too late—Maren had seen, and was perturbed. What was Gaia doing with a mobile phone?
“Give it to me,” Maren said firmly, holding out her palm. Sheepishly, Gaia handed the phone over.
“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there? Answer me!” my mother yelled. Maren held the shrieking phone at arm’s length and said, “Who is this? Why are you speaking to Gaia?”
“Who the bloody hell is Gaia?” my mother screeched. “I want Lexi!”
Maren told my mother that she had the wrong number. There was no Lexi at this number. She would have proceeded to hang up, and that would have been that. I would have arrived back into the room to a conversation about a madwoman yelling about a person who didn’t exist, and nothing more would have been said or done about it.
As it was, right as Maren’s thumb hovered over the button to end the call, my mother said, “Is Lexi still in Norway?”
“Norway?” Maren said.
“I heard she was taking some job as a nanny for some rich ponce,” my mother said, and Maren explained that no, Sophie was their nanny. My mother insisted that she’d called my phone number, and proceeded to describe me. My mother informed Maren that she was holding me personally accountable for putting her through the hell of bad-quality weed that she’d had to source from a teenage neighbor. She also mentioned that I’d recently tried to kill myself, and what a misfortune it was to the world that I had not succeeded.
At this, the penny dropped. Maren knew I wasn’t who I said I was.
“What’s going on?” Tom said from the doorway. “Where’s Sophie?”
“She’s upstairs . . .” Maren started to say, because a half second after she realized I’d been lying the whole time about who I was, she made the honorable decision to cover for me.
“Sophie’s not called Sophie,” Gaia said loudly. “She’s called Lexi, Daddy. Her mumma is on the phone. Do you want to say hello?”
Tom glanced at the phone in Maren’s hand and read the expression on her face. Right then, Maren was still processing why on earth I might have pretended to be called Sophie, and the terrible thought that I might not be the same Sophie Hallerton as championed by Verity was slowly beginning to sink in. Her expression told this story.
“Give me the phone, please,” Tom said. Maren reluctantly handed it over.
“Hello, Tom Faraday here,” Tom said to my mother. “Who’s speaking, please?”
And from there, all hell broke loose.
* * *
—
Please, Daddy! Please don’t send Sophie away!”
I could hear Gaia pleading with her father all the way from the kitchen.
“For the last time, she isn’t called Sophie!” Tom yelled, loud enough for me to hear. “She’s called Lexi! She’s a fraud! I’ve a right mind to call the police!”
Tears dripped from my face as I packed my bags. I was going home. Tom was so outraged I thought I’d be dragged off to prison, but I think I managed to earn some sympathy by begging him to hear my side of things. I told him about overhearing the real Sophie Hallerton on the train. I told him I was only on the train in the first place because I was homeless, and that I had attempted suicide not long before that. I showed him the scars, and he seemed shocked. I promised him I loved his daughters, that I’d done everything in my power to be a proper nanny to them. To care for them as Aurelia would have wanted. He softened at this.
“Pack your things at once,” he said, not looking at me. “I’ll arrange for you to be transported to the airport this afternoon.”
“But, Daddy!” Gaia shrieked at the top of her lungs. “What about Dora?”
“Dora?”
Tom clearly hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, because he said, “What on earth are you talking about?” Then it dawned on him. He followed Gaia’s guilty, petrified gaze to the corner of the room cordoned off with heavy curtains. Tom yanked one of them aside and looked at Dora in her den, perched on her tree branch.
He spun around and glared at me in disgust.
“You’re kidding me. You’ve kept that bird in here all this time?”
“She’s a little nervous about flying, Daddy,” Gaia offered gingerly. “But we’re working on her courage. She likes pine nuts, but you have to mash them up and feed them to her with your mouth . . .”
“Get out,” Tom spat at me. I turned on my heel and walked quickly