The Girl Before(78)

“Hmm,” I say. I know I’ll soon be surrounded by all the clutter of babyhood, but a part of me will always miss the austere, disciplined beauty of One Folgate Street.

I take a few sips of wine, but find I’ve lost the taste for it. “How’s your pregnancy going?” he asks, and I find myself telling him about the Down syndrome scare, which in turn leads to explaining about Isabel, and then I start crying and can’t finish my steak. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly when I’ve finished. “You’ve had a horrible time.”

I shrug and wipe my eyes. “Everyone has problems, don’t they? It’s the hormones, they make me weep at anything right now.”



“I wanted a family with Emma.” He’s silent for a moment. “I was going to propose to her. I’ve never told anyone that. Funny, it was moving here that made me decide—being settled at last. I knew she’d been going through a difficult patch but I put that down to the burglary.”

“Why didn’t you? Propose, I mean?”

“Oh…” He shrugs. “I wanted to do the most amazing proposal ever. Like those virals where the man gets a flash mob to sing the girl’s favorite song, or spells out Will you marry me in fireworks or something. I was just trying to come up with an idea, something that would really blow her away. And then out of the blue, she ended it.”

Personally I’ve always found those videos of over-the-top proposals a bit weird, even creepy, but I decide now isn’t the time to say so. “You’ll find someone else, Simon. I know you will.”

“Will I?” He gives me a significant look. “It’s quite rare I meet someone I feel I’ve made a real connection with, actually.”

I decide this has to be said. “Simon…I hope you don’t think this is presumptuous of me, but since we’re talking so openly, I just want to make something clear. I like you, but I’m definitely not looking for a relationship at the moment. I have enough on my plate.”

“Of course,” he says quickly. “I never thought…But we’re in a good place, right? As friends.”

“Yes.” I smile at him to show I appreciate his tact.

“Although you’ll probably change your mind about being in a relationship if Edward Monkford snaps his fingers at you,” he adds.

I frown. “I really won’t.”

“Only joking. In fact, there is a girl I’ve been seeing a bit of. She lives in Paris. I’m thinking of moving over there so I can see more of her.”

The conversation passes on to other things, pleasant and easy. I’ve missed this, I think: this niceness, this civilized give-and-take, so different from Edward’s dominating presence.

Later, he says, “Would you like me to stay tonight, Jane? On the sofa, obviously. But if it would make you feel safer…”

“That’s kind. But we’ll be fine.” I pat my belly. “Me and my bump.”

“Sure. Another time, perhaps.”





13. There is often a large gap between my goals and my outcomes.

Agree ? ? ? ? ? Disagree





NOW: JANE

I wake up tired and lethargic. Probably the tiny amount of alcohol from the night before, I decide, now that I’m so unused to it. Morning sickness clutches at my guts and I retch into the toilet. And then, just when I’m desperate for a shower, Housekeeper chooses its moment to turn everything off.

Jane, please score the following statements on a scale of 1–5, where 1 is Strongly Agree and 5 is Strongly Disagree.

Some house facilities have been disabled until the assignment is completed.

“Bugger,” I say wearily. I really don’t have the energy for this. But I need that shower.

I look at the first statement on the list.

If my children weren’t successful at school, I’d correctly be labeled a bad parent.

Agree ? ? ? ? ? Disagree

I choose Slightly Agree, then stop dead. I’m fairly sure there’s never been a metric about parenting before.



Are these questions random? Or is this something more: some kind of subtle, coded dig on Housekeeper’s part?

As I go on through the questionnaire, I notice something else. I feel different. Just answering these questions reminds me that living here is a privilege reserved for a select few; that leaving will be almost as great a wrench as losing Isabel—

I catch myself, appalled. How can I think such a thing, even for an instant?

I remember what the lecturer said when he took around that group of students. You probably aren’t aware of it, but you’re currently swimming in a complex soup of ultrasonics—mood-enhancing waveforms…

Are Housekeeper’s questions somehow part of how One Folgate Street works?

I connect to the neighbor’s Wi-Fi and type some of the questions I’ve just answered into Google. Immediately there’s a match. A scientific paper in an obscure-sounding medical magazine, the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

The questions in the Perfectionism Assessment Tool measure a variety of types of maladaptive over-perfectionism, including Personal Perfectionism, High Standards for Others, Need for Approval, Planfulness (obsessive neatness and organization), Ruminance (obsessive overthinking), Compulsive Behavior; and Moral Inflexibility…