The Guests on South Battery by Karen White

Author:Karen White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-11-28T13:03:48+00:00

Amelia’s Jaguar was parked in the driveway when we arrived. Standing at the bottom of the outside steps, I’d thought for a minute that I’d have to hold Jayne’s hand and drag her with me. I hadn’t seen the cat, nor did I feel any presence, sinister or otherwise. So far so good. Maybe whatever it had been was still too exhausted from terrifying us the last time. Jayne took a deep breath and followed me inside.

Scaffolding had been constructed in the downstairs rooms, where most of the water damage and crumbling moldings had been, and a few of Sophie’s students and hired conservation experts were busy with the laborious job of removing most of the damaged cornices and medallions bit by bit. As Sophie had explained it, they had been removed so they could be restored and the missing pieces reconstructed while the roof and ceilings were being repaired. I refrained from mentioning to Sophie that a huge sander would do the job in a fraction of the time and that there wasn’t really anything wrong with a smooth ceiling. I suppose I treasured our friendship too much.

“Melanie, is that you?” Amelia called from the dining room.

Jayne and I found her next to the large breakfront between the windows. There was even more of the hideous rose china in there, along with more crystal than I’d seen in one place outside Vieuxtemps on King Street. There were also, I was disappointed to see, even more of those salt-and-pepper sets, giving the intricately carved antique breakfront an almost clownish appearance. If it could express itself, I was sure it would have cried at the injustice.

“Hello, Amelia,” I said, kissing each cheek as was her custom. Perfectly turned out in a Chanel suit and pearls, her blond hair in a tight French twist, she appeared tiny and reserved, but I knew her to be a lovely, warm person who adored her grandchildren and was known to crawl on her hands and knees just to make the babies laugh, or to lie on the floor to create a barrier for the children to clamber over.

“And this is Jayne Smith, our nanny.”

They shook hands and I saw the look I’d grown accustomed to when introducing Jayne. “She has one of those faces,” I explained. “So that you think you’ve met but you haven’t.”

But Amelia didn’t laugh or step back. Instead she continued to hold on to Jayne’s hand and stare into her face. “It’s just the oddest thing. . . .” She stopped and then smiled, finally dropping Jayne’s hand. “I’m sorry. I know we haven’t met. But for a moment there, I could have sworn you were someone else. Wrong age entirely, which brought me to my senses. They say we all have a doppelgänger—perhaps not in the same generation.” She laughed, but the sound seemed forced.

“So you’re the marvelous nanny Jack has told us so much about. I thought that you might have a halo and wings the way he carries on.

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