The Turn of the Key(4)

Sorry. I’m rambling. Maybe this is why Mr. Gates is always trying to shut me up. Because I dig myself a hole with my words and instead of knowing when to stop, I keep digging. You’re probably adding two and two together right now. Doesn’t seem to like kids much. Freely admits to frustration with role. What would happen when she was cooped up with four kids and no adults to “let off steam” with?

That’s exactly what the police did. All those little throwaway remarks—all those unedifying facts. I could see the triumph on their faces every time I dropped one, and I watched them picking them up like bread crumbs, adding them to the weight of arguments against me.

But that’s the thing, Mr. Wrexham. I could spin you a web of bullshit about what a perfect, caring, saintly person I am—but it would be just that. Bullshit. And I am not here to bullshit you. I want you to believe that—I want it more than anything in the world.

I am telling you the truth. The unvarnished, ugly truth. And it is all that. It is unpolished and unpleasant, and I don’t pretend I acted like an angel. But I didn’t kill anyone. I just fucking didn’t.

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to swear again.

God, I am messing this up so badly. I have to keep a clear head—get this all straight in my head. It’s like Mr. Gates says—I should stick to the facts.

Okay then. Fact. The advert. The advert is a fact, right?

The advert . . . with its amazing, dizzying, fabulous salary.

That should have been my first warning signal, you know. The salary. Because it was stupidly generous. I mean it would have been generous even for London, even for a live-out nanny. But for a nanny in someone’s house, with free accommodation provided and all bills paid, even down to the car, it was ridiculous.

It was so ridiculous, in fact, that I half wondered if there had been a typo. Or something that they weren’t saying—a child with significant behavioral needs maybe? But wouldn’t they have mentioned that in the ad?

Six months ago I probably would have paused, frowned a little, and then passed on without thinking too much more about it. But then, six months ago I wouldn’t have been looking at that web page in the first place. Six months ago I had a flatmate and a job I liked, and even the prospect of promotion. Six months ago I was in a pretty good place. But now . . . well, things were a bit different now.

My friend, the girl at Little Nippers I mentioned, had left to go traveling a couple of months ago. It hadn’t seemed like the end of the world when she told me—to be honest, I found her quite annoying, her habit of loading the dishwasher but never actually switching it on, her endless Euro-pop disco hits, hissing through my bedroom wall when I was trying to sleep. I mean, I knew I’d miss her, but I didn’t realize how much.

She had left her stuff in her room, and we’d agreed she’d pay half rent and I’d keep the room open for her. It seemed like a good compromise—I’d had a series of terrible flatmates before we found each other, and I wasn’t keen to return to posting on Facebook Local and trying to weed out weirdos by text message and email, and it felt, in some small way, like an anchor—like a guarantee that she would come back.

But when the first flush of freedom wore off, and the novelty of having the whole place to myself and watching whatever I liked on the shared TV in the living room had started to fade a little, I found I was lonely. I missed the way she’d say “Wine o’clock, darling?” when we rolled in together from work. I missed sounding off to her about Val, the owner of Little Nippers, and sharing anecdotes about the worst of the parents. When I applied for a promotion and didn’t get it, I went to the pub alone to drown my sorrows and ended up crying into my beer, thinking how different it would have been if she had still been here. We could have laughed about it together, she would have flipped Val the bird behind her back at work, and given her earthy belly laugh when Val turned around to almost catch her in the act.

I am not very good at failing, Mr. Wrexham, that’s the thing. Exams. Dating. Jobs. Any kind of test, really. My instinct is always to aim low, save myself some pain. Or, in the case of dating, just don’t aim at all, rather than risk being rejected. It’s why I didn’t go to university in the end. I had the grades, but I couldn’t bear the idea of being turned down, the thought of them reading my applications with a scornful snigger. “Who does she think she is?”

Better to achieve perfect marks on an easy test than flunk a hard one, that was my motto. I’ve always known that about myself. But what I didn’t know, until my flatmate left, was that I am also not very good at being alone. And I think it was that, more than anything, that pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me scroll down that advert, holding my breath, imagining what lay at the other end of it.

The police made a lot out of the salary when they first questioned me. But the truth is, the money wasn’t the reason I applied for the post. It wasn’t even really about my flatmate, though I can’t deny, if she hadn’t left, none of it would have happened. No, the real reason . . . well, you probably know what the real reason was. It was all over the papers, after all.

*

I called in sick to Little Nippers and spent the entire day working on a CV and getting together everything that I knew I would need to convince the Elincourts that I was the person they were looking for. Background check—check. First aid certificate—check. Spotless references—check, check, and check.