Haven't They Grown(88)
Lewis Braid. Lewis is paying the school fees of Thomas and Emily Cater.
That could make sense. They’re his children, and he has plenty of money. There’s only one problem with this explanation, and it’s a significant one: according to Flora, Kevin Cater doesn’t know Thomas and Emily are Lewis’s. He believes they’re his. Doesn’t he wonder why his wife’s ex-husband is willing to pay the school fees of her children from her second marriage?
Is it possible he doesn’t know that Lewis pays the fees? Perhaps Flora has told him they’re coming out of a separate bank account she’s got that her parents have put money into, or something like that. Or maybe Kevin knows that Lewis plans to pay for Thomas and Emily’s schooling, doesn’t care why, and is simply happy to be spared the expense.
None of these theories satisfies me. I think about my encounters with Kevin and Yanina – not what I’ve been told about them by anyone else, only what I’ve witnessed and experienced myself. The confident way they produced the photograph of two completely different children … Toby and Emma. And then they told PC Pollard they’d given those names because they were afraid I was a dangerous obsessive.
I shake my head, though there’s no one here to see me do it. Kevin and Yanina weren’t afraid of me. They knew I was no danger to the children at Newnham House. They were attempting to manipulate me, and confident they’d succeed. I know this is true, because I was there.
I trust my senses, my instincts and my judgement. I always have, but since that first Saturday on Wyddial Lane, I trust myself even more.
What does your judgement say about Kevin and Yanina?
I’ve been so busy puzzling over Flora, Lewis and the children that, until now, I haven’t spent much time thinking specifically about Kevin and the nanny. She might not be a nanny – that’s the first thing that occurs to me. A Ukrainian nanny with a foreign accent is so easy to believe in. It’s a familiar stereotype, and people rarely question those. More likely, Yanina is a woman who happens to have an accent that isn’t English, and who’s in the house for some other reason, not to look after Thomas and Emily.
What kind of nanny collects a child from school and doesn’t even make eye contact with him? And why would anyone – Lewis, Kevin, any person in charge of children – invest in full-time live-in childcare when they won’t spend a much smaller amount on new school shoes to replace ones that are literally falling apart?
The more I focus on them, the more convinced I am that Kevin and Yanina are central to whatever’s happening at Newnham House. They aren’t just two minor players in a drama created by Flora and Lewis, a drama they don’t fully understand because many of the details have been kept from them. Flora lied about that, like she lied about Kevin being happy not to pry into the details of her past life. Of course he’d want to know what had made his wife feel she had to rush off to Florida with almost no notice to be with her ex-husband. Any husband would. Most, I think, would raise significant objections.
Kevin Cater didn’t mind at all. He was in his element when I met him, all ready to pretend the nanny was his wife for the benefit of anyone who happened to drop by. He played the part of the innocent, inconvenienced family man brilliantly. They could have told Dom and me then that Yanina was the nanny, but they decided, probably after discussing it with Lewis, that it would be more effective to have her play the part of Jeanette Cater. The hope, the assumption, was that I’d then think she must have been the dark-haired woman I’d seen outside the house with the two children. She thought she and her partners in deception were going to deal with me easily, neutralise the threat, persuade me to doubt my own perceptions and believe the lies instead, believe that my mind was playing tricks on me. Lewis will have said to them all, ‘Don’t worry about Beth Leeson. We can handle her, as long as we all stick to the script.’
In the car park that day in Huntingdon, Yanina didn’t flinch. She played her part so convincingly, fully believing in her assured victory. She was the outraged, innocent car owner, shocked to find a stranger in her car. Except she wasn’t shocked at all. The four of them will have agreed that she should return to the car park dressed in Flora’s clothes, to make me think I was losing my mind. Yanina might not have known she’d find me inside the Range Rover, but she knew I’d be there.
They must all have been prepared for me to say, ‘Why are you wearing Flora’s clothes? I’ve just seen her wearing those same clothes. Don’t tell me I haven’t.’ Yanina was trusted, evidently, to be convincingly aghast and uncomprehending if I reacted in that way.
Lewis had no worries about Kevin and Yanina. That’s why they were allowed to invite me and Dominic to Newnham House. Flora, Lewis decided, was the only possible weak link, the one who couldn’t necessarily be trusted not to let something slip. Better to move her to a different country, to be on the safe side. Meanwhile, he knew he could trust Kevin and Yanina to take charge of all the lying that needed to be done in England, while he and Flora lied with a matching confidence and determination in America – determination to win, to make sure that what they’ve all hidden so successfully remains hidden.
The terrible secret. What could it be? If I’m right about everything I think I’ve worked out so far, then someone might be in prison … but who? And for what?
The crime involved, because it has to be a crime, must be worse than what Lewis and Flora told me – worse than Flora accidentally killing Georgina and disowning her family, worse than her and Lewis misleading the authorities about the cause of Georgina’s death. No one trying to hide their guilt would invent something more likely to land them in jail than the truth. Lewis Braid is hardly an ordinary person, but I can’t see any reason why even he would do that.