‘What else did she tell you?’ I ask Lou.
‘That they’re leaving the country. Moving to America.’
‘When?’
‘In the summer. She didn’t say where they were going more specifically. Just said America.’
‘If they’re leaving in the summer, why take Thomas out of school now? Why not let him finish the term?’
‘Exactly. That’s what I thought,’ says Lou.
If Thomas remains at school, other people can observe his behaviour, and the behaviour of anyone who goes there to drop him off or collect him. And that’s the last thing they want.
‘There’s more,’ Lou says. ‘I told her – Yanina, assuming it was her – that she needed to talk to the head about something as important as that. I can’t just cancel school places and take children off lists without it going via the head. There’s all kinds of things to do with notice and fees that need to be dealt with. She said, okay, she’d ring the head. Then the phone rang again, straight away, and I answered it, and it was him: Mr Cater. “I believe you just spoke to my wife?” he said.’
‘Go on.’
‘He then tried to tell me the same thing. It was as if he thought it might work better if it came from him. I thought he was going to quibble about money and the notice period, try and save himself a term’s fees, but he didn’t.’
‘Why did you think he would?’
‘He’s complained about the fees before, many times – which got me thinking. Most parents pay as soon as they receive the bill, but some don’t. A handful always wait until we send our final demand. I’m talking every term. I don’t know what they think will happen. Maybe they hope that one day we’ll forget to chase them up about it.’
‘Are the Caters part of this late-paying group?’ I ask, trying not to spill Coke as I press the cold bottle against my forehead. It’s too bright. I can’t stay out here for much longer.
‘Yup,’ says Lou. ‘Anyway, I told Mr Cater the same as I’d told Yanina – that he’d need to speak to the head. Then I emailed the head and the bursar and told them what had happened, the nanny pretending to be Mrs Cater, and the bursar sent a reply saying exactly what I’d thought: that there would probably be some wrangling over the notice period in a last-ditch attempt to save some cash, and then she said something else – one line that leaped out at me.’
‘What line?’ I ask.
‘Let me get it up on my screen,’ Lou says. ‘Here it is: “I don’t know why the Caters complain about cost – it’s not like the money’s coming out of their accounts.”’
‘They don’t pay Thomas’s school fees? Then who does?’
‘That’s what I wondered. I emailed straight back and asked.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She had no idea. As long as the fees arrive, no one questions whose account they come from. Sometimes it’s a grandparent paying the fees. In this case … well, it doesn’t sound like that’s what’s going on here, given what you’ve told me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Thomas Cater’s school fees so far, and Emily’s deposit to reserve her a place, have all been paid from a bank account based in Florida.’
‘What’s the name of the account?’ I ask, thinking the answer to my own question at the same time.
As if she’s reading my mind, Lou says, ‘Lewis Braid.’
An hour later I’m sitting on the floor in the middle of my hotel room, waiting for my swirling thoughts to arrange themselves into some kind of recognisable order. The sun’s edging away from me inch by inch, as if it doesn’t want to get involved in whatever mess I’ve got myself embroiled in. There’s a hollow feeling in my stomach. I should probably order something to eat, but every time I try to think about where I might have put the room service menu, my brain slides back to what it prefers to think about.
Lewis Braid. Lewis is paying the school fees of Thomas and Emily Cater.
That could make sense. They’re his children, and he has plenty of money. There’s only one problem with this explanation, and it’s a significant one: according to Flora, Kevin Cater doesn’t know Thomas and Emily are Lewis’s. He believes they’re his. Doesn’t he wonder why his wife’s ex-husband is willing to pay the school fees of her children from her second marriage?
Is it possible he doesn’t know that Lewis pays the fees? Perhaps Flora has told him they’re coming out of a separate bank account she’s got that her parents have put money into, or something like that. Or maybe Kevin knows that Lewis plans to pay for Thomas and Emily’s schooling, doesn’t care why, and is simply happy to be spared the expense.
None of these theories satisfies me. I think about my encounters with Kevin and Yanina – not what I’ve been told about them by anyone else, only what I’ve witnessed and experienced myself. The confident way they produced the photograph of two completely different children … Toby and Emma. And then they told PC Pollard they’d given those names because they were afraid I was a dangerous obsessive.
I shake my head, though there’s no one here to see me do it. Kevin and Yanina weren’t afraid of me. They knew I was no danger to the children at Newnham House. They were attempting to manipulate me, and confident they’d succeed. I know this is true, because I was there.
I trust my senses, my instincts and my judgement. I always have, but since that first Saturday on Wyddial Lane, I trust myself even more.
What does your judgement say about Kevin and Yanina?
I’ve been so busy puzzling over Flora, Lewis and the children that, until now, I haven’t spent much time thinking specifically about Kevin and the nanny. She might not be a nanny – that’s the first thing that occurs to me. A Ukrainian nanny with a foreign accent is so easy to believe in. It’s a familiar stereotype, and people rarely question those. More likely, Yanina is a woman who happens to have an accent that isn’t English, and who’s in the house for some other reason, not to look after Thomas and Emily.
What kind of nanny collects a child from school and doesn’t even make eye contact with him? And why would anyone – Lewis, Kevin, any person in charge of children – invest in full-time live-in childcare when they won’t spend a much smaller amount on new school shoes to replace ones that are literally falling apart?
The more I focus on them, the more convinced I am that Kevin and Yanina are central to whatever’s happening at Newnham House. They aren’t just two minor players in a drama created by Flora and Lewis, a drama they don’t fully understand because many of the details have been kept from them. Flora lied about that, like she lied about Kevin being happy not to pry into the details of her past life. Of course he’d want to know what had made his wife feel she had to rush off to Florida with almost no notice to be with her ex-husband. Any husband would. Most, I think, would raise significant objections.
Kevin Cater didn’t mind at all. He was in his element when I met him, all ready to pretend the nanny was his wife for the benefit of anyone who happened to drop by. He played the part of the innocent, inconvenienced family man brilliantly. They could have told Dom and me then that Yanina was the nanny, but they decided, probably after discussing it with Lewis, that it would be more effective to have her play the part of Jeanette Cater. The hope, the assumption, was that I’d then think she must have been the dark-haired woman I’d seen outside the house with the two children. She thought she and her partners in deception were going to deal with me easily, neutralise the threat, persuade me to doubt my own perceptions and believe the lies instead, believe that my mind was playing tricks on me. Lewis will have said to them all, ‘Don’t worry about Beth Leeson. We can handle her, as long as we all stick to the script.’