“I used the servants’ corridor, and I snuck into her room and stole the book. I went into the library, pulled the pages out and burned them in the fire. Then I left. I did it specifically at the same time I knew the maid was about to clean the library.” She swallowed thickly, still tugging at the scarf in her hands.
“What happened?”
“Well, as you can imagine, Lumpy went straight to Daddy and told him I’d done it. Who else would it be? I was a naughty child who hated her tutor. It was obviously me. But I insisted it wasn’t me. I insisted until I was blue in the face and Mummy and Daddy were exasperated with me. Instead, I blamed the maid.”
I stared uncomfortably down at the shoes on my feet. I’m not sure why it affected me so much. She was just a child. But it did affect me because I thought of that maid and her low wages. I thought of the toilets she’d cleaned and the ornaments she’d dusted. No one aspires to be a maid. You are one because you’re desperate. And then I wondered… But no. If Lottie was ten, the timeline didn’t match with my mother’s time at Highwood.
“It was an awful thing to do, because of her kindness. She’d even helped me escape one day and then smuggled me back into the library before Lumpy came back. It meant I could go out and play in the sun. She was such a lovely woman.”
When Lottie’s expression changed, a sense of dread washed over me.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Daddy fired her. I know he didn’t believe me, but he was too full of pride to admit it in front of my tutor. So he fired the maid. He fired them both actually, and that was the end of my tutoring. I don’t know what happened to the maid, but I never saw her again. I guess she went on to work somewhere else.”
“Not as a maid,” I said quietly. She wouldn’t have known this, but references are important, and once a maid has been fired, it’d be unlikely that she’d find another job like this. A cleaner somewhere else maybe. Scrubbing toilets in offices and restaurants.
“That’s it, I suppose. That’s the story the diorama depicted. Maybe it was her, after all these years, coming back to torture me.”
“Do you remember the names?”
She shook her head. “I’ve told Daddy. He’ll have the names on files somewhere I suppose. Maybe Huxley has it all written down. I’m sure he’ll find them. It’d be odd though, wouldn’t it? After all these years.” She glanced down at the scarf between her fingers, and then she thrust it towards me. “I don’t want this. Do you want it?”
I thought about turning it down, but if I took it, it’d be the prettiest item I owned by far. Tentatively, I held out my hand and accepted the gift.
Chapter 18
On the way out of Lottie’s room, I heard a swish and caught a glimpse of Mrs Huxley’s maroon skirt disappearing around a corner. Before I had time to think—and talk myself out of a decision—I quickly pulled off my shoes and tiptoed after her. At the corner I heard a knock and a door open. Once I rounded the corner, she was gone. But I knew where. She was in Lord Bertie’s office.
Silently, I made my way down the hall and stood outside the room, pressing my ear against the wood. My heart pounded so hard that I had to force it to calm with slow, steady, silent breaths. Their voices carried through the wood. Faint but clear enough to make out their words.
“The thing is, Huxley, quite frankly I have better things to do than chase up some stupid gifts. But I suppose now Lottie has one this matter needs resolving.”
“Are you going to the police?” Huxley’s voice sounded different. Relaxed, informal. It took me by surprise. She was always such a fawning minion to the Howards in public.
“No,” he said. “I have a friend who runs an investigation company. He’ll get to the bottom of it and sort things out.”
“When you find out who it is, what will you do?”
“Threaten them, pay them off. Whatever it takes to stop them sending those ridiculous scenes. Whoever it is knew about that business with Lottie and whatsername.”
“Susan Cole. The nanny.”
“Right. Maybe it’s her.”
“Maybe,” Huxley said. “What do you think of the new maid?”
I trembled, pressed harder, felt a pitter-patter against my ribs.
“I think she’s perfectly adequate.”
Mrs Huxley waited for a long pause before responding. “Yes, so do I. Feistier than expected though.”
“Well, that doesn’t bother me. As long as you can keep her in line.”
“Of course.”
There was a shuffle inside the room and footsteps approached. I moved away from the door, hurrying quietly down the hall. Once I passed Lottie’s bedroom, I broke into a sprint towards the servants’ corridor, slipped in through the hidden panel and made my way along the hallway. The spiral staircase shivered as I ran down the steps, and when I reached the bottom, I took a moment to catch my breath. The diorama scene flashed through my mind again. I saw myself broken and bruised on the floorboards, blood trickling from a gaping wound.
Stop it, I told myself, angrily stuffing my feet back into my shoes. I made my way past the kitchen and back to my bedroom when Mrs Huxley emerged from her office.
“Did you help Miss Howard?”
I froze. “What?”
“I said, did you help Miss Howard with her closet?”
My voice came out like a crackled whisper as I replied. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Gliding as always, Mrs Huxley passed me, making her way through to the kitchen while I remained rooted to the spot, still staring in her direction.
How had she reached her office before I’d reached my bedroom? I’d run all the way back here from Lottie’s room. It made no sense. I let myself in, pulled the map out of my pocket, spread it out on the bed and examined it for secret passages. This map didn’t have the secret cupboard above the stairs marked, which meant there could be other corridors, cubby holes or even rooms hidden within the walls. Mrs Huxley obviously knew one or more of these secrets and hadn’t told me about their existence. But had she told anyone?
The silk scarf was still in my pocket. Slightly ashamed that I’d accepted a gift and somewhat nervous that Lottie might go back on her generosity, I stuffed it in my underwear drawer where my finger caught the edge of thin, worn-down paper. My mother’s letters. Over two decades old. Perhaps she’d written them sitting on this bed in this very room. I thought about reading them again, but what was the point? I knew them by heart. I think there’s something wrong with Highwood Hall. Things are strange here. All the staff say the north wing is haunted, and sometimes I could honestly swear that I hear noises coming from that part of the house.
Roisin had said the same thing.
There were secrets within these walls, but was I ever going to be able to uncover them? Who could I trust? Who could I ask? The answer was no one. I closed my mind to the constant questions there because of the unpleasant scratching at the back of my mind. The one telling me I was in over my head.
Nerves tightly wound, feeling skittish and breathless, I made my way back to the kitchen. But just as I was about to step through the doorway, I heard someone whisper my name. When I turned, Alex was leaning against the wall, head casually resting on the door jamb. The light bounced across the dark green paint, giving his skin a sallow tone, deepening the shadows beneath his eyes. He grinned, grabbing my hand and hauling me away.
I protested, not wanting to be late for Mrs Huxley, pulling my weight away from him, but his grin stretched, and he breathed, “Come with me,” as his surprising strength tugged me along the hall. The fingers I’d seen expertly playing the piano pressed deep into my flesh until it turned white as milk.
“I can’t. Mrs Huxley—”
He reversed his step, moving quickly towards me with such sudden ferocity that I ended up backed against the wall. His face moved close enough to mine that I smelled cigarette smoke on his breath.
“Who’s your boss?” His eyes flashed. The mischievous grin was lost,
replaced by lips pulled away from his teeth like an aggressive animal. But it was not a threat. Somehow I knew that. It was a test.
I didn’t tremble. I didn’t look away. “You are.”
He let go of my arm. I’d passed the test. His smile returned. “Come on then.”
Chapter 19
For an hour, Alex showed me Highwood. He took me through the Howards’ personal spaces that felt lived-in and cosy, and he showed me the formal rooms they didn’t use. He pointed out all the paintings of his ancestors and the weapons pinned to the walls. As we walked around the hall, he kept a distance from me the entire time, ensuring that our bodies never touched. It was like taking a museum tour with a guide and a complete contrast to how he’d grabbed me outside the kitchen. For almost the entire time, he kept his hands behind his back while I imagined those fingers locked around my wrist. The more I thought about it, the more the skin tingled where he’d touched it.
Since I’d started working at Highwood Hall, I’d been too afraid to open the bathroom cabinets. It wasn’t because I had a goody-two-shoes nature preventing me from snooping. Far from it. The reason I didn’t open the cabinets was because I didn’t want to see what the Howards had been prescribed. Vicodin. Adderall. Tranquillisers. Even cough medicine. Bit by bit, I’d applied a tough, outer layer to my willpower, clad in steel, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t cautious. I kept myself away from temptation.
But as I looked at Alex, a realisation hit me. These tests, these power plays, were as tempting to me as whatever barbiturates or opioids were hidden in the Howards’ bathrooms. He’d quickly become my new addiction. But what I couldn’t figure out was why.
For the last part of the tour, Alex showed me two more secrets. He took me to those tiny, confined spaces reserved for the clandestine happenings of the past. First was the dumb waiter, which I’d seen in the kitchens. It wasn’t often used because it needed maintenance, and instead Roisin and I carried most of the food around the hall.
“You could fit in there,” he mused. “You’re quite petite, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve skipped a lot of meals.”
“We don’t feed you?”
“Not now, in the past.”
He gave me a strange look. Not sympathetic. Not concerned. Not cruel. I could’ve sworn that he was aroused.
Then he led me through to another wood-panelled room with a large fireplace and several comfortable sofas arranged in a semi-circle. In this room, I noticed the one and only large flat-screen TV fitted above the fireplace. The kind of warm and cosy snug that makes you fall in love with a house. One you could imagine children playing in the corner and a cat curled up a sheepskin rug. Alex, on the other hand, seemed out of place in this room. He was too formal, too upright. His blazer and striped shirt made it look like he was about to watch a polo match.
“I want to show you something. But before I show you, I want to ask you a question.”
“Okay.”
“Do you trust me?”
I hesitated for a moment. This felt like another test. The easy answer would be yes. It would be the placating answer, the pandering one. It was the kind of answer an employee should give to an employer, or at least the son of the employer. But it would be a lie.
“No.”
He lifted his chin. “Why not?”
“I don’t give my trust to people I hardly know,” I replied.
“Your trust is a prize to be earned? You hold it dearly.”
“I suppose you could put it like that. I think of it as being screwed over too many times.”
He smiled at that. “Let’s test your ability to trust. Shall we?” He stepped closer to the fireplace, ran his fingers down a panel, and then thumped the wood with the side of his fist. I heard a clunk, and the panel popped out. “It’s a priest hole. They used to hide—”
“I know what a priest hole is.”
“Do you now?” The grin was back.
“Yes,” I said. And then to prove myself, I offered up an explanation. “When Catholics were persecuted, some families hid priests in secret compartments in their homes.” I stepped closer to him and the hole, both of which made my stomach flutter with nerves. “It’s tiny.”
The entrance to the priest hole was so small I’d have to bend double to get into it. I leaned my head and shoulders into it, observing the way the hole then fed into a space behind the fireplace. The brick walls offered no sense of comfort.
While I leaned inside the hole, Alex came closer, his lips a hair’s breadth from my ear. “Will you get in?”
When I turned my head, we were so close we almost bumped noses. Tension ran all the way through me. I didn’t want him to see that I was nervous. “Why?”
He shrugged.
I knew it was a game. I knew right then and there exactly who he was. It made my heart pound and my stomach churn. It was dangerous to encourage him. I knew it was. But the truth is—I wanted to play. I could dress up the push and pull of the dynamic between Alex and me by saying I was afraid of losing my job, but it’d be a lie. No, I was curious, and I wanted to see how far it would go. I went in backwards with my fingers groping the ceiling of the hole so that I didn’t bang my head. I went in blind because I wanted him to see that I would. He watched, his eyes cold, his teeth clenched together, bloodless fingers gripping the wood panel. Once I was inside, I turned to continue deeper into the hole, and then I tucked myself into it.
He closed the door, trapping me in darkness.
He wanted to see me stuck, to know he was the only one who could let me out. I didn’t move while I was in that hole. My pulse quickened, but I didn’t panic. I closed my eyes and imagined I was in my room, in bed, with the light off. For some reason my thoughts drifted back to my childhood, to the day my aunt told me about my abandonment. I was three, maybe four. I’m not sure now. She’d always been Aunty Josephine to me, and I wanted to know why I didn’t call her Mummy like the other children called their mothers.
She wasn’t cruel, and she hadn’t said anything mean to me. In fact, she gave me a chocolate Freddo frog, my favourite even now, and explained that my mum had left when I was six months old.
“But you have me to look after you,” she’d said. “And… Well, I’ll do my best.”
“That’s okay,” I’d replied, thinking of nothing but the Freddo. I’d loved her for the chocolate alone.
Later, when I was eighteen, she sat me down and told me that my father was still alive. And then she told me where I could find him.
The door opened. Alex was flushed pink, his skin glowing with perspiration. He reached in and helped me out of the hole, his hands guiding me with a gentleness I hadn’t felt from him in the corridor. When he closed the door to the hole, he pushed me and pressed his body against mine. Our noses touched now because he leaned over. But instead of kissing me, he lifted both my arms and pinned them behind my head, and then he watched with curiosity when I didn’t protest or struggle.
He released me. Silently he walked away.
I made my way back to the kitchen alone.
“Where have you been? You’re late!” Huxley snapped, thrusting a tray of cutlery into my hands. “Set the dining room table.”
It wasn’t the reprimand I’d anticipated. She didn’t even wait for an explanation. I couldn’t help wondering, as I carried the tray up to the dining room, whether she knew exactly where I’d been.
In the dining room, Alex never acknowledged or even looked at me as I served food. However, I sensed the presence of Mrs Huxley in the background, like she was watching me as well as watching Alex, silent disapproval seeping from every one of her pores.
Huxley dismissed Roisin and me after the starters had been served, and we walked back down to the kitchen arm in arm. Roisin’s gaze skittered up the walls and across the ceiling before it fell onto me. She hesitated before she spoke.
“Were you with Alex again? Is that why you were late?”
I didn’t need to respond because
she read the truth from the expression on my face.
She stopped dead, and her hold of my arm tightened to stop me too. “If Mrs Huxley finds out—”
I sensed myself bristling. “She can’t do anything. It’s none of her business.”
“She can. You don’t know the kind of influence she has over Lord Bertie. She basically runs everything since Lady Laura died.”
It was the first time I’d heard her name. Alex had pointed her out to me in the dining room, but I’d not known her name before.
“Alex’s mother?”
Roisin nodded. “Do you know how she died?”
I shook my head.
“She fell down the stairs.”
I gasped. “The spiral stairs?”
“No, the main ones. By the entranceway. It was the middle of the day. Lord Bertie found her first, apparently. I wasn’t working here then, but Pawel told me all about it. He said it was awful. Blood everywhere. Her face was all smashed up.”
“What about Alex? Did he see his mother like that?”
To my surprise, Roisin grimaced, as though reacting to a memory or perhaps the mental image of someone else’s memory. She removed her arm from mine and placed it on her hip. “What happened with Alex is really strange. Like, fucking weird.”
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