Am I Guilty?: The gripping, emotional domestic thriller debut filled with suspense, mystery and surprises!. Jackie Kabler

       2

       FLORA

      I stretched luxuriously, wriggling my toes against the 400 thread count Egyptian cotton bedding, then reached for my phone, which was on the bedside table, tapping it to check the time. Just after eleven. For a moment, I felt a pang of guilt for still being in bed at such a late hour, then shrugged and pulled the duvet back over my head. Stuff it. It was Monday, my day off this week, after all. And the weekend had been hard work: a two-day fiftieth birthday event at a stately home near Oxford. Annabelle had been anxious, and even more needy than usual, and she’d run me ragged. I didn’t mind, not really – I enjoyed the job, loved it in fact. But today I was tired, and I deserved the lie-in, I thought.

      I’d worked for Annabelle Garrington for nearly two months, as her personal assistant. Bit of an unusual PA job, compared with most – I lived in, like a nanny, and indeed part of my role was helping out with the kids, but it was much more than that. It was the second job I’d found through a specialized London agency, and my job was mainly helping Annabelle with her business. She ran an events management company, her clients mainly the Cotswolds set, the glitzy sort, numerous celebrities among them.

      In the short time I’d worked with her, I’d helped her throw a flamingo-themed baby shower for a well-known catwalk model, a Christmas party for a flamboyant London hair stylist at his Gloucestershire hideaway, and a fortieth birthday lunch for a slightly neurotic daytime television presenter who, clearly in denial about her age, had banned the word ‘forty’ from her event entirely, even asking me to quietly destroy several birthday cards and a balloon bearing the dreaded number presented to her on the day by well-meaning friends. Yes, it was hard work, this job, but I was enjoying it thoroughly, and there were some exciting events coming up in the next few months.

      The day, though, was all mine, and I planned to spend it doing very little indeed. A run first, obviously. Then a leisurely brunch, followed by a wander around nearby Cirencester to pick up a few bits and pieces, maybe. And then an evening chilling in my room, catching up on some TV or something on Netflix.

      I pulled the duvet down so my head was free again and gazed with pleasure around my little home. It was a big, bright room on the top floor of the Garrington house, a rambling but lovingly – and expensively – decorated and modernized Victorian villa, set in three acres of manicured gardens. Two large sash windows gave me a stunning view of rolling countryside and Cotswold stone houses, a church spire visible in the distance. On Thursday and Sunday evenings the bell-ringers did their practising, the peals drifting across the fields as they had for centuries: a sound which had driven me mad at first, but which I’d gradually begun to find oddly soothing.

      My room was flooded with light, even on a grey day like today, and the white walls, soft cream curtains and duck-egg blue cushions on the big, squishy sofa gave the space a calmness, a much-needed contrast to the frantic pace of life outside it. The ensuite bathroom was spacious too, with a separate shower and a glorious free-standing claw-foot bath, and Annabelle had made sure I had everything I needed to be self-sufficient up here, if I’d wanted to be. I had the run of the main kitchen downstairs, of course, but there was a little kitchenette in a corner alcove of my room, and she’d also installed a forty-inch television, so I could watch my favourite shows alone, away from the chaos of the family living room.

      She was thoughtful like that, Annabelle. She seemed to really like me, and I liked her too, liked the whole family, in fact, and I knew I’d been lucky to land a new job so quickly. It helped that I’d known Annabelle for a while, although only vaguely. Before this job I’d worked in Cheltenham for Thea Ashfield, who ran Just Enfant, the children’s online clothing company. Thea’s daughter Nell and Annabelle’s Millie were the same age and went to the same school, so Thea and Annabelle were acquaintances, if not exactly close friends, and I used to chat to the tall, glamorous Mrs Garrington now and again when Thea put me on the school run. When I needed a new job – when I decided back in November that I just couldn’t work for Thea any longer – I was amazed when the agency told me about the vacancy at Annabelle’s, and she’d seemed equally delighted. Serendipity, we both said.

      I never spoke about what happened at Thea’s, though, not to Annabelle – not to anyone, to be honest. I just couldn’t. It was too awful, too horrific. Annabelle hadn’t asked either, not even in the beginning. I supposed it was because she knew all about it already – everyone did really. You couldn’t escape it, at the time, and for weeks afterwards – the papers, the television news, and then all that horrible social media stuff – and Annabelle didn’t seem to need anymore details, for which I was grateful.

      I had tried to stay on with Thea, afterwards, but it was never going to work. I just couldn’t do it. I managed nearly two months, but then I quit, took a holiday, then came back to start at Annabelle’s. I thought about Thea a lot though. I still saw Nell, via Millie, which was nice. Nell and I had been close, still were. But I often thought about Thea, and Rupert, her husband. And about Zander, of course. Zander, the beautiful baby with the bright blue eyes and the winning smile …

      Their faces swam through my head and I shivered, even though the room was warm. Then I jumped as there was a gentle rap on my door.

      ‘Flora? Flora, are you up? I’ve drawn a picture of you. Flora?’

      I smiled. I’d never have admitted it to Annabelle, but Sienna, the youngest, was my favourite of her brood. They weren’t supposed to bother me, the kids, not on my day off, but I didn’t mind. And it was time I was getting up, anyway.

      ‘Come in, Sienna, sweetie, come in and show me,’ I called, and threw back the duvet as she ran in, bright-eyed, clutching her drawing to her chest, and leapt onto my bed, giggling. She was three years old, blonde and adorable. I grabbed her, pretending to try to wrestle the picture from her, and she shrieked with delight. I grinned, and she grinned back, her tiny nose wrinkling, blue eyes squinting up at me. They were gorgeous, those eyes – sparkling, cornflower blue. Eyes that reminded me of Zander’s. I swallowed hard, my heart aching for a moment, then resolutely pushed the feeling away. Stop it, I told myself. You’re with a new family now. Move on.

      ‘Right, missy. Are you going to show me this picture or not?’ I demanded.

      Sienna looked coyly at me for a moment, then beamed and pushed her drawing into my hands. I took it and frowned at the scrawl of red and yellow scribbles topped with a vaguely face-shaped blob, then raised my eyebrows at Sienna in mock shock.

      ‘Well, if I look like this, I need a makeover pronto,’ I said, then jumped out of bed,