The Turn of The Key

As Rowan is ushering the girls out to take them to school, she runs into Jean., who gives her a genuine smile and tells her she’s doing a good job with the girls. Driving back from school, Rowan notes how gray and dreary Heatherbrae and the surrounding landscape look compared to the first time she saw them when they had seemed to offer what she calls “a new life” (262). At the house, she observes that she and Petra are alone, and she is reluctant to enter. She feels that outside, she can at least be herself, free from, she says, the house’s “silent watchfulness” (263). She takes Petra for a walk in her buggy, splashing in puddles to amuse the baby. Before they head back to the house, she observes the poison garden and notes that the string she tied around the gate is gone.

When Rowan enters the house, she smells frying bacon. It turns out to be Rhiannon, who smells faintly of cheap alcohol. Unsure what to do, Rowan decides to call Cass, Elise’s mom. A male named Craig answers the phone, demanding to know who she is. Rowan realizes Rhiannon had been lying to her about being with Elise and was most likely with Craig. After Craig hangs up on her, she tries to compose an email to Sandra and Bill but is overwhelmed by the fact that she wants to tell them about everything—Maddie, the attic, the noises, and Craig. As she settles on a message expressing concerns about Rhiannon’s behavior, she’s interrupted by Petra waking up from her nap and sees it’s time to pick up the girls. She leaves the email unsent on the tablet.

After Maddie and Ellie are in bed, Rowan finds Rhiannon downstairs in a mini skirt, insisting she’s going out. Rowan tries to stop her by threatening to tell Sandra and Bill she’d been drinking. She notices an email on her phone from Sandra and finds a response to her unsent email from earlier, thanking her for the update. Rowan scrolls up and reads her original email, which has been changed to praise Rhiannon. Rowan confronts Rhiannon and again threatens to call Sandra and Bill, but Rhiannon stops her by bringing up Rachel Gerhardt. Rowan slumps into a kitchen chair, shocked at the realization that Rhiannon knows the truth about her (273).

Rowan again addresses Mr. Wrexham directly, explaining that he knows from the legal papers that it was Rachel Gerhardt who was arrested—not Rowan Caine. However, when the police found out that Rowan’s real identity was Rachel, they viewed her, she says, as “some kind of criminal mastermind” (274). Rachel explains that it had been easy to take on another identity because the real Rowan was her roommate, and her paperwork did not contain pictures. Their credentials were also similar, although Rachel had not worked at Little Nippers as long as Rowan and was not a supervisor like Rowan. Rachel insists the name was nothing more than a technicality because all her qualifications were accurate, and everything was true except her name.

Now that the moment of truth has arrived, she’s glad to have it over with. She asks how Rhiannon figured it out, to which Rhiannon replies that she only had to look on social media and see that the pictures didn’t match up. She also found Rachel’s still-active Facebook profile, which gave her away. Rachel wonders that she was so careless but sees it as proof that she wasn’t trying to be deliberately deceptive. The police kept asking Rachel why she had done it, but she couldn’t adequately explain herself.

Rachel watches as Rhiannon leaves, wondering if she has any recourse besides admitting to Sandra that she has been posing as someone else. She knows she should come clean but is unsure of the best approach. She starts drinking wine heavily, not caring anymore if Bill and Sandra see her on the camera because, she says, “the shit was about to hit the fan” (280). Although she’s drunk, Rachel can’t bring herself to go into her bedroom to sleep. She starts to wash her wound from the doll when Jack enters. He observes that she’s up late and asks if it was a good day. She confesses it wasn’t because she had a run-in with Rhiannon. She debates whether to tell Jack the details because it might be a breach of confidentiality, but she also feels, she says, that she “might go crazy” (281) if she doesn’t tell someone. She explains that Rhiannon went out with, she says, an “awful unsuitable friend” (282). She’s worried that if something bad happens to Rhiannon, it will be her responsibility. Jack comforts her and tends to her wound. He can’t find any antiseptic in the house and invites her to come back to his flat. She debates leaving the children, but he convinces her that she’s not far and can bring the baby monitor.

Later, the police would ask why she left the children if she thought there was a threat in the house. Rachel tried to explain that if anything malevolent existed in the house—and she now questions whether there was anything—it was after her, and her alone. She insisted that she just wanted to be away from it, but the police, she says, “didn’t seem to buy it” (284). She grabs the baby monitor and tablet and follows Jack to his flat.

At Jack’s, Rachel is relieved to find his lights operate by ordinary switches. She sits on the couch, enjoying the warmth of the fire. She finds the simplicity of Jack’s flat refreshing and endearing. He puts antiseptic on her wound and fishes out more glass from her hand with a pair of tweezers. Jack commends her for lasting longer than the previous nannies, one of whom left in the middle of the first night. He confesses that he thinks it was Bill who “scared them off” (289). Rachel asks why he didn’t warn her, but he insists he didn’t know how. She wonders if Ellie had been referring to her dad when she said she liked it better when he wasn’t around because, she had said, “He makes them do things they don’t want to do” (290). When Jack admits he has no proof, Rachel says he doesn’t need any because Bill tried something with her. Jack apologizes to her, adding it’s no wonder she’s been hearing sounds, but Rachel clarifies that the two are unrelated (290). Jack becomes agitated and threatens to do something to Bill. Rachel tells him not to, grabbing his arm, and suddenly they kiss with urgency and intensity.

Afterward, they lie in one another’s arms until Rachel realizes she needs to go back to the house. She also knows she has to tell Sandra her real identity. It may get her fired, leaving her with no job, references, or money, but it would be what she deserved (292). As she’s getting dressed, she hears a sound from the house that she says is “between a crack and a thud” (292). She checks the tablet but the children still seem to be sleeping. She kisses a sleeping Jack on the cheek and turns to head back to the house.

Before leaving Jack’s flat, Rachel looks back at him one more time and notices a purple flower on the counter identical to the one she found in the kitchen. She wonders if Jack left the flower in the house, but can’t remember if he had been away that night. She also notices that he has the string that she wrapped around the entrance to the poison garden gate. She does an internet search for the flower and finds that it’s an extremely poisonous type called monkshood. Her mind starts racing at the possibility that it could have been Jack all along (295), and that he might also be responsible for the doorbell, the footsteps above her, the music in the middle of the night, and the writing in the attic. She starts trembling and runs out of his flat as quickly as and quietly as possible.

Back at the house, Rachel thinks back on Jack’s behavior and decides it doesn’t add up. He always seems to be around when he’s needed and offers a convenient solution to whatever problem has presented itself. And his last name is still Grant, which means he could somehow be connected to the previous owner despite his insistence otherwise. However, it’s not the Elincourts he’s trying to drive away but the nannies. Rachel tries to understand why, she says, “someone or something” (298) is determined to get rid of them.

She suddenly notices that the wine bottle, which had almost been empty when she left, is now empty. She then spots a berry near the garbage disposal. When she puts her hand in, she finds several mushed berries—possibly the poisonous cherry laurel—and realizes they had been put into the wine when she wasn’t looking. But then someone else had dumped them out. She concludes there must be, she says, “two forces in the house” (299): one good, one malevolent.

Rachel heads to the attic to find answers. She is convinced now that the hauntings are human. The door to her room is open and she feels a strong breeze. She hears, she says, a “low, mechanical buzzing” (300) above her. She opens the door to the attic and heads upstairs. She finds that it’s undisturbed except for the missing doll’s head and the open window—which Jack had closed last time they were there. She also notices a light in the corner and finds that it’s a buzzing mobile phone. She also discovers her necklace on the floor.

Rachel is back in the kitchen trying, she says, to “make sense of it all” (305), particularly how her necklace had gotten into a locked room. She had searched for some alternative entrance to the attic through a trap or hidden door but hadn’t found anything. When Rhiannon stumbles in late at night, Rachel tells her she’s going to say something to Sandra. Rhiannon laughs it off, making it clear to Rachel that she’s going to get fired. She curses at Rachel, spitting crumbs into her face, which prompts Rachel to become angry. She asks Rhiannon why they all hate her so much. Rhiannon angrily responds that they don’t want or need her.

Rachel sees some of Maddie in Rhiannon’s face, as well as some of herself. She remembers how she used to break the rules to get her mother to notice her. As a child, she never felt good enough. Her mother never noticed her accomplishments, only her flaws. So, as a teenager, she rebelled. Instead of trying to be perfect, she did the opposite. However, it didn’t change anything and the message she got from her mom was that she had ruined her life. She had left home at eighteen and never looked back.

Rachel feels herself becoming more sympathetic towards Rhiannon and begins to mention Holly, the previous nanny. Rhiannon suddenly becomes enraged and refers to Holly as a “slut-faced hell witch” (309), explaining she hates her because she slept with Bill for two years. She tells Rachel she caught them with Petra’s baby monitor since there’s no camera in Bill’s study. They had professed their feelings, and Bill told Holly he was going to leave Sandra for her. Rhiannon decided to take revenge by framing Holly. She got her so angry that she hit Rhiannon on camera. Rhiannon told Holly to leave, or she’d expose her.

Rachel tries to comfort Rhiannon by telling her she’d never sleep with Bill, but Rhiannon hysterically insists she doesn’t believe her. He left his previous family for Sandra, and he could easily do it again. Rachel wants to tell Rhiannon the truth, as to why she would never be with Bill, but she can’t bring herself to do it. She wishes she had, but she wanted to save the truth for Sandra—that Bill is also her father.