Chapters (56)
‘What were you doing in here?’ she said archly, and this time her suspicion was naked, angry.
I stumbled towards her. Somewhere in the house a child’s wail sounded. Coco.
‘This,’ I said, picking up a purple dummy I had just spotted on the floor. A moment of adrenalin-fuelled genius. ‘Coco’s favourite dummy. She’ll be needing this tonight, I think.’
‘Right,’ Maren said, narrowing her eyes. We both knew what happened when Coco was without her favourite dummy at night.
My heart close to bursting like a piñata through my ribcage, I walked quickly to Coco’s room before Maren’s gaze burned a hole through my back. Coco let out another desperate howl, groping around the bedclothes.
‘Here you are, darling,’ I said, slipping the dummy into her mouth.
I sat for a long while in the chair beside her crib, my heart still pounding from what I’d seen and heard in the kitchen. I had heard someone whisper my name. A woman. And I had seen her – the trail of water was proof that she had been there. I thought back to the morning I had woken to find large hoof prints in my room, leading to my bed. If it wasn’t strange enough to find actual hoof prints in the house, indicating that a creature had come in while I was sleeping and had stood over my bed, stranger still was the absence of a second set of prints from where the creature turned around and left. It hardly went out through the window. So why just one set?
After that night, I became more vigilant. Instead of writing in the evenings, I studied YouTube videos and Pinterest boards on all kinds of early learning activities. I learned all about the milestones Coco should be reaching, and how to deliver a Montessori education through drawing and play. I never found any log book, but I made one out of a notebook and kept detailed notes about the girls’ development. And every time I went near the kitchen I dived for the light switch lest some weird woman should be standing at the window. When I read to the girls, I read aloud in my new southern accent. How now brown cow. I was beginning to sound, look, and even smell like someone else. Like Sophie Hallerton.
I couldn’t prevent the truth from coming out entirely, but I could certainly do my best to stall it as long as I could. Gaia and Coco laughed more, slept better. I found some old sand bags in the nursery and stitched them to the corners of a quilt to form a weighted blanket, which had the effect of enabling Gaia to sleep in her own bed – and without screaming – for the first time. This earned me a lot of brownie points with Tom.
But when I spoke with Maren, I saw it in her face: suspicion.
10 