Chapter 2
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Except I do know. It’s the fact that I just agreed to a ten p.m. curfew. Max is going to be livid; my chest constricts just thinking about it.
Relax, Kate, it’ll be fine.
Except it won’t be. It never is. That’s the problem living with a monster – a psychopath who loathes his own daughter.
We exist in a constant state of alert, waiting for the next inevitable meltdown, the next eruption of anger, the fists banging on walls, even going through doors, once.
I am the buffer between Max and Holly. Conversations are a minefield, and the slightest deviation from Max’s directives is taken as a personal affront.
We are cowered, Holly and I, shadows moving swiftly through the house, striving to stay out of his way.
‘Excuse me?’
I turn around and stare at an elegant, short woman with red-framed glasses. I try to dredge up her name. I picture her daughter, Caroline, who is in the same class as Holly. Caroline Henry. She came to our house once, after school, to study with Holly when Max was away on business.
‘Hello, Mrs Henry. How are you? This is quite the party, isn’t it?’
‘Are you Holly’s nanny?’
I get this a lot. I’m twenty-three years old, and Max is forty-five, so this isn’t the first time I’ve been taken for Holly’s nanny, or Holly’s older sister.
Still. I can’t help but glance down at myself.
I am wearing high-heeled Ala?a calfskin boots, my chocolate-coloured, Italian wool-cashmere-blend coat and a Reiss knitted dress.
I wonder how much people pay their nannies around here.
Max buys my clothes for me, so I have no idea how much they cost, but let’s just say I’m pretty sure my wardrobe costs more than a year’s worth of my primary school teacher salary.
‘I’m not Holly’s nanny,’ I say. ‘I’m her stepmother.’
‘Really,’ she says, trying not to grin. Ah. So she already knew. Then, as if to underscore the point, she gives me a pointed up-down look. ‘I thought you looked too…young, to be Holly’s mother.’
‘Also, Holly’s mother is dead,’ I say.
She recoils, mouth pursed. Then she looks over her shoulder at a group of parents standing together near the gates of Scarlett’s house. They are laser focused on us, and I wonder if Mrs Henry was sent to talk to me. Go on! Ask her if it’s true that she went from nanny to wife.
She turns back to me. ‘Well. Good for you. Well done.’
I blink. ‘Surely you mean—’ I give her a similar, deliberate, up-down look ‘—good for him.’
She looks like she swallowed a lemon.
‘Was there something you wanted to ask me?’ I say.
She stands a little taller. ‘Yes, actually, there is. Since you’re going to pick up Holly after the party, you could pick up Caroline, too, and bring her home. We live on Hartford Avenue, on the other side of town.’
‘You want me to pick your daughter up from the party and drive her home to the other side of town?’
‘That’s right. Is there a problem?’
I don’t know what I’ve done to these women to make them treat me so rudely. This isn’t the first time one of the mothers has spoken down to me, but it’s definitely the first time they’ve instructed me to chauffeur their children to and from parties.
‘Holly’s father will be picking up Holly. You’re welcome to ask him. You’ll have his number from the class list.’
‘Ask Max? God no!’ She laughs, her gloved hand delicately at her throat. ‘I would never be that rude! How is dear Max by the way?’
‘He’s fine.’ I give her a tight smile. ‘Excuse me,’ I say, then reach into my bag for my phone. ‘I need to take this call.’
I walk away, staring at my non-ringing phone.
I press my friend Jen’s speed-dial number.
The phone rings, and I look over my shoulder to see that Mrs Henry has joined the group of parents.
They’re now huddled together, deep in conversation.
Please don’t tell me they’re talking about me. I can’t possibly be that interesting.
‘I was just thinking about you!’ Jen says.
‘And here I am!’ I sing as I get back into my car. I immediately feel better just hearing her voice. I picture her in her flat in Lewisham, probably on the small balcony, leaning back in her chair with her feet up on the railing, sipping on a mug of tea. ‘God, I wish I was there for real,’ I say.
‘Why? You’re living the country life while I’m stuck here marking tests on a Saturday. What could you possibly be missing? Are you wearing your wellies? Your quilted jacket? Or is it waxed?’
I chuckle. Once upon a time, if you’d told me I’d be dressed head to toe in Reiss, Mint Velvet and LK Bennett, I would have laughed so hard I would have vomited.
But Max has standards – as he often reminds me – and he doesn’t like me wearing jeans and T-shirts even though that’s exactly what I was wearing when he proposed.
‘Yep. You got me,’ I say, before telling her about my encounter with Mrs Henry.
‘What kind of nanny drives an Audi around there?’ she says. ‘Maybe I need to relocate. Change jobs.’
‘Oh God, please. Will you?’
We laugh. Then she says, ‘How are you, Kate, really? And more importantly, when am I going to see you again? I’m starting to forget what you look like!’
‘Come over when Max is away the week after next. Take some time off.’
‘As if,’ she says with a sigh. ‘And how is my Holly girl?’
‘She’s really good. I just dropped her off at a friend’s party.’
‘Really? Good for her! I miss her. Tell her I miss her.’ A pause. ‘And Max? How is he?’
She doesn’t put a lot of affection into the question. She’s never understood why I married him. Not to mention, I had a boyfriend at the time, and I broke things off with him to be with Max. To say that Jen was shocked would be an understatement.
She told me once, after too many beers, that I should have married Eamon – that was the boyfriend – and that Max is a narcissist and I’ve fallen for some kind of gothic romance fantasy, that I think I’m Catherine from Wuthering Heights playing the part of the devoted nanny slash housekeeper who is going to drag her dark and brooding boss out of his dark and brooding moods.
Like I pointed out to her at the time, that is not the plot of Wuthering Heights.
‘You’re thinking of Jane Eyre,’ I’d said, throwing a salted peanut into my mouth, and missing. Also, Max is an outgoing, sporty extrovert with a flop of straight brown hair. Dark and brooding he is not.
She’d waved a hand. ‘Whatever. My point is, that man is a cold fish. Cold as ice. And you’re screwing up your life because you are an incurable romantic. That’s all I’m saying.’
‘Right,’ I’d said. ‘As long as that’s all you’re saying…’
Jen was devastated when I told her we were moving away.
We’d been best friends since school. We did the same degree at Middlesex University.
We shared a flat in Platt Hall in our first year, then later moved into a flat together in Hendon.
The plan was to get jobs at the same school, if possible, or at the very least in the same area, and share a house somewhere.
But then my little sister died, and everything went to shit.
Sometimes I wonder if I could tell Jen what was really going on – why I decided, on impulse, to marry Max. You’re right. He’s cold as ice. He’s awful. He’s evil. Why did I marry him? Because the day Holly turned sixteen, he told me that I was no longer needed.
‘Holly is too old for a live-in nanny,’ he’d said.
‘She can look after herself from now on.’ Which was true.
The reason Holly had a live-in nanny in the first place was that Max went away on business all the time.
Somebody had to keep an eye on her. Make sure she didn’t run away, I guess.
That’s what I would have done in her shoes. Oh, and cook meals.
One night, a few months after I’d started working there, Max made a pass at me.
I was cooking dinner. It was, frankly, gross.
He stood behind me and put his arms around my waist and kissed the back of my neck.
I dropped the pan. He laughed, left the kitchen and let me clean up.
It was hard to be in the same room as him after that.
I was twenty-two years old and reeling from my sister’s death.
He was forty-three. I could have quit and gone to stay with Jen, and God knows I considered it, but I’d grown attached to Holly, not to mention protective.
So when Max told me that I was essentially fired, I didn’t know what to do.
There would be no one to stand between him and Holly.
No one to soothe him when he got into one of his rages.
No one to protect Holly. And that terrified me.
So, I did the only thing I could think of: I resolved to seduce him.
I’ve never seduced anyone. He repulsed me.
I had to break up with my nice boyfriend.
But I figured that if Max liked me enough to let me stick around as his girlfriend, I could make sure Holly was safe until she was old enough to move out.
And if I had breathed a word of this to Jen, she would have stopped me. She still would, if she knew. She would absolutely drive over and rescue me. She would make things so much worse; it doesn’t bear thinking about.
A car honks down the road, bringing me back to the present. ‘He’s well,’ I say. ‘Busy. You know how it is.’ I start the car. ‘Maybe Holly and I could come over at Christmas,’ I say.
‘Oh yes, do that! Come over at Christmas. Roxanne is going to visit her family – you can have her room.’
I laugh. I would like nothing more than for Holly and me to spend Christmas with my best friend.
And fingers crossed, if everything goes to plan, we will be able to.