‘Lucky.’ Sighing, she took hold of her toddler’s arm and steered her out to the patio. ‘He’s precious, enjoy him.’

Just a throw-away moment, but I felt a faint glow of happiness that someone thought I could be Carson’s mother. I didn’t know the prosecution would somehow dig that woman up, and at my trial she would testify that I’d told her Carson was mine. She was backed up by the cashier at the coffee shop, who had remembered the conversation. She knew it wasn’t true that I was Carson’s mother, because Abby was in there all the time, and since a British teenager was much more likely to be a nanny than a mother round here. The little things we do that damn us.

Back at the house, I was surprised to see the blender still unwashed and the greasy breakfast dishes. The washing machine was also silent, a stack of dirty baby clothes in front of it where I’d left them.

‘Marietta?’ I called out.

No answer. The house seemed empty. I carried Carson through it, my flip-flops echoing on the patio, where Abby sat with a script and half a grapefruit, all she would eat until four in the afternoon.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Is Marietta not here today?’

Abby was wearing huge sunglasses and black Lycra. She turned the page, coolly.

‘No. Or any day.’

‘What?’

‘I fired her. She overstepped her boundaries.’ Abby turned her blank, reflective gaze on me. ‘Let that be a lesson to you, Casey. I don’t tolerate people breaking my confidence. What happens in this house stays in this house.’

I knew immediately I had done this. Marietta had brought it up with Abby, Madison’s bruises, and she had been fired for it.

‘But – what will she do?’

I knew so little about Marietta, I realised. Had she family, a husband to support her?

Abby shrugged. ‘Her visa’s tied to her job, so I guess she’ll be sent back to wherever she came from, or she’ll disappear.’

And that was indeed what happened. My defence could not trace Marietta for my trial, and there was no one to back me up. When Madison’s teacher, Miss Oliver, testified that she’d told me about the bruises, there was no one to say that I’d done anything about it. And Abby could not be questioned, of course, because she was dead, her throat cut and bleeding out over the kitchen floor I’d mopped so many times.

Rachel

Rachel

I crouched under the table in an uncomfortable squat, peering out through a fold in the sheet. Would Alex come into this room? If he found me, how could I explain myself? I’d thought I was doing so well, moving on from the trauma of America, but here I was, behaving like a crazy person. Like a criminal, in fact.