“You’ll have to come and see Max,” she said, whistling to the dog immediately after.
Thomas looked at the woman suspiciously and then barreled past, knocking her as he went. She blew her blond fringe out of her eyes, a gesture that seemed to convey both good-natured frustration and an ironic commentary on my arrival. “I’m Mrs. Mins. I hope I’m pleased to meet you.”
She had gold hoops in her ears—larger than I would have thought appropriate for the countryside—and was wearing a wrap dress in a clingy jersey fabric. Brown was not a colour I would wear, but it suited Mrs. Mins very well. She was much older than I, perhaps in her early fifties, but she looked very good for her age. I felt dowdy despite being at least twenty years younger.
The nanny job. I had not come about the nanny job. I’d babysat as a teenager—hadn’t everyone?—and I had no intention of doing it again. The tantrums, the messy meal times, and the minutes crawling past. No, thank you.
But as the minutes ticked by, it felt harder to say so. Why else was I there? I didn’t really have a reason to have come; at least, not one that I could announce immediately. I hadn’t expected to be put on the spot like that. My father’s warnings were echoing in my ear: some things—some people—are better left in the past.
My plans of simply turning up and talking to Sophia seemed flimsy now I was standing here in the kitchen. She was a teenager. I couldn’t just turn up and ask to speak to her without setting off all sorts of alarm bells. I should have stayed in town for a night, gotten my bearings. I should have had more of a plan. It was too late for that now.
The kitchen was warm, and much smaller than I had expected from the size of the outside, bathed in a soft light from the fairy lights strung above the antique dresser. There were no children in sight, and yet there were signs of them everywhere. It was rustic compared to the commercial kitchen I used to hire to test my recipes, and without any sign of the expensive equipment and technology I had once thought indispensable.
The signs of a happy home were everywhere—schoolbags chucked on the floor, a basket of wet washing shoved against the cupboard, homework books open on the kitchen table. A pot spluttered on the stove, the heat so high that red sauce was spraying unnoticed across the top of the Aga. Mrs. Mins was waiting for me to say something. “Yes, you too,” I said, and put out my hand to shake hers.
“Have you come about the nanny job?” she asked, a small streak of colour rising on her exposed décolletage. Was there fear in her voice, or is it something I have imagined in hindsight? My father’s voice again: It’s time for you to grow up.
A job was growing up, wasn’t it?
“Yes. Yes, I have,” I said. The familiar relief of untruth spread through my body, the thrill of invention giving me audacity. It always had. I bent down, opened the front zipper on my rucksack. “I’ve got some references here somewhere, or did you get the ones I emailed?”
“Don’t worry about that, I’m sure Max received them. Although between you and me, he’s not great on the email. Plus, I don’t know if he warned you, but the internet connection around here is a bit dodgy.”
“Oh, yes, he said,” I replied, thankful for the heads-up from the taxi driver. He had helped me in more ways than he would ever know.
“Come through then and see Max,” she said. “You can leave your bag there.”
I braced myself for the meeting with my uncle Max, wondering how much he knew about me, or if he even knew I existed. After what my father had told me, I doubted he had even read the letters.
The initial buzz of the lie had faded, and now came the second stage: the fear of exposure. The third stage could go either way: elation at the continuing deception or the crushing humiliation of Being Found Out. It was the first and the third stages I found so addictive.
What other choice did I have? Sophia’s letter led me to believe the situation was quite delicate. She didn’t have anyone to trust. Her only option was someone she had never met, on the other side of the world. Maybe it would be better to keep my identity to myself until I worked out my next step, until I worked out just why she had been so desperate. This was my only way in, for now. Besides, I had cared for Ophelia and Juliet since they were little. I could handle a few little English kids.
Mrs. Mins walked me down a corridor lined with children’s art in antique gold-leaf frames. Someone, once upon a time, had had the sense of humour to remove the original contents and replace them with finger-painted portraits, abstract splashes of water paints, and yet more family photographs. The result was a blurred mass of smug happiness.
And yet Sophia had sent me the letter. The hotel, once award-winning and famous, now seemed to be shuttered. There was no sign of Daphne. There was no sign of the happy children from the photographs. Alarm bells were ringing for me, and I consider myself an expert: there are lies everywhere if you know what to look out for.
Mrs. Mins tapped softly on a closed door. A voice came from within and she opened the door. The familiar head of the Labrador emerged and then disappeared again.
“We’ve just taken a wedding booking for September,” Mrs. Mins was saying as I stood behind her in the dark corridor.
“How many rooms?” Max asked. I couldn’t see him, so I envisaged him sitting by a fire, scratching the top of Thomas’s head.
“The whole place.”
“Good. That’s something. What’s happening with the winter grass?”
“Mr. Mins says it’s going like wild through the front lawn. He’s got a plan, though.”
“Anything else?”
By this point I wasn’t entirely sure Mrs. Mins was going to mention my presence at all. I imagined being stuck in the hallway, hovering by the photograph wall in nostalgic limbo, until someone besides the dog noticed my presence.
Mrs. Mins walked into the study and shut the door behind her. Now I really was in the dark. The minutes ticked by. I listened carefully, but the walls were thick, and only a low murmur was discernable. There was still no sign—audible or otherwise—of the children. I wondered where they were and then remembered where I was. In a house this big they could be anywhere. It might be days before I came across them. Or would they be paraded in front of me, Von Trapp style, in some as yet unseen entrance hall?
Just as I was smirking at the thought, the door cracked open again and Mrs. Mins summoned me into the room.