The Housemaid

by Sarah A. Denzil

  When we’d found a table, Roisin pointedly made sure I sat next to Ade. I pulled the cardigan around me, my self-consciousness no doubt evident to everyone in the room.

  “So,” Ade said. “You didn’t fancy joining Mrs Huxley in the woods for anything witchy?”

  We’d kept the joke running, and it was becoming a lifeboat for us to cling to whenever we didn’t know what else to talk about. I decided to help us move on.

  “Not tonight. I thought I’d give Satan a break. How’s your foot?”

  “Oh, you know. Lost the toe—and the foot, actually—and I’ll never walk again.” He maintained his deadpan expression until I began to laugh. “What? It’s true.”

  “How is it really?”

  “Fine.” He lifted his booted foot to prove it to me, eyes twinkling. Lips twitching. Our gazes met and held. Warmth spread through my body, and I cleared my throat to break the spell.

  “I owe you a drink.” My eyes dropped to the table, still taken aback by the moment we’d shared.

  He held out his full pint. “Maybe later.”

  I thought of the twenty Roisin had given to me before we left. It was just enough to get a round in case the group wanted to go that route. “All right, you’re on.”

  He placed the pint glass back down on the table. Across from me, Roisin was halfway down her Aperol spritz and leaning close to Pawel, occasionally patting him on the forearm flirtatiously. I couldn’t tell if they were in a relationship or still at the courting stages. The giggles, smiles and innuendo stage.

  “So,” Ade said. “How are you settling into Highwood? Obviously, Mrs Huxley is about as friendly as a trained Doberman, but aside from that.”

  “You mean apart from someone sending me a threat on my first day? Yeah, it’s been great.”

  “A threat?” He frowned. “What happened?”

  I told Ade all about the diorama, from the doll at the bottom of the spiral staircase to the perfectly imitated walls and floors. Then I told him about Lottie’s version, of her as a child in the library. As I went on, his eyes widened and his eyebrows lifted until his face could be mistaken for an emoji.

  “Why me, and why Lottie? Why would the same person want to torture us both? I’m just a maid. A new maid. I’ve been here two weeks!”

  “Maybe you two are connected in some way,” he said.

  “She’s rich and I’m poor.” I shrugged. “I can’t see it.”

  “You have the hall in common. You both live there, sort of. Or maybe it’s to do with your past. What about your parents? Could they know the Howards in some way?”

  I shifted in my seat, wondering how much to tell him. Part of me assumed he’d think less of me if I told him everything about my life, the mistakes, the misfortunes. And then, of course, my hidden connection to the hall. To give me some time and try to hide the inner conflict, I drank down the last dregs of my Coke.

  “I guess you could say I’m estranged from my father in that I’ve only met him once. My mum…” I hesitated. Should I tell him? I hardly knew him. “No. I don’t think so.” And it was the truth. Lottie’s age meant that my mother had left the hall before she’d been born. I’d never once considered that the dioramas were connected to my mother. There wasn’t a strong enough thread between them.

  He was quiet for a moment, and then he went to the bar to get us some more drinks. I found myself lost in my thoughts, completely forgetting my promise to buy him a pint. When he came back, we ended up embroiled in a conversation led by Pawel about Mrs Huxley’s mysterious persona.

  “Does she even have a husband?” Roisin said. “She lives alone in her offices at Highwood.”

  “She used to,” Pawel said, “but then she killed him and baked him into a pie.”

  “Oh, come on, she’s not that bad,” Roisin said. “Let’s not be mean.”

  “She’s not that bad, but she is that weird. It’s like she has nothing better to do than live for the Howards. What does she even do outside work? She doesn’t drink. She doesn’t socialise with us. Once the Howards are in bed, what does she do?” Pawel lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug.

  “She goes somewhere every Sunday,” Roisin said. “Every afternoon she leaves for several hours and comes back not herself.”

  “What do you mean not herself?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Sad, I suppose.”

  “Do you think she has a lover?” Ade suggested.

  “Nah. She’s too busy servicing Little Lord Bertie, if you know what I mean.” Pawel snorted and Roisin smacked him on the arm.

  “Don’t be so gross,” she snapped.

  Pawel’s crude joke killed the conversation, and we went back to other chatter. I bought Ade that drink, and we talked about him for a while. He’d moved to York to study for a diploma in horticulture six years ago. Once he graduated, he applied for a job at Highwood. The Howards were his first steady employers.

  “To be honest, I came up north because I needed to get out of London. I love my parents and my little sis, but I’ve always hated the city.”

  I found that surprising. “How come?”

  “It’s just not for me. I like the quiet. I like air that isn’t tainted by pollution. You can hear the plants here.”

  I almost choked on my coke. “I’m sorry, what?”

  He laughed. “It’s true. Listen to them next time. They sing.”

  Eventually we started talking about the dioramas again, which I appreciated because it helped me process what was happening. I wanted to hear Ade’s ideas because I was fresh out of them.

  “There is one part of it that connects,” he said. “Lottie ended up getting the maid fired and you’re a maid. That’s the thread that links everything together. I don’t get why now though. The Lottie thing happened over a decade ago.”

  I sipped my Coke. “Ro told me about Chloe, the maid before me, and I wondered if she was, I don’t know, trying to warn me off. Then I thought it was Huxley, who’s been there years and must have seen everything. But why would she care about a maid who got sacked all those years ago? The people involved in Lottie’s story must have moved on. Don’t you think?”

  “You know, I’ve worked here for four years now and noticed that there’s a crazy high turnover of maids at Highwood,” Ade said. “I always thought it was Margot. She can be pretty demanding. But I guess it’s also because Lord Bertie hires so many from the Providence programme and it doesn’t always work out.”

  I stared hard at the glass in front of me, again not wanting to admit to more of my shady past.

  “There could be other disgruntled ex-employees out there,” Ade said. “But a diorama is a fucking weird thing to send.”

  Chapter 22

  We staggered out of the pub at midnight. I hooked an arm under Roisin’s shoulder to help her wobble her way out onto the pavement. She smiled at me, exhaling acidic alcohol breath in my face. It was impossible to be mad at her though, because she remained just as sweet when drunk, stroking my face and calling me pretty.

  “Alex Howard is a dick,” she said. “You need to stay away from him. He won’t treat you right.”

  Ade, on the other side of Roisin, cast a quick glance at me and then pointedly away. My cheeks flushed.

  “He didn’t treat Chloe right,” she continued to babble on. “She cried all the time. Every night. It made me so sad, but she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. She just cried and cried.” She stopped dead on the street and extricated herself from my and Ade’s grip. Then she cupped my face in her hand. “I don’t want you to cry.”

  “I’m not, Ro,” I told her. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah. Come on. Let’s get you in a taxi.”

  “Oh, you won’t find any taxis out here after eleven,” Ade said. “We’ll have to walk.”

  “You live in the village though, don’t you? You don’t have to come with us,” I said.

  “You can’t get her up the hill on your own. Unl
ess you want to stay at mine. I live right around the corner.”

  “What do you reckon?” I asked Roisin, not that she was in a position to give a sensible answer.

  “It’s our day off tomorrow,” Roisin said. Even in her drunkenness, she seemed to weigh up the pros and cons in her mind. The charming little furrow that appeared between her eyebrows made Ade and I share an amused smile. “Mrs Huxley won’t like it. She’d want us at the hall.”

  “We could walk up first thing in the morning.” Still annoyed at Mrs Huxley’s iron fist on Highwood Hall, I added, “It’s our day off, and we can do whatever we want. Screw Mrs Huxley.”

  “Screw Mrs Huxley,” Roisin said with a grin.

  Ade steered us away from the road leading to the hall and back into the heart of the village. Unsteadily, with Roisin propped up between us, we passed the post office and the old-fashioned gift shop. We turned onto a cobbled street that almost upended Roisin in her stilettos, finally coming to a small semi-detached cottage at the end of the road.

  “I only have two bedrooms,” he warned. “And most of the spare bedroom is taken over by plants. Actually, most of the house is.”

  Even in the dark, I noticed the greenery outside the house. Long vines reached up trellises, plump flowers hanging from them, and a tall sunflower propped up by garden canes, its wide head looming over mine. Roisin smiled up at it, trying to touch the seeds in the centre. Ade just laughed as he unlocked the front door and let us in.

  Roisin was compliant enough to drink some water before we tucked her into blankets on the sofa. Ade placed a large bowl on the floor next to her. Pale-red hair spilled over the armrest. I turned around to apologise to Ade for the intrusion, but he’d already wandered into the kitchen.

  “Do you want a cup of tea?”

  Caffeine was a bad idea, given the time, but I couldn’t stop fidgeting. At least holding a mug would give me something to do with my hands. I nodded my head and sat down at the small round table in the centre of the kitchen. A lush green spider plant sat in the centre, and I idly fingered the leaves. My eyes roamed around the room, finding all the other plants around the kitchen. An orchid on the windowsill, succulents lined up on top of a butcher’s block. Tall palms with leaning fronds in the corner of the room. Ade’s house was small and busy, but it didn’t have that untidy, cluttered feel of most compact homes; it was just cosy.

  Aunt Josephine always said that a house told you more about a person than they ever would. A bare, soulless house belonged to an empty human being. But Ade’s house had been crammed full of life that he nurtured.

  “Sugar?”

  “No, thanks.” I smiled as he poured the kettle. “You need a pet.”

  An eyebrow lifted as he looked at me over his shoulder. “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, you like caring for living things. So why not get a pet?”

  “I do like cats.” He placed the mug down on a coaster in front of me with a sigh. “I swear Saturday night drinks don’t usually end like this. I’m not sure what got into Roisin tonight.”

  “I think she needed to blow off some steam. She’s had to babysit me for nearly two weeks.”

  “I can’t imagine that’s much of a hardship.” The twinkle in his eye told me he was being playful, but the curve to his mouth made sensual suggestions.

  My fingers gripped hold of the mug, and I dropped my eyes to the table. Things were complicated enough already without adding Ade to the mix. Another sense of claustrophobia washed over me. Those bent fronds seemed impossibly oppressive in the small room.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “It’s been a weird few weeks,” I replied. “I’m feeling it. My mood…” I wafted a hand. “I’m all over the place right now. Do you ever feel like you can’t trust yourself? Like your heart is going to betray you?”

  He tilted his head to one side as though considering the question, then he let out a quiet, humourless laugh. “Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe. I… just don’t know.”

  I nodded. “That’s okay. You’re too sensible for that. You’re too together.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We all have our moments. Hey, try not to let this stuff get to you. That’s exactly what the weirdo who sent you that shit wants. Lord Bertie won’t tolerate any threat to his family. I bet you this is all resolved within a few weeks.”

  I tapped my finger against the ceramic mug, recalling Lord Bertie’s callous words: I don’t have time to investigate gifts. Everything he’d said had left a bitter taste in my mouth. Perhaps it was because we were sitting there in the early hours of the morning, a pitch-black sky beyond the kitchen windows, but my insides felt pulled tight, like drum skin.

  “Do you think there’s something strange about Highwood Hall?” I asked.

  Ade blew through his lips as though I’d asked him an impossible question. “There are many strange things about Highwood Hall. There’ve been rumours for years about it being haunted, which is bullshit.”

  “It is?”

  “Ghosts don’t exist.” He shrugged. “It’s just an old house. You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?”

  “No.” I sipped my tea.

  His eyes narrowed slightly, and I could tell he wasn’t buying it, but he continued. “Lord Bertie is a strange dude. And… dodgy. His son too.”

  “What do you mean by dodgy?”

  “I’ve heard things about his fingers and what pies they’re in. The people he does business with aren’t the nicest. I’m just a fucking gardener, you know? I’m no expert on how you make money in the financial sector. But one of his best mates did go to prison for fraud a few years ago.”

  “Wow. That’s big.”

  “Yeah.” Ade shifted in his seat. “And Alex…”

  I leaned forward; my interest piqued. “What about him?”

  “I do not like that guy.”

  “Why not?”

  Ade lifted two fingers and waggled them in front of his face. “Nothing behind the eyes. Whenever he smiles at you, it goes nowhere. He creeps me out.”

  I wrapped both hands around my mug of tea, craving the warmth.

  Chapter 23

  While tossing and turning in Ade’s spare room, I dreamed that a faceless entity shrank Highwood Hall down to the size of a doll’s house and I was smaller than a Barbie as I went about my cleaning. Everything was in proportion, and yet it all seemed uncannily wrong. The wood panelling was just plastic attached to a cardboard wall, and when I looked down at my hands, they were malformed and stiff, the fingers too long, the joints solid. I still had a heart that pounded in my chest cavity, and I walked the corridors just fine, but everything else was frozen. A solid Mrs Huxley stood in the shadowy corner of the library, Lord Bertie reclined on a chaise longue, a newspaper on his lap, his eyes glazed over. Roisin was on her knees, scrubbing the corridor floor, a rag not moving in her hand. Every figure I passed made my throat tighten with fear. My arms and scalp prickled as goosebumps spread across my body.

  And then I heard the sound of a piano coming from the music room. It was a romantic melody, one that swelled into a crescendo before returning to a soft caress. Chopin maybe. As I followed the sound, I was aware of a bundle of papers falling from my pocket. Letters, perhaps. I ignored them and carried on, trying to reach the music room. But I was lost. Every time I searched for the music room, I ended up back at the dining room with Alex’s mother staring at me from the painted walls. Then I tried to find the servants’ door so that I could at least go back to the kitchen, but instead I discovered the portrait of myself painted there. Dark hair, olive skin. A pained, worried expression on my face. The lips began to move. The painted version of me wanted to speak, but I didn’t want to hear her. I ran backwards on my plastic legs until I tripped.

  A hand touched my shoulder, wrenching me from my dream. And when I woke, Ade’s dark brown eyes gazed down at me, a horrified expression on his face.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I had to come and wake you becaus
e we need to get back to Highwood. It’s seven. I made you a cup of tea.”

  As I slowly came round, I became aware of the sweat on my forehead and upper lip. I ran my hand over my face and then into my hair. Ade’s eyes remained locked on my face, and I checked that the duvet covered my body. I’d slept in my underwear, not wanting to wear Roisin’s dress underneath the bedding. Thankfully, I was covered.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Bad dream. Thank you for the tea. How’s Roisin?”

  “Chugging water,” he said with a smile. “She’ll be fine in a few hours.”

  “At least we don’t have to clean toilets today.”

  He nodded. “Anyway, I’ll let you get dressed. You’re welcome to have a shower.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll shower at the hall. But thank you.”

  He backed out of the room, and I almost laughed. Ade was the complete opposite of Alex in almost every way. Where Alex was entitled and arrogant, Ade was unsure of himself and a little shy. Alex wouldn’t have felt embarrassed waking me. He would’ve pulled open the curtains and ordered me out of bed. Who’s your boss? I shivered.

  One taxi journey later—Ade’s truck was still at the hall—and Mrs Huxley’s crow eyes followed us as we tiptoed through the corridor to our rooms. Roisin’s hand was in mine, her eyes firmly focused on her feet. I opened my mouth once or twice to speak, but I couldn’t muster the courage to do it. It was our day off. We didn’t need to explain anything to her, and yet I felt like a child about to receive a thorough telling off by their parent.

  Back in our shared room, I peeled away the borrowed dress.

  “I want to sleep, but I don’t think I can,” Roisin said as she climbed into her bed.

  I walked over to her, concerned. I’d heard an edge to her voice, almost like an ache or perhaps a croak that suggested she might break down.

  “What’s wrong, Ro?” Slowly, with my body a little delicate following the late night in high heels, I bent down so that we were face to face.