Tears dripped from my face as I packed my bags. I was going home. Tom was so outraged I thought I’d be dragged off to prison, but I think I managed to earn some sympathy by begging him to hear my side of things. I told him about overhearing the real Sophie Hallerton on the train. I told him I was only on the train in the first place because I was homeless, and that I had attempted suicide not long before that. I showed him the scars, and he seemed shocked. I promised him I loved his daughters, that I’d done everything in my power to be a proper nanny to them. To care for them as Aurelia would have wanted. He softened at this.

‘Pack your things at once,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘I’ll arrange for you to be transported to the airport this afternoon.’

‘But Daddy!’ Gaia shrieked at the top of her lungs. ‘What about Dora?’

‘Dora?’

Tom clearly hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, because he said, ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Then it dawned on him. He followed Gaia’s guilty, petrified gaze to the corner of the room cordoned off with heavy curtains. Tom yanked one of them aside and looked at Dora in her den, perched on her tree branch.

He spun around and glared at me in disgust.

‘You’re kidding me. You’ve kept that bird in here all this time?’

‘She’s a little nervous about flying, Daddy,’ Gaia offered gingerly. ‘But we’re working on her courage. She likes pine nuts, but you have to mash them up and feed them to her with your mouth …’

‘Get out,’ Tom spat at me. I turned on my heel and walked quickly out of the room.

I folded my clothes and placed them one by one in the suitcase. Then I quickly emptied the drawer of my bedside table of all the drawings and notes Gaia had done for me. A painting of unicorns dancing underneath a rainbow with ‘I love you Sophie’ written in the corner. Another drawing of four figures walking hand in hand through trees. The four figures were Gaia, Coco, Aurelia, and me. A bird flew in the background. Dora.