He’d go inside. He’d call her. But before he could get his key into his front lock he heard his daughter Isabel let loose a blood-curdling cry: ‘No! No!’
Chapter 29
KNIGHT THREW OPEN the front door into the lower hallway as Isabel’s cry turned into a cutting screech: ‘No, Lukey! No!’
Her father heard a high-pitched maniacal laugh and the pattering of little feet escaping before he entered the living area of his home, which looked as though a snow tornado had whirled through it. White dust hung in the air, on the furniture, and coated his daughter, about three years old, who saw him and broke into sobs.
‘Daddy, Lukey, he … ! He …’
A dainty little girl, Isabel went into hiccupping hysterics and ran towards her daddy, who tried to bend down to comfort her. Knight gritted his teeth at the throbbing ache all down his left side, but scooped her up anyway, wanting to sneeze at the baby-powder. Isabel’s tears had left little streams of baby powder paste on her cheeks and on her eyelashes. Even covered in talc like this, she was as beautiful as her late mother, with curly fawn-coloured hair and wide cobalt-blue eyes that could cleave his heart even when they weren’t spilling tears.
‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ Knight said. ‘Daddy’s here.’
Her crying slowed to hiccups: ‘Lukey, he … he put bottom powder on me.’
‘I can see that, Bella,’ Knight said. ‘Why?’
‘Lukey thinks bottom powder is funny.’
Knight held onto his daughter with his good arm and moved towards the kitchen and the staircase that led to the upper floors. He could hear his son cackling somewhere above him as he climbed.
At the top of the stairs, Knight turned towards the nursery only to hear a woman’s voice yell, ‘Owww! You little savage!’
Knight’s son came running from the nursery in his nappy, his entire body covered in talc. He carried a bonus-sized container of baby powder and was laughing with pure joy until he caught sight of his father glaring narrowly at him.
Luke turned petrified and began to back away, waving his hands at Knight as if he were some apparition he could erase. ‘No, Daddy!’
‘Luke!’ Knight said.
Nancy, the nanny, appeared in the doorway behind his son, blocking his way, powder all over her, holding her wrist tight, her face screwed up in pain before she spotted Knight.
‘I quit,’ she said, spitting out the words like venom. ‘They’re bloody lunatics.’ She pointed at Luke, her whole arm shaking. ‘And that one’s a pant-shitting, biting little pagan! When I tried to get him on the loo, he bit me. He broke skin. I quit, and you’re paying for the doctor’s bill.’
Chapter 30
‘YOU CAN’T QUIT,’ Knight protested as the nanny dodged around Luke.
‘Watch me,’ Nancy hissed as she barged right by him and down the stairs. ‘They’ve been fed, but not bathed, and Luke’s crapped his nappy for the third time this afternoon. Good luck, Peter.’
She grabbed her things and left, slamming the door behind her.
Isabel started to sob again. ‘Nancy leaves and Lukey did it.’
Feeling overwhelmed, Knight looked at his son and shouted in anger and frustration: ‘That’s four this year, Luke! Four! And she only lasted three weeks!’
Luke’s face wrinkled. He cried: ‘Lukey sorry, Daddy. Lukey sorry.’
In seconds his son had been transformed from this force of nature capable of creating a whirlwind to a little boy so pitiful that Knight softened. Wincing against the pain in his side, still holding Isabel, he crouched down and gestured to Luke with his free arm. The toddler rushed to him and threw his arms so tight around Knight that he gasped with the ache that shot through him.
‘Lukey love you, Daddy,’ his son said.
Despite the stench that hung around the boy, Knight blew the talc off Luke’s cheeks and kissed him. ‘Daddy loves you too, son.’ Then he kissed Isabel so hard on the cheek that she laughed.
‘A change and a shower is in order for Luke,’ he said, and put both his children down. ‘Isabel, shower too.’
A few minutes later, after dealing with the soiled nappy, they were in the big stall shower in Knight’s master bath, splashing and playing. Knight got out his mobile just as Luke picked up a sponge cricket bat and whacked his sister over the head with it.
‘Daddy!’ Isabel complained.