The Babysitter Read online

  Praise for Phoebe Morgan

  ‘A spine-chilling tale’

  The Sun

  ‘Utterly compelling’

  Woman

  ‘A compelling page-turner’

  Fiona Cummins, author of Rattle

  ‘A terrific read!’

  Cass Green, author of In a Cottage in a Wood

  ‘Utterly absorbing, I couldn’t put this thrilling whodunit down’

  C. L. Taylor, Sunday Times bestselling author of Sleep

  ‘Claustrophobic and unsettling!’

  Lisa Hall, author of Between You and Me

  ‘A real page-turner’

  B A Paris, bestselling author of Behind Closed Doors

  ‘Unsettling… I read this with a growing sense of dread’

  Louise Jensen, author of The Sister

  ‘Keeps the reader captivated until the final twist’

  Jane Corry, Sunday Times bestselling author of My Husband’s Wife

  ‘Crackles with twists and turns’

  Amanda Jennings, author of The Cliff House

  ‘Impossible to put down!’

  Isabel Ashdown, author of Little Sister

  ‘So clever… I didn’t guess the ending at all!’

  Laura Marshall, author of Friend Request

  PHOEBE MORGAN is an author and editor. She studied English at Leeds University after growing up in the Suffolk countryside. She edits commercial fiction for a publishing house during the day and writes her own books in the evenings. Phoebe lives in London and you can follow her on Twitter @Phoebe_A_Morgan, or find her website about publishing and writing at phoebemorganauthor.com. She is the author of The Doll House and The Girl Next Door, and The Babysitter is her third book. Her novels have been translated into multiple languages and are available in the US, Canada, France, Croatia, Italy, Estonia, Norway, Portugal and more.

  The Babysitter

  Phoebe Morgan

  ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

  Copyright © Phoebe Morgan 2020

  Phoebe Morgan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Ebook Edition © May 2020 ISBN: 9780008314880

  Version 2020-03-04

  Note to Readers

  This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

  Change of font size and line height

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  Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008314873

  For my girlfriends.

  Every penny from these books is going towards our

  shared home where we’ll live when we’re all eighty and

  can’t tolerate anyone else apart from each other.

  What I don’t understand is what happened to the baby. That poor little mite. How did she get caught up in all this? It’s enough to make your blood run cold. She was already on our nursery list. I hope to God they find her.

  – Penny Speller, owner at Mulberry Bush Nursery School, Ipswich

  We didn’t know anything about it. Not until the police arrived. I’ve never seen so many police. I think they were digging behind that row of flats, not far from the harbour.

  – Margaret Parkinson, 42 Ludgate Road, Ipswich

  I think any one of them could have done it. I mean, why did they bugger off to France? Bit convenient, don’t you think?

  – Graham Smith, Facebook Group [346 replies]

  We need to remember, there’s a woman dead too. Caroline Harvey’s life matters. #RIPCaroline.

  – @rainbows55, Twitter

  It was the husband. It’s ALWAYS the husband.

  – Michelle Rhodes, to her book group over wine [nods of agreement: 5]

  Look. All I want is for us to be able to get the story. The whole story of what happened that night. Our readers deserve the truth. Don’t they?

  – Jessica Coutts, News Editor at the East Anglian Daily Times

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Readers

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  France

  13th August

  Siobhan

  The day my husband is arrested on suspicion of murder is the hottest of the year. Sweat is clinging to the underside of my arms; my top, hastily thrown on at the sound of the bell echoing through the house, is unflatteringly tight around my stomach, dark lines of perspiration beginning to appear on the clingy white material. The bell is an old-fashioned one, pulled by a thin piece of rope hanging by the door of the villa, and t
he noise of it wakes all of us up – me, Callum, our daughter Emma and my sister Maria. My eyes alight on the digital clock – it is 09.03 and we have all slept late. We are on holiday. France is in the grip of a heatwave; already, it is 33 degrees.

  We came to France two days ago, to stay at Maria’s holiday house in a tiny village on the baking north-west coast: Saint Juillet, overlooked by a rocky peak that shades part of the garden. There is no police station in the village – just a tiny church that seats forty, a fancy restaurant overlooking the hills, a Saturday fish stall, and a boulangerie, the opening hours of which are random and confusing. The police must have risen early this morning, made the drive over from Rouen or Dieppe, navigated the treacherous, steep hill down to the holiday villa. No cars come down here unless they absolutely have to. Unless it’s an emergency.

  There are two officers, a man and a woman, both French, with heavy accents that my sleep-addled brain is slow to understand. My husband is in a faded T-shirt and boxers, his feet bare, dark hairs covering his legs. At first, I think that something must have happened at home – my mind goes to my mother, elderly now, a frail 86-year-old living stubbornly on in a care home on the outskirts of Norwich, alone apart from the nurses. Her grasp of reality has diminished severely of late; it has been a few weeks since I’ve made the dutiful trip to see her and guilt squeezes my insides, fast and unpleasant. Callum’s cousin has just given birth, and I worry that something has gone wrong, picturing Rosa on blood-stained sheets in a hospital room. But of course, it is neither of those things.

  Behind me, I feel Emma’s presence, the pad of her socked feet. She’s in her pyjamas, blonde hair tied back in a bun. At 16, this morning she is childlike and innocent. A second later, Maria appears, a blue silk kimono wrapped around her tanned limbs. Our eyes meet; her gaze as familiar to me as my own. She is a mirror of me, a more beautiful version. Our mother often gets the two of us confused now.

  Callum is saying something, protesting, his pidgin French failing to convey the anger and shock that his hand gestures show perfectly. My heart is beginning to beat faster, a tiny drum in my chest. The police are stern, their faces set and unmoveable. Too late, I realise that Emma shouldn’t be here. Quickly, I turn from the door and take my daughter’s arm, trying to pull her back towards the stairs.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she asks, her voice still smudged with sleep, and Callum whips round, trying to reassure her, using the calming voice he always does when she’s anxious. He can be so kind to her when he wants to be, but his voice is still tinged with an edge of uncertainty that only I can hear.

  ‘It’s nothing, sweetheart, this is some sort of mistake – Siobhan, will you tell them? This is all a mistake, darling. Maria, you speak to them, will you? Please?’ He smiles at my sister, but it’s strained, the muscles in his cheeks tight and false.

  My French is no better than his – my mind flits back to my O Level teacher droning on, a bluebottle buzzing against the window in a hot, dry classroom, the spill of blue ink of my fingers – but we are both able to pick up the word the taller of the police officers is saying. Meurtre. Meurtre. Vous êtes suspecté du meurtre. I am frozen, I cannot move.

  We suspect you. Murder. Maria, whose command of the language is much better than ours, steps forward and begins to speak in rapid, urgent French. It is too fast for me; I don’t understand.

  And then they say the name of the victim, clear as a bell, and I feel my vision begin to blur, panic grip my throat. It’s her. Caroline Harvey.

  One of them steps forward, and in that second, our nightmare begins.

  Chapter One

  France

  11th August: Two days before the arrest

  Siobhan

  There’s barely any signal in this house. We’re all eating dinner out on the terrace, red-flagged stones underneath our feet. It’s our first night in France, where the air is hot and still and the sound of the crickets is constant and deafening. Behind us, the swimming pool glistens, bright blue because of the little robot hoover Maria drops into it every day. It’s a clever little thing that zooms through the water, up and down like one of those uber-mothers at the local leisure centre back home. But Ipswich seems a world away today; Suffolk has nothing in common with the stifling heat of the French coast. The uber-mothers can’t get to me here.

  ‘Emma, aren’t you going to eat the rest of that mozzarella?’ Callum asks, and I flick my eyes over to my daughter’s plate, surprised to see it virtually untouched. Her appetite usually outstrips mine – oh for the metabolism of a 16-year-old. But she ignores me; she’s playing with her iPhone, shifting it around on the table, trying to pick up 4G.

  ‘The signal’s crap here, Emma,’ Maria says, ‘that’s why I installed the landline. Before I bought this place, there was nothing, can you believe it?’ She laughs, spears a piece of tuna onto her fork. I cooked it myself, followed an English recipe to the letter. A thank you for having us gesture, I suppose. I don’t like feeling in debt to her, or to anyone.

  ‘I know you want WiFi, Ems, I’ll sort it for next summer,’ Maria continues. ‘Mmm. This is delicious, S.’

  I feel a flicker of pleasure that she, at least, likes the meal. My sister has high standards, which is why, according to our mother, she’s still alone at forty-six. Nobody’s good enough. I don’t broach the subject with Maria any more. I don’t think she likes it. She’s always made me feel as though I am the boring one, choosing marriage and kids over freedom and fun. Never getting my own way. I’m the mistress of my own life, Siobhan, she always tells me. I haven’t met anyone she’s been dating for years, although I don’t doubt there’s at least someone keeping her sheets warm.

  Emma shifts in her seat, barely acknowledging Maria, a strand of hair falling slightly over her face. My daughter is wearing a loose, emerald green dress, the kind of thing I could never pull off any more. She and Maria usually get on so well, but tonight nobody is in my daughter’s good books, it seems.

  My husband’s gaze falls on me, and I can almost feel him willing me to step in, to snap at her, to cajole her into coming out of whatever latest strop she is in and eat the food on her plate. In this scenario, i.e. an Emma mood, I’m usually the bad cop. But tonight, I’m not going to be. After all, I’m on holiday. And I’ve already cooked the meal, done my bit.

  Instead, I take a long sip of my wine, sourced from the nearest vineyard, bought for us as a welcome gift by Maria. My sister has owned the villa for two years, and is still in the process of perfecting it. She’s an interior designer with her own business, forever carting expensive rugs and must-have lamps to and fro across the Channel. As a result, the house is an enviable mish-mash of English antiques mixed with French chic. It was her idea for us all to come out here this summer and make use of it; partly an excuse to show the place off, I’m sure, but hard to say no to all the same. You need a break, she said, and for a moment I wondered if she knew more than she’d let on about Callum and I. But it’s doubtful. I haven’t told anyone about the latest development, not yet. I’m still deciding what to do.

  Callum booked the flights for us a few months ago, and the three of us flew out here from Southend whilst Maria drove a carful of antiques sourced from a Suffolk auction house through the Channel Tunnel, arriving just in time to let us in and see the envy flit across our faces. I was anxious on the way to the airport, worried about how the holiday would pan out. This might be the sticking plaster that keeps our family together. Either that or it’s the tear that pulls us apart.

  In this second, though, I’m glad that we’re here. The wine is delicious, and for a moment, I let myself believe that this is all mine – this sprawling, escapist luxury – but then Emma pushes back her chair and the moment breaks.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ she says, and I watch the hem of her silky dress fall to her ankles as she stands up and leaves the table, disappearing behind the sliding glass doors of the villa.

  After a few seconds, music starts – she’s turned on the Sonos sy
stem in the downstairs basement, blasting angry, loud music that sets my teeth on edge. The house is two storeys, with the basement in reality forming two bedrooms and another bathroom. Emma and Maria are sleeping down there, while Callum and I are on the ground floor, level with the swimming pool. There’s an en suite leading off from our room, a power shower and fluffy white towels. Expensive soap and hand moisturiser that smells of geranium.

  Callum sighs, the sound familiar. Maria blows out her breath, the worry evident on her face. She’s had the same facial expressions since we were teenagers, all those years ago now. More years than I’d like to count, to be honest. I turned forty-four in the spring. Still, I’ll always be her younger sibling. That’s something, I suppose.

  I take an olive from the little black pot on the table, feel the oil slick on my fingertips.

  ‘Change of scenery hasn’t helped with the mood swings, then,’ Callum says wryly, raising his wine glass to his lips, and I shrug my shoulders, swallow the olive. He smiles at me, his teeth white and his eyes crinkling. That handsome look that I know so well.

  ‘We’ve been here less than twenty-four hours. Let’s give her a chance.’ My voice sounds calm, measured.

  It isn’t how I feel inside. But then, I’ve got good at keeping my feelings to myself lately. I’ve had to, after all. Secrets are becoming my forte.

  We finish the meal, and then with still no reappearance from Emma, move onto the comfy chairs on the veranda and open another bottle of wine – red this time, five euros in the local supermarket on our way over here. Callum’s mood has perked up; he is becoming more jovial, his arm around my waist, his voice loud in my ear. I try to relax into his touch, but it’s hard.

  ‘I was thinking I’d take you to see Rouen in the morning. I can unload the car of all the junk I brought over so that we can all fit,’ Maria is saying, a cardigan wrapped around her shoulders now as the temperature cools. I roll my eyes; ‘junk’ – the contents of her car are probably worth thousands judging by the rest of the house. Not for Maria the delights of IKEA – the pieces she brings over are each carefully selected, the best she can afford.