Free Shallow Be Thy Grave by A. J. Taft

nights.”
    “What were you going to say about him?” asked Jo. “Yesterday before Madame came in.”
    Nell checked over her shoulder and made sure the front door was properly closed. She dropped her set of keys into her bag. “I don’t remember.”
    “You said he was a complete…” Jo was trying to jog Nell’s memory.
    Nell hurried down the steps towards them. “He’s a bit of a letch,” she said, lowering her voice. “That’s all.”
    “Do you know someone called Grace?” asked Lily. “An au pair?”
    “Never heard of her.” Nell noticed the look on Lily’s face. “But I’ve only been here a couple of weeks. I hardly know anyone.”
    “We really need to find her,” said Jo. “She’s Fiona’s best mate.”
    Sebastian started running in circles around Nell, entangling her in the reins. She fought to bring him to heel. “Does she work round here?”
    “I guess,” said Lily. “Fiona must have met her somehow.”
    “She looks after two kids,” said Jo. “One of ’em’s called Angelina.”
    “Come with me to the playgroup. There’s bound to be someone who knows her,” Nell said when she was finally free of the reins. She pointedly looked Jo and Lily up and down. “But I warn you now, you’re not exactly going to blend.”
     
    The playgroup was held in the upstairs room of a pavement cafe.  In the corner of the room were brightly coloured plastic mats and some toys, which most of the toddler-aged children were ignoring.  A couple of small girls in patterned dresses and matching pigtails sat crayoning at a table. Most of the au pairs, and there must have been at least a dozen, stood at the far end of the room, chatting to each other, as the rest of the children ran wild. The rich smell of French coffee filled the room. Lily was aware she was staring, but she couldn’t help herself.  It was like watching something out of a Robert Palmer video. ‘The Parisian Au Pairs’. Lily wondered whether there was an agency specialising - ‘Identikit Au Pairs’. Must be young, blonde, well-groomed and slim.
    “I think the Beaumonts have had to scrape the bottom of the barrel with me,” Nell confided as she took the boys’ shoes off. “April’s not the best time to get yourself a nanny. Not an English one.” She dropped her voice to a whisper, “Most of the girls in here are just filling time ’til they find themselves a rich husband. Obviously a proper job is out of the question, so they’re developing their domestic skills while pretending they’re becoming more cultured.  Thick as pig shit most of them.”
     “So what are you doing here?” asked Lily.
    “I thought I might like to work with children,” said Nell. “How wrong can you be?”
    Nell led them over to a small group of three young women who were sitting together around a coffee table. They greeted Jo and Lily with the same sense of suspicion and mistrust that Lily was trying to keep from showing on her own face. Nell introduced them. Each one flashed a brief smile and Lily was struck immediately by what good teeth they all had. Straight, aligned, white as porcelain.
    “We’re looking for an au pair called Grace,” explained Jo. “Kids are called Angelina and something. Do you know her?”
    “She doesn’t come to this group,” one of the seated women said, as she fiddled with the small diamond studs in her ears. A small, uncomfortable silence followed, before she eventually felt moved to add, “It’s her morning off.”
    Jo pulled her notebook from her canvas satchel and turned to a clean page. “Where does she live?”
    The au pair pulled at her diamond studs until Lily worried she might rip them out of her ears. Her two companions avoided making eye contact with Jo or Lily.
    “I’m Fiona’s sister,” said Lily, breaking the silence. “Fiona Winterbottom. Do you know her? She was the Beaumonts’ au pair before Nell.”
    One of the three au pairs, the one on the left with, shock, horror, light brown hair,