They were incredulous. But surely there wasn’t all that much to do, no cleaning, for instance, no washing, no cooking, she had her three evenings off a week and her nights were never disturbed. That last part at least was true, but rather through her own determination than from any edict of theirs. She had decided from her fourth day there, her evening beginning only when James came home at nine, that no matter what happened she wouldn’t be summoned by Marcus or baby Georgia in the night, and she never had been. But in spite of her dislike of children, she suffered pangs of conscience and shame when she heard Marcus screaming at two in the morning and the baby left crying piteously. If she’d gone to them, she’d have been useless the next day, which was also perhaps Claudia’s own excuse for turning over in bed and going back to sleep.

Sometimes she told herself she was making a fuss. It was true what Claudia said, many of the jobs she had thought would fall to her lot were done by the cleaning woman. She usually got her evenings off unless the Hindes asked her to baby-sit because they had “an absolutely unbreakable engagement writ in stone,” and then they paid her for the extra hours she put in. Money was no object, money flowed. She told James at breakfast she needed to buy milk and a packet of baby porridge and he gave her a £20 note, next morning, shrugging at the change she held out to him, pushing her hand away and saying, “Keep it for next time,” but next time, no matter how she protested, another £20 or £40 or £50 was handed over. She began keeping this money.

She put it in a tin. The food delivery van brought meat and fish and fruit and vegetables and innumerable tins of fancy biscuits, cookies, crackers, wafers, cheese straws, chocolates. One of these, a small round dragée tin, she took to use as a money box. She kept it in her bedroom, on the floor of the clothes cupboard. Her stash of money quickly grew. If anyone had told her when she was a good dutiful schoolgirl in Kiruna that in a year’s time she would be stealing from her employers, she’d have laughed at them.