20ALICE
Sleep cannot come fast enough. I shower, turning the water up as hot as I can stand it, and scrub every inch of my skin before climbing inside the cool sheets and closing my eyes, longing for the blackness to descend. His mouth, his hands all over me – that’s all I can think about. It makes my skin go hot and cold, a clammy sensation shifting over my flesh as I visualise his face, his soft groans as he pawed at me. Even his unarguably handsome face and sweet-smelling body cannot help me come to terms with what I have had to do tonight: getting inside his bed, allowing him inside of me. It’s a means to an end, something I had to do to get close to him. I always knew it was going to happen. I’ve prepared for it. It doesn’t make it any easier, however. It doesn’t make me want him. Not in the same way he wants me. Ours is an asymmetrical relationship, his needs quite different to mine. His needs overshadowing everything, like the grasping hands of a spoilt, petulant child, desperate for attention.
Smashing the door panel inconvenienced them and gave me a warm glow inside. It was my starting point. A little bit of external damage, just for fun. Just because I can. They have no idea what lies ahead. No clue at all. I should pity them, being blind to the subterfuge and deception taking place right in front of them. Their minds are too idle to notice it: stuck in a rut, bogged down with grief and a desperate need to get their old life back. They don’t see me. The real me. I am invisible to them. Just as well, really.
I clear my thoughts and concentrate on slowing down my breathing until at last, the darkness settles behind my eyes and I drift into a place of shadows and weightlessness where my life is full of meaning again and I’m at the helm, steering it in the right direction.
The light streaming in through the window wakes me the following morning. I was too tired, just too damn sick and repulsed to bother closing them. I look at the clock – 6.30 a.m. Time to get up anyway. The Downeys prefer it if I take the children to school even though it’s only a ten-minute walk for them. They’re busy people, they tell me. I rub at my eyes feverishly. Too busy for their own children, even.
I get up, eat breakfast and get ready, wondering what Peter will be up to this morning. Hopefully, he will call later or send a message. I’ve got him. That’s the main thing. He is dangling on the end of my line. Today, regardless of what happens, regardless of how many demeaning chores Jack and Elizabeth throw my way, whether it be cleaning windows and scrubbing floors that haven’t even been stepped upon, I will smile and walk on air.
Everything feels effortless, fluid and requiring minimal exertion as I head to the Downeys’ house, ready for the day ahead.
I’m greeted with a deathly silence as I open the door and step inside. This isn’t unusual. The people in this house are ghosts, a family of corpses floating from one room to another with no regular interaction or true purpose. They may as well be dead.
‘Morning, Alice. Elizabeth left early this morning for a spa day in Durham. I was wondering if you could take the children to school? I’m working from home today but have a virtual meeting in half an hour.’ Jack appears bright, his manner sprightly. No signs that he is nervous about his missing items. Just like me, he is the perfect liar.
‘Of course. I’ll go and get their things ready.’
I start to head towards their playroom but he calls after me. ‘I was wondering if I could have a chat with you about something when you get back. Nothing to worry about. Just a few things I want to clear up.’
A frisson rushes through me. I turn and flash him a wide smile, doing my best to appear cool and unruffled. Which of course, I am. I’ve no reason to be nervous or afraid. I hold all the cards and have the power to crush this man. ‘Absolutely. I’ll be back in just over half an hour. I’ll set to cleaning the children’s bedrooms once I return. Feel free to come and see me when you’ve finished your meeting.’
The air is warm, the path thick with people hurrying to various destinations as we make our way to school, Fionn complaining that I’m walking too quickly and Yasmin focused on her phone.
‘You’ll need to hand that over to me once we get to the gates. You know the rules about phones in school.’
‘Whatever,’ she says curtly. ‘You’re not my mum anyway. You can’t tell me what to do.’
I stare down at little Fionn who is busy waving to his friends and rummaging in his schoolbag for his small football, and then turn to Yasmin, my fingers clutched tightly around the top of her arm, my mouth close to her ear. ‘Watch your mouth, missy. You don’t want me telling your parents about the messages you’ve been sending to people on social media now, do you?’ My voice is a hiss, tiny flecks of spittle escaping from between my pursed lips.
She stops walking, her eyes wide, her mouth slack with shock as I continue with my little hissed tirade. ‘This stays between us, okay? One word to your parents and every text and nasty, pissy little message you have ever sent will get printed off and handed over to your mum and dad. Now change your attitude and start treating me with a bit of fucking respect, yes?’
She is nodding now, her eyes brimming with tears, her cheeks crimson with fear. Good. I have had enough of her shitty little attitude. Nine going on nineteen. She is a child. Enough is enough.
‘Bye, Alice.’ Fionn gives me a fist bump as we reach the school before running off to greet his little pals. He’s a cute kid really – privileged and isolated but unlike his sister, hasn’t yet developed an icy attitude. The attitude of a privileged child who is cocksure yet has been nowhere and experienced nothing of note.
‘Phone.’ I hold out my upturned palm and watch with satisfaction as Yasmin hands it over without question, her slightly freckled skin still red with shock and fear. ‘Always remember,’ I say icily, ‘I’m the grown-up around here. What I say goes.’
She is nodding now, her brain possibly trying to work out which of her messages I’ve read. The truth is, I haven’t seen any of them but I’ve met many girls like Yasmin before – feisty, aloof creatures, so firm in their belief that they are deserving of only the best that life can offer them, brimming to full with entitlement that I took a stab at the kind of texts and missives she sends to friends and enemies alike and hit gold. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to work it out. I’ve seen the way she greets her friends, heard the way she speaks to them and about them. Yasmin is an Elizabeth Downey in the making. Like mother, like daughter. Spoilt, spiteful creatures interested only in themselves.
‘I’m sorry,’ she squeaks, her body seeming to shrink before my eyes.
‘It’s fine,’ I say coolly. ‘And as I say, if we keep this between ourselves, then there’s no reason for your parents to be told, is there?’
More nodding. She bites at her lip and makes an attempt at linking her arm through mine. I give her a brief tap of acknowledgement and shrug her off. ‘Right. Off you go. I’ll see you later.’
And then she is gone, her small, lithe body swallowed up by the crowd of youngsters heading through the gates, all decked out in their silly straw boaters and bottle-green blazers. This place is so far removed from the school I attended, an alien environment full of rich children, their path in life already mapped out with a large pot of gold at the end of it, that it may as well be another planet, another universe even. My school was the local comprehensive full of disadvantaged, disaffected youngsters with no real aim or aspirations in life. Just getting through the day was a challenge for them. As a child, I came from an average, working-class family and we lived in a fairly average house. I went to university despite my humble beginnings, and that was where I met my husband. I thought I had it all sorted. I thought we would grow old together. How wrong I was.
I turn and walk back to the house, a jumble of thoughts crowding my head, jockeying for position in my brain. I force them out of my mind and focus on the Downey family. If Jack has a study, why did he choose to leave his packet in the library? And then I realise that Elizabeth spends time in the study but rarely visits the library. Perhaps Jack has done this type of thing before and she is aware of it. Who knows how these people operate? I cannot begin to fathom their thinking. We are very different beasts, the Downeys and me. They think of me as the servant and nanny, and until discovering Jack’s tawdry little secrets, I didn’t think of them at all. They pay my wages and that’s where my allegiance to them starts and ends.
Jack’s Jaguar is the cleanest vehicle I have ever seen; those are my thoughts as I arrive back at the house and make my way up the driveway. Fitted with all the top-of-the range gadgets, it is a target for criminal damage. Even areas such as this one, a leafy suburb on the outskirts of York, can be susceptible to bouts of crime. It would be such a pity if one day, he were to come out and find that somebody had gouged the paintwork or slashed the tyres. A terrible, terrible shame.
He’s standing with his back to me in the hallway as I enter and take off my jacket, hanging it up on the coat peg in the small vestibule tucked away next to the stairwell. He turns, his face half hidden, his phone clamped to his ear. He holds up his hand for me to wait, turns back again, mumbling into the mobile, telling whoever it is that he will speak to them later, and ends the call.
‘Alice. Thank you for taking the children to school.’
I want to tell him that I do it every morning and pick them up again every evening and although it pains me to say it, that it is part of my job, unlike the cleaning tasks they put my way which is a different remit altogether, but remain silent, nodding instead and lowering my eyes obediently.
‘Not a problem. They’re lovely children. You must be very proud of them.’
This catches him unawares. I don’t imagine he spends a great deal of time thinking about his children and how they present themselves to the outside world. Why would he? Jack Downey is a busy man, an important man in the world of commerce. They are, after all, just children. His children. Children I will probably never be able to have. I have no partner and up until recently, no hope either.
‘Well, yes. Quite,’ he says, his eyes slightly glassy as he attempts to put the conversation back on course with him controlling the direction it takes. He puts his phone in his pocket and steps closer to me. ‘Anyway, I just wanted to chat to you about that missing medication again. And the receipt.’ His tone has changed. Less bluster, a more direct and authoritative inflection in his voice. It carries across the empty hallway, imposing and confident.
I brace myself, the words I plan on saying already formulated in my head.
‘You see, the thing is, Alice, what you may not realise is that we have cameras in this house.’ He takes another step closer to me, steel in his glare, his body straight, his face chiselled and harsh. ‘We have cameras in the hallway and in the library. And I checked those cameras last night, so I don’t think I need to spell it out to you, do I?’ His hands are balled into fists, his jaw pulsing as he clamps his mouth together tightly and chews at his bottom lip.
I guessed about the cameras. I didn’t know it for sure but people like the Downeys living in a house like this are bound to be serious when it comes to security. His words don’t faze me and neither does his aggressive stance. Whichever way this situation is viewed, I still have the upper hand.
‘Well, maybe you do. You see,’ I murmur, moving back from the heat of his body, the slightly rancid odour of his breath, ‘whichever way you look at this, I’m not the one stashing class-A drugs in a house where children are present. Nor am I the one conducting an illicit affair behind my spouse’s back.’
The colour leaches from his face. This, he didn’t expect. I presume he was prepared for a weeping, apologetic, subservient nanny who begs to keep her job, promising she will never do such a thing again, asking if they can they keep it a secret between the pair of them because she needs this money and to lose her position would be the ruin of her. Blah blah blah…
