Are you mad? a voice was screaming inside my head. Are you crazy? You barely know these children.

But another part of me was whispering something very different—Good. Because in a way, this made things considerably easier.

“We can play it by ear,” Sandra was saying. “I’ll keep in touch by phone—if the children are too unsettled, then I can fly back midweek perhaps? You’ll only have the little ones for the first few days, so hopefully that’ll make the transition a little bit easier . . .”

She stopped again, a little awkwardly this time, but I was nodding. I was actually nodding, my face stiff with the effort of holding in my real feelings.

“Well,” Sandra said at last. She put down her coffee cup. “Petra’s already in bed, but the girls are through in the TV room watching Peppa Pig. I don’t want to delegate my last bedtime with them to you completely, but shall we do it together, so you can get a feel for their routine?”

I nodded and followed her as she led the way through the darkened glass cathedral towards the concealed door to the TV room.

Inside the blinds were drawn, the floor was still carpeted with scattered Duplo and battered dolls, and two little girls were curled up together on the sofa, wearing flannel pajamas and clutching soft, worn teddy bears. Maddie was sucking her thumb, though she took it swiftly out of her mouth as her mother came in, with a slightly guilty jump. I resolved to look that one up in the binder.

We perched on the arms of the sofa, Sandra fondly ruffling her fingers through Ellie’s silky curls while the episode wound its way to the close, and then she picked up the remote control and shut down the screen.

“Oh, Mummeeeee!” The chorus was immediate, though slightly half-hearted, as if they didn’t really expect Sandra to acquiesce. “Just one more!”

“No, darlings,” Sandra said. She scooped up Ellie, who wrapped her legs around her waist and buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. “It’s super late. Come on, let’s go up. If you’re very lucky, Rowan will read you a story tonight!”

“I don’t want Rowan,” Ellie whispered into the crook of her mother’s neck. “I want you.”

“Well . . . we’ll see when we get up there,” Sandra said. She hitched Ellie into a more comfortable position and held out her hand to Maddie. “Come on, sweetie. Up we go.”

“I want you,” Ellie said doggedly as Sandra began to climb the stairs, me trailing after her. Sandra gave me a little eye roll and a smile over her shoulder.

“I tell you what,” she whispered to Ellie, though deliberately loud enough for me to hear. “Maybe you’ll get a story from me and a story from Rowan. How does that sound?”

Ellie made no reply to this, only dug her face further into Sandra’s shoulder.

Upstairs the curtains on the landing were drawn, and I could see the dim pink light of Petra’s night-light filtering across the carpet. Sandra supervised tooth brushing and the loo while I made my way down the softly carpeted hallway to Maddie and Ellie’s doorway.

There they were—two little beds, each bathed in the soft glow of a bedside light—one pink, the other a kind of dusky peach. Above each one was a collection of framed prints—a baby footprint, a scribble just recognizable as a cat, a butterfly made out of two chubby handprints—and tangled around the frames were strings of fairy lights, giving off their gentle illumination.

It was picture-perfect—like an illustration from a nursery catalog.

I sat gingerly on the foot of one of the little beds, and at last I heard feet and whining voices, swiftly hushed by Sandra.

“Shh, Maddie, you’ll wake Petra. Come on now, dressing gowns off and into bed.”

Ellie jumped into hers, but Maddie stood stonily for a moment, regarding me, and I realized it must be her bed I was sitting on.

“Do you want me to move?” I asked, but she said nothing, only folded her arms mutinously, got into bed, and turned her face towards the wall, as if pretending I wasn’t there.

“Shall I sit on the bean bag?” I asked Sandra, who gave a laugh and shook her head.

“You’re fine. Stay there. Maddie takes a bit of time to warm up to people sometimes, don’t you, sweetie?”

Maddie said nothing, and I wasn’t sure I blamed her. It must be uncomfortable hearing herself discussed with a stranger like this.

Sandra began to read a Winnie the Pooh story, her voice low and soporific, and when at last she finished the final sentence, she leaned over, checking Ellie’s face. Her eyes were closed, and she was snoring very gently. Sandra kissed her cheek, clicked off the lights, and then stood and came across to me.

“Maddie,” she said very quietly, “Maddie, do you want a story from Rowan?”

Maddie said nothing, and Sandra leaned over and peered at her face, still turned to the wall. Her eyes were shut tight.

“Out like a light!” Sandra whispered, a touch of triumph in her voice. “Oh well, your rendition will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m sorry I didn’t hear it.”

She kissed Maddie’s cheek too, drew her covers up a little, and tucked some kind of soft toy under her chin—I couldn’t see what exactly—and then clicked off her light as well, leaving just the glow of the night-light. Then she gave a last glance at her sleeping daughters and made her way to the door, with me following behind.

“Can you close the door after you?” she said, and I turned, ready to do so, glancing back at the little white beds and their occupants, both in shadow now.

The night-light was very soft and too close to the floor to show much except for shadows around the girls’ beds, but for a moment, deep in the blackness, I thought I saw the glint of two little eyes, glaring at me.

Then they snapped shut, and I pulled the door closed behind me.

I couldn’t sleep that night. It wasn’t the bed, which was as sumptuously comfortable as before. It wasn’t the heat. The room had been oppressively warm when I first entered, but I had managed to persuade the system to switch to cooling mode, and now the air was pleasantly temperate. It wasn’t even my worries over being left alone with the children the next day. If anything I was feeling relieved at the thought of getting rid of Bill and Sandra. Well . . . not Sandra . . . mostly Bill, if truth were told.

The uncomfortable end to the evening flashed though my head once more. We had been sitting in the kitchen, talking and chatting, and then at last Sandra had stretched and yawned and announced her intention to make an early night of it.

She’d kissed Bill and headed for the stairs, and just as I was thinking about following her, Bill had refilled both our glasses without asking me.

“Oh,” I said, half-heartedly. “I was . . . I mean I shouldn’t . . .”

“Come on.” He pushed the glass towards me. “Just one more. This is my only chance to get to know you before I entrust my kids to your care, after all! You could be anyone for all I know.”

He gave me a grin, his tanned cheeks wrinkling, and I wondered how old he was. He could have been anything from forty to sixty; it was hard to tell. He wore rimless glasses and had one of those tanned, slightly weather-beaten faces, and his cropped hair gave him an almost ageless quality, slightly Bruce Willis–esque.