Chapter Forty
Haze
Today we were heading to Balgray Hall for a conference and a chance to snoop around the building.
“No time lost in reconnaissance,” old Fox would say.
Current Fox was giving himself a pep talk in the bathroom mirror.
He was running the taps to try and drown out the sound of one of his ridiculous recordings.
I was spooning porridge into Reggie while Bibi was feeding toast to Pinga, her fluffy penguin. Around its neck was a silver pendant. Why did her soft toy have jewelry? I frowned at it, until I remembered it was Bibi’s lucky charm. She’d found it when we were at the hospital in Ivrea.
“You remember getting this?” I tapped it.
“Yes. When Dada was in hospital.” Bibi looked at her penguin’s necklace. “The fairies gave it to me.”
I smiled to myself. Last month, she’d had a twenty-minute conversation with her imaginary friend Princess Snufflepot where they bonded over their hatred of cooked carrots.
I hoped she kept believing in fairies, and magical things, and anything brighter than the reality of the sad, gray world we lived in.
Once we’d dropped Bibi at school, we headed straight to Balgray, Reggie gurgling away in the backseat. Jenny had assured me he would be welcome too.
Sorry I can’t make it. School cake sale.
Jenny had texted that an hour ago. I wanted to believe that Fox niggling away at me with his ridiculous suspicions about her was just the jealousy talking.
But this was unlike Jenny. She was, what?
Volunteering at a cake sale rather than helping us plan our potential escape routes from The Chameleon?
Maybe Felix had got into trouble. Maybe he’d guilt-tripped her into being there for him for something.
But if that was true, why wouldn’t she have just said that?
I would’ve understood. We were in this together, weren’t we?
And there was nothing more important than protecting us from the person who had us in their crosshairs.
I tried not to think about how Jenny knew all our history.
Last year, we’d given her a list of every man we’d eliminated on foreign soil.
The details of how and where. It was for our own protection.
We’d armed her with information on our every kill in case she had any insight into what could give us away.
She knew everything—but she would never betray us.
If there was someone in our life reporting our every move to The Chameleon, we hadn’t found them yet.
My phone pinged. I looked down at it. Frederica, confirming plans for our double date tomorrow night.
I’d only agreed as she was so persistent.
I had no way of getting out of it, short of admitting we would rather watch Netflix than hang out with them.
And upsetting the queen bee of the school mums could have repercussions for Bibi—I didn’t want her to be blacklisted from parties for having an antisocial mother.
Especially as Diana Morgan was clearly determined to make my life hell.
How long until she tried to turn the other mothers against me?
Although, in fairness, I wouldn’t notice—Frederica was the only one who seemed determined to get to know me.
Frederica. Wanting to be friends. Someone who had recently inserted themselves into our lives.
We’d always said The Chameleon could be a woman.
There was every chance the criminal mastermind, a subcontractor of services for the most dangerous European gangs, could be female.
And Frederica was steely. She was a formidable new arrival at the school gates.
Almost as if she had experience of navigating complicated groups and how best to rise within them.
Jenny had written her off as being just another mum, but she hadn’t met her.
I comforted myself with the thought that this dinner had now gone from being a boring duty to another reconnaissance mission.
—
We arrived at Balgray Hall to find it busy. Very busy. It was mostly women. A surprising number of them had brought babies and toddlers with them. I walked up to the sign by the front door of the Hall.
Parenting top tips with US bestselling author and mindful parenting coach Bells Brightley.
It became clear why Jenny had failed to tell me exactly what kind of “conference” we were attending. I turned to Fox. “Bells is one of those nutters who loves everything to do with kids.”
“What’s wrong with—”
“You know what I mean. She embraces every shit stain.” I put on an American accent. “You are a Mama now. Be grateful. Be present. Meditate.” I shuddered. “What even is mindfulness? I’m mindful of how fucking tired I am.”
We walked into the ballroom. A small stage had been set up at the back with a large screen behind it. Rows of chairs were laid out, nearly all of which were already full. Every row had at least one person with a baby or toddler on their lap. It looked like Fox was one of only four men here.
I was wearing a baby carrier with Reggie snuggled inside. It felt like I’d strapped him to me to announce to the world my eligibility for being inside a room of simpering parents.
Fox looked around. “Wow. She’s popular. There must be more than two hundred people here.”
“She has three million Instagram followers. She lives on a farm in the Midwest, and it’s all homemade everything.
No help. Being with the kids twenty-four-seven.
Still managing to look perfect. Still managing to run her reassuringly expensive homewares shop.
Sitting on a pottery wheel making perfect vases while breastfeeding.
Never raises her voice. Never shows any sign of being a normal human being who regularly loses her shit. I hate her.”
“If you hate her, why do you know so much about her?”
My husband really was clueless. “Come on! Everyone knows we love watching people we hate.”
Bells walked onto the stage to enthusiastic applause.
She was a blonde wisp of a woman in a flowered dress and cowboy boots.
She always looked tiny in her photos when standing next to her hulking six-foot-five former-American-football-player husband and their children (all born naturally at over ten pounds without even a helpful Panadol).
“Hello, darlings! It means so much that you’re here, and I love that so many of you have brought your precious little ones.” Bells clasped her hands to her chest. “We don’t trust our children to anyone outside our family. My mother has been a huge support. Blood looks after blood.”
There was a cheer from the crowd. I rolled my eyes.
“I love that my children need me so much. Hearing them call to me, at all hours, no matter the time, I can’t help but think how blessed I am.”
I leaned over to Fox. “She must be on drugs. No one enjoys being woken up all night.”
Fox scanned the ballroom. “This is where the main dinner will be. If The Chameleon is going to try anything, surely it won’t be in here?” He shook his head. “The fact everyone will be wearing masks means he wouldn’t necessarily even be able to find us.”
I was annoyed that Fox wasn’t engaging with my commentary on the rubbish Bells was spouting, but in fairness I couldn’t complain. He was focusing on the job at hand. I tried to do the same.
“The auction is happening in the library.” I remembered the evening’s program from the booklet I’d stolen. “We should check it out.”
We slipped out of the ballroom as Bells was saying, “My husband is the head of the family, and I am the heart.” I dug my fingernails into my palms and took deep breaths.
Reggie could feel me tensing and looked up at me.
I gave his little head a kiss. I loved my kids my way.
I hated being told how best to raise them.
It was, though, hard to argue that Bells should keep her stupid opinions to herself, given that so many people seemed to want to hear them.
The library was closed off for today’s events, with a red rope blocking access. Not quite enough to scare us off. We slipped behind it and into the library.
Reggie was gurgling. I jigged him up and down as we walked past the mahogany bookcase–lined walls.
I looked around. “If things go to shit in the ballroom, this is our easiest route out. There’s a back room leading to an outside door.” Jenny had found an old floor plan online, which we were now well versed in.
At the very back of the library was a heavy oak door. “Let’s give this a try.” I turned the handle and it loudly swung open to reveal a small snug filled with a few ratty old armchairs.
“What are you doing here?” A woman in her fifties was staring at us. On the floor were two toddler boys plugged into iPads.
“We’re looking for the changing facilities.” I tilted Reggie slightly toward them to prove we had a real live baby with us.
“It’s right by the ballroom.” The woman saw me looking at the children and moved to stand in front of them. “You’d better head back so you don’t miss any more of Bells’s talk.”
The bigger kid was wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt. He had ruffled blond hair and a couple of moles on his right cheek. I stared at him. “We don’t call them moles, we call them beauty spots, as they just add to his gorgeous good looks.”
I knew this boy!
The smaller kid had luscious golden locks that were half up in a man bun. Or I guess boy bun. “Our homemade goat’s milk hair mask is what gives his hair this beautiful shine.” They were brothers!
I hadn’t recognized them straightaway, as I’d only ever seen them with wooden toys or chasing after chickens while dressed in matching checked shirts.
Bells’s middle two boys.
On devices.
This was just great.
“These are Bells’s children?”
I pointed at them.
“They’re actually on a mindfulness app,” she said just as the unmistakable sounds of the Spider-Man theme tune rang out. She winced.
“And you work for Bells as…?”
“I’m Bells’s…helper.”
“You mean nanny?”
“No, that’s not a word we’d use.”
“But you help her with the children.”
“Among other things.”
I shook my head. “You’re telling me that she’s out there implying she’s winning at parenting through mindfulness and dedication and not missing a second of her children’s lives, but really she’s cheating? She has a nanny?”
The door to the outside swung open.
“Have you seen the sterilizer?” Another woman walked in, clutching a baby. Bells’s baby.
I laughed. “Oh, wow—two nannies! And not a helpful granny in sight!”
“Please, you can’t tell anyone about this,” said Nanny Number One. “Bells’s mother moved to Barbados a while ago.”
“Probably to avoid the grandchildren,” muttered Nanny Number Two.
“She should be ashamed of herself,” I said. “Making other women feel inadequate for not doing enough. You should write an exposé.”
The two women glanced at each other.
“We’ve signed NDAs,” said the first nanny.
“The amount of money you’d make from whatever you have to say would be enough to fight any lawyers she sets on you! Think of the women you could help!”
Nanny Number One was nodding. “That’s a good—”
Fox cut her off. “How did you guys get in here without anyone seeing you?”
“There’s an underground passage that leads to that little forest at the back of the house,” said Nanny Number Two.
Fox looked between them both. “Show us where, and we will promise to keep your secret.”