Chapter 3 Maria

Chapter 3

?Maria

The door slid open with a hydraulic smoothness.

So weird, Maria thought, after three days of trying, nothing and then this. The woman had told her the rules when she arrived at the house. There were always rules for clients like this. The bigger the property, the shinier the surfaces, the quieter the rooms: the stranger the clients —it was a truth universally acknowledged, though Maria hadn't gotten the measure of this client at all as she hadn't even met him, or his children, yet.

She had been hired for two weeks to cover the client's usual nanny's annual leave. She had done enough of these now to know what that entailed, and these short jobs were always the easiest. Be quiet, cheerful, fun, but incredibly reliable, yes to everything, no to nothing, in a nutshell: the dream. Well, everyone else's dream. But the money was always, always good. The best.

The rules of this particular job were simple: Wear the clothes provided, impeccably made soft white polo shirts and chic linen shorts; be amenable; and when not immediately required, make yourself comfortable in the house. Make yourself comfortable. What a joke, Maria thought. No one wants to see the hired help comfortable.

Of course, Maria hadn't dreamt as a child of being the hired help. She started doing short contracts between her first-year terms at Cornell Medical School, each contract easily paying off her course fees. She had no particular ambition to become a nanny, but she was savvy as well as intelligent, and it turned out she was good with kids, or at least they listened to her, and the astronomical amount she could make as a live-in nanny to the super-rich had made it a simple choice.

Then as the course's study schedule began to leak into her "free time," it got harder to do both. Holidays between terms had ceased to exist. So she had to make a clear-minded decision: an unsentimental, rational decision. Training to be a doctor required money, money required a job, a job required time. She had needed to quickly reassess her career trajectory. The truth was that Maria could make more as an attractive, highly educated, polite young child-minder to the super-rich than she could as an overworked junior doctor back in New York City.

And with the hefty nannying wage packets she had been hoarding over the last few years, rent-free, overhead-free, she'd be able to pick up her med course again in, say, five years and be able to pay for it all outright—hell, she'd even be able to buy her own apartment in Manhattan near the hospital in order to study there comfortably if she wanted.

And this new contract, her largest and most life-altering paycheck yet, would push her closer than ever to the figure she knew she needed to be safe, to be comfortable. After a lifetime of hustle, she would soon be secure.

Even if Maria hadn't memorized the payment breakdown on the new contract, she would have been able to guess this placement was a good one just from the list of requirements that came with it.

The house rules on this job stated that she could use all the property's facilities: pools, spa, sauna, steam room, grounds, as well as the two-hundred-foot private beach. The only stipulations being that she would need to: keep things tidy, not leave the house unless in the company of the client or the children, and not interrupt any of the client's phone calls or speak to other visitors. Though why the hell anyone would think she would want to talk to any of the client's friends Maria had no idea.

The woman who had shown Maria around the house—her chignon too tight, her smile too warm—had also explained how the biometric door lock system worked on the property. That had worried Maria at first. High security often meant shady clients, clients with a reason to be paranoid. She'd had one such experience on a yacht off the coast of Monaco the year before. The number of room searches and security briefings had been enough to put her off working for a certain type of client for life. But the woman who had shown her around this house explained that this client, a single father of two, was just fond of tech. And as the property, with its glass corners and steep staircases was most definitely not toddler-friendly, he had made the decision that only adults should be able to activate the doors between various safety hazards. A childproofing of sorts.

A Silicon Valley guy, Maria inferred, and relaxed. Tech guys were the easiest to work for. The easiest pleased. They knew what they wanted, had no problem telling you, sometimes with eye-watering bluntness, and then often completely ghosted you so you could get on with it.

The woman had placed Maria's hand on the spotless glass panel and entered her information into the palm-scanner. Maria would be able to go anywhere in the house freely, except, she was told, the locked room at the end of the lower ground-floor passage. A private office, Maria surmised. She could go anywhere but there— so far, so Bluebeard's castle, Maria thought with an internal smirk. The idea she would care to nose around a tech guy's office was somehow reassuringly ridiculous.

In a vague way Maria wondered if somehow this privacy was meant to increase her curiosity, if that was the point? She had experienced a few tests in previous jobs. The rich were predictably terrified of being stolen from or cheated in some way. The room downstairs could well be just that, some weird trust exercise. Not beyond the bounds of believability, she'd had stranger: nanny cams, jewelry left out, clients who thought they were paying for more than child care! All of human life was here. It's best to be on your toes with clients; when the rewards were this high, the risks often were too. And at the back of her mind, she had considered the possibility that this job might not actually be, as sold, covering for their permanent nanny, but rather that she is being actively trialed for the permanent position.

The woman with the too-tight chignon went on to explain that while Maria could go anywhere within the grounds, she wouldn't actually be able to leave the property through any of the perimeter exits unless accompanied. That was the bit Maria hadn't liked.

The woman went on to clarify that Maria could leave with the client and the children, on excursions, lunch dates, et cetera, but if Maria wanted to leave alone, she would need to terminate her two-week contract. To do that she would have to call the chignon woman on her direct line; the woman would inform security, who would then escort Maria from the property. It sounded undignified, Maria thought, but then wasn't it all undignified? What she did and what these rich people couldn't do themselves—equally undignified.

But dignity didn't pay for Maria's lifestyle, and this job did.

So, Maria had squared away that she wouldn't leave the property, as requested. But she hadn't been born yesterday. She'd been doing this long enough to have her own assurances in terms of "client risk." If anything here was even slightly off, a lot of people at the agency knew where she was.

After the woman left Maria remained on her best behavior for a full forty-eight hours.

She unpacked her personal items in the smallest room, showered in her own marble wet room, and slipped into her expensive, if anonymous prescribed uniform. Then she found and gathered what few child-friendly books she could find around the minimalist house. The children's books seemed to focus on broad pop-culture Central American figures and themes: Frida Kahlo, Botero, Pérez. Figures from her long-left-behind Central American culture to a degree that made her wonder if her heritage had been a deciding factor in her hiring. Perhaps the client also had Colombian ancestry, she figured. After all, the rich could cherry-pick who looked after their children. And if they paid this well and the perks were good—she didn't know why they shouldn't pick whoever they wanted.

She just hoped the client didn't expect her to speak fluent Spanish, because she didn't. She'd left too young, her parents hadn't spoken it around her, and her high school had only taught French as a second language.

She lay the bright adventure books out on a soft blanket with gathered cushions and pillows: her thinking being that the children might arrive tired from the journey when they finally appeared, so they could snuggle and listen to stories while she surreptitiously took the measure of their father. But after a few hours of no-show from father and children Maria slipped off her anonymous uniform tennis shoes, lay down herself on the blanket, and let the warm Caribbean sunlight pool at her feet.

She jolted awake two hours later as the integrated air-conditioning kicked up a gear, its hum intensifying in frequency. But still, no one had arrived.

When evening approached, Maria made her way to the fully stocked pantry to cobble together one of her sure-fire children's hits, bacon-y mac it wasn't particularly unusual in the families she'd worked with for the children to use what the adults used. That and the lack of toys and other accoutrements told Maria that these children, like others she had looked after, must have their entire worlds shipped around in suitcases between global residences. Maria placed the warm, comforting meal on the table at the hour requested in her manual. One adult portion and two children's portions, but time passed and no one came. Finally she placed the meals in the warming oven and ate her own out on the darkening twinkle-lit terrace, the sound of tree frogs croaking and distant waves crashing her only company.

It was a kind of bliss there. She closed her eyes and told herself to make the most of this quiet before the inevitable storm of children. And when she opened her eyes to the gleaming of the pool lights in the growing darkness, she let herself imagine for a moment that this was her life. Out here, with all of this. This life.

After another hour she removed the meals from the warming oven and packed them away in the fridge, just in case. But the evening ebbed by and when she was absolutely sure no one was coming, she tidied the kitchen and slipped silently into her room for the night.

The next morning, her alarm did not sound, and she groggily woke, instead, to the loud cries of a seabird calling from the clifftop surrounds. Still no one had arrived.

Assuming the client had probably been held up, Maria decided to call the woman with the too-tight chignon. Her suspicions were confirmed.

The woman promised to follow up with more news soon. In the meantime, she told Maria to enjoy the facilities. Maria, wary of doing anything as extreme as that, instead allowed herself the possibility of a nervous swim and sauna in an attempt to clear her jet-lagged head. The flight from her last family in Paris had been a real kick in the circadian rhythm.

On the way to the indoor pool, she passed the locked lower ground-floor door, a door identical to all the other doors in the house except that this one's biometric lock glowed blue instead of green like the others.

Maria considered the room, the warning she received about it. She hadn't thought she'd be curious at all, but now she was. Where the hell was this family? What was the holdup? Lingering by the forbidden door Maria vaguely considered pressing the glowing door panel. She contemplated entering the room, perhaps seeing what kind of job might get you a house like this, but then she came to her senses, let out an audible chuckle, and headed to the pool. She wasn't going to take the bait that soon, if indeed it was even bait.

As she swam Maria weaved a narrative around the room and concluded that if the client's late arrival and the out-of-bounds room were a form of trust test, these clients would need to try harder than that. Maria had worked incredibly hard to get into Cornell, and even harder to make sure she could secure these premium high-paying private staff contracts—she knew how to delay gratification like no one she had ever met, and in Maria's heart she was pretty sure she could put up with anything longer than most if she knew it would ultimately benefit her. If this new employer was testing her, if they were hoping to uncover someone with no self-control: More fool them. Maria stepped out of the pool a few inches taller. She didn't rate most of her personal qualities but she did rate that.

Throughout the day she ran through the scheduled events in the client's manual, regardless of having no audience, as she waited for the client to arrive—keen to ensure that she would not be caught out should the family suddenly appear. An art station was cobbled together from what she could find about the property, and later some adult pool floats inflated and made ready poolside. A jug of homemade lemonade with huge clunking ice chunks was laid out beside three frosted glasses on the kitchen counter. It was always better to be overprepared, to anticipate needs. Maria had worked out fairly early on as a nanny that the tips and gifts from families at this client level often superseded the original negotiated fees. And she was well aware that clients turning up to find her not ready would not garner her a fat high-denomination stuffed envelope at the end of the two weeks or another Patek Philippe, with a potential resale value of over $200,000. Best to exceed expectations, always.

The next morning she lay out a strawberries, yogurt, and orange juice breakfast, and waited. She vaguely wondered what would happen when the supplies in the fridge ran low, if another member of staff or a catering firm would arrive laden with produce at some point—but she did not linger on this thought. Households like these ran like clockwork, even if their owners didn't.

The breakfast lay untouched. And once she had finally decanted everything back into the fridge, she decided to call the woman with the too-tight chignon again.

The clients would definitely not be arriving that day. She was encouraged once more to make the most of the facilities.

Maria did as she was told, now safe in the knowledge that she wouldn't be imminently required. She applied sun lotion liberally by the outdoor pool then stretched out on a plush lounger in the sun, a book in hand, her toes dragging lightly into the cool outdoor pool water.

Later she explored the grounds, showered, cooked herself an elaborate lunch, and by the evening even allowed herself the small bottle of wine left for her as a welcome gift along with her manual.

But by day three, when the client had still not arrived, Maria had developed concerns, or rather niggling questions, about their now increasingly strange absence.

Would she still be paid? Maria asked the woman over the phone as much. The woman seemed surprised to find out the client had still not arrived. She herself seemed unsure about why this was happening, but reassured Maria that she would be paid regardless.

Maria was good at reading people. The woman's tone confirmed, at least, that this late arrival was not part of some greater plan.

Recognizing what was and was not part of a client's plan had become a very useful adaptive quality.

But this client's absence didn't seem to be part of anyone's plan.

Perhaps he was old or sick. Perhaps something had happened to him or one of the children on their way out?

The thought of those eventualities hovered, for a few minutes, in Maria's mind, but the truth was it really didn't matter what the hell had happened to them. She didn't know them, she'd never met them. Either they would arrive eventually or they wouldn't. The truth was she'd lucked out in paradise, for the time being; she was now, it seemed, on a paid vacation.

And that's when Maria's best behavior began to slip.

She relaxed. She let her uniform crease as she lay on the deep cool sofas and read. She dived into the pool, used the floats, ate at the pool edge. She even allowed herself a double bill in the crisp air-conditioned darkness of the home cinema room as she shoveled freshly popped corn into her mouth. In the womblike blackness she let herself imagine again that this was her life.

A swim. A sauna. A steam. A shower.

Then exploring the rest of the house, the other rooms, the art, the books, the hints left behind by her absent employer.

She thought again of who the client might be. If he might actually be ill. No client of hers had ever not turned up.

And so, the insidious question of who the missing client was would not leave her alone. In the minimalist white library, she went as far as googling the house's address on the desktop before deleting the search history. No celebrity lived here, no titan of commerce, or if they did, that information was not available online.

Maria thought again about the house rules. She thought about the room downstairs. The locked room. The room she definitely wasn't allowed to go in. What was in there?

If it was a home office, as she had been told, it might hold the answer to whose house she was in. All she would need to do is go down there and take a look.

She shook off the notion as unprofessional and predictable. But the notion would not release its grip and finally Maria went back downstairs.

The door lock glowed blue. She placed her palm on it and then a low tone sounded: a denial tone. Access denied.

Maria was oddly relieved. The illusion of choice had been removed from the equation. She didn't have to worry about going, or not going, into that room anymore.

Instead she went for a walk down to the private beach and swam naked in the secluded cove to feel the world on her skin—and as she did, she struggled to remember the last time she had felt so calm. Again she mused on what her life might look like if she lived here—if there were no client at all.

Salty, she returned to the house and got ready for dinner.

Halfway through her meal the house's phone burst to life, ringing shrilly. Maria almost choking on her steak, a small chunk of it leaping from her coughing mouth across the swirling marble of the kitchen island. She rose as if suddenly interrupted by guests, smoothed down her hair self-consciously, and lifted the receiver.

It was the woman with the too-tight chignon. She had tried but failed to reach the client. She would keep trying, but she cautioned Maria it might be that the client would not be joining Maria at all. Though Maria would still be paid regardless.

That fact should have reassured Maria, however, when she put the phone down, she felt instead…what? Nervous. Though she couldn't imagine why.

She thought of the door downstairs again and shivered, her imagination again taking flight. Were there ever any children? Was there even a client?

The only person Maria had met was the woman with the chignon. And why wasn't she allowed to go in that room downstairs?

She knew her thoughts were childish, ridiculous, but without any other diversion she reveled in them for a moment, the drama of them, the horror of them, just to feel something. Before bed she tried the locked door again. But it was locked. She wouldn't have been able to enter even if she wanted to.

In the middle of the night Maria woke to the lights in her room mechanically flashing on and off. Some kind of electrical fault, she inferred. She rose.

Tentatively, ready to reach for a vase or andiron as a weapon, Maria made her way to the living room phone and called the woman with the too-tight chignon to tell her about the fault.

The woman promised to send someone to fix the electrical problem first thing in the morning.

Could Maria manage with the lighting malfunction until then? Was the issue affecting other rooms in the house?

Maria checked. It was just her bedroom.

Maria offered to change rooms for the night and wait until the next morning for the problem to be fixed. Maria put down the phone with a mild excitement of knowing she would see another human being the next day.

As she walked back toward the largest bedroom, she heard an automated tone come from downstairs. An access granted tone. She took a peek down the stairwell. The sound was coming from the locked door. The electrical fault had affected other areas of the house. The door panel glowed green; Bluebeard's room was no longer locked. Maria could enter if she so desired.

Maria shook her head in disbelief at the horror-movie predictability of anyone actually deciding to enter a forbidden room in the dead of night. And, not having an intense desire to push her luck, she ignored the impulse to go investigate and wandered gratefully back to bed instead.

But fear has a way of squeezing through the smallest of gaps. So, after firmly closing her new bedroom door, Maria considered a moment before sliding the room's large armoire, two bedside cabinets, and a particularly heavy armchair against it, before sleeping soundly through the night.

The first thing next morning, energy renewed, daylight blazing, Maria went downstairs, pushed her palm to the now unlocked door panel, and watched it slowly open.