knock that could have been anything from an acorn to a bird . . . it wasn’t exactly Friday the 13th.
It was maybe ten or fifteen minutes later—though it felt like much more—that I heard another sound, this time from the side of the house, a knock that set the dogs barking from their baskets in the utility room.
The noise made me jump, though there was something more homely and ordinary about it than the hollow bang of before, and when I went through to the utility room, I could see a dark shape silhouetted outside the rain-spattered glass panes in the door. The figure spoke, his voice almost drowned by the hiss of the rain.
“It’s me. Jack.”
Relief flooded through me.
“Jack!” I wrenched the door open, and there he was, standing just under the threshold, hunched in a raincoat, hands in pockets. The water was streaming down his fringe and dripping from his nose.
“Jack, was that you, before?”
“Before when?” he asked, looking puzzled, and I opened my mouth to explain—and then thought better of it.
“Never mind, it doesn’t matter. What can I help with?”
“I won’t keep you,” he said, “I just wanted to check you were all right, with it being your first day and all.”
“Thanks,” I said awkwardly, thinking of the awful afternoon and the fact that Petra was probably still sobbing into the baby monitor. Then, on an impulse I added, “Will you—I mean, do you want to come in? The kids are in bed. I was just getting myself some supper.”
“Are you sure?” He looked at his watch. “It’s pretty late.”
“I’m sure,” I said, standing back to let him inside the utility room. He stood, dripping onto the mat, and then stepped gingerly out of his boots.
“I’m sorry it’s so late,” he said, as he followed me into the kitchen. “I was meaning to come over before, but I had to take that bloody mower over to Inverness to be serviced.”
“You couldn’t fix it?”
“Oh, aye, I got it running. But it clapped out again yesterday. Whatever’s the matter, I can’t seem to get to the bottom of it. But never mind about that. I didn’t come to moan at you about my troubles. How was it with the kids?”
“It was—” I stopped, feeling, with horror, my bottom lip quiver treacherously. I wanted to put on a brave face—what if he reported back to Sandra and Bill? But I just couldn’t do it. And besides, if they looked at the security footage they would know the truth soon enough. As if to set the seal on it, Petra gave a long, bubbling wail of grief from upstairs that was loud enough to make Jack’s head turn towards the stairs.
“Oh God, who am I kidding?” I said wretchedly. “It was awful. The girls ran away from me after Bill and Sandra left, and I went to look for them in the woods and then that woman—what’s her name? Mrs. McKinty?”
“Jean McKenzie,” Jack said. He pulled his raincoat off and sat at the long table, and I found myself sinking into a chair opposite. I wanted to put my head in my hands and cry, but I forced myself to give a shaky laugh.
“Well she turned up to clean and found the girls sitting on the doorstep claiming I’d locked them out, which I absolutely didn’t, I’d deliberately left the door open for them. They hate me, Jack, and Petra’s been screaming for like an hour and—”
The wail came again, and I felt my stress level rise in tandem with its pitch.
“Sit down,” Jack said firmly, as I made to rise. He pushed me back into the chair opposite his. “I’ll see if I can settle her. She’s probably just not used to your face, it’ll be better tomorrow.”
It was in defiance of every safeguarding rule I’d ever been taught, but I was too tired and desperate to care—and besides, I told myself, Sandra and Bill would hardly have kept him on the premises if they thought he was a danger to their kids.
As the sound of his steps receded up the stairs, I switched on the baby monitor and listened to the door of Petra’s room swish gently open and her choking, gasping cries subside as her body was lifted from the crib.
“There, there, my little love,” I heard, a low, intimate croon that made my cheeks flush as if I were eavesdropping, though Jack must surely know the baby monitor was plugged in. “There, there, ma poor wee