The Turn of the Key(31)

The house was completely silent as I stood on the landing, listening for the sound of running feet or childish laughter.

Where the hell were they?

I hadn’t been in Sandra and Bill’s room, but I knew from the layout of the house that the window must overlook the drive, and holding my breath slightly, I turned the handle and opened the door.

The sight made my breath catch in my throat for a moment. The room was huge. They must have knocked together at least two other bedrooms to make it—maybe even three. There was an enormous bed piled high with plump cushions and white bed linen, and facing it a huge carved stone fireplace. Three long windows overlooked the front of the house. One was open a few inches, and muslin curtains fluttered a little in the breeze.

There were drawers left slightly open, and a closet ajar, and I felt a sharp tug of curiosity as I crossed the silver-gray carpet to the central window, but I pushed it down. For all I knew, Sandra and Bill could be watching me right now, and while I had an alibi for wanting to look out the window over the drive, I certainly had no excuse for rummaging in their cupboards.

When I reached the window, Ellie was nowhere in sight; the curve of drive where she had been lying was empty. I was not sure whether that was a relief. At least Jack wouldn’t run her over when he brought the Tesla back. But where on earth was she? Sandra had seemed remarkably relaxed about the children running off into the woods, but every bone in my body was screeching discomfort with the situation—at the nursery we’d had to risk assess everything, from a trip to the park through to messy play with porridge oats, and there were a billion risks I had absolutely no way of knowing. What if there was a pond within the grounds? Or a steep fall? What if they climbed a tree and couldn’t get down? What if the fencing wasn’t secure and they wandered out into the road? What if a dog—

I broke off my mental litany of worst-case scenarios.

The dogs. I’d forgotten to ask Sandra whether their routine was down to me, but presumably an extra walk couldn’t hurt, and surely they would be able to find the children. If nothing else, their presence would give me an excuse to go hunting in the woods without looking to the children like they were running rings around me. I had to establish myself as someone firmly in charge right from the outset, otherwise my authority was going to be shot to pieces, and I would never recover.

I pushed aside the unsettling thought of what would happen when Rhiannon returned and a teenager was added to the mix. Hopefully Sandra would be home by then to back me up. . . .

Downstairs the dogs were lying in their baskets in the kitchen, though they both looked up hopefully as I walked in carrying their leads.

“Walkies!” I said brightly, and they bounded over. “Good girl . . . er . . . Claude,” I said as I struggled to find the right attachment on the collar, though in truth I wasn’t sure if I had the girl or the boy. Claude bounded around me excitedly as I wrestled with Hero, but at last I had them both on leads and a handful of dog biscuits in my pocket in case of problems, and I set off, out of the utility room door, across the graveled yard, past the stable block, and into the woods.

It was a beautiful day. In spite of my growing anxiety about the children, I couldn’t help but notice this as I walked down a winding, faintly marked path through the trees, the dogs straining at their leashes. The sun filtered through the canopy above, and our movements sent golden dust motes spinning and whirling up from the rich loam underneath our feet, the sun gleaming off the tiny particles of pollen and old man’s beard that floated in the still air beneath the trees.

The dogs seemed to have a definite idea of where they were going, and I let them lead, conscious of the fact that they were probably puzzled about being kept on leashes in their own garden. They’d have to put up with it though. I had no idea if they’d come when I called, and I couldn’t risk losing them as well.

We were heading downhill, towards the bottom of the drive, though I couldn’t see it through the trees. Behind me I heard the crack of a twig and turned sharply, but there was no one there. It must have been an animal, a fox perhaps.

At last we broke out of the cover of the trees into a little clearing, and my stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch, for there it was—the thing I’d been fearing ever since the girls had disappeared—a pond. Not very deep, but plenty deep enough for a small child to drown. The water was peat-colored and brackish, an oily scum floating on the surface from the decomposing pine needles. I poked it doubtfully with a stick, and bubbles of stagnant air floated lazily to the surface, but to my relief the rest of the pond looked undisturbed, the water clear except for the swirls of mud my stick had stirred up. Or . . . nearly undisturbed. Walking around the far side I saw the imprints of small shoes on the bank, skidding as if two little girls had been messing around by the water’s edge. There was no way of knowing when they had been made, but they looked fairly fresh. The prints led down the bank, becoming deeper and deeper as the mud softened, and then turned and went away again, back into the forest. I followed them for a few meters until the ground became too hard to take a print, but there were two sets of shoes, and at least I knew now that they were probably together, and almost certainly safe.

The dogs were whining and straining against their leads, desperate to get into the muddy pond and splash about, but there was no way I was having that. I wasn’t bathing a pair of filthy dogs on my first day on top of everything else.