Clever little thing, p.1
Clever Little Thing, page 1
VIKING
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Copyright © 2025 by Helena Echlin
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A Pamela Dorman Book/Viking
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Echlin, Helena, author.
Title: Clever little thing / Helena Echlin.
Description: [New York] : Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, 2025.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024018874 (print) | LCCN 2024018875 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593656075 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593656082 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Thrillers (Fiction) | Paranormal fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3605.C45 C54 2025 (print) | LCC PS3605.C45 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20240515
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024018874
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024018875
Ebook ISBN 9780593656082
Cover design and illustration: David Litman
Cover art: Aaron Amat / Getty Images
Designed by Cassandra Garruzzo Mueller, adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Acknowledgments
About the Author
_149834111_
For Jordan
I imagine the corruption of myself running through her tracts, into her veins and recesses. I long to withdraw my sting from her innocent body.
Rachel Cusk, A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother
Now
1.
On a table by the window is a bowl of fruit that confusingly also contains ceramic fruit. Shiny porcelain Bartlett pears are jumbled with dull green ones notched with brown, too imperfect not to be real. I feel a strong urge to sort the fruit, just to take control of something. I’m about to move them when the door springs open. A cheery young woman introduces herself as Kelly, and says, “Just to let you know, we have to take your shoelaces, my love. It’s regulation.”
“Fine.” I take off my shoes and hand her the laces. Lose the battle, win the war. I am going to get out of here.
“We already got your sharps,” she tells me.
“Sharps?”
“Anything sharp, love. Razors, nail files. In your case, it wasn’t much. Just a pencil.”
“I don’t have anything to write with?” Not that I have anything to write, and my right hand is still bandaged, my cuts throbbing. I could barely scrawl the word help.
In any case, I agreed to stay here for two nights. Not that I had much choice.
“You can write in the lounge. It’s lovely and cozy in there, they’ve got the fire on. Peaceful too: they put the moms who came with their babies in the other wing, so you won’t be disturbed.” She gives me a pointed look, as if I’ve forgotten that Luna, three days old and born just before Christmas at thirty weeks, is in the NICU in London. But she’s getting the best possible medical care. Stella is the one who’s in danger.
Kelly surveys the room. Is she checking to see if I’ve examined the fruit? Maybe the fruit bowl is a test: If I don’t sort it, she’ll say I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. But if I do sort it, she might say I’ve got an obsessive need to control my surroundings.
Pete says anxiety is my natural mode, and I look for things to worry about. Maybe I do worry too much about what other people think. I force myself to take a deep breath, blow out slowly. I turn away from the fruit, paint on a bright smile for Kelly. “Now what?”
“Pop on your comfy clothes,” she says. “I’ll wait outside.” She closes the door and leaves me. Laid out on the bed is a long-sleeved white cotton T-shirt and white fleece-lined tracksuit bottoms. They have a uniform here.
This could be an upmarket B & B, with its oak beams, comfortable armchair, and big bed with crisp cotton sheets and decorative mound of pillows. On the wall opposite the window hangs a still life: bleached shapes of bottles and jars on a darker background. Empty vessels. Perhaps this is what we mothers should aspire to be.
Someone has unpacked the bag Pete brought. My toothbrush and contact lens solution are in the bathroom. The breast pump is on the table by the window, plugged in and ready to go. The dresser drawers contain my underwear but no sign of other clothes. Did Pete forget them?
Win the war, I remind myself. And my phone’s still in my pocket, so I’m not helpless. I change into the clothes Kelly laid out. I go into the bathroom, where there’s a basket of soaps individually wrapped in pretty paper, and change my pad too, afraid of bleeding through the pale tracksuit bottoms.
When Kelly returns, she gathers up the clothes I removed. She tells me someone will bring my lunch shortly and to have a nice sit-down while I wait. When she’s gone, I stand by the window, staring at the peaceful view of bare winter trees and hills dotted with sheep. Pete didn’t stint on this place, I’ll give him that. I promised I would relax, but I can’t. I can’t choose an organic lavender-and-geranium soap and run a soothing bath. I wrap my arms around myself and rock back and forth.
Kelly knocks and enters without waiting for me to invite her in. “Almost forgot.” She holds out her hand. I stare at her, wondering if she expects a tip. “Your phone,” she says. “We find it helps guests with their rest and relaxation if they don’t have their phones to worry about.”
“I need my phone.”
“You can still use it whenever you want,” Kelly says, but I shake my head and grip my phone with both hands. She mutters something about having to run this by management, but doesn’t fight me.
When she’s gone, I go back to staring out the window. I’m terrified that Pete doesn’t understand the danger that Stella is in. I promised to stay, but I could break my promise. I’m no more than a couple of hours from London, although I have no coat and no shoelaces. I do have my phone, so I can call a taxi. But they might not let it through the gates. In any case, I’m afraid that if they know I’m leaving, they’ll do something to stop me. But I have to get back to Stella.
After her birth, eight years ago, I was exhausted, but I lay awake in wonder at the glorious smell that emanated from her, like vanilla pudding, like caramelizing sugar, like honeysuckle. This is the smell of something greater than human, I thought, the secret sweetness at the heart of it all.
Stella no longer smells sweet. When I look back on it, I see that by the time I found out what happened to Blanka, Stella had already begun to change.
Then
2.
When Stella and I spotted my friend Emmy, her daughter Lulu was already racing towards the sea. But Stella clapped her hands over her ears. “Too loud,” she moaned.
“What is, sweetie?” I asked as Emmy unfolded a blanket, laying her baby, Madeleine, on top. When she sat down, she took care to spread the skirt of her white Breton striped dress so it wouldn’t get creased. It was a perfect August day, the sky a rare, deep blue. I wanted the girls to run around together. But Stella clutched her head and grimaced as if a military jet screamed overhead, even though the only sound was the surf and the cry of gulls.
Emmy pushed up her oversized sunglasses and studied Stella with concern. “Does she have a headache?”
I shook my head. “I think she doesn’t like the sound of the waves. She’s got very acute hearing.” She also didn’t like the sound when I ran her a bath.
Stella sat down and drew her knees up. The broad brim of her sun hat cast her face into shadow. She seemed subdued. Maybe she was more upset about Blanka leaving than I’d realized. She had resigned abruptly a week ago. After four years of working for us, she’d sent a brief text: I cannot come anymore. When I tried to get a reason out of her, she ghosted me. After all that time she’d spent with Stella, playing with her, bathing her, feeding her, apparently my daughter was still just a job to her, one she cast aside like a used tissue.
“Maybe Stella needs a snack,” Emmy suggested. “How about a piece of your mom’s homemade banana bread, sweetheart? Or I’ve got some carrots somewhere.”
With her hands still glued to her ears, Stella shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“She might be getting a bit hot in that sunsuit,” Emmy said to me.
“With our Irish coloring, you can’t be too careful,” I said. Stella had inherited my pale complexion, along with my hair, the dark red of saffron threads.
Emmy’s daughter Lulu attempted a cartwheel at the edge of the sea, her flaxen hair twisted into a pretty crown braid. Emmy herself had a fashionably messy side plait. I’d looked at videos on how to do both, but Stella hated me touching her hair. I wished that Stella would go and play too. Year four started in a few days, and Stella still struggled to fit in. I organized this end-of-summer trip to a beach in Kent so Stella could spend time with another kid in her class. Instead, Stella sat in her self-imposed bubble of silence.
Lulu finally turned a perfect cartwheel and then did one after another. My chest felt tight. Lulu looked so joyful and free. Stella had never done a cartwheel in her life. But I reminded myself that other mothers had trouble getting their kids to read, whereas Stella read happily for hours. I tapped her shoulder and made sure she could see my lips. “I love you,” I said. Her gaze met mine, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
Emmy attached her baby to her breast, though thanks to a clever opening in her dress, you couldn’t see a thing. She managed to look chic even when breastfeeding. She caught me looking at her, and I turned away and folded my arms over my own chest, clad in a nondescript white T-shirt. My breasts were swollen, and Emmy didn’t know I was pregnant. I was hopeful this time, but I’d lost pregnancies before, and I didn’t want to jinx this one by making it public. Not yet. Luckily, I was barely showing.
Emmy placed a hand on my arm and murmured, “I’m so sorry about Blanka. I only found out this morning, or I would have messaged you.”
I murmured back, “It’s fine. Stella liked her, but she actually wasn’t very good at babysitting.”
Emmy looked reproachful. “Well, she’s gone now.”
“She moved?” I laid a palm over the back of my neck. I’d recently had my hair cut short, a practical bob, and it felt like the sun was burning the newly exposed skin.
Now Emmy was staring at me too. “Oh my god, you haven’t heard?” She looked at Stella, who still had her hands clapped over her ears, then leaned closer to me and whispered, “Are you sure Stella can’t hear?”
I wasn’t. Then I had an idea. I took a tissue from my tote, tore it down the middle, and folded each half until I had two tiny wads. I wet the wads and squeezed them out. I pulled Stella’s hands away from her ears. “Ta-da! Earplugs.” Once I got them in, her whole body relaxed. “Now you can go and have fun,” I said. Stella clambered to her feet and ran to join Lulu.
“Genius,” said Emmy. I smiled. It seemed like we were going to have an actual, real conversation, instead of just administering sunscreen and snacks. Best of all, Stella was at last playing happily with Lulu.
“Blanka’s dead,” Emmy said.
I shook my head. The surf rushed into my ears, smashing, pummeling, grinding. Stella was right: the noise was unbearable. Emmy’s mouth kept moving. When the noise finally retreated, I thought I had the gist: an accident of some kind. Emmy didn’t know the details.
“But I just saw her,” I said absurdly, as if the fact that she’d just been alive could disprove her death. “When did this happen?”
“On Thursday. Just before the weekend. Look, I’m so sorry you’re finding it out from me. I can’t believe you didn’t know.”
“How do you know?”
“I ran into my friend who lives on the same street,” Emmy said. “She saw them taking her away.”
Blanka had died just before the weekend, a few days after she quit. If she hadn’t stopped babysitting for us, would she still be alive?
I closed my eyes and saw Blanka shuffling along the pavement in her long black skirt and grey hoodie, shoulders drooping as if she carried all her worldly belongings on her back. She’d only been in her thirties, and had a round, girlish face, but she had moved like an old woman.
“Was it a car accident?” I asked, feeling sick.
Emmy shook her head. “My friend didn’t know.”
“Her poor mother,” I said. I had never met her mother—Blanka was a very private person—but I knew they lived together. I wondered if the accident had happened at home.
“Blanka was with you for a long time, wasn’t she? I’m so sorry, Charlotte. This must be awful for you.”
I nodded, although in fact Blanka was never one of those babysitters where people say, “She’s part of the family.” Stella liked her, but Pete and I never quite understood why. We used to joke that she was the nondairy creamer of babysitters: the only good thing you could say about her was that she was better than nothing.
Now I felt terrible for every bad thought I’d ever had about her.
A shriek tore the air. Lulu charged towards us, face crumpled. She threw herself on the blanket, wailing, and Emmy set her baby down and squeezed Lulu tight. Stella stood at a safe distance, clutching something behind her back. My heart sank.
“Stella, what is that?” I called. She shook her head and pointed to her earplugs.
“We went to the rocks,” Lulu choked out. “Stella said she had something to show me, and it was a—dead—” She resumed her wailing.
“Oh my god,” said Emmy as Stella finally presented what she held: a mass of bones and quills, some kind of seabird. A piece of it fell to the sand. “Oh my god.” She snatched up her baby and, clutching Lulu’s hand, retreated several yards.
“Get it away!” Lulu whined.
“Don’t worry, Lulu,” Stella called. “It can’t hurt you. It doesn’t even have a head.”
Lulu buried her face in Emmy’s waist. “I don’t want that thing near the baby,” Emmy called, clutching her infant to her chest. “It could have a disease.”
“OK, OK.” I walked over to Stella, leaving Emmy consoling Lulu. I pulled out her earplugs, but she didn’t complain about the noise of the surf anymore. She was too excited. “Why do you have that seagull, sweetie?” I asked.
“It’s not a seagull, it’s a gannet. I want to look at it. Please, Mommy?”
I softened. Stella loved investigating. It never even occurred to her that Lulu might not share her scientific interest.
“You can study it at home,” I said. “But it’s going in the boot. And you’re apologizing to Lulu.” Luckily, I had a spare plastic bag in my tote. I helped Stella stuff the thing in, and marched her back to the blanket, where Emmy was placating Lulu with banana bread. “I’m sorry you felt scared, Lulu,” Stella said, hanging her head. Lulu sniffled and kept on eating. Nobody offered any banana bread to Stella, even though I was the one who made it. I used almond flour because Emmy claimed Lulu was allergic to gluten.
Emmy looked at Stella, her face wary. With a shock, I realized that she was thinking about what Stella had done at her eighth birthday party. My face grew hot.
This skin Stella and I had: you really couldn’t be out in the sun for a minute.
* * *
• • •
Stella insisted on having the bag on her lap on the way home, and I didn’t have the energy to argue with her. As I started the drive back to London, my heart ached. She was so different from her peers. She read at an adult level: her bedtime reading was Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation by Otto Lilienthal. No wonder it was difficult for her to socialize. And the hard part was, she didn’t yet understand the gulf between her and other kids.
