Page 61 of The Perfect Guests
There’s a pause, and then Nina makes a gesture of defeat. “Well, okay, then. Put her back in the study if you have to. I’ll come and wait with you, until the police get here.”
Leonora stalks away and shuts herself in the study again. Nazleen turns the key on her this time, and the tension in my shoulders eases slightly as I follow Nina into the once-familiar drawing room, where Zach and the old man are huddled by a modest fire in the grate.
Sadie is safe. The police are on their way. And not only is Nina here, she’s chosen to come with me rather than wait with Leonora. Despite everything, Nina still trusts me.
Leonora rarely visits their local market town—they have everything they need delivered to Raven Hall, after all—but she does enjoy these occasional trips out. Perhaps she should do this more often.
She buys herself a necklace that catches her fancy. A new shirt for Markus. A Cabbage Patch doll for Nina’s upcoming ninth birthday. Then she pauses in front of the bakery window and eyes up the cakes. She’ll buy three doughnuts. Markus and Nina will be waiting for her to return home for lunch. They can eat these out on the veranda afterward, where Nina can scatter sugar to her heart’s content.
Tucking the paper bag in with her other purchases, she strolls back to the car park, and that’s when she sees it: the mink-blue Ford Capri.
Outwardly, she freezes, but inside, her heart is pounding, her muscles tense and ready to run. She scans the car park twice, three times. There’s no sign of the Capri’s owner. A young couple passes her, casting her wary looks, and she darts across to her own car, to start the engine with trembling fingers.
She needs to get home. She needs to get back to the safety of Raven Hall. Her shopping lies forgotten in the car park as she escapes the town.
When she reaches the village, she presses her sunglasses more firmly against her nose, and she keeps her gaze fixed on the road ahead, her fingers rigid on the steering wheel, until she emerges on the other side. And then, out on the lane, a good few hundred yards from the top of Raven Hall’s driveway, she sees Nina whizzing toward her on her little blue bike. Leonora slams on her brakes. She leaps out, into the middle of the road.
“What are you doing?” She grabs her daughter by the arm and shoves her into the back seat of the car.
“Mummy, my bike—”
“You mustn’t leave Raven Hall,” she shouts at her. “You must never come this far, not by yourself.”
“But I was coming to meet you—”
“What if someone saw you?” She shakes Nina’s arm to make sure she’s listening. “Do you hear me? You stay close to home, okay? You mustn’t come this far again.”
By the time they pull up outside the house, Nina is sobbing hysterically. Markus gives Leonora a despairing look.
“Did you have to be so hard on her?”
She reaches out and tries to stroke her daughter’s hair, but Nina flinches away from her.
“Daddy will go back and get your bike,” she says, her voice soft now with guilt. “I’m sorry, Nina. I was frightened. You could have been hit by a car; anything could have happened...”
Markus scoops the little girl out of the back seat. “It’s okay, sweetie. Mummy didn’t mean to scare you.”
Leonora reaches out to touch Nina again as Markus carries her up the steps in his arms, and this time Nina doesn’t turn away. She gazes back at Leonora, watching her shut the front door firmly behind them, watching her lean back against it with a sigh of relief. Even after Markus has setNina down, wiped her tearstained cheeks, and gone to fetch her a chocolate biscuit, her eyes are still fixed on her mother.
“You just have to remember,” Leonora tells her, as gently as she can. “It’s very important, Nina. You must never leave Raven Hall without us. It isn’t safe.”
Sadie
Sadie still has that hollow feeling in her head, but she’s convinced there’s something else wrong with her too. Her body is on full alert, as if an invisible threat were constantly behind her, ducking out of sight each time she glances over her shoulder. She frowns at the back of Beth’s head as she follows her into the drawing room.
Zach gazes at Nina as they take their seats, and his expression slides from bemusement to surprise.
“Oh, hi,” he says to Nina. “I thought you’d left.”
Sadie knows she’s missed something. She was so thrown to discover the stranger at the door was Nina—the woman her mother describes as once being like asisterto her—that she’d barely registered that Nina looked vaguely familiar too. She studies her now, trying to work out where she’s seen her before.
Nina accepts a cup of tea from Nazleen, and she smiles at Zach.
“Yeah, I was hoping for a good night’s sleep, but I had a bad dream, and when I got up for a glass of water, I looked out the window and saw smoke...”
Finally, Sadie recognizes her. “You were the photographer lastnight, weren’t you?” Her gaze roams over Nina’s hair and face. “You looked different, then. Your hair was covered...”
“Keeps it out the way of the lens.” Nina gives Sadie a puzzled look. “Didn’t you recognize me when you opened the door just now?”
