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“Mummy!”

The Tesla wound its way along the driveway and towards the main road, with Ellie running in its wake, the tears streaming down her face as Jack’s driving speed outpaced her short legs.

“Mummy, come back!”

“Bye, darlings!” Sandra’s head leaned out the rear window, her honey-colored hair whipping in the breeze as the car picked up speed. There was a cheerful smile on her face, but I could see the distress in her eyes, and I knew that she was keeping up a happy facade for the sake of the children. Bill did not turn around. He was bent over his phone in the back seat beside her.

“Mummy!” Ellie shouted, desperation in her voice. “Mummy, please don’t go!”

“Bye, sweeties! You’ll have a wonderful time with Rowan, and I’ll be back very soon. Goodbye! I love you all!” And then the car rounded the bend in the drive and disappeared from sight among the trees.

Ellie’s legs slowed, and she stumbled to a halt, letting out a wail of grief before she threw herself dramatically to the ground.

“Oh, Ellie!” I hitched Petra higher on my hip and jogged down the drive to where Ellie lay, face-first on the gravel. “Ellie, darling, come on, let’s go and get some ice cream.” I knew from Sandra’s instructions that this was a big treat, something not allowed every day, because it made both girls rather hyper, but Ellie only shook her head and wailed louder.

“Come on, sweetheart.” I bent down, with some difficulty—as I was holding Petra—and took her wrist, trying to pull her up, but she only let out a scream and wrenched her arm out of my hand, slamming her little fist onto the gravel.

“Ow!” she screamed, redoubling her sobs and looking up at me with angry, red, tear-filled eyes. “You hurt me!” “I was just trying—”

“Go away, you hurt me, I’m going to tell my mummy!”

I stood for a moment, irresolute over her angry, prone form, unsure what to do.

“Go away!” she screamed again.

At last, I gave a sigh and began to walk back up the drive towards the house. It felt wrong leaving her there, in the middle of what was, basically, a road, but the gate at the foot of the drive was shut, and it would be at least half an hour before Jack returned. Hopefully she would have calmed down long before then and I could coax her back into the house.

On my hip Petra had begun grousing, and I suppressed another sigh. Please, not a meltdown from her as well. And where the hell was Maddie? She had disappeared before her parents left, flitting off into the woods to the east of the house, refusing to say goodbye.

“Oh, let her go,” Bill had said, as Sandra flapped around trying to find her to kiss her goodbye. “You know what she’s like; she prefers to lick her wounds in private.” Lick her wounds. Just a silly cliché, right? At the time I hadn’t dwelt on it, but now I wondered. Was Maddie wounded? If so, how?

Up in the house I sat Petra in her high chair, strapped her in, and checked the red binder in case it gave instructions for what to do if the children disappeared off the face of the earth. The whole thing must have been at least three inches thick, and a cursory flick-through after breakfast had told me that it contained information on everything from how much Calpol to give and when, through to bedtime routines, favorite books, nappy-rash protocol, homework schedules, and which washing capsules to use for the girls’ ballet uniforms. Virtually every moment of the day was accounted for, with notes ranging from what snacks to serve, right through to which TV programs to choose, and how much they were allowed to watch.

The one thing it didn’t cover was total disappearance—or at least, if it did, I couldn’t find the page where it was mentioned, but as I skimmed down the carefully annotated “typical weekend day,” I saw that Petra was overdue for lunch, which might explain her irritability. I didn’t really want to start preparing food before I’d tracked down Maddie and Ellie, but at least I could give Petra a snack to tide her over and stop her grumbling.

6:00, the page began. All the younger ones (but particularly Ellie) are prone to early wakings. To that end, we have installed the sleep-training “Happy bunny clock” in the girls’ room. It’s a digital clock with a screen image of a sleeping bunny that soundlessly switches over to an image of a wide-awake “Happy bunny” at 6:00 a.m. If Ellie wakes before this, please gently (!) encourage her to check the clock and get back into bed if the bunny is still asleep. Obviously use your judgment regarding nightmares and toilet accidents.

Jesus. Was there nothing in this house that wasn’t controlled by the bloody app? I scanned the page, skipping past suggested outfits and wet-weather clothes, and acceptable breakfast menus, down to midmorning.

10:30–11:15—snack, e.g., some fruit (bananas, blueberries, grapes—QUARTERED for Petra, please), raisins (sparingly only—teeth!), breadsticks, rice cakes, or cucumber sticks. No strawberries (Ellie is allergic), no whole nuts (nut butters are okay, but we only buy the sugar-/salt-free kind), and finally Petra is not allowed snacks containing refined sugar or excess salt (older girls are allowed sugar in moderation). This can be hard to police if you are out, so in that scenario I suggest taking a snack box.

Well, at least the app didn’t prepare the snacks. Still, I’d never encountered anything like this level of detail at any other nannying job—at Little Nippers the staff handbook was a slim pamphlet that concentrated mostly on how to report staff sickness. Rules, yes. Screen time, sanctions, red lines, allergies—all of that was normal. But this—did she think I had spent nearly ten years in childcare without knowing you had to cut up grapes?

As I closed the scarlet folder and pushed it away from me across the table, I wondered. Was it the unsettling changes of staff that had made Sandra so controlling? Or was she just a woman desperately trying to be there for her family, even when she couldn’t be physically present? Bill, it was clear, felt no compunction about leaving his children alone with a comparative stranger, however well qualified. But Sandra’s binder spoke of a very different type of parent—one very conflicted about the situation she was in. Which begged the question of why, in that case, she was so determined to be with Bill rather than at home. Was it really just professional pride? Or was there something else going on?

There was a huge marble fruit bowl in the center of the concrete table, freshly stocked with oranges, apples, satsumas, and bananas, and with a sigh, I ripped a banana off the bunch, peeled it, and placed a few chunks on Petra’s tray. Then I went into the playroom to see if Maddie had returned. She wasn’t there, nor was she in the living room, or anywhere in the house, as far as I could tell. At last I went to the utility room door, the one she had left by, and called out into the woods.

“Maddie! Ellie! Petra and I are having ice cream.” I paused, listening for the sound of running feet, cracking branches. Nothing came. “With sprinkles.” I had no actual idea if there were sprinkles but at this point I didn’t care about false advertising, I just wanted to know where they both were.

More silence, just the sound of birds. The sun had gone in, leaving the air surprisingly chilly, and I shivered, feeling the goose bumps rise on my bare arms. Suddenly hot chocolate seemed more appropriate than ice cream, in spite of the fact that it was June.

“Okay!” I called again, more loudly this time. “More sprinkles for me!”

And I walked back into the house, leaving the side door open a crack.

In the kitchen I did a double take.

Petra was standing up in her high chair on the far side of the breakfast bar, triumphantly waving a chunk of banana at me.

“Fuck!”

For a moment all feeling drained out of me, and I stood, frozen to the spot, looking at her precarious stance, the unforgiving concrete beneath her, her small wobbly feet on the slippery wood.

And then, regaining my senses, I ran, stumbling over a stray teddy, staggering around the corner of the breakfast bar to snatch her up, my heart in my mouth.

“Oh my God, Petra, you bad, bad girl. You mustn’t do that. Jesus. Oh, Jesus Christ.”

She could have died—that was the long and short of it. If she’d fallen and struck her head on the concrete floor, she would have been concussed before I could reach her.

How could I have been so stupid?

I’d supervised toddlers a million times before—I’d done all the right things, pulled her chair away from the counter so she couldn’t push herself backwards with her feet, and I was sure, certain in fact, that I’d done up those clips. They were far too stiff for little fingers.

So how had she got free?

Had she wriggled out?

I examined the clips. One side was still fastened. The other was open. Shit. I must have not pushed one home quite hard enough, and Petra had worked it loose and then managed to squirm out of the other side of the restraint.

So it was my fault after all. The thought made my hands feel cold with fear, and my cheeks feel hot with shame. Thank God it hadn’t happened when Sandra was here. That kind of safeguarding stuff was pretty much nannying 101. She would have been within her rights to sack me there and then.

Though, of course . . . she still could, if she was watching over the cameras. In spite of myself, my eyes flicked up to the ceiling, and sure enough there was one of those little white egg-shaped domes in the far corner of the room. I felt my face flush and looked away hastily, imagining Sandra seeing my guilty reaction.

Fuck. Fuck.

Well, there was nothing I could do, apart from hope that Sandra and Bill had better things to do than pore over the footage of their security cameras every hour of the day and night. I was pretty confident that Bill hadn’t so much as glanced at the app since leaving, but Sandra . . . somehow that binder spoke of a level of intensity that I had not quite anticipated from her relaxed, cheerful manner at the interview.

But with any luck they would be in a mobile black spot, or even in the air by now. Did the footage record? How long was it stored for? I didn’t know, and somehow I doubted whether that information was in the binder.

The realization was unsettling. I could be being watched, right now.

It was with a strange performative feeling that I hugged Petra tightly to my chest and dropped a shaky kiss on the top of her head. Beneath my lips I felt the gentle flex of her fontanelle, the fragility of a baby-soft skull almost, but not quite, closed over.

“Don’t do that again,” I told her, firmly, feeling the adrenaline still pulsing through me, and then, with an effort at restoring normality, I lifted her up and took her over to the sink, where I wiped her face. Then I looked at my watch, trying to breathe slowly and normally, and remember what I had been doing before Petra scared the life out of me.

It was just gone one. The binder had said Petra ate lunch twelve thirty to one and then went down for a nap at two. But in spite of that, she was grousing and rubbing her eyes crossly, and I found myself mentally adding up timings and trying to figure out how to handle this. At the nursery they’d gone down straight after lunch more or less, around one.

I didn’t want to mess with her routine so early in the day, but on the other hand, stretching out a tired, cranky baby until the specified time wasn’t a great idea either, and would probably result in a bad night’s sleep if she was the type of child who got more wired the more exhausted she became. I stared doubtfully down at the top of her head, trying to decide. Suddenly, the idea of a quiet hour or so to round up Maddie and Ellie was very appealing. It would definitely be easier without a fussy toddler in tow.

Fretfully Petra scrubbed a balled-up fist at her eyes and gave a tired sob, and I made up my mind.

“Come on, you,” I said aloud, and took her upstairs to her room.

Inside, the blackout blinds were already drawn, and I switched on the illuminated mobile as the binder had instructed and put her gently down on her back. She rolled over onto her tummy and rubbed her face into the mattress, but I sat quietly beside her, one hand on her wriggling spine, while the soft light show played over the ceiling and walls. Petra was grumbling to herself, but her cries were getting farther apart, and I could tell she was ready to go under at any moment.

At last, she seemed to be completely asleep, and I stood carefully and laid her rabbit comforter gently over one hand, where she could find it if she woke. For a moment she stirred and I froze, but her fingers only tightened onto the material as she let out a soft little snore. With a sigh of relief, I picked up the monitor that was hooked over the end of the cot, tucked it into my belt, and tiptoed out of the room.

The house was completely silent as I stood on the landing, listening for the sound of running feet or childish laughter.

Where the hell were they?

I hadn’t been in Sandra and Bill’s room, but I knew from the layout of the house that the window must overlook the drive, and holding my breath slightly, I turned the handle and opened the door.

The sight made my breath catch in my throat for a moment. The room was huge. They must have knocked together at least two other bedrooms to make it—maybe even three. There was an enormous bed piled high with plump cushions and white bed linen, and facing it a huge carved stone fireplace. Three long windows overlooked the front of the house. One was open a few inches, and muslin curtains fluttered a little in the breeze.

There were drawers left slightly open, and a closet ajar, and I felt a sharp tug of curiosity as I crossed the silver-gray carpet to the central window, but I pushed it down. For all I knew, Sandra and Bill could be watching me right now, and while I had an alibi for wanting to look out the window over the drive, I certainly had no excuse for rummaging in their cupboards.

When I reached the window, Ellie was nowhere in sight; the curve of drive where she had been lying was empty. I was not sure whether that was a relief. At least Jack wouldn’t run her over when he brought the Tesla back. But where on earth was she? Sandra had seemed remarkably relaxed about the children running off into the woods, but every bone in my body was screeching discomfort with the situation—at the nursery we’d had to risk assess everything, from a trip to the park through to messy play with porridge oats, and there were a billion risks I had absolutely no way of knowing. What if there was a pond within the grounds? Or a steep fall? What if they climbed a tree and couldn’t get down? What if the fencing wasn’t secure and they wandered out into the road? What if a dog— I broke off my mental litany of worst-case scenarios.

The dogs. I’d forgotten to ask Sandra whether their routine was down to me, but presumably an extra walk couldn’t hurt, and surely they would be able to find the children. If nothing else, their presence would give me an excuse to go hunting in the woods without looking to the children like they were running rings around me. I had to establish myself as someone firmly in charge right from the outset, otherwise my authority was going to be shot to pieces, and I would never recover.

I pushed aside the unsettling thought of what would happen when Rhiannon returned and a teenager was added to the mix. Hopefully Sandra would be home by then to back me up. . . .

Downstairs the dogs were lying in their baskets in the kitchen, though they both looked up hopefully as I walked in carrying their leads.

“Walkies!” I said brightly, and they bounded over. “Good girl . . . er . . . Claude,” I said as I struggled to find the right attachment on the collar, though in truth I wasn’t sure if I had the girl or the boy. Claude bounded around me excitedly as I wrestled with Hero, but at last I had them both on leads and a handful of dog biscuits in my pocket in case of problems, and I set off, out of the utility room door, across the graveled yard, past the stable block, and into the woods.

It was a beautiful day. In spite of my growing anxiety about the children, I couldn’t help but notice this as I walked down a winding, faintly marked path through the trees, the dogs straining at their leashes. The sun filtered through the canopy above, and our movements sent golden dust motes spinning and whirling up from the rich loam underneath our feet, the sun gleaming off the tiny particles of pollen and old man’s beard that floated in the still air beneath the trees.

The dogs seemed to have a definite idea of where they were going, and I let them lead, conscious of the fact that they were probably puzzled about being kept on leashes in their own garden. They’d have to put up with it though. I had no idea if they’d come when I called, and I couldn’t risk losing them as well.

We were heading downhill, towards the bottom of the drive, though I couldn’t see it through the trees. Behind me I heard the crack of a twig and turned sharply, but there was no one there. It must have been an animal, a fox perhaps.

At last we broke out of the cover of the trees into a little clearing, and my stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch, for there it was—the thing I’d been fearing ever since the girls had disappeared—a pond. Not very deep, but plenty deep enough for a small child to drown. The water was peat-colored and brackish, an oily scum floating on the surface from the decomposing pine needles. I poked it doubtfully with a stick, and bubbles of stagnant air floated lazily to the surface, but to my relief the rest of the pond looked undisturbed, the water clear except for the swirls of mud my stick had stirred up. Or . . . nearly undisturbed. Walking around the far side I saw the imprints of small shoes on the bank, skidding as if two little girls had been messing around by the water’s edge. There was no way of knowing when they had been made, but they looked fairly fresh. The prints led down the bank, becoming deeper and deeper as the mud softened, and then turned and went away again, back into the forest. I followed them for a few meters until the ground became too hard to take a print, but there were two sets of shoes, and at least I knew now that they were probably together, and almost certainly safe.

The dogs were whining and straining against their leads, desperate to get into the muddy pond and splash about, but there was no way I was having that. I wasn’t bathing a pair of filthy dogs on my first day on top of everything else.

There was no path up through the woods in the direction the footsteps had been leading, but I followed in as near an approximation as I could, when suddenly a crackling scream split the air. I stopped dead, my heart thumping erratically in my chest for the second time that day, the dogs barking hysterically and leaping at the end of their leashes.

For a second I didn’t know what to do. I stood, looking wildly around. The scream had sounded close at hand, but I could see no one, and I couldn’t hear any footsteps over the noise the dogs were making. Then it came again, long and almost unbearably high-pitched, and with a stomach-lurching realization, I understood.

I pulled the baby monitor out of my pocket, and watched as the lights flared and dipped in time with the long, bubbling shriek of pure fear.

For a moment I just stood there paralyzed, holding the monitor in my hand, the dogs’ leads looped around my wrist. Should I try to access the cameras?

With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and pressed the icon of the home-management app.

Welcome to Happy, Rowan, the screen said, with agonizing slowness. Home is where the Happy is! And then, to my despair, Updating user permissions. Please be patient. Home is where the Happy is!

I swore, stuffed both the phone and the monitor back into my pocket, and began to run.

I was a long way from the house, down a slope, and my breath was tearing in my throat by the time I left the cover of the trees and saw the house in front of me. The dogs had broken away from me some way back, tugging their leads out of my numb fingers, and now they were leaping and gamboling in front and behind me, barking joyfully, convinced that this was all some kind of game.

When I reached the front door, it was standing ajar, in spite of the fact that I knew it had been closed when I left—I had used the utility-room door, leaving it open for Maddie and Ellie in case they returned, and for a second I thought I might be sick. What had I done? What had happened to poor little Petra?

I was almost too frightened to stumble the last few steps up the flight of stairs to the nursery, but I forced myself, leaving the dogs in the hallway, tangled up in their own leads, and at last I was outside Petra’s door, sick with fear about what I was about to find.

It was closed, just as I’d left it, and I pushed down a sob in my throat as I turned the knob—but what I found there made me stop short on the threshold, blinking and trying to fight down my gasping breath.

Petra was asleep, in her cot, arms flung out to either side, sooty lashes sweeping her pink cheeks. Her bunny was clutched in her left hand, and she had plainly not stirred since I had put her down.

It didn’t make sense.

I had just enough self-control left to back out of the room, closing the door quietly behind me, before I sank to the floor in the hallway outside, my back hard against the knobbly banisters, my face in my hands, trying not to sob with shock and relief, feeling the wheeze in my chest as my lungs labored to take in enough oxygen to stabilize my pounding pulse.

With shaky hands, I pulled my inhaler out of my pocket and took a puff, then tried to make sense of it all. What had happened?

Had the sound not come from the monitor? But that was impossible—it was equipped with lights that illuminated to show when the baby was crying, in case you had the volume turned low for some reason. I had seen the lights. And the noise had been coming from the speaker, I was certain of it.

Had Petra had a nightmare and cried out? But when I thought back, that didn’t make sense either. It was not a baby’s cry. That was part of what had frightened me so much. The sound I’d heard was not the fretful wail I knew so well from the nursery but a long, throbbing shriek of terror, one made by a much older child, or even an adult.

“Hello?”

The voice came from downstairs, making me jump again, convulsively this time, and I stood, my pulse racing, and leaned over the bannisters.

“Hello? Who is it?” My voice came out not sharp and authoritative, as I had intended, but quavering and squeaky with fear. “Who’s there?” It had been an adult voice, a woman, and now I heard footsteps in the hall and saw a face below, peering up at me.

“You’ll be the new nanny, I dare say?”

It was a woman, perhaps fifty or sixty years old, her face ruddy and her body foreshortened by my perspective. She looked plump and motherly, but there was something in her voice and her expression that I couldn’t quite pin down. It wasn’t welcoming, that was for sure. A sort of . . . pinched disapproval?

There were leaves in my hair, and as I began to make my way down the flight of steps towards the ground floor, I saw that I’d left a trail of spattered mud on the thick carpet, in my headlong flight to Petra.

Two buttons had come adrift on my blouse and I fastened them and coughed, feeling my face still hot with exertion and fright.

“Um, hello. Yes. Yes, I’m Rowan. And you must be . . .”

“I’m Jean. Jean McKenzie.” She looked me up and down, not troubling to conceal her disapproval, and then shook her head. “It’s up to you, miss, but I don’t approve of keeping children locked out, and I dare say Mrs. Elincourt wouldna like it either.” “Locked out?” I was puzzled for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“I found the poor bairns shivering on the step in their sundresses when I came to clean.”

“But wait”—I put out a hand—“hang on a second. I didn’t lock anyone out. They ran away from me. I was out looking for them. I left the back door open for them.” “It was locked when I arrived,” Jean said stiffly. I shook my head.

“It must have blown shut but I didn’t lock it. I wouldn’t.”

“It was locked when I arrived,” was all she said, with a touch of stubbornness this time.

Anger flared inside me, replacing the fear I’d felt for Petra. Was she accusing me of lying?

“Well . . . maybe it came off the latch or something,” I said at last. “Are the girls okay?” “Aye, they’re having a bite in the kitchen wi’ me.”

“Were you—” I stopped, trying to figure out how to phrase this without placing myself even lower in her estimation. Plainly, for whatever reason, this woman didn’t like me, and I mustn’t give her any ammunition to report to Sandra. “I came back because I heard a sound from Petra on the baby monitor. Did you hear her?” “She’s not let out a peep,” Jean said firmly. “I’ve been keeping my eye on them all”—Unlike you, was the unspoken subtext—“and I’d have heard her if she was greeting.” “Greeting?”

“Crying,” Jean said impatiently.

“Maddie then? Or Ellie? Did either of them come up?”

“They’ve been down in the kitchen with me, miss,” Jean said, a touch of real crossness in her voice. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to be getting back to them. They’re too wee to be left alone wi’ the stove.” “Of course.” I felt my cheeks flush with the implied criticism. “But please, that’s my job. I’ll give them lunch.” “I’ve given it to them already. The poor wee mites were ravenous, they needed something hot in them.” I felt my temper, already frayed by the stress of the morning, begin to break.

“Look, Mrs. . . .” I groped for the name, and then found it, “McKenzie, I’ve already explained, the girls ran away from me; I didn’t lock them out. Maybe if they got a bit cold and scared waiting for someone to let them in, that’ll make them think twice about running off next time. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do.” I pushed past her and stalked into the kitchen, feeling her eyes boring into my back.

In the kitchen Maddie and Ellie were sitting at the breakfast bar eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking juice, with what looked like the remains of a pizza on a plate by the sink. I felt my jaw tighten. All those foods were strictly on Sandra’s “occasional treat” list. I’d been planning to settle them down for a film in the afternoon with some cookies in the TV room. Now that was off the menu, Mrs. McKenzie was in their good books, and I would be the bitch nanny who locked them out and had to enforce a healthy supper.

I pushed down my irritation and made myself smile pleasantly.

“Hello, girls, were you playing hide-and-seek?”

“Yes,” Ellie said with a giggle, but then she remembered our earlier quarrel, and frowned. “You hurt my wrist.” She held it out, and there, to my chagrin, was a ring of bruises on the pale skin of her stick-thin wrist.

I felt my cheeks color.

I thought about arguing with her, but I didn’t want to raise the issue in front of Mrs. McKenzie, and besides, it seemed like I’d done enough to antagonize them both today. Better to swallow my pride.

“I’m ever so sorry, Ellie.” I bent down beside her at the breakfast bar so that our heads were on a level, speaking softly so that Mrs. McKenzie wouldn’t hear. “I truly didn’t mean to. I was just worried you’d hurt yourself on the drive, but I really apologize if I was holding your arm too hard. It was an accident, I promise, and I feel terrible about it. Can we be friends?” For a second, I thought I saw Ellie wavering, then she jerked and gave a little whimper.

Beneath the breakfast bar I saw Maddie’s hand whip back into her lap.

“Maddie,” I said quietly, “what just happened?”

“Nothing,” Maddie said, almost inaudibly, speaking to her plate more than me.

“Ellie?”

“N-nothing,” Ellie said, but she was rubbing her arm, and there were tears in her bright blue eyes.

“I don’t believe you. Let me see your arm.”

“Nothing!” Ellie said, more fiercely. She pulled down her cardigan and gave me a look of angry betrayal. “I said nothing, go away!” “Okay.”

I stood up. Whatever chance I had had there with Ellie, I’d blown it for the moment. Or rather Maddie had.

Mrs. McKenzie was standing against the counter, her arms crossed, watching us. Then she folded the tea towel and hung it over the stove rail.

“Well, I’ll be away now, girls,” she said. Her voice, when she spoke to the children, was softer and far more friendly than the terse, clipped tone she’d used with me. She bent and dropped a kiss on top of each head, first Ellie’s blond curls, then Maddie’s wispy dark locks. “You give your wee sister a kiss from me, now, mind.” “Yes, Mrs. M,” Ellie said obediently. Maddie said nothing, but she squeezed Mrs. McKenzie’s waist with one arm, and I thought I saw a wistful look in her eye as her gaze followed the woman to the door.

“Goodbye now, girls,” Mrs. McKenzie said, and then she was gone. Outside I heard a car start up and bump down the drive to the road.

Alone in the kitchen with the two little girls I felt suddenly drained, and I sank down on the armchair in the corner of the room, wanting nothing more than to put my face in my hands and bawl. What had I taken on with these two hostile little creatures? And yet, I couldn’t blame them. I could only imagine how I would have reacted if I’d been left for a week with a total stranger.

The last thing I could cope with was losing the children in the grounds again, so while they finished up their cookies, I crossed into the hallway and examined the inside of the big front door. There was no key—no keyhole even, as I’d observed the very first time I had arrived. Instead, the white panel I had noticed contained a thumb sensor—Sandra had programmed my thumbprint into her phone app earlier that morning, before she left, and shown me how to operate it.

There was a matching panel on the inside, and I gingerly touched it, watching as a series of illuminated icons sprang into life. One of them was a big key, and remembering Sandra’s instructions, I tapped it cautiously, and heard a grinding click as the deadlocks inside the door slid home. There was something rather dramatic, even ominous about the sound, almost like a prison-cell lock grinding into place. But at least the door was secure now. There was no way Maddie or Ellie could even reach the panel without a set of steps, let alone activate the lock, since I very much doubted Sandra would have programmed their fingerprints into the system.

Then I went into the utility room. The door there operated with just a regular lock and key—as if Sandra and Bill’s budget had run out, or as if they didn’t care about the servants’ entrance. Or maybe there was some practical reason one door needed to be traditionally operated. Something to do with power cuts or building regulations, perhaps. Either way, it was a relief to be faced with technology an average person could figure out, and it was with a feeling of satisfaction that I twisted the key firmly in the lock and then tucked it away on the doorframe above, just as the binder had instructed. We keep all keys for the doors operated by traditional locks on the doorframe above the corresponding door, so that they are handy in case of emergency but out of reach of the children, the paragraph had read. There was something comforting about seeing it up there, far away from little fingers.

Mission accomplished, I went back into the kitchen, my best and brightest smile firmly plastered on.

“Right, girls, what do you say we go through to the TV room and watch a movie. Frozen? Moana?” “Yay, Frozen!” Ellie said, but Maddie butted in.

“We hate Frozen.”

“Really?” I made my voice skeptical. “Really? Because do you know, I love Frozen. In fact I know a sing-along version of Frozen where they have the words on the screen and I’m really good at joining in on all the songs.” Behind Maddie I could see Ellie looking desperate but too scared to contradict her sister.

“We hate Frozen,” Maddie repeated stubbornly. “Come on, Ellie, let’s go play in our room.”

I watched as she slid down from her stool and stomped into the hallway, the dogs’ eyes following her with puzzlement as she went. In the doorway she paused and jerked her head meaningfully at her sister. Ellie’s bottom lip quivered.

“We can still watch it if you want, Ellie,” I said, keeping my voice as light as I could. “We could watch it together, just you and me. I could make popcorn.” For a minute I thought I saw Ellie hesitate. But then something in her face seemed to harden, and she shook her head, slid from her stool, and turned to follow her sister.

As the sound of their footsteps faded away up the stairs, I sighed and then turned to put on the kettle, to make myself a pot of tea. At least I would have half an hour to myself, to try to figure out the situation.

But before I had even finished filling the kettle, the baby monitor in my pocket gave a crackle and then broke into a fretful coughing cry, telling me that Petra had woken up, and I was back on duty.

No rest for the wicked then.

What had I taken on?