فصل دوازدهم

I know I’m going on. And I know you must be wondering when the hell I’m going to get to the point—to the reason I’m here, in this prison cell, and the reason I shouldn’t be.

And I promise you, it’s coming. But I can’t—I can’t seem to explain the situation quickly. That was the problem with Mr. Gates. He never let me explain properly—to show how it all built up, all the little things, all the sleepless nights and the loneliness and the isolation, and the craziness of the house and the cameras and everything else. To explain properly, I have to tell you how it happened. Day by day. Night by night. Piece by piece.

Only that sounds as if I’m building something—a house perhaps. Or a picture in a jigsaw. Piece by piece. And the truth is, it was the other way around. Piece by piece, I was being torn apart.

And the first piece was that night.

That first evening . . . well, it wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t the best either, not by a long stretch.

Petra woke up from her nap cranky and fretful, and Maddie and Ellie refused to come out of their room all afternoon, even for supper, no matter how much I pleaded, no matter what ultimatums I laid down. No pudding unless you are downstairs by the time I count from five . . . four . . . three . . . no sound of feet on the stairs . . . two . . . one and a half . . .

It was when I said one and a half that I knew I had lost.

They weren’t coming.

For a moment I thought about dragging them out. Ellie was small enough for me to grab her round the waist and carry her forcibly downstairs—but I had just enough sanity left to know that if I started that way, I would never be able to dial it back, and besides, it wasn’t Ellie who was the problem, it was Maddie, and she was eight and solidly built, and there was no way I could carry a kicking, screaming, fighting child down that long, curving staircase all by myself, still less, force her to sit down and eat something once I got her into the kitchen.

In the end I capitulated and, after checking Sandra’s suggested menu plan in the binder, I took pasta and pesto up to their bedroom—though the memory of those meek little heads bent over Jean McKenzie’s chocolate chip cookies was bitter in the back of my head as I knocked on the door and heard Maddie’s fierce Go away!

“It’s me,” I said meekly. “I’ve got your pasta. I’ll leave it here outside the door. But me and Petra will be downstairs having ice cream if you want some pudding.” And then I left. It was all I could do.

Downstairs in the kitchen, I tried to stop Petra from throwing her pasta on the floor, and I watched Maddie and Ellie on the iPad. My personalized log-in gave me permission to view the cameras in the children’s room, playroom, kitchen, and outside, and to control the lights and the music in some of the other rooms, but there was a whole menu of settings on the left that was grayed out and unavailable. I guessed I would have needed Sandra’s log-in to control those.

Although I still found it a little creepy to be able to spy on the children from afar like this, I began to appreciate how useful it was. I was able to watch from my seat by the breakfast bar as Maddie moved towards the bedroom door and then came back into view of the cameras, dragging the tray of food across the carpet.

There was a little table in the middle of the room, and I watched as she directed Ellie to one seat and put out their bowls and cutlery, and sat opposite her sister. I didn’t have the sound on, but it was plain from her actions that she was bossing Ellie around and telling her to eat up . . . probably making her try the peas I had mixed into the pesto, judging by Ellie’s gestures as she protested. My heart gave a funny little clench, of angry pity mixed with a kind of affection. Oh, Maddie, I wanted to say. It doesn’t have to be like this. We don’t have to be enemies.

But for the moment at least, it seemed like we did.

After supper I bathed Petra, listening with half an ear to the sounds of some kind of audio book coming from Maddie and Ellie’s room, muffled by the splashing of water, and then I put her to bed, or rather tried to.

I did exactly as the binder said, following the instructions to the letter, just as I had at lunchtime, but this time it wasn’t working. Petra groused and thrashed and ripped off her nappy, and then when I put her firmly back into it and buttoned her sleep suit up the back, so she couldn’t take it off, she began to wail, loudly and persistently.

For more than an hour I followed the binder’s instructions and sat there, with my hand patiently on her back, listening to the soothingly repetitive jingle of the mobile and watching the lights circle on the ceiling, but it wasn’t helping. Petra was getting more and more upset, and her cries were raising in pitch from irritated to angry, and from there to borderline hysterical.

As I sat there, stroking and trying not to let the tension in my wrist and hand convey itself to Petra, I glanced nervously up at the camera in the corner of the room. Maybe I was being watched right now. I could imagine Sandra at some corporate event, tensely sipping champagne as she followed the nursery feed on her phone. Was I about to get a call asking me what the hell I was doing?

The binder said to avoid taking Petra out of her cot after the lights were out, but the alternative, just leaving her there, didn’t seem to be working either. In the end I picked her up and put her over my shoulder, walking her up and down the room, but she wailed angrily in my arms, arching her back as though trying to tip herself out of my grasp. So I put her back in the cot and she hauled herself to her feet and stood, sobbing furiously, her little red face pressed against the bars.

It seemed like there was nothing I could do, and my presence was only making her more furious.

At last, with a final, guilty glance at the camera, I gave up.

“Good night, Petra,” I said aloud, and then stood and left the room, closing the door firmly behind me, and listening as the sound of her cries diminished as I walked down the corridor.

It was past 9:00 p.m., and I felt wrung out, exhausted by the effort of battling with the children all evening. I thought about going straight downstairs for a glass of wine, but in reality I had to check on Maddie and Ellie.

I could hear nothing coming from behind their bedroom door, and when I peered through the keyhole, everything inside seemed to be dark. Had they turned off the lights? I thought about knocking, but decided against it. If they were falling asleep the sound of a knock would probably undo all that.

Instead, I turned the knob very quietly, and pushed. The door opened a crack, but then met resistance.

Puzzled, I pushed harder, and there was a toppling crash, as a pile of something—I wasn’t sure what—stacked up against the inside of the door fell with a clatter to the floor. I held my breath, waiting for wails and cries, but none came—apparently the children had slept through it.

Gingerly now, I slid through the gap I had created and switched on the torch of my phone to survey the damage. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. They had piled up nearly all their movable furniture—cushions, teddies, books, chairs, the little table from the center of the room—into a barricade on the inside of the bedroom door. It was comic, and yet at the same time more than a little pathetic. What were they trying to protect themselves against? Me?

I swung the torch around the room and saw one of the bedside lamps, which they had unplugged and stacked on top of the pile of stuff. It had fallen to the floor when I toppled the stack, and the shade was wonky, but fortunately the bulb was not broken. Carefully, I straightened the shade, and then plugged it back in and set it on Ellie’s bedside table. As the soft pink glow suffused the room, I saw them, curled together in Maddie’s bed, looking for all the world like two little cherubs. Maddie’s arms were firmly around her sister, almost constrictively, and I thought about trying to loosen her grip but then decided against it. I’d dodged a bullet once with that huge crash, no point in rocking the boat further.

In the end, I moved just enough stuff away from the door to make it possible to slip in and out without causing an avalanche, and then left them, turning on Happy’s listening function on my phone so I could hear if they woke up.

Petra was still sobbing as I tiptoed quietly past her room, but the volume had decreased, and I hardened my heart and didn’t look in. I told myself she would settle faster if I left her to it. And besides, I’d had nothing to eat or drink since noon—too busy trying to feed and bathe the girls to make supper for myself. I was suddenly ravenous, light-headed, and desperate for food.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, I walked over to the fridge. “You are low on milk,” said the robot voice as I touched the door, making me jump convulsively. “Shall I add it to the shopping list?” “Er . . . yes,” I managed. Was I going insane, talking aloud to a household appliance?

“Adding milk to your shopping list,” said the voice brightly, and again the screen on the door lit up, showing a list of groceries. “Eat happy, Rowan!” I tried not to think about how it figured out who was standing in front of it. Face recognition? Proximity of my phone? Either way, it felt distinctly unsettling.

At first sight the fridge contents looked distressingly healthy—a huge drawer full of green veg, tubs of fresh pasta, various pots of things like kimchi and harissa, and a large jar of something that looked like pond water but which I thought might be kombucha. However right at the back, behind some organic yogurts, I saw a cardboard pizza box, and with some difficulty I inveigled it out and opened it up. I was just sliding the baking tray into the oven when there was a sharp rap from the glass wall on the far side of the kitchen table.

I jumped and swung around, scanning the room. It was getting dark, rain spattering the glass, and although the far side of the room was in shadow, I could see very little outside except the jeweled droplets running down the enormous glass pane. I was just beginning to think I might have imagined it, or that perhaps a bird had flown into the glass, when a dark shape moved against the gloaming, black against gray. Something—someone—was out there.

“Who is it?” I called out, a little more sharply than I had intended. There was no answer, and I marched past the breakfast bar, around the kitchen table, and towards the glass wall, shrouded in darkness.

There was no panel over here—or none that I could see—but then I remembered the voice commands.

“Lights on,” I said sharply, and somewhat to my surprise, it worked—the huge brutalist chandelier above my head illuminating suddenly into a blaze of LED bulbs. The blast of brilliance left me blinking and astonished. But as soon as my eyes adjusted, I realized my mistake. With the lights on, I could see absolutely nothing outside now apart from my own reflection in the glass. Whereas whoever was out there could see me very plainly.

“Lights off,” I said. Every light in the entire room went out immediately, plunging the kitchen into inky darkness.

“Shit,” I said under my breath, and began to feel my way back across the kitchen, towards the panel by the door, to try to restore the settings to something halfway between retina-burning brilliance and total darkness. My eyes were still dazzled and hurting from the blast of light from the chandelier, but as my fingers finally sought out the control panel, I looked back toward the window, and thought, though I could not be sure, that I saw something whisk away around the side of the house.

I spent the rest of the time while the pizza was cooking glancing nervously over my shoulder into the dark shadows at the far side of the room, and chewing my nails. I had turned the baby monitor off, the better to hear any more sounds from outside, but Petra’s sobs still filtered faintly down the stairs, not helping my stress levels.

I was tempted to put on some music, but there was something unnerving about the idea of drowning out the sound of a potential intruder. As it was, I hadn’t seen or heard anything definite enough to call the police. A shape in the darkness and a knock that could have been anything from an acorn to a bird . . . it wasn’t exactly Friday the 13th.

It was maybe ten or fifteen minutes later—though it felt like much more—that I heard another sound, this time from the side of the house, a knock that set the dogs barking from their baskets in the utility room.

The noise made me jump, though there was something more homely and ordinary about it than the hollow bang of before, and when I went through to the utility room, I could see a dark shape silhouetted outside the rain-spattered glass panes in the door. The figure spoke, his voice almost drowned by the hiss of the rain.

“It’s me. Jack.”

Relief flooded through me.

“Jack!” I wrenched the door open, and there he was, standing just under the threshold, hunched in a raincoat, hands in pockets. The water was streaming down his fringe and dripping from his nose.

“Jack, was that you, before?”

“Before when?” he asked, looking puzzled, and I opened my mouth to explain—and then thought better of it.

“Never mind, it doesn’t matter. What can I help with?”

“I won’t keep you,” he said, “I just wanted to check you were all right, with it being your first day and all.” “Thanks,” I said awkwardly, thinking of the awful afternoon and the fact that Petra was probably still sobbing into the baby monitor. Then, on an impulse I added, “Will you—I mean, do you want to come in? The kids are in bed. I was just getting myself some supper.” “Are you sure?” He looked at his watch. “It’s pretty late.”

“I’m sure,” I said, standing back to let him inside the utility room. He stood, dripping onto the mat, and then stepped gingerly out of his boots.

“I’m sorry it’s so late,” he said, as he followed me into the kitchen. “I was meaning to come over before, but I had to take that bloody mower over to Inverness to be serviced.” “You couldn’t fix it?”

“Oh, aye, I got it running. But it clapped out again yesterday. Whatever’s the matter, I can’t seem to get to the bottom of it. But never mind about that. I didn’t come to moan at you about my troubles. How was it with the kids?” “It was—” I stopped, feeling, with horror, my bottom lip quiver treacherously. I wanted to put on a brave face—what if he reported back to Sandra and Bill? But I just couldn’t do it. And besides, if they looked at the security footage they would know the truth soon enough. As if to set the seal on it, Petra gave a long, bubbling wail of grief from upstairs that was loud enough to make Jack’s head turn towards the stairs.

“Oh God, who am I kidding?” I said wretchedly. “It was awful. The girls ran away from me after Bill and Sandra left, and I went to look for them in the woods and then that woman—what’s her name? Mrs. McKinty?” “Jean McKenzie,” Jack said. He pulled his raincoat off and sat at the long table, and I found myself sinking into a chair opposite. I wanted to put my head in my hands and cry, but I forced myself to give a shaky laugh.

“Well she turned up to clean and found the girls sitting on the doorstep claiming I’d locked them out, which I absolutely didn’t, I’d deliberately left the door open for them. They hate me, Jack, and Petra’s been screaming for like an hour and—” The wail came again, and I felt my stress level rise in tandem with its pitch.

“Sit down,” Jack said firmly, as I made to rise. He pushed me back into the chair opposite his. “I’ll see if I can settle her. She’s probably just not used to your face, it’ll be better tomorrow.” It was in defiance of every safeguarding rule I’d ever been taught, but I was too tired and desperate to care—and besides, I told myself, Sandra and Bill would hardly have kept him on the premises if they thought he was a danger to their kids.

As the sound of his steps receded up the stairs, I switched on the baby monitor and listened to the door of Petra’s room swish gently open and her choking, gasping cries subside as her body was lifted from the crib.

“There, there, my little love,” I heard, a low, intimate croon that made my cheeks flush as if I were eavesdropping, though Jack must surely know the baby monitor was plugged in. “There, there, ma poor wee lassie.” Upstairs, away from me, his accent was somehow stronger. “Shh . . . shh now, Petra . . . there, there . . . what a fuss over nothing.” Petra’s cries were lower now, more hiccups and grumbling than real distress, and I could hear the creak of the boards as Jack paced softly up and down, holding her, soothing and gentling the fretful baby with a surprisingly practiced touch.

At last she fell silent, and I heard his feet stop, and the rattle of the cot bars as he leaned over, lowering her gently to the mattress.

There was a long pause, and then the shush of the door against the carpet, and Jack’s feet on the stairs again.

“Success?” I said, hardly daring to believe it, as he entered the kitchen, and he nodded and gave a little wry smile.

“Aye, I think the poor wee thing was knackered, she was just looking for an excuse to put her head down. She fell asleep almost as soon as I picked her up.” “God, Jack, you must think I’m a complete—” I stopped, not sure what to say. “I mean, I’m the nanny. I’m supposed to be good at this kind of stuff.” “Don’t be silly.” He sat again at the table, opposite me. “They’ll be fine when they get to know you. You’re a stranger to them; that’s all. And they’re testing you. They’ve had enough nannies this past year to make them a bit mistrustful of a new one waltzing in and taking over. You know what kids are like—once they see you’re here to stay and won’t be off abandoning them again, it’ll get better.” “Jack . . .” It was the opening I’d been waiting for, and yet now that it was here, I wasn’t sure how to phrase my question. “Jack, what did happen with those other nannies? Sandra said they left because they thought the house was haunted, but I can’t believe . . . I don’t know, it just seems preposterous. Have you ever seen anything?” As I said it I thought of the shadow I’d seen outside the glass wall of the kitchen and pushed the image away. It was probably just a fox, or a tree moving in the wind.

“Well . . . ,” Jack said, rather slowly. He reached out one of his big, work-roughened hands—the nails still a little gray with oil in spite of what must have been repeated scrubbing—and picked up the baby monitor I had laid down on the table, turning it thoughtfully. “Well . . . I wouldn’t say—” But whatever he had been about to say was cut short by a loud, rather peremptory voice saying, “Rowan?” Jack broke off, but I jumped so hard I bit my tongue and swung round, looking wildly for the source of the voice. It was that of an adult female, not one of the children, and it was very human, quite distinct from the robotic drone of the Happy app. Was someone in the house?

“Rowan,” the voice repeated, “are you there?”

“He-hello?” I managed.

“Ah, hi, Rowan! It’s Sandra.”

With a rush of mingled relief and fury, I realized—the voice was coming out of the speakers. Sandra had somehow dialed in to the house system and was using the app to talk to us. The sense of intrusion was indescribable. Why the hell couldn’t she have just phoned?

“Sandra.” I swallowed back my anger, trying to restore my voice to the cheerful, upbeat tone I’d mastered at the interview. “Hi. Gosh, how are you?” “Good!” Her voice echoed around the kitchen, magnified by the surround-sound system, bouncing off the high glass ceiling. “Tired! But more to the point, how are you? How’s everything on the home front?” I felt my eyes flicker to Jack, sitting at the table, thinking of how he had been the one to get Petra down. Had Sandra seen? Should I say something? I willed him not to cut in, and he didn’t.

“Well . . . calm, right now,” I said at last. “They’re all in bed and safely asleep. Though I have to admit, Petra was a bit of a struggle. She went down like a lamb at lunchtime but maybe I let her sleep too long, I don’t know. She was really hard to get down this evening.” “But she’s asleep now? Well done.”

“Yes, she’s asleep now. And the other two went down quiet as mice.”

Scared, defensive, angry mice—but they had at least been quiet. And they were asleep.

“I let them have supper in their room as they seemed really tired. I hope that was okay.”

“Fine, fine,” Sandra said, as though dismissing the question. “And they behaved okay the rest of the day?” “They—” I pursed my lips, wondering how truthful to be. “They were a bit upset after you left, to be honest, especially Ellie. But they calmed down in the afternoon. I offered to let them watch Frozen, but they didn’t want to. They ended up playing in their room.” Well, that part was true enough. The problem was that they hadn’t come out of their room. “Listen, Sandra, are there rules about the grounds?” “How do you mean?”

“I mean, are they really allowed to just roam around, or should I be keeping them in? I know you and Bill are relaxed about it, but there’s that pond—I’m just—it’s making me a bit nervous.” “Oh that,” Sandra said. She laughed, the sound echoing around the space in a way that made me wish I knew how to control the volume on the speakers. “It’s barely six inches deep. Honestly, it’s the reason Bill and I bought a place with big grounds, to give the children a bit of freedom to run wild. You don’t need to helicopter them every second. They know they’re not allowed to do anything silly.” “I—I’m—” I stopped, struggling with how to put my concerns without sounding like I was criticizing her parenting. I was horribly conscious of Jack sitting across the table from me, his eyes politely averted, trying to pretend he wasn’t listening. “Look, you know them better than I do, of course, Sandra, and if you’re happy that they’re okay with that I’ll take your word on it, but I’m just—I’m used to a closer level of supervision, if you know what I mean. Particularly around water. I know the water isn’t that deep, but the mud—” “Well, look,” Sandra said. She sounded a little defensive now, and I cursed myself. I had tried so hard not to sound critical . . . “Look, you must use your common sense, of course you must. If you see them doing something stupid, step in. It’s your job to supervise them, that goes without saying. But I don’t see the point of having children stuck in front of the TV all afternoon when there’s a big beautiful sunny garden outside.” I was taken aback. Was this a dig about the fact that I had tried to bribe them with a film?

There was a long, uncomfortable pause while I tried to figure out what to say. I wanted to snap the truth—the fact that it was impossible for one person to adequately supervise a five-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a baby who could barely toddle when they were scattered across several acres of wooded grounds. But I had a feeling that doing so would get me fired. It was plain that Sandra didn’t want to discuss the risks involved in letting the girls roam.

“Well,” I said at last. “I totally take that point, Sandra, and obviously I’m very keen to take advantage of the beautiful grounds for myself as well. I’ll—” I stopped, groping for what to say. “I’ll use my common sense, as you suggest. Anyway, we had a pretty good day, considering, and the girls seem—they seem to have settled well. Would you like me to check in with you tomorrow?” “I’ll be in meetings all day, but I’ll call before bedtime,” Sandra said, her voice slightly softer now. “I’m sorry I didn’t manage to speak to the girls before bed, but we were having dinner with a client. And anyway, it probably would have unsettled them. I find it’s better to be out of sight, out of mind at first.” “Yes,” I said. “Sure. I can appreciate that.”

“Well, good night, Rowan. Sleep tight. I’m sure you will; you’ll have an early start tomorrow, I’m afraid!” She gave another laugh. I made myself echo it, though in truth I was feeling anything but amused. The idea of starting all this all over again at 6:00 a.m. was giving me a kind of sick feeling. How had I ever thought I could do this?

Remember why you’re here, I thought grimly.

“Yes, I’m sure I will,” I said, trying to infuse a smile into my voice. “Good night, Sandra.” I waited—but there was no click, or any sign that she had hung up, or closed the app.

“S-Sandra?” I said uncertainly, but she seemed to be gone. I slumped back in my chair, and ran my hand over my face. I felt exhausted.

“I should be going,” Jack said awkwardly, evidently taking my gesture as a hint. He stood, pushing back his chair. “It’s late, and you’ve an early start, I’d imagine, with the girls tomorrow.” “No, stay,” I looked up at him, suddenly desperate not to be left alone in this house of hidden eyes and ears and speakers. The company of a person—a real, flesh-and-blood person, not a disembodied voice, was irresistible. “Please. I’d rather have someone to eat with.” A whiff of something burning came from the oven, and I suddenly remembered the pizza. “Have you eaten?” “No, but I won’t take your supper.”

“Of course you will. I put a pizza in the oven just before you arrived. It’s probably burnt by now, but it’s huge. I won’t manage it all myself. Please, give me a hand, honestly, I want you to.” “Well . . .” He glanced at the utility room door, towards the garage, and, I assumed, his little flat above, its windows dark. “Well . . . if you insist.” “I do.” I put on oven gloves and opened the door of the hot oven. The pizza was done. Overdone, in fact, the cheese crisping and charred around the edges, but I was too hungry to care. “Sorry, it’s a bit blackened. I completely forgot about it. Do you mind?” “Not at all. I’m hungry enough to eat a horse, let alone a slightly burnt pizza.” He grinned, the tanned skin of his cheeks crinkling.

“And I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I need a glass of wine. You?”

“I wouldn’t say no.”

He watched as I chopped the pizza into slices and found two glasses in the cupboard.

“Are you okay with eating off the board?” I asked, and he gave another of his wide grins.

“I’m more than okay. It’s you who’s taking the risk. I’ll gobble all your dinner if it’s not safely ring-fenced, but if you’re fine with that, it’s not my lookout.” “I’m more than okay too,” I said, and to my surprise, I found myself returning his grin with a slightly shy smile of my own, but a real one, not the forced, watery attempt of earlier tonight.

There was silence for a few minutes as we both worked our way through a greasy, delicious slice each, and then another. At last Jack picked up his third and spoke, balancing it on his fingertips, angling the slice so that the grease dripped back onto the board.

“So . . . about what you were asking earlier.”

“The . . . the supernatural thing?”

“Aye. Well, the truth is, I’ve not seen anything myself, but Jean, she’s . . . well, not superstitious exactly. But she loves a good yarn. She’s always filling the kids’ heads with folk tales—you know, selkies and kelpies, that sort of thing. And this house is very old, or parts of it are, anyway. There’s been the usual amount of deaths and violence, I suppose.” “So . . . you think Jean’s been telling the girls stuff and they’ve been passing it on to the nannies?” “Maybe. I wouldn’t want to say for sure either way. But, look, those other nannies were very young, most of them, at least. It’s not everyone who’s cut out to live in a place like this, miles away from a town or a bar or a pub. Au pairs, they don’t want to be here, they want to be in Edinburgh or Glasgow, where there’s nightclubs and other people who speak their own language, you ken?” “Yeah.” I looked out of the window. It was too dark to see anything, but in my mind’s eye I saw the road, stretching away into darkness, the miles and miles of rolling hills, the mountains in the distance. There was silence apart from the rain. Not a car, not a passerby, nothing. “Yeah, I can understand that.” We sat in silence for a moment. I don’t know what Jack was thinking, but I was filled with a mix of strange emotions—stress, tiredness, trepidation at the thought of the days stretched out ahead of me, and something else, even more unsettling. Something that was more about Jack, and his presence, and the scatter of freckles across his broad cheekbones, and the way his muscles moved beneath the skin of his forearm as he folded the final pizza slice into a neat parcel and finished it off in two quick bites.

“Well, I’d best be away to my bed.” He stood, stretching so that I heard his joints click. “Thanks for the meal, it was nice to have someone to talk to.” “Same.”

I stood, suddenly self-conscious, as if he had been reading my thoughts.

“You’ll be all right?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Well, I’m just over the garage, in the old stable block if you need anything. It’s the door around the side, the one painted green with a swallow on the plate. If anything happens in the night—” “What would happen?” I broke in, surprised, and he gave a laugh.

“That came out wrong. I just meant, if you need me for anything, you know where I am. Did Sandra give you my mobile?” “No.”

He pulled a leaflet off the fridge and scribbled his number in the margin, then handed it to me.

“There you go. Just in case, like.”

Just in case, what? I wanted to ask again, but I knew he would only laugh it off.

His gesture had been meant as a reassuring one, I was sure of it. But somehow it had left me feeling anything but.

“Well, thanks Jack,” I said, feeling a little awkward, and he grinned again, shrugged himself into his wet coat, and then opened the utility room door and ducked out into the rain.

After he had gone I made my way into the utility room myself to lock up. The house felt very still and quiet somehow, without his presence, and I sighed as I reached above the top of the doorframe for the key. But it wasn’t there.

I patted my way along the doorframe, feeling with my fingertips among the dust and little crunching lumps of dead insect, but there was nothing there.

It wasn’t on the floor either.

Could Jean have moved it? Or knocked it down while dusting?

Except, I had a crystal clear memory of putting the key up there after Jean left, just as Sandra had instructed, to keep it handy in case of an emergency but out of reach of the children. Could it have fallen down? But if so, what had happened to it? It was large and brass. Too big to go unnoticed on the floor, or to fit up a Hoover pipe. Had it got kicked under something?

I got down on my hands and knees and shone my phone’s torch under the washing machine and tumble dryer, but could see nothing under either, just flat white tiles and a few dust bunnies that quivered when I blew them aside. It wasn’t behind the mop bucket either. Then, in spite of my doubts, I went to the cupboard where the downstairs Hoover lived—but the dust chamber had been emptied. There was nothing in there. It was the bagless kind with a clear plastic cylinder that you could see the dust circulating in—even setting aside the question of whether the key could have got inside, there was no way anyone could have tipped out a big brass key without noticing it.

After that I scoured the kitchen, and even checked the bin—but there was nothing there.

At last I opened the utility room door and stared out into the rain towards the stable block, where a light had come on in the upstairs window. Should I call Jack? Would he have a spare key? But if he did, could I really bear for him to think me so disorganized and helpless that I had waited only ten minutes before taking up his offer of help?

As I was wavering, the light in his window went out, and I realized he had probably gone to bed.

It was too late. I wasn’t going to drag him out in his nightclothes.

After a last glance around at the yard directly outside the door, in case the key had got kicked outside somehow, I shut the door.

I’d ask Jack in the morning.

In the meantime, oh God, what would I do? I’d . . . I’d have to barricade the door with something. It was absurd—we were miles away from anywhere, behind locked gates, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep well if I felt the place was insecure.

The handle was a knob, not the kind you could put a chair under to stop it from turning, and there was no bolt, but at last, after a lot of searching, I found a wedge-shaped door stopper in the Hoover cupboard. I rammed it firmly into the gap beneath the door and then turned the doorknob to test it.

Somewhat to my surprise, it held. It wouldn’t stop a determined burglar—but then very little would. If someone was really set on breaking in they could just smash a window. But at the very least, it did give the impression that the door was locked, and I knew I would sleep more soundly because of it.

When I went back into the kitchen to clear away the pizza box and our plates, the clock above the stove read 11:36, and I could not suppress a groan. The girls would be up at six. I should have been in bed hours ago.

Well, it was too late to undo that. I’d just have to forgo a shower and get to sleep as quickly as possible. I was so tired, I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be a problem, anyway.

“Lights off,” I said aloud.

The room was instantly plunged into blackness, just the faint glow from the hallway illuminating the concrete floor. Smothering a yawn, I made my way up the stairs to bed, and was asleep almost before I had undressed.