It was only when I went to put Maddie’s drawing back on the stairs that I finally looked at it. It reminded me of the drawing I’d found on the first night, of the house, and the pale little face staring out. But there was something distinctly darker and more disturbing about this one.
At the center of the page was a crude figure—a little girl, with curly hair and a sticking-out skirt—and she seemed to be locked inside some kind of prison cell. But when I peered at it more closely, I realized, it must be meant to represent the poison garden. The thick black bars of the iron gate were scored across her figure, and she was clutching at them with one hand, and holding something in the other—a branch, I thought, covered in green leaves and red berries. Tears were streaming down her face, her mouth was open in a despairing wail, and there were red scribbles of blood on her face and on her dress. The whole image was encircled in thick black spiraling lines, as if I were staring down the wrong end of a telescope, into some kind of nightmarish tunnel into the past.
On the one hand, it was just a little girl’s drawing, no different from the sometimes violent scribbles I had seen at the nursery—superheroes gunning down baddies, policemen fighting robbers. But on the other . . . I don’t know. It was hard to put my finger on what made me recoil, but there was something so indescribably nasty about it, so chilling and so full of satisfaction and glee in the macabre subject matter, that I let the paper drop from my fingers to the floor as if it had burned me.
I stood there, ignoring Petra’s increasingly irritable cries of “Down. Down! Peta down NOW!” behind me, and stared at the picture. I wanted to screw it up and throw it away, but I knew what the child-protection advice at Little Nippers would have been. Put the drawing on file. Flag concerns with the safeguarding officer at the nursery. Discuss the issues raised in the drawing with parents/guardians if deemed appropriate.
Well, there was no safeguarding officer here except me. But if I were Sandra, I was pretty sure that I would want to know about this. Where Maddie was getting this stuff from, I wasn’t sure, but it needed to be stopped.
Feeling more disturbed than I wanted to admit, I picked the drawing up from the floor, and slid it carefully into one of the drawers in the study. Then I returned to the kitchen and set about cleaning Petra up, and putting her down for her nap.
I hadn’t meant to fall asleep in Petra’s room, but I woke with a start, the armchair’s gingham cover wet with drool beneath my cheek, and my heart pounding for reasons I could not put my finger on. Petra was still slumbering in her cot as I struggled upright, trying to figure out what had happened, and what had woken me so abruptly.
I must have drifted off while waiting for her to fall asleep. Had I— Shit, the thought came like a sudden punch to the solar plexus—had I slept through school pickup? But no. When I checked my phone it was only one thirty.
Then it came again, the noise that had woken me from sleep. The doorbell. Doorbell sounding flashed on my phone. And then Open door? Confirm / Cancel.
A Pavlovian jolt of dread flooded through me, and for a moment I sat there, paralyzed, half dreading, half expecting the creak . . . creak . . . to commence as it had last night, but it didn’t, and at last I forced myself to move. I swung my feet to the floor and stood up, waiting for my blood pressure to settle and my heart to stop drumming with panic in my ears.
As I did so, I wiped the corner of my mouth and looked down at myself. It was only a few days since I’d turned up—note-perfect in my rendition of Rowan the Perfect Nanny, in her tweed skirt and neatly buttoned cardigan. I looked far from perfect now. I was wearing crumpled jeans, and my sweatshirt was stained with Petra’s breakfast. I looked much closer to the person I really was, as if the real me was leaking out of the cracks in the facade, taking over.
Well, it was too late to change now. Instead, I left Petra sleeping peacefully in her cot, and made my way down the stairs to the hallway, where I pressed my thumb to the panel, and watched as the door swung silently open.
For a second it seemed like a continuation of last night—there was no one there. But then I saw the Land Rover parked across the driveway, heard the retreating crunch of gravel, and peering round the side of the house, I saw a tall, broad figure, disappearing towards the stables, two dogs bounding at his heels.
“Jack?” I called, my voice croaky with sleep. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hey, Jack, was that you?”
“Rowan!” He turned at the sound of my voice and came striding back across the yard, grinning widely. “Yes, I rang the bell, I was going to ask if you fancied a cup of tea. But I thought you must have gone out.”
“No . . . no, I was . . .” I paused, unsure what to say, then, in view of my sleep-crumpled face and draggled clothes, decided maybe the truth was best. “I’d fallen asleep actually. Petra’s down for her nap and I must have drifted off. I— Well, I didn’t get a very good night’s rest last night.”
“Oh . . . were the girls playing up?”
“No, no it’s not that. It’s . . .” I paused again, and then screwed up my courage. “It’s those noises I was talking about. From the attic. I got woken up again. Jack, you know those keys you mentioned . . .”
He was nodding.
“Aye, sure, no problem. Want to try it now?”
Why not? The girls were at school, Petra would probably nap for at least an hour longer. It was as good a time as any.