The Start of Everything (20 page)

“Mr. Finley—” Keene begins, but he waves us off.

“As I’m sure Eleanor has explained to you, I’m not in a position to choose my working hours. Please excuse me.” He heads for the car park.

I collect all the factual details: the agency through which they’d hired Katja, and the sources of her recommendations. Mrs. Finley suggests we try the Holsts, who live in the other upstairs flat. Katja had been friends with their holiday nanny. “I’d have hired her away from them if she’d been willing. She dressed sensibly.” She shoots a glance at Liliana, who is pretending to be a horse for Daniel the cowboy. It makes her shirt ride up. Mrs. Finley narrows her eyes.

Liliana bucks him off. “I need to move the wash into the tumble dryer,” she announces.

“Well, take him with you!” Mrs. Finley flaps her hands, shooing them off. Liliana sighs, and Daniel skips after her. “I’ve been trying to exercise for the past hour,” Mrs. Finley complains, glaring at the both of us.

“If this other nanny was friends with Katja, we’d like to speak with her. What was her name?”

“Grace,” she says.

Grace
.

CHAPTER 18

GRACE RHYS

K
atja elbowed me in the chest as she ran past, chasing the children. Her wellied foot stamped on my white trainers.

I stood stunned for about four seconds. I know it was four because Caitlin was chanting a hide-and-seek countdown. Caitlin is six. She has long hair and sucks on it whenever she isn’t talking or eating. She and Danny are Katja’s responsibility, but I’m the one who combs that hair.

Caitlin finished the countdown and pounded the pathway paving stones with her running. The garden was vast enough for the other kids to hide effectively, so I had a few minutes to lean against the lip of the dry fountain. The nose of a stone dolphin chilled my cheek.

“Grace!” Katja called.

I turned my head away. She called again, striding back across the frosted lawn. She’d helped them get well hidden and wanted a break.

“You didn’t answer,” she accused me.

“I was …” There was no ready end for that sentence. I used to say to Gran,
Sorry, I was studying
.

Katja stabbed a cigarette between her lips and cupped her hands to light a match. The kids had gone round the house, but we could still hear them. Caitlin found Brent and Lizzy, the toddler twins I look after, quickly. Too quickly. They must have given themselves away. Running. Laughing. Squealing.
Screaming
.

“Katja!” Caitlin bellowed.
“Katja!”
Someone was crying. Danny.

“You go,” Katja said. That happened a lot. “I’ll finish this.” She inhaled deeply, then blew a line of white smoke that curled around the edges.

I didn’t respond at first, but Caitlin yelled for Katja again. I pushed off from the edge of the fountain and took off around the house.

“Katja! Danny fell!” His quiet crying became more evident as I ran across the lawn.

He was under the climbing frame, shocked but unhurt. I bent to get under it with him. His sister and the twins crowded around. A dark patch spread across the front of his corduroy trousers. The smell wafted up to my face.

Mum had cleaned Gran whenever she wasn’t at work, but after school was my time. I’d got used to the smell as a cue for action, ignoring the sourness of it. But since Gran had died I’d regained my sensitivity. I reared my head back to get away from it, and banged into the underside of the slide.

Katja sidled up, close enough to see the wet spot. “Daniel!” She’d thought she got the better part when I ended up with the littler ones, but Danny was the one with repeatedly wet trousers.

He started to cry again. “I’ll get him fresh clothes,” I said. Katja scowled. Getting the part of a job that didn’t involve the children themselves was always the win. Funny, I’d thought I liked kids, just like I’d thought I liked maths. Now I didn’t know what I liked.

I went inside and up the stairs.
Knock-knock
. “Mrs. Finley …?”

I only got the door cracked open. Her footsteps thudded then the door was shoved shut. “I told you, Katja, I’m wrapping presents!” Mrs. Finley shouted, breathing heavily.

I rapped again. “I know, Mrs. Finley. I haven’t got the children with me.”

She opened the door two inches, looking beyond me to confirm that that was true. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.” She allowed the door to flop open.

“The kids are cold,” I lied, gathering up sweaters for both of them, to hide the pants and corduroys for Danny. She gets angry when he wets himself.

“Would you like a coffee?” she offered. She treats Katja like a servant, but she’s nice to me, because of Cambridge. I haven’t yet told anyone at Deeping House that I’ve degraded. They all think I’m starting back up in January.

“I hope Danny’s been good,” Mrs. Finley said, eyeing the clothes in my arms.

“He’s been a treat, Mrs. Finley.” A roll of wrapping paper slid off one of the couches, unspooling until it hit a neat stack of boxes. “He’ll like that,” I said. The bottom box was a Lego Atlantis set.

“I should hope so. It cost forty pounds.” Cuttings of paper, some of them crumpled, filled the space up to the fireplace. They rustled as she stepped forward and put her hand casually on the side of her head. “Are you good at wrapping presents?”

“No,” I said firmly, gripping the doorknob. “I have to get back to the kids.” That was the thing: She couldn’t ask Katja to wrap the presents without having to watch Caitlin and Danny herself. I had to be vigilant to avoid getting bullied into doing her extra work.

I popped next door to grab mittens for Lizzy and Brent. They weren’t complaining yet, but it was getting chilly. We couldn’t really come inside. We didn’t have the option of disturbing the present-wrapping apocalypse or the book editing we’d been hired to preserve. We’d have no place to take them but into our own tiny bedsit downstairs if the weather got bad.

I knocked on the Holsts’ door but went ahead and opened it while I did so. It was just a courtesy knock; Mrs. Holst wasn’t bonkers like Mrs. Finley. They weren’t there. The manuscript pages were in piles. Their research books were open on the table. I grabbed four mittens and two hats from the basket by the door and just breathed deeply for
a moment. “Dr. Holst?” I said, which I did whenever I meant either of them. I used Mr. or Mrs. when I wanted to specify.

An echoey laugh bounced around in the bathroom. It was made of two voices.
Ha!
They were taking a bath together.

I got out and quickly closed the door. That was really nice, when grown-ups were happy. Mum was worried I would be scarred when Shep started sleeping over, but I thought it was nice for her. I stayed out of their bedroom. They were both always fully dressed for breakfast, so it’s not like I had to see his skinny legs sticking out from under his dressing gown or Mum in some kind of lacy thing. Once I saw him put his hand on her bum while they were washing dishes together. They jumped apart when they realised I was there. I never caught that again, and I felt like I’d taken something away from her.

Back outside, the sounds of children arguing, that high-pitched indignation they favour, wafted from the play area. Danny was whining, and Katja told him to “shut up.” She shouldn’t talk to him like that. I’ve told her that, but she doesn’t listen. She even swore at him once. She swore at me sometimes, too. She was a lot more fun before we lived together.

I shivered and pushed forward. Danny needed his fresh clothes, so I jogged around to the side of the house. Mr. Bennet had planted winter shrubs around all the edge of the building, thin-branched bushes that snagged my clothes as I jogged past towards the climbing frame. They didn’t flower but were bright themselves: red, yellow, and orange. Together they gave the effect that the house was being cooked over a fire.

Mr. Bennet worked hard. He was always hammering, painting, sweating.

He emerged from the woods behind the house. The rest of us were buttoned and zipped up to our necks, but he, hot from exertion, wore his flannel shirt open at the neck over a round T-shirt collar. The sleeves bunched at his elbows, baring his arms. He dragged a tree behind him, an irregular fir shaggy with green needles. In his other hand he carried an axe, reflecting sharp sunlight.

He pitched the tree at our feet, grinning like a hunter who’s hauled in a carcass for dinner. “Think you girls can put this up?”

Katja laughed and clapped her hands.

Mr. Bennet picked up the rough trunk at the bottom, and Katja lifted the pointy tip. I ran ahead to get the door. Katja entered first, pulling towards the obvious place in the crook of the stairs. Mr. Bennet paused to stamp his boots on the mat, and Katja tugged playfully. He pulled back, almost knocking her off balance.

Together they lifted the tree into the mouth of the stand. Mr. Bennet held it up while Katja crawled underneath to tighten the bolts. The children and I hung back, judging the position, calling out contradictory instructions:
Left! Right!
Sharp twigs caught in Katja’s hair; she barked an obvious swear in Finnish.

At last the tree was even. Katja backed out from under it on hands and knees.

Mr. Bennet rapped on his door. “Hill!” he called, for Hillary, I guess. They were a one-syllable-nickname family.

She answered something from inside. I don’t know how he understood it, but he did and opened the door for her. She backed through it with a tray of star-shaped biscuits. The kids swarmed her. The shortbread was still warm, studded with silver ball sprinkles and dark gold underneath.

“Dru!” she called through the still-open door. I know that voice. Mums call that way when they want to sound cheerful but actually they’re annoyed.

“Dru!” she called again, more annoyed, less cheerful.

“I’ll get her,” said Mr. Bennet, disappearing into their place,
knock-knock-knock
distantly inside.

“She has her iPod on,” Mrs. Bennet called after him.

I was never allowed to have earbuds in when I was at home, in case Gran called for me.

“Her door’s locked,” he called back from inside the flat, accompanied by a rattling sound. I could tell, just by hearing, the difference between the house’s solid, original doors and the ones Mr. Bennet had put in when he added extra walls and Frankensteined the place into flats. This was one of the flimsy new doors.

“Since when does …” Mrs. Bennet put the tray down. Caitlin and Dan fought over the last shortbreads while she stormed in after her teenager.

Mrs. Bennet’s pounding was profound. The door
thwapped
. “Drusilla! Open this door!”

I tried to distract the kids. “How shall we decorate the tree?” I asked, thinking we could make chains from paper strips or thread popcorn. But Mr. Bennet came out with a box labelled “Xmas ornaments.” Katja pulled out a snake of garland and wrapped it around herself. She wiggled, and the kids laughed.

“Where did you get this?” Mrs. Bennet demanded, loud. The kids’ giggling trailed off into an audible ellipsis.

Mr. Bennet ducked back into the flat. “I have lots of chain locks,” we overheard. “She’s welcome to one.”

“Did you take it from Ian’s supplies? Don’t you know that his hard work pays for everything? For that iPod, and your television, and
this house?
”

“It’s all right. I don’t mind if she took one,” Mr. Bennet insisted.

“I mind.
I
mind!”

Dru finally spoke loud enough for us to hear. “I just wanted some privacy!”

They back-and-forthed over taking the lock off the door. Mrs. Bennet wanted Dru to do it. Mr. Bennet said he would do it later. Mrs. Bennet had an agenda: “No, no. I want
her
to do it. What do you need? A screwdriver?” There was a sudden clattering sound. I think Mrs. Bennet kicked a toolbox.

“Hillary, this isn’t
necessary
.” He hit that last word hard, and no one said anything for a few seconds.

Mrs. Bennet said, “Dru, it’s almost Christmas. Please.”

Some kind of mime or exchange of expressions must have resolved things, because they came out together. Mr. Bennet had his hand on Mrs. Bennet’s shoulder, and she had her hands on both of Dru’s shoulders. “Who wants to decorate the tree?” Mrs. Bennet asked cheerfully. They held that pose, Mrs. Bennet pinching Dru’s shoulders, until Dru gave in and mouthed “me.”