“It’s why I’m in such a state.” He looked ruefully down at his hands. “She didn’t tell me you’d be wanting a lift until half an hour ago. I was halfway through fixing the mower, but I was worried I’d miss your train, so I just set out, dirt and all. Can I take your case?”
“Honestly, it’s fine.” I picked up my case. “It’s not heavy. Thank you for coming out.”
He shrugged.
“No need to thank me; it’s my job.”
“You work for the Elincourts?”
“For Bill and Sandra, aye. I’m . . . well I don’t know quite what my job title would be. I think Bill’s got me on his company payroll as a driver, but odd-job man would cover it better. I do the gardening, fix the cars, run them in and out of Carn Bridge. You’ll be the nanny?”
“Not yet,” I said nervously, but he grinned sideways at me, and I smiled in spite of myself. There was something infectious about his expression. “I mean, that’s the position I’m going for, yes. Have they had many other interviewees?”
“Two or three. You’re doing better than the first one. She didn’t speak much English; I don’t know who she got to write her application, but from what Sandra said it wasnae her.”
“Oh.” Somehow his words made me feel better. I’d been imagining a parade of starched and fiercely competent Mary Poppins types. I stood straighter, smoothing the wrinkles out of my tweed skirt. “Good. I mean, not good for her, I suppose. Good for me.”
We were outside the station now, walking across the little sparsely populated car park, towards a long black car on the opposite side of the road. Jack clicked something on a fob in his pocket and the lights flashed and the doors opened, shooting up like bat wings, making my jaw drop involuntarily. I thought of my stepfather’s bland gray Volvo, his pride and joy, and gave a short laugh. Jack grinned again.
“It’s a bit conspicuous, isn’t it? It’s a Tesla. Electric. I don’t know if it would have been my choice of vehicle, but Bill . . . well, you’ll see. He’s into technology.”
“Is he?” The words were meaningless as a response, but somehow . . . just the knowledge of this small thing was a little nugget, a connection to this faceless man.
Jack stood back as I put my case into the rear of the car.
“Do you want to ride in the back, or up front?” he asked, and I felt my face color up.
“Oh, in front, please!”
The thought of sitting regally in the back, treating him like a chauffeur, was enough to make me squirm.
“The views are better anyway” was all he said, but he clicked something that made the batwing doors at the rear of the car swing closed, and then held open the front passenger door.
“After you, Rowan.”
For a moment I didn’t move, almost forgetting who he was speaking to. Then, with a start, I pulled myself together and climbed into the car.
I had known, on some level, I suppose, that the Elincourts were rich. I mean, they had a driver slash odd-job man, and they were offering fifty-five grand for a nanny position, so they must have had cash to spare, but it wasn’t until we reached Heatherbrae House that I began to realize quite how rich they were.
The knowledge gave me a strange feeling.
I don’t care about the money, I wanted to tell Jack as we stopped at a high steel gate, which swung slowly inwards, clearly sensing some sort of transmitter in the car. But it wasn’t completely true.
How much do Sandra and Bill make? I found myself wondering.
The Tesla was eerily silent as we drove up the long winding drive, the sound of the gravel beneath the wheels louder by far than the hushed electric engine.
“Jesus,” I muttered under my breath as we rounded yet another bend and still no house was in sight. Jack shot me a sideways look.
“Big place, isn’t it?”
“Just a bit.”
Land must be cheaper round here than down south, of course, but it couldn’t be that cheap. We bumped across a bridge over a quick-running burn, the waters dark with peat, and then drove through a cluster of pines. I thought I saw a flash of something scarlet through the trees and craned to look, but it was getting dark, and I wasn’t completely sure if I had imagined the movement.
At last we came out of the shelter of the trees and into a clearing, and I saw Heatherbrae House for the first time.
I had been expecting something ostentatious, a McMansion, maybe, or a sprawling log-built ranch. But that wasn’t what greeted me at all. The house in front of me was a modest Victorian lodge, foursquare, like a child’s drawing of a house, with a glossy black door in the center and windows on each side. It was not big but solidly built of granite blocks, with lush Virginia creeper rambling up one side of it, and I could not have put my finger on exactly why, but it exuded warmth and luxury and comfort.
Dusk had fallen, and as Jack turned off the engine of the Tesla and extinguished the headlights, the only illumination from all around was the stars, and the lamps from inside the house itself, shining out across the gravel. It looked like something from a sentimental illustration, those nostalgia-soaked twinkly photographs on the front of the jigsaws that my grandmother had loved.
Soft gray stone, lichened and weathered, golden lamps shining out through the clean rippled glass of the windows, overblown roses scattering their petals in the dusk—it was almost too perfect, unbearably perfect, in some strange way.
As I stepped out of the car and the cool evening air settled around me, pine-scented and sharp and clear as mineral water, I felt suddenly choked with longing for this life and all that it represented. The contrast with my own upbringing—the cheerless boxy suburbia of my parents’ 1950s identikit bungalow, every room except my own neat as a pin, yet all utterly devoid of any character or comfort—was almost too bitter to bear, and it was more to banish the thought than because I was ready to meet Sandra that I stepped forward into the shelter of the covered porch.
Instantly something felt off-kilter. But what was it? The door in front of me was traditional enough, paneled wood painted a rich glossy black, but something seemed wrong, missing, even. It took me a second to notice what it was. There was no keyhole.
The realization was somehow unsettling. Such a small detail, and yet without it I was left wondering—was the door a fake? Should I go round the other side of the house?
There was no knocker either, and I looked over my shoulder, seeking Jack’s guidance as to how I should announce myself. But he was still inside the car, checking something on the big illuminated touch screen that served as the dashboard controls.
I turned back and put out my hand, ready to rap on the wood with my knuckles, but as I did so, something embedded in the wall to the left of the door caught my eye. A ghostly illuminated icon in the shape of a bell had appeared from nowhere, shining out of what had seemed to be solid stone, and I saw that what I had taken for simply part of the wall was actually a cleverly inlaid panel. I went to press it, but it must have been motion sensitive, for I had not even made contact when a chime sounded from inside the house.
I blinked, suddenly thinking of Jack’s comment in the car. Bill . . . well, you’ll see. He’s into technology. Was this what he had meant?
“Rowan! Hello!” The female voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and I jumped, looking around for a camera, a microphone, a grille to speak into. There was none. Or none that I could see.