The Turn of the Key(30)

More silence, just the sound of birds. The sun had gone in, leaving the air surprisingly chilly, and I shivered, feeling the goose bumps rise on my bare arms. Suddenly hot chocolate seemed more appropriate than ice cream, in spite of the fact that it was June.

“Okay!” I called again, more loudly this time. “More sprinkles for me!”

And I walked back into the house, leaving the side door open a crack.

In the kitchen I did a double take.

Petra was standing up in her high chair on the far side of the breakfast bar, triumphantly waving a chunk of banana at me.

“Fuck!”

For a moment all feeling drained out of me, and I stood, frozen to the spot, looking at her precarious stance, the unforgiving concrete beneath her, her small wobbly feet on the slippery wood.

And then, regaining my senses, I ran, stumbling over a stray teddy, staggering around the corner of the breakfast bar to snatch her up, my heart in my mouth.

“Oh my God, Petra, you bad, bad girl. You mustn’t do that. Jesus. Oh, Jesus Christ.”

She could have died—that was the long and short of it. If she’d fallen and struck her head on the concrete floor, she would have been concussed before I could reach her.

How could I have been so stupid?

I’d supervised toddlers a million times before—I’d done all the right things, pulled her chair away from the counter so she couldn’t push herself backwards with her feet, and I was sure, certain in fact, that I’d done up those clips. They were far too stiff for little fingers.

So how had she got free?

Had she wriggled out?

I examined the clips. One side was still fastened. The other was open. Shit. I must have not pushed one home quite hard enough, and Petra had worked it loose and then managed to squirm out of the other side of the restraint.

So it was my fault after all. The thought made my hands feel cold with fear, and my cheeks feel hot with shame. Thank God it hadn’t happened when Sandra was here. That kind of safeguarding stuff was pretty much nannying 101. She would have been within her rights to sack me there and then.

Though, of course . . . she still could, if she was watching over the cameras. In spite of myself, my eyes flicked up to the ceiling, and sure enough there was one of those little white egg-shaped domes in the far corner of the room. I felt my face flush and looked away hastily, imagining Sandra seeing my guilty reaction.

Fuck. Fuck.

Well, there was nothing I could do, apart from hope that Sandra and Bill had better things to do than pore over the footage of their security cameras every hour of the day and night. I was pretty confident that Bill hadn’t so much as glanced at the app since leaving, but Sandra . . . somehow that binder spoke of a level of intensity that I had not quite anticipated from her relaxed, cheerful manner at the interview.

But with any luck they would be in a mobile black spot, or even in the air by now. Did the footage record? How long was it stored for? I didn’t know, and somehow I doubted whether that information was in the binder.

The realization was unsettling. I could be being watched, right now.

It was with a strange performative feeling that I hugged Petra tightly to my chest and dropped a shaky kiss on the top of her head. Beneath my lips I felt the gentle flex of her fontanelle, the fragility of a baby-soft skull almost, but not quite, closed over.

“Don’t do that again,” I told her, firmly, feeling the adrenaline still pulsing through me, and then, with an effort at restoring normality, I lifted her up and took her over to the sink, where I wiped her face. Then I looked at my watch, trying to breathe slowly and normally, and remember what I had been doing before Petra scared the life out of me.

It was just gone one. The binder had said Petra ate lunch twelve thirty to one and then went down for a nap at two. But in spite of that, she was grousing and rubbing her eyes crossly, and I found myself mentally adding up timings and trying to figure out how to handle this. At the nursery they’d gone down straight after lunch more or less, around one.

I didn’t want to mess with her routine so early in the day, but on the other hand, stretching out a tired, cranky baby until the specified time wasn’t a great idea either, and would probably result in a bad night’s sleep if she was the type of child who got more wired the more exhausted she became. I stared doubtfully down at the top of her head, trying to decide. Suddenly, the idea of a quiet hour or so to round up Maddie and Ellie was very appealing. It would definitely be easier without a fussy toddler in tow.

Fretfully Petra scrubbed a balled-up fist at her eyes and gave a tired sob, and I made up my mind.

“Come on, you,” I said aloud, and took her upstairs to her room.

Inside, the blackout blinds were already drawn, and I switched on the illuminated mobile as the binder had instructed and put her gently down on her back. She rolled over onto her tummy and rubbed her face into the mattress, but I sat quietly beside her, one hand on her wriggling spine, while the soft light show played over the ceiling and walls. Petra was grumbling to herself, but her cries were getting farther apart, and I could tell she was ready to go under at any moment.

At last, she seemed to be completely asleep, and I stood carefully and laid her rabbit comforter gently over one hand, where she could find it if she woke. For a moment she stirred and I froze, but her fingers only tightened onto the material as she let out a soft little snore. With a sigh of relief, I picked up the monitor that was hooked over the end of the cot, tucked it into my belt, and tiptoed out of the room.