Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pags
Release Date: January 8, 2019
Publisher: Berkley
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thrillers / Suspense
The Au Pair, by author Emma Rous, is an almost Gothic web
with her dual narrative of a young woman, Seraphine Mayes, in search of the truth, and a
second young narrator, Laura Silveira, who is drawn into the world of the enigmatic Mayes
family. The story itself alternates between Seraphine in 2017 and
Laura Silveira, the Au Pair for the Mayes family during the years of
1991 through 1992.
Seraphine is still in shock over her father Dominic’s death when
she finds a puzzling photo while going through his papers. Their
family is no stranger to tragedy since her mother, Ruth, committed
suicide the day she gave birth to Seraphine and her twin brother Danny. The picture is of Seraphine's mother Ruth holding a newborn baby. Seraphine realizes the photo was
taken on the day Seraphine and her twin brother Danny were born, she wonders
why only one baby is in the family photo?
Where is the second baby? Even
more curious, why does her mother look so peaceful and happy moments
before throwing herself off the seaside cliffs? Seraphine has never felt like she fit in with her family so she cannot
help but worry this picture holds the truth about her. Her older
brother Edwin provides a vital clue when he mentions his former au pair
Laura Silveira took the photo. Seraphine immediately begins searching
for her although she is not certain she is ready for answers to her
questions.
After Laura refuses to speak to her, Seraphine persists. She reaches out to quite a few people as she tries to unearth the truth.
After a few scary occurrences, Seraphine has clearly rattled someone
who wants the secrets of the past to remain buried. She is not ready to
give up her quest despite her fears and her brothers’ pleas. Will
Seraphine unravel the mystery that continues to plague her? Who holds the secrets to her mother's final day and why are they threatening her for trying to uncover them?
The Au Pair is a suspenseful mystery with an eerie setting and a
clever storyline. The cast of characters are superbly developed with
realistic strengths and all too human weaknesses. Seraphine’s quest for
the truth in the present is interesting and she does not allow anyone
to dissuade her from finding answers. Laura’s chapters paint a picture of a somewhat troubled family who has shouldered more than their fair share of tragedy.
Such a discombobulated family. Thanks be to God that it's not mine. The ending really is strange and absolutely out there. Yes, it kind of makes sense, but it's like watching an episode of Maury when he does the tests to determine who the parents of the child really are only to find out that everything is totally freaking not what you expected.
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1
Seraphine
August 2017
We
have no photographs of our early days, Danny and I. A six-month gap
yawns in the Mayes family album after we were born. No
first-day-at-school pictures for Edwin, no means of telling which of us
two looked more like him at the beginning. An empty double page marks
the overwhelming grief that followed our arrival.
It’s
a muggy evening at Summerbourne, and the unopened window in the study
muffles the distant rasp of the sea and leaves my skin clammy. I’ve
spent the day creating paperwork towers that cluster around the shredder
now, their elongated shadows reminding me of the graveyard. If Edwin
has finished his packing, he’ll be waiting for me downstairs; he
disapproves of me doing this so soon, or perhaps disapproves of me doing
it at all.
The
swivel chair tilts with me as I grab another photo wallet from the
bottom desk drawer-more landscape shots of my father’s, I expect-and I
focus on the wall calendar as I straighten, counting red-rimmed squares.
Twenty days since my father’s accident. Eight days since his funeral.
The packet flaps open and spills glossy black negatives across the
carpet, and my jaw tightens. I’ve lost count of how many days since I
last slept.
The
first photo is of Edwin on the beach as a child, and I check the date
on the back: June 1992, just weeks before Danny and I were born. I study
this four-year-old version of my big brother for any sign of awareness
of the family catastrophe that was looming, but of course there is none:
he’s laughing, squinting against the bright sunlight, pointing a
plastic spade toward a dark-haired young woman at the edge of the image.
Photos
of seagulls and sunsets follow, and I shuffle through them until I
reach the final picture: a domestic scene both recognizable and
unfamiliar. The hairs at the base of my skull prickle, and I hold my
breath, and the air in the room presses closer, as if it too is
straining to absorb the details.
We
grew up with no photos of our early days, Danny and I. Yet here is our
mother, sitting on the patio at Summerbourne, her face tilted down
toward a swaddled baby cradled in her arms. Here is our father, standing
on one side of her, young Edwin on the other side, both beaming proudly
at the camera.
I
bend closer over the image: my mother, before she left us. The details
of her expression are hazy, the picture poorly focused, yet she radiates
a calm composure from the neatness of her hair, the angle of her cheek,
the curve of her body around the single infant. She shows none of the
wild-eyed distress that has always haunted my imagination in the absence
of anyone willing to describe her final hours to me.
I
flip the photo over, and my father’s distinctive scrawl confirms it was
taken on the day we were born, just over twenty-five years ago. I
already know it could be no later, because on the same day Danny and I
were born, our mother jumped from the cliffs behind our house and killed
herself.
My bare feet make no noise on the stairs.
A
duffel bag lurks by the hall table, snagging at my dressing gown as I
sweep past. I find Edwin leaning against the wooden countertop in the
unlit kitchen, gazing through the wide glass doors toward the shadows in
the garden.
“Look at this.” I flick on the lights. “I’ve never seen this before.”
He takes the picture, blinking.
“Me
neither,” he says. He studies it. “The day you were born. I didn’t know
we had this, but…yeah, I think I remember it being taken.” It’s the
first time I’ve seen him smile in days. “Dad looks so young. Look at
that. Mum looks so…”
“Happy,” I say.
“Yeah.” His tone is soft; his attention absorbed in the picture.
“Not like someone who’s about to commit suicide.”
His smile fades.
I twitch the picture from his fingers and scrutinize it. “Why’s she only holding one of us? Is it me or Danny?”
“I’ve
no idea. What’s this one?” Edwin reaches for the other photo I brought
down-him laughing on the beach with the dark-haired teenager. “Oh, this
was Laura. I remember her. She was nice.”
“Your
au pair?” I ask. Now that he says her name, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen
her in the family photo album. The young woman who looked after Edwin in
those carefree days before we were born, when he still had a mother and
no need of the full-time roster of nannies that Danny and I grew up
with.
“She’s
the one who took this,” Edwin says, reaching again for the photo of our
mother holding the single baby, but I keep my grip on it and take it
with me to the kitchen table. I drop onto a chair and straighten the
picture in front of me, smoothing a curled corner with my thumb.
“It’s odd,” I say. “It’s staged, like you were marking the occasion. You’d think they’d have made sure both of us were in it.”
Edwin shakes his head. “I don’t know. I guess-there was other stuff going on we don’t know about.”
“But
Mum looks so calm here.” I frown at the picture. “I know-I do know why
we never had any baby photos. Everyone in shock after Mum died. But I
can’t believe-I’ve finally found one-and I don’t even know if it’s me or
Danny in it.”
“Here,”
Edwin says. “I’ll take it-I’ll ask Gran about it.” He reaches for it
again, but I press my thumb more firmly onto the corner.
“Gran never wants to talk about these things,” I say. “No one ever does.”
Edwin
sighs. “You need to get some sleep, Seph-do you want to try one of
Gran’s pills? Maybe get dressed tomorrow, go out for a walk or
something.” He rubs his eyes briefly. “Things will get easier, you
know.”
“Do
you think we could find Laura?” I ask him. “If she’s the one who took
the picture, maybe she could tell us…” I bend closer over the image,
gazing at my mother’s hair, the way she cradles the baby. “This was
literally a few hours before Mum died, wasn’t it? This was the day
everything here changed.”
“Seraphine,” Edwin says.
I
look up at him. “And we don’t know why. And now Dad’s gone, we might
never…” The injustice of our situation-of growing up without a mother
and now losing our father in such a senseless accident-comes crashing
down on me again.
Edwin’s
gaze travels from my unwashed hair to the coffee stain on my dressing
gown, and then he squeezes his eyes shut. “Okay, I’m going to stay
another night. I can’t leave you like this. I’ll ring work first thing
and explain.”
“No.”
I slide the photo away across the table and roll my shoulders,
stretching my neck. “Don’t be silly. I’m fine, honestly. I guess I was
just wondering, really, where Laura went. Afterward.”
Edwin
watches me. I concentrate on relaxing my facial muscles, dredging up an
expression of unconcerned interest. He sighs again.
“She
left after Mum died. I’ve no idea where she went. And she’d be-what? In
her forties by now. Even if you knew where she was, you couldn’t just
turn up on her doorstep complaining that one of you got missed out of a
photo twenty-five years ago. She’d think you were nuts.”
I
nod, and Edwin pushes himself off from the countertop, heading to the
hall. The corner of the photo lifts again, and I draw it slowly back
toward me.
“But if she could tell us what happened-”
He pauses in the doorway. “We know what happened, Seph. Mum was ill. She took her own life. We can’t change that.”
I press my lips together.
“Do
you want me to stay?” he asks. “I can stay another night. Or, look-pack
a bag and come back with me? Go out with Danny tomorrow, have lunch
with Gran. Take your mind off things.”
I
grit my teeth. For almost three weeks I’ve had my brothers and my
grandmother staying at Summerbourne with me, handling funeral
arrangements and solicitors and condolence visits. I can’t begin to
express to Edwin how desperately thirsty I am now for solitude.
“No,
honestly, I’m fine,” I say. “You need to go. It’s late.” I fold my
hands in my lap and try to smile at him. “I’ll go to bed now. I might
come up at the weekend.”
“Joel’s staying at Michael’s-I could ask him to look in on you, check you’re okay?”
I
can’t suppress a groan. “Oh, please don’t.” I’d found it awkward enough
shaking Joel’s hand at Dad’s funeral; I hadn’t realized he was staying
with his grandfather, our old gardener, Michael, just down the lane.
“Well, could you ask someone over tomorrow?” Edwin asks. “A friend…someone from work…?”
His
gaze slides away as I shrug. I’ve never felt much need for friendships,
never nurtured them, and this baffles my big brother. I think of the
phrase Danny uses about Edwin occasionally-“he’s not disappointed in
you, Seraphine, he’s disappointed for you”-Danny’s wry tone softening
the thorny truth of it. Not for the first time, I swallow down my
frustrated response. I’m fine as I am, Edwin. Leave me alone.
I
allow him to hug me at the front door, leaning against him for a
moment, inhaling the honeysuckle scent of the fabric conditioner that
our grandmother uses on our clothes when she stays here. When I pull
back, I keep my gaze lowered to avoid having to look at the tension
creases around his eyes.
“Get some sleep, Seph,” he says.
“I will.”
Back
Laura Silveira was eighteen years old in 1991, and her home address was in London.
I
type her name into my phone, then try the address, but come up with
nothing that convincingly fits a woman who worked here as an au pair
over twenty-five years ago. I carry the form down to the sitting room
and pull out the family photo album that covers 1991 and 1992, gingerly
turning the pages that show life at Summerbourne during her eleven
months of employment here, up until the blank double page when we were
born.
She
appears in only half a dozen pictures. The clearest is labeled Edwin
with Laura in my mother’s spiky handwriting, and as I tilt the page to
peer at it more closely, the ancient adhesive gives up, and the photo
slides free of its transparent cover and into my hand.
I
gaze at Laura’s image. In the other pictures, she’s on the margins,
glancing away, the focus on Edwin and frequently his best friend, Joel.
In this one she smiles at the camera as she holds Edwin’s hand in front
of the rock pools. She’s tall, athletic, with a mass of dark hair tied
back. The agency document says she was taking a year out to repeat her
A-level exams following “difficult circumstances at home.” I study her
face. Were there complex emotions within her smile? To me, she simply
looks happy.
The
sun has set, but the heat of the August day lingers. I prop the family
photo on my bedside table, and the eyes of my so-much-younger father and
brother follow me as I roam restlessly around my room.
It
was never a taboo subject exactly, my mother’s suicide, but we were
only given a limited amount of information as we were growing up. Seeing
her in this picture, gazing calmly down at her indistinct bundle,
contradicts everything I’ve ever imagined about that day, and reminds me
forcibly that there’s no chance now of ever hearing the full details
from my dad. But if Laura was there-if Laura saw what happened between
this photo being taken and our mother jumping-perhaps I don’t have to
spend the rest of my life not knowing after all.
I
shove the previous night’s nest of sheets off the bed and stretch out
flat on my back, my fingers splayed, as I wait for a hint of breeze from
the open window.
Inside
the red-black of my eyelids flicker the faces of children who were a
few years above me at the village school-sly-tongued kids who used to
call us the sprite twins, and ask me repeatedly why I didn’t look like
my brothers. Vera, my grandmother, used to tell me they only taunted me
because I reacted with fury, unlike Danny, who could shrug any teasing
off with a laugh.
Bird
chatter rouses me, creeping through my window with the first rays of
sunlight, and I’m not sure whether I was asleep a moment ago or just
lost in my thoughts. A plan is already unfurling behind my gritty
eyelids. By seven o’clock I am showered and dressed, with more energy
and purpose in my limbs than I’ve felt in the three weeks since Dad
died. I tap Laura’s old postcode into my GPS and join the flow of
traffic from the coast to the capital, a three-hour journey that often
swells to four.
Laura’s
old address turns out to be a neat terraced house with a semicircle of
brightly stained glass in its front door. There’s a small park across
the road, surrounded by green painted railings that gleam in the late
morning sunshine as if they’ve just been polished. I hesitate on the
pavement, imagining suspicious eyes watching me from behind the pristine
net curtains. For several heartbeats I consider walking away, but I
grit my teeth and knock.
The man who answers is grinning before I even finish my question.
“I’m looking for a Laura Silveira who lived here twenty-five years ago. Do you happen to know where I might find her?”
He has a large hooked nose and a bald head, and he fills the narrow doorway.
“You from that posh family she used to live with?” he asks.
I blink at him. His gaze travels over my linen shift dress down to my cream ballet pumps, and he curls his lip, still grinning.
“Wait there. I’ll get her mum. She knows where she works.” He shuts the door in my face.
Great cover and after reading the blurb, I am curious about the missing baby.
ReplyDeletesherry @ fundinmental