few times at the chateau after Nick died and then at Aura’s funeral. I sought them out, offering to come and work for them as the boys’ nanny ‘for continuity in this difficult time for them,’ I had said. As I had already given up my job anyway, it would suit all of us well.

  So here I am, nanny and, to all intents and purposes, full-time mother to these sweet little boys. Of course they’re no substitute for Indy, no one could be. But I’m making myself indispensable to Penny and Roger, who, while fit and healthy, are approaching their seventies and will increasingly need my help with the two boisterous little boys now in their care. One of the first things I did was make sure they caught up on all the vaccinations they missed. They will grow up loved, safe and happy, and with the best chance of staying healthy. They will be brought up according to my values, not Aura’s stupid, selfish ones. It’s what they deserve.

  As I go back int
o the kitchen to find a glass of water for Sorrel’s dandelions, he hurls himself towards me and wraps his arms around my legs.

  ‘I love you, Lelen,’ he says.

  I cradle his head. ‘I love you too, Sol. Tell you what, why don’t you call me Mummy from now on?’

  Acknowledgements

  The first draft of this book was written largely during the first lockdown of 2020 in between walks (within 1km of home, of course) when it was lovely to have something concrete to get on with. So first thanks go to Phoebe Morgan at HarperCollins for your faith and enthusiasm for The Chalet, as well as for including a second book in my contract on the strength of a paragraph. And of course thank you for the new contract! Sorry for the fangirling but you are the type of editor every author dreams of. Huge retrospective thanks also to Fliss Denham, Rachel Quin, Sophie Churcher and the rest of the HarperFiction team for helping to make The Chalet such a success – I loved every step of the way and it achieved way more than I could ever have expected thanks to you all.

  Thank you to Gaia Banks at Sheil Land for your usual patience in reading my very rough first drafts, securing the foreign deals (yay!), negotiating the new contract and putting up with all my questions. Thanks also to your Shiel Land colleagues Lucy Fawcett for dealing with the film and TV side, and also Alba Arnau and Chloe Woods.

  Thank you to The Chateau beta readers Eve Ainsworth, Sarah Wells, Jackie Wesley and Hannah Parry who I think read when I’d got about two-thirds of the way through? All of you helped shape the book in some way and I hope you approve of how I finished it.

  Thank you again to copy editor Anne O’Brien for tidying up my words and flagging my continued over-use of ‘just’, ‘really’ and ‘a bit’, and to Claire Ward for another brilliant cover.