The Turn of the Key

“Got it. Well done. That must have hurt like a bastard.”

My hand was shaking as he sat down beside me.

“You know, you’ve stuck it out longer than the last few.”

“What do you mean?”

“The last couple of nannies. Actually, I tell a lie, Katya made it to three weeks, I think. But since Holly, they’ve come and gone like butterflies.”

“Who was Holly?”

“She was the first one, the one who stayed the longest. Looked after Maddie and Ellie when they were wee, and she stayed for nearly three years, until—” He stopped, seeming to think better of what he had been about to say. “Well, never mind that. And number two, Lauren, she stayed nearly eight months. But the one after her didn’t last a week. And the one before Katya, Maja her name was, she left the first night.”

“The first night? What happened?”

“She called a taxi, left in the middle of the night. Left half her things too; Sandra had to send them on.”

“I don’t mean that, I mean, what happened to make her leave?”

“Oh, well . . . that, I don’t really know. I always thought—” He flushed, the back of his neck staining red as he looked down at his empty glass.

“Go on,” I prompted, and he shook his head, as if angry at himself.

“Fuck it, I said I wouldna do this.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t bad-mouth my employers, Rowan, I told you that on the first day.”

The name gave me a guilty jolt, a reminder of all that I was concealing from him, but I pushed the thought aside, too intent on what he had been about to say to worry about my own secrets. Suddenly I had to know what had driven them away, those other girls, my predecessors. What had set them running?

“Jack, listen,” I said. I hesitated, then put a hand on his arm. “It’s not disloyalty. I’m their employee too, remember? We’re colleagues. You’re not shooting your mouth off to an outsider. You’re allowed to talk about work stuff to a colleague. It’s what keeps you sane.”

“Aye?” He looked up from his contemplation of the whiskey glass, and gave me a little wry smile, rather bitter. “Is that so? Well . . . I’ve said half of it already, so I might as well tell you the whole lot. You’ve maybe a right to know anyway. I always thought what scared them off—” He took a breath, as if steeling himself to do something unpleasant. “I thought it was maybe . . . Bill.”

“Bill?” It was not the answer I had been expecting. “In—in what way?”

But the words were no sooner out of my mouth than I knew. I remembered his behavior on my own first night, the spread thighs, the persistent offerings of wine, his knee insinuating itself, unwanted, between my own . . .

“Shit,” I said. “No, you don’t need to say. I can imagine.”

“Maja . . . she was on the young side,” Jack said reluctantly. “And very pretty. And it crossed my mind that maybe he’d . . . well . . . come on to her, and she’d not known what to do. I’d wondered before . . . Bill had a black eye one time, when Lauren was here, and I did think maybe she’d . . . you know . . .”

“Belted him one?”

“Aye. And if she did, he must have deserved it or she’d have been sacked, you know?”

“I guess. Jesus. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Bit hard to say, Oh, aye, by the by, ma boss is a wee bit o’ a perve, you know? Difficult to bring it up on a first day.”

“I can see that. Fuck.” My cheeks felt as flushed as Jack’s, though in my case it was more than half wine. “God. Ugh. Oh yuck.”

The sense of betrayal was all out of proportion, I knew that. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known. He’d tried it on me, after all. But somehow the idea that he’d been systematically preying on his daughters’ carers, time after time, careless of the fact that he was helping to drive them away . . . I suddenly felt a desperate urge to wash myself, scrub all traces of him off my skin, even though I’d not seen him for days, and when I had, he’d barely touched me.

Ellie’s voice filtered through my head, her reedy little treble. I like it better when he’s gone. He makes them do things they don’t want to do.

Was it possible she had been talking about her own father, predating the young women and girls his wife had picked out to look after his children?

“Jesus.” I put my face in my hands. “The absolute fucker.”

“Listen.” Jack sounded uncomfortable. “I could be wrong, I don’t have any proof of this, it’s just—”

“You don’t need proof,” I said wretchedly. “He tried it on with me the first night.”

“What?”

“Yup. Nothing—” I swallowed, gritting my teeth. “Nothing I’d get very far with at an employment tribunal. All vague remarks and ‘accidentally’ blocking my way. But I know when I’m being harassed.”

“Jesus, God, Rowan, I’m so— I’m so sorry— I’m just—”

“It’s not your fault, don’t apologize.”

“I should have bloody said something! No wonder you’ve been a bag of nerves, hearing blokes creeping about in—”