fees so far, and Emily’s deposit to reserve her a place, have all been paid from a bank account based in Florida.’
‘What’s the name of the account?’ I ask, thinking the answer to my own question at the same time.
As if she’s reading my mind, Lou says, ‘Lewis Braid.’
An hour later I’m sitting on the floor in the middle of my hotel room, waiting for my swirling thoughts to arrange themselves into some kind of recognisable order. The sun’s edging away from me inch by inch, as if it doesn’t want to get involved in whatever mess I’ve got myself embroiled in. There’s a hollow feeling in my stomach. I should probably order something to eat, but every time I try to think about where I might have put the room service menu, my brain slides back to what it prefers to think about.
Lewis Braid. Lewis is paying the school fees of Thomas and Emily Cater.
That could make sense. They’re his children, and he has plenty of money. There’s only one problem with this explanation, and it’s a significant one: according to Flora, Kevin Cater doesn’t know Thomas and Emily are Lewis’s. He believes they’re his. Doesn’t he wonder why his wife’s ex-husband is willing to pay the school fees of her children from her second marriage?
Is it possible he doesn’t know that Lewis pays the fees? Perhaps Flora has told him they’re coming out of a separate bank account she’s got that her parents have put money into, or something like that. Or maybe Kevin knows that Lewis plans to pay for Thomas and Emily’s schooling, doesn’t care why, and is simply happy to be spared the expense.
None of these theories satisfies me. I think about my encounters with Kevin and Yanina – not what I’ve been told about them by anyone else, only what I’ve witnessed and experienced myself. The confident way they produced the photograph of two completely different children … Toby and Emma. And then they told PC Pollard they’d given those names because they were afraid I was a dangerous obsessive.
I shake my head, though there’s no one here to see me do it. Kevin and Yanina weren’t afraid of me. They knew I was no danger to the children at Newnham House. They were attempting to manipulate me, and confident they’d succeed. I know this is true, because I was there.
I trust my senses, my instincts and my judgement. I always have, but since that first Saturday on Wyddial Lane, I trust myself even more.
What does your judgement say about Kevin and Yanina?
I’ve been so busy puzzling over Flora, Lewis and the children that, until now, I haven’t spent much time thinking specifically about Kevin and the nanny. She might not be a nanny – that’s the first thing that occurs to me. A Ukrainian nanny with a foreign accent is so easy to believe in. It’s a familiar stereotype, and people rarely question those. More likely, Yanina is a woman who happens to have an accent that isn’t English, and who’s in the house for some other reason, not to look after Thomas and Emily.
What kind of nanny collects a child from school and doesn’t even make eye contact with him? And why would anyone – Lewis, Kevin, any person in charge of children – invest in full-time live-in childcare when they won’t spend a much smaller amount on new school shoes to replace ones that are literally falling apart?
The more I focus on them, the more convinced I am that Kevin and Yanina are central to whatever’s happening at Newnham House. They aren’t just two minor players in a drama created by Flora and Lewis, a drama they don’t fully understand because many of the details have been kept from them. Flora lied about that, like she lied about Kevin being happy not to pry into the details of her past life. Of course he’d want to know what had made his wife feel she had to rush off to Florida with almost no notice to be with her ex-husband. Any husband would. Most, I think, would raise significant objections.
Kevin Cater didn’t mind at all. He was in his element when I met him, all ready to pretend the nanny was his wife for the benefit of anyone who happened to drop by. He played the part of the innocent, inconvenienced family man brilliantly. They could have told Dom and me then that Yanina was the nanny, but they decided, probably after