The Turn of The Key

Rachel explains to Mr. Wrexham that she had been doing an internet search for her father when she’d come across the ad for the nannying position. He’d left her mother when her mother was still pregnant with Rachel, and Rachel had never met him. She had once stood shakily outside his previous address but then lost track of him. Her mother had moved on with another man and made Rachel feel like an outsider—an unwanted reminder of a past her mother was trying to forget. Rachel’s only ties to her father were her eyes, her “thick, wiry hair” (314), and the “R” necklace he had given her on her first birthday.

When Rachel had been working as a nanny at age 22, her mother had called and told her that she was retiring to Spain with Rachel’s stepfather. Her mother’s casual attitude about Rachel visiting in the future caused Rachel to curse at her mother. She told her she “hated her” and never wanted to see her again (314). Rachel tried to find Bill two days later, but he had moved to Scotland. She felt she lost her chance to ever see him again until a few years later when the nannying ad appeared.