The Turn of the Key(16)

It was oddly disconcerting, but there was no name signed to it, and no way of knowing why it was in the bedside drawer. I turned it over, looking for clues. There was writing on the other side. It wasn’t a child’s but an adult’s—sloped and looping and somehow non-English in a way I couldn’t quite define.

To the new nanny, it read in neat, regular italics. My name is Katya. I am writing you this note because I wanted to tell you to please be

And then it stopped.

I frowned. Who was Katya? The name rang a bell, and then I remembered Sandra’s voice at dinner saying but with Katya leaving—she was our last nanny . . .

So Katya had lived here. Slept here even. But what had she wanted to say to her successor? And had she run out of time, or thought better of what she was about to say?

Please be . . . kind to the children? Please be . . . happy here? Please be . . . sure to tell Sandra you like dogs?

It could have been anything. So why was the phrase that kept hovering on the tip of my tongue please be careful?

The two taken together, the eerie little drawing and the unfinished note, gave me a strange feeling that I could not put my finger on. Something like uneasiness, though I could not have said why.

Well, whatever it was she had wanted to say, it was too late now.

I folded the drawing and slipped it back into the drawer. Then I switched off my phone, pulled the covers up to my chin, and tried to forget everything that hung in the balance and sleep.





When I woke, it was to the insistent shrill beep of my alarm, and for a moment I could not think where I was, or why I was so tired. Then I remembered. I was in Scotland. And it was 6:00 a.m.—a full hour and a half earlier than I was accustomed to waking up.

I sat up, smoothing my rumpled hair and rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Downstairs I could hear thumps and shrill sounds of excitement. It sounded as though the children were probably up. . . .

The curtains were blackout, but the sunshine was already streaming through the gaps around the edges, and, forcing my legs out of bed, I walked across and tried to pull them open, before remembering the previous night.

“Curtains open,” I said aloud, feeling more than slightly stupid, and they swooshed apart like a magician’s trick. I don’t know what I was expecting, but whatever it was, I was not prepared for the reality.

The beauty of the scene in front of me took my breath away.

The house had been perfectly sited by some long-dead Victorian architect to gaze out across an uninterrupted vista of blue hills, green valleys, and deep-verdant pine forests. On and on it stretched, the rolling foothills punctuated by little dark burns that rambled here and there, and the corrugated roofs of faraway crofts, and a few miles away a loch, reflecting the morning sun so brightly it looked like a patch of snow. In the distance, presiding above it all, were the Cairngorms—Gaelic for the blue mountains, according to Google.

When I had looked up the origin of their name, the translation had seemed faintly absurd. The photos online showed all the colors you might expect—green grass, brown bracken, reddish earth with the occasional purple splotch of heather, and in winter a covering of crisp white. The idea that they were blue seemed fanciful in the extreme.

But here, with the mist rising from their slopes in the morning sun, and the dawn pink still tingeing the sky behind them, they did look blue. Not the brackeny foothills, but the unforgiving granite slopes themselves, all jagged crags and peaks, far above the tree line. The highest peak looked like it was tipped with snow, even in June.

I felt my heart lift, and then I heard a noise in the garden below and looked down.

It was Jack Grant. He was walking across from a huddle of outbuildings tucked just around the corner of the house. His hair was wet, as if he had just showered, and he was holding a bag of tools in his hand. For a minute I watched him, staring down at the top of his dark head, before it began to feel more than a little voyeuristic, and I turned away from the window to head to the bathroom for my own shower.

Inside it was dark, and I automatically felt around for a switch, before I remembered the damn panel. At my touch it leapt into life, presenting me again with that confusing mosaic of squares, sliders, and dots. I pressed one at random, hoping I wasn’t going to get more Miles Davis. I had been aiming for the same one I’d pressed yesterday, but evidently I’d missed my mark, because low blue lights suddenly illuminated the baseboards. Some sort of night setting, for if you wanted to go to the loo while your partner was asleep? Not bright enough to shower by, at all events.

The next button I tried made the blue lights disappear, and two low, golden lamps came on over the bath, suffusing my skin with a warm, flattering glow. It was exactly what I would have wanted if I was soaking in a long bubble bath, but the shower enclosure was still dark, and I needed something brighter and more . . . well, more morningish.

I found it on the fourth or fifth try—a setting that was bright, but not agonizingly so, with an illuminated rim around the mirror perfect for doing my makeup. With a sigh of relief I dropped my robe to the floor and stepped into the shower, only to be faced with a different challenge. There was a dazzling array of nozzles, spouts, and showerheads. The question was, how did you operate them? The answer seemed to be yet another panel, a waterproof one this time, set in among the shower tiles. When I touched it, letters appeared. Good morning, Katya.

The name gave me a funny little jolt, and I remembered again that unfinished note on the child’s drawing, from the night before. There was a smiley face and little down button. Well, I wasn’t Katya. I pressed the down button, and the letters changed. Good morning, Jo. I pressed again. Good morning, Lauren. Good morning, Holly. Good morning, guest.