It wasn’t quite true though, was it? She had tried to get me sacked, first by luring me into that bloody poison garden, and second by tattling on me to her mother in a way designed to make me look as bad as possible.

“Jack, is there any way it could have been . . .” I stopped myself, and amended what I had been going to say, “one of the kids who set all that stuff off? They were playing with the tablet earlier, is there any way they could have . . . I don’t know . . . preprogrammed it by accident?”

Or deliberately, I thought, but did not say.

But he shook his head.

“I don’t think so. There’d be a record of a log-in. And anyway, from what you said, it overrode every single speaker and lighting system in the house. None of the users on this tablet have access rights to do that. You’d need an admin password for that.”

“So . . . you’d have to be Bill or Sandra, basically? Is that what you’re saying?” The thought was very odd, and my doubts must have shown on my face. “Could the kids have got hold of their PIN somehow?”

“Maybe, but they’re not even down as users on this tablet. Look.” He clicked the little drop-down menu on the home-management app that listed the possible users for this device. Me, Jack, Jean, and a final one marked “Guest.” That was it.

“So what you’re saying is . . . ,” I spoke slowly, trying to think it through, “to get an admin level of access, you wouldn’t just need Sandra’s PIN, you’d need her phone?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” He pulled out his own phone, and showed me his access panel. “See? I’m the only user set up on my phone. It’s the way it’s configured.”

“And to set up new users on a device . . .”

“You need a specific code. Sandra would have given you one when you came here, no?”

I nodded.

“And let me guess, the code can only be generated by . . .”

“By an admin user, yup. That’s about the size of it.”

It made no sense. Had Sandra or Bill done this somehow? It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility—I had read up on the app when Sandra had first told me about it, and from what I could make out, the whole point of the system was that you could control it from anywhere with internet access—check the CCTV when you were on holiday in Verbier, turn on the lights when you were upstairs and wanted to come down, lower the heating when you were stuck in a traffic jam in Inverness. But why would they?

I remembered what Jack had said when I went to take the girls up to bed, and though I knew I was clutching at straws, I still had to ask the question.

“And the virus scans . . . ?”

He shook his head.

“Nothing on the tablet, at any rate. It’s clean as a whistle.”

“Shit.” I ran my hands through my hair, and he put his hand on my shoulder, touching me again, lightly, but I felt a kind of static charge run between us, making the hairs on my arm prickle, and I shivered lightly.

Jack made a rueful face, misinterpreting my reaction.

“Look at me, blathering away. You must be cold and tired—I’ll let you get to bed.”

It wasn’t true. Not anymore. I wasn’t cold, and suddenly I was very far from tired too. What I wanted was a drink, with him—and preferably one as strong as possible. I didn’t usually drink spirits, but it was on the tip of my tongue to mention the bottle of Scotch in the cupboard in the kitchen. But I knew that if I did, I would be starting something very stupid indeed, something I might not be able to stop.

“Okay,” I said at last. “That’s probably good advice. Thank you, Jack.”

I stood up, and he did too, setting down his tea and stretching until I heard his joints crack, and a little sliver of flat stomach showed between the bottom of his shirt and his waistband.

And then, I did something that surprised even myself. Something I had not intended to do, until the instant I found myself doing it.

I stood on tiptoes, and, pulling his shoulder down towards me, I kissed his cheek. I felt the leanness of his skin, the roughness of a day-old beard beneath my lips, and the warmth of him. And I felt something at the core of me clench with wanting.

When I stepped back, his expression was blank surprise, and for a moment I thought I had made a horrible mistake, and the butterflies in my stomach intensified to the point of queasiness. But then his mouth widened into a broad grin, and he bent, and kissed me back, very gently, his lips warm and very soft against my cheek.

“Good night, Rowan. You’re sure you’ll be all right now? You don’t need me to . . . stay?”

There was an infinitesimal pause before the last word.

“I’m sure.”

He nodded. And then he turned and left by the utility room door.

I locked it after him, the key turning with a reassuring clunk, and then I tucked the key back into its resting place and stood, watching his silhouette against the light streaming from the stable windows as he walked back to his little flat. As he mounted the stairs to his front door he turned and lifted a hand in farewell, and even though I was not sure he would be able to see me in the darkness, I raised mine in return.

Then he was gone, the door closed behind him, and the outside light clicked off, leaving a shocking, inky darkness in its wake. And I was left standing in there, my skin shivering, and fighting the urge to touch the place on my cheek where his lips had been with the tips of my fingers.

I did not know what he had meant when he offered to stay. What he had been hoping, expecting.

But I knew what I had wanted. And I knew that I had come very close to saying yes.

I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Wrexham. None of this is helping my case. And that’s what Mr. Gates thought too.

Because we know where this leads, you and I, don’t we?

To me, slipping out of the house on a rainy summer night, baby monitor in one hand, running across the courtyard and up the stairs to the stable-block flat.

And to a child’s body, lying— But no. I can’t think about that, or I’ll start crying again. And if you lose it in here, you really lose it, I know that now. I never knew there were so many ways to deal with pain so unbearable that it cannot be endured, but in here I have seen them all. The women who cut their skin, and tear out their hair, and smear their cells with blood and shit and piss. The ones who snort and shoot and smoke their way to oblivion. The ones who sleep and sleep and sleep and never get out of bed, not even for meals, until they’re nothing but bones and grayish skin and despair.

But I have to be honest with you, that’s what Mr. Gates didn’t—couldn’t—understand. It was acting a part that got me here in the first place. Rowan the Perfect Nanny with her buttoned-up cardigans, her pasted-on smile, and her perfect CV—she never existed, and you know it. Behind that neat, cheerful facade was someone very different—a woman who smoked and drank and swore, and whose hand itched to slap on more than one occasion. I tried to cover her up—to neatly fold my T-shirts when my instinct was to throw them on the floor, to smile and nod when I wanted to tell the Elincourts to fuck off. And when the police took me in for questioning, Mr. Gates wanted me to keep on pretending, keep on hiding the real me. But where did that pretense get me? Here.