The man’s eyes narrowed at the sight of her – was there a dress code here? Was her dress too short? Her hair too scruffy? – and he stopped typing. ‘May I see some ID confirming that?’
Her smile faded. ‘What?’
‘ID, miss.’
‘I don’t have any ID. What would I need that for?’
He looked away and around the room, as though checking he wasn’t going to offend any neighbours with his words. ‘Well, I’m afraid you wouldn’t be the first young lady to purport to be one of Mr Von Greyers’ employees.’
She stared at him, incredulous. ‘I’m his son’s nanny.’
‘Yes, madam. That’s what they tend to say.’
She gave a short bark of laughter that would have made Nina proud. ‘Oh my God! Are you seriously—’
‘It’s okay, Lennart, she’s with me.’
She turned to find Emil walking towards her. He must have been sitting in one of the chairs by the window. Had he been waiting for her? Watching her with Kris?
Why?
‘Where’s Linus?’ she asked, hot-cheeked that he must have overheard this pompous man’s ridiculous intimations that she was some sort of . . . groupie.
He regarded her coolly, his cap still on. ‘Already in the cinema. I thought I’d wait for you. The room can be hard to find if you don’t know where to look.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’ A reluctant hero again?
A moment pulsed, silent and tense, the two of them ever at odds.
‘Lennart, please remember her for future reference,’ he said, not taking his eyes off her. ‘Her name is Bell Appleshaw.’
‘Certainly, sir. And I’ll make a note that she’s your son’s nanny?’
Emil began walking briskly away. ‘That’s correct. She’s just the nanny.’
Chapter Nineteen
‘Linus?’ She sat up, the dim light playing tricks on her as she squinted into the gloom, her heart pounding deeply in her chest. ‘Is that you, sweetie?’
Her ears strained for a sound, but the silence was as enveloping as the darkness. It was a cloudy night and the moon was hiding behind tufted clouds, the resident owl silent in his tree. But someone had been in here, she could feel it – the trace of their presence like a heat, a scent left behind, her sixth sense twitching, lifting her from sleep.
Was her mind playing tricks, or had she simply been roused by something outside? A fox catching a mouse? She waited another moment, still listening hard, before she threw back the covers and walked to the windows, folding back one of the shutters. She looked out over the treetops. The dusky sky vaulted above her; the pine wood was an inky blot, the lawn silvered and . . . studded with footprints in the dew. She peered more closely into the black mass of trees, hearing now branches snapping, the flash of something pale suddenly catching the eye like quicksilver. She stared harder, her heart beating strongly again. It could have been a white hart.
But there were no deer on these islands. Everyone knew that.
She dashed across the floor and out into the long corridor, glancing down to Emil’s door at the far end; it was closed, no light shining through beneath the crack as it often did. She looked in to Linus’s room, willing herself to see what she always saw when she checked on him – Linus fast asleep and lying on his side, his body tucked up in a caterpillar curl, thumb in his mouth – a babyhood habit he had outgrown during the day but not, as yet, at night. But the scene that greeted her was unequivocal. His bed was empty, the alarm beeping on his clock again as it came off snooze . . .
‘Oh God,’ she gasped, knowing exactly what was happening. He was running away, taking the boat back to Summer Isle. But though there was no breeze, though the water would be flat, he didn’t know how to navigate the lagoon by night. He wouldn’t see the spar markers warning of the rocks that could tear the bottom of a boat . . .
She flew down the landing and stairs, neither knowing nor caring if she made any sound, stuffing her feet into a pair of wellingtons left by the back door. They were several sizes too big but she ran anyway, hearing them wallow and flap around her bare legs as she sprinted down the lawn in her t-shirt.
It felt eerie running through the trees in the dead of night. Although the sun and moon both hung in the sky like dimmed chandeliers, the fabric