I went out to the woods that night with a flashlight to look for Gaia’s teddy, Louis, but there was no sign of him. It was still snowing on and off, great swirling flakes sugaring the branches and outbuildings. I spotted plenty of tracks and scat in the snow, which indicated that we were having quite a few visits from foxes and possibly wolverine. A toy like Louis—bathed as he was in Gaia’s scent—would probably be snatched up by a predator and torn to pieces. Poor Gaia.
More and more my mind was trying to understand how the diary had ended up in my bedroom that night. Maren had promised me that my room was a private space and it wouldn’t be entered without my permission, even for cleaning. Perhaps Coco had pulled the book off a bookshelf and toddled into the room with it, but this was unlikely, too, given I kept my door closed. Gaia would have told me if she left something in my room, and she wasn’t prone to sleepwalking. It had to be one of the other adults. I could rule out Tom, for sure. Clive? I wasn’t sure how a diary containing such information about his business partner made him a likely candidate, and Derry was pretty much on the same scale.
That put Maren in the prime spot on the list of suspects. Perhaps she had mistaken the diary for Gaia’s logbook, which she had never mentioned since she’d first quizzed me about it. I doubted it—she surely would have recognized the gold lettering on the front, indicating Aurelia’s initials. And if she had known it was Aurelia’s diary, she would have read the contents. But when I spoke to her about Tom she said he was a good man, even though he had sometimes torn strips off her in public. She blamed Clive for persuading him into recommencing the build. So why would she put the diary in my room?
But remember, a voice in my head said—this one sounded like Laurence Olivier, replete with trilled r’s—remember that nobody is what they seem. Consider Tom. And Aurelia, who appears so joyous and grounded in all the photographs. And yet . . .
I turned back to Google. I searched “Aurelia Faraday” and found an old interview she’d given about one of her photography exhibitions. She titled it can’t see the woods (for the trees) and it was, she said, all about “perception, blindness, and how we often can’t see the truth despite it staring us in the face.” Interesting. This was two years before she died. The diary started just after Coco was born, but there were pages ripped out so it’s likely she was writing before then. Come to think of it, why were there pages ripped out? Who had done that?
The link between the mystery murdered girl, Ingrid Olsen, and Aurelia had to have some kind of meaning, and Google was giving me nothing on that. Maren had said that Aurelia had no siblings, and a follow-up question to Gaia about her aunts and uncles confirmed that she had none on her mother’s side. I would have to go into the attic, retrieve the newspaper clippings, and try to type the content into Google Translate. The problem was that if I got caught, I would need some kind of explanation. And I was fast running out of favor.
The next day Tom asked me calmly to have a meeting with him in his office. I felt sick. No one had ever, not ever, asked to have “a quiet word” or “a meeting” without it turning out very badly.
This time was no different.
“I’m not angry,” he said calmly, once the door was shut. Oh, good. Because anytime someone says that, I totally believe it. “I’m disappointed.”
I nodded and looked at the floor.
“Your job is to take care of the children, and that includes making sure they are safe.”
I went to speak, but he cut me off.
“It’s your responsibility to ensure they aren’t able to get out of the house.” He looked outside. “If anything like this happens again, I’m afraid I’ll have no choice but to seek a replacement. Understood?”
I promised him there wouldn’t be a next time. He nodded, stood up. We were done.
29
the discovery
NOW
Clive was right: the diggers have saved an enormous amount of time. Tom wishes he’d done this sooner. He’s even managed to avoid damaging the older trees, despite the roots spreading so wide. The