The Bad Nanny

Abigail is not coping as well as she thinks she should be. Her husband is at work all day, the baby takes everything she has, and she has convinced herself that with a bit of help she could be both a better mother and a person with a job again.

So she hires Haley, who is competent, warm and very good with the child, and for a while it works exactly as advertised.

Then Abigail starts losing time. Not minutes: hours she cannot account for, conversations she does not remember having, a version of her own day that other people describe back to her and she cannot match. Emily Shiner writes it tight to Abigail, whose grip on events keeps slipping just as the reader's grip on what Haley is doing starts to tighten, and by the time Abigail understands the shape of it she has already given this person the run of her house.