“But surely… is that likely?” Rosalind had asked, looking baffled. She’d glanced across to where Ella had been sitting on the sofa alongside the man who claimed to be her grandfather, proudly showing him the motheaten Eeyore and, from the slightly bemused look on his face, giving him the stuffed animal’s life history and quirks of character.
Simone had hesitated, not wanting to be awkward with her hosts, but then she saw the way my eyebrows had come down meaningfully.
“Well, it is Charlie’s job,” she said then, with an apologetic smile. Rosalind had done her best to make friends with her stepdaughter, but I don’t think Simone would have been fighting my corner quite so hard if it had been Lucas himself who’d raised the query.
Eventually, they found a roll-out bed for Ella to use in Simone’s room, while I was given the smaller of the guest rooms on the upper floor nearby. Rosalind was clearly mystified at my insistent disruption of her plans, but she accepted it with some measure of grace. When she showed me up to my room she even apologized profusely for the fact that it didn’t have its own en suite bathroom.
Now, I finished my quick call to Sean and left the room, pulling the door closed behind me. As I did so, Rosalind stepped out of a doorway across the landing, leading from the master suite. I wondered briefly if she’d been able to eavesdrop on my conversation, then dismissed the thought. I’d never been in the habit of shouting into a mobile phone, and the house seemed well built enough to be reasonably soundproof.
“So, how long have you been Simone’s au pair?” Rosalind asked as she led the way back down the polished wooden staircase.
“Oh no, I’m paid to work for her,” I said cheerfully, deliberately obtuse.
“Excuse me?”
“Au pairs are traditionally young girls who work for families for pocket money, in order to learn English,” I said, smiling. “I’m a little old for that, and my English is fine.”
“Er, yes, I see,” Rosalind said, frowning.
We reached the ground floor. It was mostly open-plan, the through-kitchen and breakfast nook leading to the great room, which was a huge living area with a fireplace built of rounded fieldstone up the end wall. The furniture was dark wood, heavy and rather staid in design, at odds with the light airy feel of the house. Most of one side of the great room was glass, looking out over the deck through the trees and onto the lower part of the ski slopes.
There were elaborate drapes but they didn’t look like they were ever closed, which was going to be tricky from a security point of view Lovely to be able to enjoy the view, but anyone with a lift pass could see into the house and they had a perfect right to do as many runs past the Lucases’ place as they felt like.
Simone was standing looking out of the window, cradling Ella. Lucas was standing beside them, his hand on Simone’s shoulder as he pointed out the line of the ski run, their heads tilted close together. When Rosalind saw them she stopped abruptly and I caught the unguarded expression on her face before she had a chance to mask it. But was it hurt I saw? Or anger?
Lucas heard our footsteps and turned, letting his hand drop away a little too quickly.
Interesting….
“Ah, there you are, Charlie,” he said, overly hearty. “All settled in?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said.
“You all must be hungry after your journey,” Rosalind said, her features schooled back into a cool politeness once more. “I have a Brunswick stew in the crockpot. We can eat whenever you’re ready.”
The conversation over our late lunch was somewhat stilted. Lucas was doing his best to play genial host, but the tension in Rosalind communicated itself to Simone, and then on to Ella, like they were connected by wires. Apparently oblivious, Lucas appeared quite happy to chat about his first wife in front of his second. He seemed to be going out of his way to drop into little reminiscences about Simone’s childhood-a well-loved toy, the wallpaper in her nursery, her favorite picture book.
To begin with, Simone seemed reluctant to join in this game of “do you remember,” but as Lucas kept coming up with snatches of her infancy that she clearly did remember, she found herself inexorably drawn in. And, as the conversation began to flow more freely, so the whole atmosphere relaxed a little. When I glanced at Rosalind, even she no longer seemed quite so stiff in her upright dining chair.
The Brunswick stew turned out to be mainly chicken and vegetables, served up with mashed potatoes. Although Ella picked her way around the carrots with some caution, she was hungry enough to clear her plate and even accept a second helping. Even if she did seem to end up wearing more of the gravy than she was managing to spoon into her mouth.
I, too, kept my mouth occupied with eating rather than joining in the talk, content to observe rather than take part, despite Lucas’s occasional attempts to involve me in the proceedings.
“So, did you always want to work with children, Charlie?”
That question, from Rosalind, had me glancing up from my food in surprise. It had sounded so pointed, as if she knew I was either more-or less — than I was pretending to be. I wondered again if she’d been listening in on my conversation with Sean.
“Not really,” I said, offering as much of the truth as I was able to, “but I suppose I like the idea of looking after people.” Besides, during the previous summer I’d finally come to terms with the fact that I was capable of behavior that took me to the extremes of social acceptability, and the more I was able to channel those traits into something useful- and legal-so much the better.
Rosalind frowned, something she seemed to do a lot if you gave an answer she didn’t like or wasn’t expecting.
‘And how did you meet Simone?”
“She was recommended by a friend of the family.” It was Simone herself who answered, shooting me a quick smile as she did so.
“I thought you didn’t have any family-apart from the fact that you now have us, of course,” Rosalind said, raising a small smile of her own in the direction of her husband, who answered it cheerfully enough.
“Yes, and it’s wonderful to suddenly discover I have two of you where I only ever expected-dreamed, really-to find one,” Simone said. She paused, picking her next words with care. “And I can’t wait until Greg and I have the tests done and we can make it all official.”
Simone delivered this news with such artful casualness, beaming at the pair of them and carrying on eating, apparently oblivious to the fact that they’d both frozen in their chairs.
“Tests?” Rosalind echoed.
“DNA,” Simone said. “I’m assuming we can get them done locally, can we?”
I scanned their faces quickly, suppressing a cheer and the desire to jump up and hug Simone for her sudden display of levelheadedness. Lucas and his wife exchanged glances, too fast for me to catch the message that flashed between them.
“Surely there’s no need to go that far, is there?” Rosalind said with a breathless kind of a laugh. “After everything Greg’s told you …?”
“Oh, it’s a formality, of course,” Simone said breezily. “I mean, I’m absolutely convinced, but my solicitor will skin me if I don’t come back with undisputed proof-especially when there’s Ella to consider.”
“Yes, but-”
That was as far as Rosalind got when, suddenly, the doorbell rang.
Rosalind’s eyes flew to her husband’s, startled. Lucas almost ducked sideways slightly in his seat, as if to hide. The dining area wasn’t quite in direct line of sight to the glazed front door, but it was pretty close.
“I’ll go,” he said, but the smile he gave Rosalind was a strained one. He wiped his mouth on his napkin and dropped it onto the table as he got to his feet.