“Yes,” I said, hearing my own voice in my ears, flat and emotionless. Then I thought, I have to say something, I can’t let this go. “Maddie, about what just happened—you cannot spit at people like that; it’s disgusting.”

“What?” She turned to look at me, her face a picture of injured innocence. “What? I sneezed. I couldn’t help it.”

And then she ran down the rest of the flight of stairs and out to the waiting car, as if the bitter struggle of the last twenty minutes had been nothing but a figment of my own imagination.

I found myself wondering who had won in that encounter, as I checked Petra’s car seat and buckled myself in the front beside Jack. And then it struck me what a fucked-up dynamic this really was—that my relationship with this damaged little girl was not about caring and caregiving but about winning and dominance and war.

No. No matter what the outcome of that situation was, I hadn’t won. I had lost the moment I let Maddie make it into a battle.

But I hadn’t hit her. Which meant that, if nothing else, I had triumphed over my own worst instinct.

I hadn’t let the demons win. Not this time.

As the school gate clanged shut, I felt a kind of weak relief come over me, so that I almost sank to the pavement, my back to the iron railings, my face in my hands.

I had done it. I had done it. And now my reward was five hours of something close to relaxation. I still had Petra of course—but five hours with her was nothing compared to Ellie’s uncomfortable misery, and Maddie’s bitter campaign of vengeance.

Somehow, though, I stayed upright and walked back round the corner to the side road, where Jack was waiting in the car, with Petra.

“Success?” he asked as I opened the car door and slid in beside him, and I felt a grin crack my face wide, unable to conceal my own relief.

“Yes. They’re behind bars for the next few hours anyway.”

“See? You’re doing a great job,” he said comfortably, pressing on the accelerator so that we slid away from the curb with the unnervingly silent hum I had come to expect from the car.

“I don’t know about that,” I said, a little bitterly. “It was touch-and-go getting Maddie out to the car, to be honest. But I’ve survived another morning, which is probably the main thing.”

“Now, what do you want to do?” Jack asked practically, as we drove towards the center of the little town where the girls’ primary school was. “We can go straight back to the house if you’ve stuff to be getting on with, or we can stop off for a coffee, if you like, and I can show you a wee bit of Carn Bridge.”

“A little bit of a tour would be lovely. I’ve not really had a chance to see anything much apart from Heatherbrae yet, and Carn Bridge looked really pretty as we were coming through.”

“Aye, it’s a bonny little place. And it’s got a good coffee shop too, the Parritch Pot. It’s down at the other end of the village, but there’s not much in the way of street parking there, so I’ll park up by the kirk, and we can walk down along the high street. And I’ll show you what there is to see.”

Ten minutes later, I had wrestled Petra into her pram and we were walking down the main street of Carn Bridge, with Jack pointing out shops and pubs, and nodding at the occasional passerby. It was a quaint little place, somehow built on a smaller scale than you expected from afar, the granite buildings neater and narrower than they seemed from a distance. There were empty shops too; I saw one that had once been a butcher’s and another that looked like it might have been a bookshop or a stationer’s. Jack nodded when I pointed them out.

“There’s plenty of big houses round about, but the little shops still find it hard going. The tourist ones are all right, but the small places can’t compete with the supermarkets for price.”

The Parritch Pot was a neat little Victorian tea shop right at the bottom of the high street, with a brass bell that jangled as Jack opened the door and held it for me to maneuver Petra across the threshold.

Inside, a motherly looking woman came out from behind the counter to welcome us.

“Jackie Grant! Well, and it’s a good while since you were in here for a piece of cake. How are you doing, my dear?”

“I’m well, Mrs. Andrews, thank you. And how are you?”

“Och, well, I cannae complain. And who’s your lady friend?” She gave me a look I couldn’t quite decipher. There was something . . . well, arch was the closest word I could find to describe it, as if there was something more she could have said but was holding back. Perhaps it was just good old-fashioned curiosity. I wanted to roll my eyes. It wasn’t the 1950s anymore. Surely men and women were allowed to have a cup of tea without setting tongues wagging, even in a little place like Carn Bridge.

“Oh, this is Rowan,” Jack said easily. “Rowan, this is Mrs. Andrews, who runs the tea shop. Rowan is the new nanny up at Heatherbrae, Mrs. Andrews.”

“Oh, so you are, my dear,” Mrs. Andrews said, her brow clearing, and she smiled. “Jean McKenzie did tell me, and it slipped clean out my head. Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Let’s hope you’ve more staying power than the other lassies.”

“I hear they didn’t last long?” I ventured. Mrs. Andrews laughed and shook her head.

“No, indeed. But you don’t look like the type to be easily scared.”

I pondered her words as I unclipped Petra from her pram and slid her into the high chair Jack had fetched from the back of the tea shop. Was it true? A few days ago I would have said so. But now, as I remembered myself lying there stiff and trembling in bed, listening to the creak . . . creak . . . of footsteps above me, I was not so sure.

“Jack,” I said at last, after we’d placed our order and were waiting for our drinks to appear. “Do you know what’s above my bedroom?”

“Above your bedroom?” He looked surprised. “No, I didn’t know there was another floor up there. Is it a storage loft, or a proper attic?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been up there. But there’s a locked door in my room that I’m assuming leads up there, and, well . . .” I swallowed, unsure how to phrase this. “I thought . . . well, I heard some odd noises up there a couple of nights ago.”

“Rats?” he asked, one eyebrow cocked, and I shrugged, too embarrassed to tell the truth.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not though. It sounded . . .” I swallowed again, trying not to say the word that hovered on the tip of my tongue—human. “Bigger.”

“They make an awful racket in the night, or at least they can do. I’ve a bunch of keys somewhere, do you want me to have a try this afternoon?”

“Thanks.” There was a kind of comfort in sharing my fear, however guardedly, though I felt like something of a fool now the words had left my lips. After all, what was I going to find up there, other than dust and old furniture? But it couldn’t hurt, and maybe there was some simple explanation—a window left open, an old chair rocking in the draught, a lamp swinging in the breeze. “That’s really kind.”

“There you go, now.” The voice came from behind us, and I turned to see Mrs. Andrews holding two coffees—proper cappuccinos, made by a human being, rather than a bloody app. I set mine to my lips and took a long, hot gulp, feeling it scald the inside of my throat, heating me from within, and for the first time in a few days, I felt my confidence return.