it—extremely good-looking, in a scrubby unshaven kind of way, with tangled dark hair and a tall, lean frame.
He was wearing overalls, and as he came up to me he took his hands out of his pockets and I saw they were grained with something—soil, or engine oil, though he’d made an attempt to clean them. For a moment I thought perhaps he was an employee of the railway, but as he drew level with me he spoke.
“Rowan Caine?”
I nodded.
“I’m Jack Grant.” He grinned, his mouth curling disarmingly at the edges, as though appreciating a private joke. His accent was Scottish but softer and more distinct than the Glaswegian girl I’d worked with after school. He pronounced his surname with a lilt, to rhyme with ant, not the longer English aunt. “I work up at Heatherbrae House. Sandra asked me to pick you up. Sorry I’m late.”
“Hi,” I said, suddenly shy for no reason I could pin down. I coughed, trying to think of something to say. “Um, it’s fine. No problem.”
“It’s why I’m in such a state.” He looked ruefully down at his hands. “She didn’t tell me you’d be wanting a lift until half an hour ago. I was halfway through fixing the mower, but I was worried I’d miss your train, so I just set out, dirt and all. Can I take your case?”
“Honestly, it’s fine.” I picked up my case. “It’s not heavy. Thank you for coming out.”
He shrugged.
“No need to thank me; it’s my job.”
“You work for the Elincourts?”
“For Bill and Sandra, aye. I’m . . . well I don’t know quite what my job title would be. I think Bill’s got me on his company payroll as a driver, but odd-job man would cover it better. I do the gardening, fix the cars, run them in and out of Carn Bridge. You’ll be the nanny?”
“Not yet,” I said nervously, but he grinned sideways at me, and I smiled in spite of myself. There was something infectious about his expression. “I mean, that’s the position I’m going for, yes. Have they had many other interviewees?”
“Two or three. You’re doing better than the first one. She didn’t speak much English; I don’t know who she got to write her application, but from what Sandra said it wasnae her.”
“Oh.” Somehow his words made me feel better. I’d been imagining a parade of starched and fiercely competent Mary Poppins types. I stood straighter, smoothing the wrinkles out of my tweed skirt. “Good. I mean, not good for her, I suppose. Good for me.”
We were outside the station now, walking across the little sparsely populated car park, towards a long black car on the opposite side of the road. Jack clicked something on a fob in his pocket and the lights flashed and the doors opened, shooting up like bat wings, making my jaw drop involuntarily. I thought of my stepfather’s bland gray Volvo, his pride and joy, and gave a short laugh. Jack grinned again.
“It’s a bit conspicuous, isn’t it? It’s a Tesla. Electric. I don’t know if it would have been my choice of vehicle, but Bill . . . well, you’ll see. He’s into technology.”
“Is he?” The words were meaningless as a response, but somehow . . . just the knowledge of this small thing was a little nugget, a connection to this faceless man.
Jack stood back as I put my case into the rear of the car.
“Do you want to ride in the back, or up front?” he asked, and I felt my face color up.
“Oh, in front, please!”
The thought of sitting regally in the back, treating him like a chauffeur, was enough to make me squirm.
“The views are better anyway” was all he said, but he clicked something that made the batwing doors at the rear of the car swing closed, and then held open the front passenger door.
“After you, Rowan.”
For a moment I didn’t move, almost forgetting who he was speaking to. Then, with a start, I pulled myself together and climbed into the car.
I had known, on some level, I suppose, that the Elincourts were rich. I mean, they had a driver slash odd-job man, and they were offering fifty-five grand for a nanny position, so they must have had cash to spare, but it wasn’t until we reached Heatherbrae House that I began to realize quite how rich they were.
The knowledge gave me a strange feeling.
I don’t care about the money, I wanted to tell Jack as we stopped at a high