Part one

The first time, it was a bruise on her forearm. A yellow and purple bruise, the size of a two-euro coin, just above the wrist.

“I bumped into the radiator,” said Mum.

She was eighty-one. Since her stroke the year before, she walked with a stick and her left hand shook a little. Bumping into the radiator was possible. I bought a foam cover for the radiator. I drove back home to Namur, twenty minutes from her. I didn’t give it another thought.

The second time, it was on her cheek.

Mum’s name is Jeanne. She taught nursery school in Andenne for thirty-eight years. In the street, men of fifty still stop to say “Good morning, Madame Jeanne”, and she remembers their names, their cuddly toys and the day they wet themselves in class. She brought up two children on her own, after Dad left: my brother Marc and me.

She still lived in her house on the rue de la Papeterie, a narrow brick house with a little garden where she grew tomatoes she could no longer pick. She refused to go into a care home. “I’ll die in my own bed,” she had said, “not in a bed that smells of bleach.”

So we had got organised. A home carer from the social services came every morning, Monday to Saturday: Nadia, a woman of forty, calm, precise in everything she did, who called Mum “Madame Jeanne” like her former pupils. A nurse came by for the medication. I came on Wednesdays and Sundays. And Marc, who lived five minutes away, dropped in every evening.

Marc was the perfect son. He had taken over Mum’s accounts after her stroke, with a power of attorney signed at the bank, “to spare her the worry”. He paid her bills, did her shopping, fixed the boiler. The whole neighbourhood said so: “Aren’t you lucky, Madame Jeanne, to have a son like that.”

I admired him. I even felt a little guilty. He did so much more than I did.

The bruise on her cheek, Mum said, was from a fall in the bathroom.

Then there was a bruise on her shoulder, which I saw while helping her into her cardigan. Then two red marks on her upper arm, side by side, like fingers. Mum stopped talking. She who used to talk all the time, who commented on the news, who passed on the gossip from the baker’s, had taken to staring out of the window for hours. When I spoke to her, she jumped.

I mentioned it to Marc. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

“I wanted to talk to you about it, Sophie. I think it’s Nadia.”

“Nadia?”

“Think about it. When did the bruises start? After the summer. When Nadia replaced the other carer, the little blonde one. And there’s something else. Money’s going missing. I’ve seen withdrawals from Mum’s account. Two hundred euros, three hundred euros. Mum doesn’t go out any more, she doesn’t go to the cash machine on her own. Who has access to her card in the mornings? Who knows her PIN?”

My head spun. Nadia, who brushed Mum’s hair while singing her Dalida songs. Nadia, who had brought gazelle-horn pastries for her birthday.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not sure of anything. But I’m not going to wait until she kills her to be sure. I’ve rung social services. I’m asking for her to be replaced.”

Nadia left the following Monday. She came to say goodbye to Mum. I wasn’t there, but the neighbour, Madame Collard, told me about it afterwards: Nadia had cried in the hallway, and she had held both Mum’s hands and said: “Madame Jeanne, I didn’t do anything. You know that.”

Mum hadn’t answered. She had just squeezed her hands, very hard.

On the Wednesday, as I was leaving Mum’s, I found a piece of paper tucked under my windscreen wiper. A page torn from an exercise book, folded in four. Careful handwriting, in blue biro.

“Madame Sophie. I never took your mother’s money. I never hurt her. In the mornings, when I arrive, she is frightened. She is not frightened of me. She is frightened of the night. Look at the night. Nadia.”

Look at the night.

I sat in my car with the paper on my knees. At night, Mum was alone. The nurse came in the mornings, at the same time as Nadia. Marc came in the evenings, around nine, to check everything was all right, and he locked the door when he left. Nobody else had a key. Apart from Nadia, who had handed hers back on Monday.

And yet, two days later, there was a new bruise. On her right wrist, this time. Nadia was no longer there.

I said nothing to Marc. I don’t know why. Perhaps because he would have had an explanation, and I didn’t want an explanation. I wanted to see.

In my attic, in a box marked “Léo”, I had kept the camera baby monitor I bought for the weekends when I looked after my great-nephew. A small white device with a black eye and an infrared light for night-time. You could watch the picture on an app, on your phone. Léo is four now and doesn’t sleep over any more. It took me an hour to find the charger.

On the Sunday, while Mum was having her nap, I set it up in her bedroom, on top of the bookcase, between her wedding photo and an old dictionary. You couldn’t see it unless you knew it was there. I covered the little green light with a piece of black tape. I set the app to alert me at the slightest movement between midnight and six in the morning.

Before leaving, I sat on Mum’s bed. She had woken up. She looked at me for a long time, then raised her eyes to the bookcase. Just for a second. Then she looked at me again.

I think she had seen it. She said nothing. She took my hand and squeezed it, the way she had squeezed Nadia’s.

The first night, nothing. The phone buzzed twice: Mum turning over in bed. I looked at the grainy grey picture, my mother tiny under the eiderdown, and I felt ridiculous. I was spying on my eighty-one-year-old mother. For nothing. Perhaps Nadia had lied to defend herself. Perhaps Marc was right.

The second night, nothing either.

The third night was a Thursday. I couldn’t sleep. At two, I got up for a glass of water and stayed in my kitchen, in the dark, with the phone on the table.

At 2.40, it buzzed.

“Motion detected — Mum’s room”.

I opened the app. The picture took a few seconds to load. Mum was in bed, but she wasn’t asleep. She was sitting up, the eiderdown pulled up to her chin, and she was watching the door.

The door handle went down.

Someone came in. Someone with a key to the house, since the front door was locked every night. A silhouette, grey on the grey screen. It stopped at the foot of the bed. I saw Mum shrink back, both hands in front of her face.

Then the silhouette leaned over her, into the glow of the night light, and I saw the face.

I recognised the jacket before I even recognised the face.