The Babysitter: From the author of digital bestsellers and psychological crime thrillers like The Girl Next Door comes the most gripping and addictive book of 2020! by Phoebe Morgan

Author:Phoebe Morgan [Morgan, Phoebe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008314873
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-05-27T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Ipswich

10th August: The night of the murder

Caroline

Jenny barely knocks on the door before inserting herself into my flat, Eve in one arm and a huge, unwieldy-looking travel cot tucked under the other.

‘Helloooo,’ she calls out, in that way people who are very comfortable living with other people do, and then she appears in the doorway of my living room slash kitchen, her hair piled on top of her head and looking – well, a bit frazzled to be honest. Quickly, my eyes dart to the sink but the tell-tale wine glass is hidden from view. I wish I had some gum, or a mint, something to mask it on my breath. Still, hopefully she’ll be gone soon, and it’ll be just me and Eve. And Eve isn’t likely to notice, is she!

‘Thank you so much again for this, Caro! You’re becoming my star babysitter!’ she says, setting the cot down in the middle of the room with a loud ‘ooph.’ To my surprise I see that Eve is awake, her mouth silenced with a little pink dummy, her eyes wide and blinking at me.

‘Hello Eve,’ I say, standing up from where I’ve been sat on the sofa and coming to help Jenny, who is looking around my flat as if suddenly realising for the first time how un-baby proof it is. I see it through her eyes: the sharp edges, the gaping plug sockets, the little balcony with a sheer drop down to the concrete below. The wine bottles stacked in the rack by the cupboard, the glasses that might shatter. The many, many ways that something could go wrong. My heart skips a beat, but I’m committed now, aren’t I? It’s all going to be fine.

‘Is she OK on the sofa?’ I ask awkwardly, ‘just while we set up the cot?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Jenny says, disentangling Eve’s little arms from where they’re wound around her neck, and placing her daughter gently onto my sofa. Callum laughed when he first saw my sofa – ‘It’s tiny! It’s more like a big armchair. How are we ever going to shag on that?’ – but then again, he comes from a life where plush four-seater sofas are the norm. A different life to mine.

Eve’s brown eyes are huge, they stare around the room, and I wonder how much one-year-olds can really take in. Can baby Eve sense my loneliness, the emptiness of my life from just a scan around my living space? I notice Callum’s suitcase, stuffed away near where I keep my unused ironing board, and hope Jenny doesn’t notice the name tag, start on at me again. I wish he’d come and get it, the sight of it reminds me of our mini-break and how happy we were, or how happy I was, anyway.

Eve blinks at me, and I long to touch her, to pick her up and cuddle her close, but it feels awkward with Jenny here, huffing and puffing over the travel cot.

‘Honestly,’ she says, ‘this bloody thing is meant to be “portable and easy to use, any time, any place”.

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