New Book - The Nanny by Gilly MacMillan (Pages 1 - 34)

 First Published: 2019

The book starts with someone dropping a body into a lake, and then a woman rows back to land. The last image in the prologue is of the woman seeing the face of her daughter behind.

The first chapter takes place in 1987. Jocelyn wakes up and tries to call her nanny. Something happened the day before, and she knows she didn't behave well. When she goes to find her nanny, Hannah, her bedroom is empty and without any of her things. The housekeeper comes when she hears her cry, and she says that she will ask her parents, but some time later she tells Jocelyn that she needs to ask her parents herself. It is obvious that Jocely is afraid of her mother, and she tries to talk to her father, but he is focused on the newspaper he is reading. So when her mother, Virginia, notices and Jocelyn asks her where Hannah is, Virginia cruelly tells her that she is gone and it is all her fault. Jocelyn starts crying and tells her to make her return as she will be good from then on, but her mother grabs her face roughly and tells her that she doesn't want any nonsense.

In present time Jocely, who nows go by the name of Jo, has returned to her mother's home with her ten-year-old daughter, Ruby. Her husband died, and she found herself forced to find help from her widowed mother. Jo hates what the house and her mother represent, and even though Ruby is happy at first, as time goes by, she feels her sadness more deeply and feels bored. One thing that seems to draw her attention is the lake and she wants to go on a boat, but Victoria forbids him. Yet, Jo wants to do something for her daughter, and when she asks the gardener, he says that he can borrow his brother's kayak. She and Ruby go rowing and reach the island, and when they leave the kajak, Ruby's foot is trapped in some tree roots. And when Jo manages to release her foot, she discovers a human skull, and she knows she has to report it.

I am agog with curiosity. Did Nanny Hannah really leave the Holts household? Or was she killed? Is the skull belong to the nanny?