by Sarah Hilary
‘Until you met me.’
Bradley adjusted his expression to neutral, nodding. ‘Exactly so.’
Starling Villas was silent when I reached home.
I caught myself thinking that – home. Pushing the key into my pocket, I scowled at my own stupidity. Hi, honey, I’m home. With your stinking cheese and fresh eggs.
I wanted so much to be fierce again, full of rage at my predicament, at the easy way his smile slipped under my defences. Ours was no fairy-tale but there had been the start of something, before she came. The shape of his hand hesitating as he reached for the coffee I’d poured. His offer of blankets, his insistence I cook myself a meal. The peace I’d found, washing his floors. There had been such comfort in our shared silence, the whisper of his wrist against mine.
I knew what Meagan would say: Nell with a K. Death Knell.
She hated me. Hated all of us in Lyle’s but me more than anyone because I did her job, kept the house clean and fed the little ones, rocked them to sleep, taught them to read. I showed her up, and she couldn’t forgive that. She’d hated me long before I set the local press at her heels with my rumours of what went on in the house. What would she make of my life here in the Villas? ‘You’re papering over the cracks, girl.’ Not a metaphor. Up in the attic, I was literally papering over cracks, although I suppose you could say it was what I’d done all my life so, yes, all right, a metaphor. I was a prisoner in plain sight, given keys, allowed outside. But what truly traps a person? Debt. Death. Love. ‘The ruin’s in the blood,’ Meagan used to say about Joe and me. ‘The worm’s in the apple.’
Every trick I knew, she taught me. If I was too good, she grew wary, too wild and she threatened to throw me out, too servile and she took advantage. I learnt to be a tightrope walker, agile-footed mother hen, acrobat, magician. Her tricks should have helped me here in Starling Villas where balance was the frail thing on which the house was resting.
‘Two worms in one apple. I should throw you out. Disgusting, degrading.’
It was happening again, here in Starling Villas. Robin had begun to trust me. But then Carolyn came and I’d no way of knowing if this strange seduction was what the pair of them had planned from the start. No way of knowing if I was the one who’d walked into a trap.
I banged his rota onto the kitchen table, flicking through its plastic-shrouded pages. He had a rule for everything, except what really mattered. How To Treat Your Housekeeper With Respect and Dignity – where was that chapter? The pages were slick under my hands. I could feel the steel of the knives in the butcher’s block, each blade slicing its shadow on the counter.
I drew a long breath, shutting my eyes. I mustn’t lose my temper or burn my bridges, not so soon after the last time, after Brian and the masseuse. Reading the rota’s bland instructions helped to calm me, and to remind me I should be watering his plants.
In the garden room, I fancied I heard the plants growing, the trickle of their roots through soil, the furring of their leaves. For a second I stood defeated by their industry, my neck creeping as if I’d disturbed a room of conspirators. His plants huddled at the edges of the room, a dense mass pricked by colour, and thorns. A moth orchid shuddered on its tall stem, turning its ghost’s face away from me. I made a circuit, checking the moisture in the pots, trickling water where it was needed. Halfway around, I came to an abrupt halt, holding the watering can away from my dress.
Poking from under a terracotta pot – the pale corner of a sheet of paper. It hadn’t been there yesterday. Setting the can down, I lifted the plant out of the way, pulling the paper free with a spattering of soil. It was Carolyn’s painting of me, a blue watermark bleeding around my face. ‘Show some emotion,’ she’d said. She’d drawn me with downcast eyes, my mouth ajar. ‘Half-cocked,’ Meagan called it. ‘Don’t stand there with your mouth at half-cock.’
Blood beat in my ears.
In Carolyn’s picture, my hair was piled into a black turban and my shoulders were weak, trailing to nothing. She’d painted me with no arms or legs, a head and torso floating in front of the mirror, grossly hunchbacked, an iron band of shadow around my neck. The slant of my eyes and the high angle of my cheeks made me look Slavic. She’d exaggerated the scar on my eyebrow, making it puckered and ugly. I didn’t look like this, but I recognized myself in her painting. The darkening lines, the sense I’d bolt the first chance I got. She’d captured me, and I hated it. Rolling the sketch, I hid it up the sleeve of my dress before searching under all the other pots for his drawing.
Robin’s charcoal sketch was nowhere in the room.
Instead, I found something else. Hidden under another plant – a keychain with a pink silk photo frame. It hadn’t been here yesterday, or any day since I’d started working for him; I’d have found it before now. Photos of twin girls, aged about six. Asian, with big eyes and smiles. Water had crept into the frame, spotting their faces.
I shivered, rubbing my thumb at the spots. Who were they?
The keychain wasn’t Carolyn’s but she’d wanted me to find it, just as she’d wanted me to find her painting of me. The chain was a cheap thing, precious only because of the girls’ faces. Had it belonged to his last housekeeper? Of the three keys, none would fit any lock in Starling Villas, their teeth were too wide for the doors here. Tucking the keychain into my pocket, I finished watering his plants. I searched every inch of the room, still looking for his sketch of me, but it wasn’t there.
In his bedroom, I hunted again. Nothing. Carolyn had shoved the art equipment into the cupboard under the stairs where wicker hampers were gathering cobwebs alongside golf clubs and skis and an expensive rowing machine turned upright on its nose. Robin had liked to leave the house, once. He’d led an active life, sporty, holidaying abroad. Or had he only dreamt of it, buying the apparatus then abandoning his plans? Such a dull man by Carolyn’s standards, unsocial and awkward. Why wasn’t she with someone new? Young and glamorous, a trophy to hang off her arm as she flitted about London. For the first time, I thought how poisonous their relationship was. A squatting, swollen thing. For the first time, I wanted to run.
I carried the keychain up to my attic, sitting cross-legged on my mattress to study the little faces in the pink silk frame. His housekeeper’s daughters, or nieces? Grandchildren, maybe. But why was the keychain here in his house when she was not? And why had Carolyn wanted me to find it today? She’d left her portrait in plain sight, knowing I’d search under every pot for his charcoal sketch. She’d wanted me to find the keychain, but what and whom did she want me to suspect? Twin girls, big-eyed. The chain was worn with use, its frame smooth from fingers or lips. I could picture its owner. Dark like me but bent with work, the soles of her feet polished to horn. How often had she kissed the pictures of her girls, reminding herself she was doing this for their sakes? She’d loved the frame, keeping it close. How then had she lost it, or left it behind? And why hadn’t she returned once she’d discovered its loss?
I wasn’t aware she had left. Bradley’s expression was unreadable but he was warning me, I was certain of that now. Warning me of the need to take care here in Starling Villas.
I hid the keychain inside an old tea tin, pushing it to the bottom of my rucksack. When I straightened, I caught my reflection in the window, furtive and afraid. I should start keeping a record of what was happening in this house. For posterity, for the police. Then, when it was over and there was no one left to tell the truth about Starling Villas, they’d have something to go on. Proof. The wildness of the thought surprised me. The police had never been my friends and now, by any measure, would consider themselves my enemies. I hadn’t felt threatened here until Carolyn came. Even now, it wasn’t a real fear but rather the ghost of one. Best to keep a record, even so. Robin would approve. Unless he preferred to pretend it’d never happened. His wrist on mine, the heat in his lips as she was prodding me into place or when I was kneeling on his tiles. In her sketch, I resembled a slave. Was I the same in his? He’d caught sight of hi
mself in the mirror when her hands were on me. I’d watched him recoil, seen him thinking, Who is this? Not me, not me.
‘Show some emotion,’ she’d insisted when he was showing nothing but emotion, written all over him in hectic, betraying blood.
Was this what he’d hoped for, all along? The rota and rules his way of catching me off guard, and instilling discipline. It’s just me in the Villas.
Liar.
I’d never have taken this job if Carolyn had been here that first day. But shouldn’t the presence of a wife make a house less sinister, not more? The trouble was, I didn’t know the rules, no one took the time to teach me. At school, yes, but I’d hardly attended thanks to my caretaker role at Lyle’s. Meagan taught me ways to get out of trouble, not how to avoid it in the first place. She taught me to put on lipstick when Social Services sent a man instead of a woman, and to take notice of my body changing, as if its curves could be my camouflage. ‘Just tell him you’re happy here. You love Lyle’s, the little ones. Rosie.’
Soon it would be time to make Robin’s cocoa. I’d creep downstairs to battle with the stove, taking care not to heat the milk too long. When it was done, I’d carry the cup to the library where he’d ignore me, busy with his books, imagining because I was young I must be immune to pride or shame, patience or envy. If I blushed, he dismissed it as shyness or at worst a fleeting humiliation, thinking I’d soon forget the barbs his wife flung at me, or his own studious disregard. But I was an old soul, with an old heart. At the age of eight, I was mother to a dozen kids. I grew up in a house where childhood was banished to the back of the cupboard. If Robin Wilder imagined his wife’s stones only skipped the surface of my skin, he had no idea how deep I ran, what fears and furies I felt. Nell, leave her. Come here. I reached for my rucksack and held it close, shutting my eyes at the attic I’d transformed. Blood beat in my feet with the urge to run from this place, and these people. Starling Villas was stuffed full of money and history and character, but it was empty. Everything in here was hollow, including him. Including us.
You’ll find out, I thought. Dr and Mrs Wilder. If you push me, playing your games . . . You’ll find out who I am and what I’m capable of.
20
‘Here.’ Meagan handed Joe her cigarette lighter. ‘And be careful,’ she warned him. ‘From what you’ve said, they’re not the type for anything stronger than a smoke.’ He’d told her all about Carolyn Wilder, his night of passion in her posh house. ‘Wait for her to suggest it. Let her think she’s the one making the decisions. Just like that first night, after she picked you up in the club.’
Joe took the lighter, pushing it out of sight into his pocket. He’d showered at Meagan’s insistence. His fringe was damp, his eyes spacey. He’d bewitched that rich cow in Nell’s new home, but only because Carolyn Wilder was fighting a closing window of her own. Meagan hoped the husband was the same, or that Nell had worked her magic there already. She’d not spied Meagan when she was out shopping, too busy buying overpriced cheese from a shop that made the Spar look like a food bank. She looked good, did Nell. Her skin like milked coffee, those haunted eyes. Guilt suited her, she wore it like a good coat. Meagan had thought she’d find the girl eaten up by it but here she was with her pretty feet under an expensive table, slipping between the cracks in that marriage as easily as last demands through a letterbox. Dr and Mrs Robin Wilder. The house reeked of money, and who owed Meagan more than Nell did? Who had run away because she was afraid of what Meagan knew about little Rosie Bond’s death? No kiddies were living in Starling Villas, Meagan had established that much. It hadn’t been easy to lay her hands on any better information. Very private, the Wilders. Well, good. They’d want to keep it private, what happened next. As for Joe and Nell, they owed her, after two years of keeping mum.
Meagan laughed, and lit a cigarette. Keeping mum. She wasn’t without a sense of irony and she knew her faults, could count them on the fingers of both hands. She’d never pretended she was perfect, but she was owed. Time to collect.
21
On Sundays at Starling Villas, breakfast was served in the dining room. I opened the curtains and laid the table, after first polishing each plate and piece of cutlery. The sun sat in the centre of it all, striking the silverware. I was pleased with the effect, and that Carolyn wasn’t here to see it. She’d left last night in her black satin coat, and she hadn’t returned. I imagined she was in a hotel somewhere, with whichever Joe-shaped substitute she’d picked up for the night.
In the kitchen, I lit the stove. As it heated, I greased two ramekins to bake eggs before loading the coffee press, and frothing the milk. The smell of baking eggs brought the pigeon to the windowsill. She sat watching as I tidied my hair and smoothed the apron at my waist.
Carrying the tray, I climbed the stairs, crossing the hall to the dining room, where Robin was waiting, dressed for the day in his soft blue shirt and grey trousers. I set the tray on the sideboard, aware of his eyes on me as I brought the breakfast to the table.
‘Sit with me,’ he said.
When I hesitated, he added, ‘Two eggs, yes? I can’t eat two this morning. Sit, please.’ He sounded sad, his thumb smoothing the handle of his knife.
‘I’ll need to lay another place.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded.
While I brought the place setting, he poured coffee into his cup, moving it into the space he’d reserved for me. We fell into a rhythm. As I set my plate, he settled the ramekin there; when I laid a side plate, he loaded it with toast. He moved the salt and pepper closer to me. ‘Do you take sugar?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Milk, then?’ I nodded and he poured the froth from the jug into my coffee. Then he stood and drew back my chair, like a waiter. No, like a gentleman.
I was very aware of the weight of him, standing behind me. ‘Thank you.’ I sat, drawing my napkin into my lap, pressing it in place with the palms of my hands.
We reached for our coffee together, smiling at our synchronicity.
‘This is nice,’ he said.
He buttered a slice of toast, his wrist turning neatly. I thought about the strength in him which he kept hidden so much of the time. Had something happened to make him despise his strength, or fear it? All his energy went into sitting with his books and boxes. Did he put on the passivity, as armour against Carolyn? I’d never seen her look at a book, much less read one. I’d caught her poking a stockinged foot at a pile of his textbooks, toppling two of them to the floor. The look on her face – she hated his books, as if they were her mortal enemies. I had waited until she was gone before crouching to rescue them, smoothing their spines, running my thumb down the deckled edges of their pages. Rosie had hated books, saying on her sixth birthday she was too old for them.
‘These eggs are perfect,’ Robin said.
Did he ever think of me when I wasn’t right in front of him? At night perhaps, sending his thoughts up through the house to where I lay in the attic. He’d called it wonderful – the varnished walls, the rug I’d restored from his childhood – but what would he say if he knew I thought of it as my home? His attic, mine. If he knew how much it meant to me to have rescued his forgotten treasures, the reverence I’d made of the ritual? My palms sweated against the linen in my lap, a flush of shame heating my skin. He crunched at the toast with his strong teeth, crumbs sitting on the cuff of his shirt. For the first time, I thought how human he was, and how handsome.
I broke the yolk of my egg with the point of my spoon. ‘I found a set of keys in the garden room.’ I licked the spoon, before dipping it into the hot heart of the yolk.
He frowned, fishing egg onto his toast with the tines of his fork. ‘Did you?’
‘I thought perhaps Mrs Wilder left them behind by accident. But the keychain has photos in it, of children.’ I stopped, conscious of having crossed a line. The sentence was full of intimacy. His wife, clumsy or forgetful, leaving her keys behind. The faces of children when they had none. The word childless lay betwe
en us. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do with the keys.’
He chewed a mouthful of baked egg before he answered. ‘I can’t think who they belong to, unless it was Mrs Mystery.’
Mrs Mystery. Was he mocking me? I’d dreamt of the silk keychain, the twins’ faces chasing me through the night until I turned and hissed at them to stop.
‘Mrs Mistry was the last housekeeper.’ He reached for his coffee. ‘She left a few weeks before you came. As far as I know she took all her belongings with her. She has two little girls, I believe.’
‘This must be them.’ I nodded. ‘Twin girls, very pretty.’
‘I have her details somewhere.’ He sounded vague. ‘I’ll find them, and we can return the keys.’
Neither of us asked why the keys had come to light only now. I’d been in the garden room every day. The keychain wasn’t there, and then it was.
I finished my egg, wiping my mouth on the napkin but only after I’d licked every corner of my lips. Egg was horrible to get out of linen. ‘More coffee?’
He nodded, ‘Please,’ and I rose from my seat to refill his cup. There was enough in the press for a fourth cup but I didn’t refill mine, not wanting him to think I was taking advantage of his kindness. Did he even think of it as kindness, inviting me to share his breakfast? Did he know how long it had been since I’d eaten so much food so early in the day? How could he know? He’d wanted company, that was all. He couldn’t eat the second egg and didn’t want it going to waste.
‘Have a slice of toast,’ he said, upsetting my theory.
‘It’s yours.’ Tears heated my eyes for a second. ‘You always have two slices on Sunday.’
‘I always have two eggs.’
I looked at the empty ramekin, my spoon rimmed with yellow. ‘I’m sorry . . .’
‘Nonsense.’ There was an edge in his voice, of annoyance or impatience. ‘I invited you to eat it. You know how I hate waste.’ He moved the butter dish closer to my plate. ‘The toast won’t keep, so please. Take it.’