by Agatha Frost
“Put Vinnie to bed soon,” Katie said as Julia followed them to the front door. “I’ve made up the biggest guest bedroom for you, next door to Vinnie’s. Thank you for doing this at such short notice. I really appreciate it.”
“Not at all.” Julia waved her hand. “It’s my pleasure. All good practise for the future.”
“Are you—”
“Not yet,” Julia cut in. “But fingers crossed, we shouldn’t have to wait too much longer.”
“You’ll be pregnant before you know it,” Katie said as she pulled a delicate shawl across her shoulders. “My father’s nurse will be here around six in the morning. She has a key, so she’ll let herself in. You shouldn’t have to worry about him. He was fine when I last checked, but just keep an ear out.”
Julia nodded that she would, not wanting to admit she had forgotten all about her brother’s namesake, Vincent Wellington, the present owner of the manor and Katie’s elderly, mute, very sick father. It had been a while since Julia had seen him up and about in his wheelchair, and even then, he had looked like he was barely clinging onto life.
“How’s he doing?” Julia asked softly.
“He’s fine,” Katie replied quickly without looking at Julia. “He still can’t talk, but he’s getting better after his stroke last month.”
“He had another stroke?” Taken aback by the news, Julia quickly caught the subtle head shake from her father. She smiled at Katie and said, “I’ll check in on him before bed.”
Katie slipped on the pair of tall heels waiting for her by the door as though the topic of her sick father hadn’t even come up. “Are we taking your car or mine?”
“Mine’s being serviced,” Brian replied.
“It’s been over a week!”
“Engine trouble.” He plucked Katie’s car keys from a glass bowl on a small side table next to a coat stand. “I’ll chase it up tomorrow. Let’s get going. We’re going to miss our booking.”
Katie leaned in and kissed Julia on the cheek, no doubt leaving behind a red lipstick mark. “I know you’ll look after him. There’s no one I trust more.”
“Call if you need anything,” Brian said, kissing Julia on the other cheek. “And make yourself at home. There’s plenty of food in the kitchen.”
“Don’t worry.” Julia opened the door for them and shooed them into the night. “I’ve done all this before. Have fun!”
Julia rubbed the lipstick off her face as she watched Katie and Brian climb into the pink Range Rover, with Katie behind the wheel. She waited until they were on their way down the lane to step back inside. At that same moment, a crack of purple lightning split the sky open, followed by a rumble of thunder. The rain started immediately.
Julia retreated into the manor and finally kicked off her shoes. She played with Vinnie and his vast collection of plastic dinosaurs on the sitting room floor until he looked like he was forcing his eyes to stay open.
After carrying him carefully up the grand staircase, Julia put him down in his cot in the middle of his large and toy-filled bedroom. Katie had already turned on his solar system nightlight, and it projected stars all over the ceiling. The gentle twinkling noises it made weren’t enough to drown out the pounding rain on the roof above, but Vinnie seemed too exhausted to notice.
“Toy,” he called after another wide yawn. “Toy!”
Julia turned to the massive pile of stuffed animals. They varied in size and shape, but there must have been at least a hundred of them – not that Julia was surprised. If Katie was anything, it was excessive.
Sticking with the theme of his plastic dinosaurs, Julia selected a pink stegosaurus and an orange triceratops from the pile, but by the time she returned to his cot, he was already asleep on his back. She settled a soft toy to either side of him before covering him with his blanket.
Another crack of lightning pierced the dark sky, followed by rumbling thunder. Julia held her breath, but Vinnie’s eyelids merely twitched. She crossed to the large, floor-to-ceiling window that looked out at the grounds behind the manor and tugged the curtains shut.
Following through with her father’s insistence that she make herself at home, Julia took a baby monitor with her and ventured downstairs, into the large kitchen. After the day she had endured at the café, cooking was the last thing she wanted to do. Even though she was eating well for the sake of getting pregnant, she lazily opted for a large packet of cheese and onion crisps and a cup of hot peppermint tea.
Instead of going back into the sitting room, which she had always found a little too big to feel comfortable, she pulled up a stool at the kitchen island. She picked up the tablet computer resting there, glad to find it didn’t have a password. After scanning through the apps, she settled on streaming a documentary about death in the Victorian home. It was more something her husband, Barker, would have chosen for them to watch, but considering her surroundings, it felt like an apt choice.
After finishing the crisps and getting twenty minutes into the programme, Julia pulled over the large box of polish and dug through it. She wasn’t a woman obsessed with beauty and appearance, but a little nail polish here and there wasn’t out of the ordinary for her. As long as she didn’t have to have long fake nails, she could cope with a little colour.
She selected a springtime shade of pale green that matched her vintage dress perfectly. After filing her nails into a somewhat more reasonable shape, she unfastened the bottle and went to paint her left thumb. Before the polish even touched her nail, the strong chemical scent hit her nostrils. Her stomach turned, making her retch.
Had she gobbled down the crisps too quickly after barely finding time to eat anything substantial all day? She paused and rested her hand against her mouth for a moment as she focused on the screen. Shaking her head, she lowered her hand, sure the feeling had passed.
Determined to finish what she had started, Julia dipped the brush back in the bottle. A pop of lightning and roar of thunder echoing through the baby monitor made her jump. She knocked over the polish, spilling the green liquid all over the marble island.
Cursing under her breath, she set the bottle upright. She frowned at the mess, wondering how she was going to explain to Katie that she had spilt half a bottle of her new polish. Before she could begin cleaning it up, she got another, even stronger, whiff of the harsh smell. She retched again, but this time, it wasn’t a false alarm.
Knowing she had no time to make it to the downstairs bathroom, Julia dove for the sink. The cheese and onion crisps came up in a soft pile, tasting far less appealing on the way out. She tried to catch her breath by sipping some water, but the act of swallowing had her heaving again, and the rest of the crisps followed the first batch.
While the documentary’s presenter explained that green wallpaper in the Victorian home could contain enough arsenic dye to kill, Julia stood upright and leaned against the sink, washing away her mess with the tap. If only to scramble for an explanation, she toyed with the idea that the polish might contain arsenic. The truth was, it hadn’t smelled any different than any other polish she had ever used, so she couldn’t comprehend her stomach’s violent reaction.
Julia carefully drank more water, but it wasn’t enough to get rid of the taste of bile. Leaving the documentary running, she walked barefoot across the entrance hall towards the downstairs bathroom. Another thunder growl made her jump. The glass chandelier above rattled slightly, and the lights dipped in and out. She paused, willing the electricity not to cut out. After an even louder rumble, the lights twitched again but stayed on.
Katie’s babysitting request had come so last minute, Julia hadn’t had any time to go home and pack an overnight bag. She hoped to find a spare toothbrush or mouthwash to banish the taste from her mouth in the downstairs bathroom, but when she rattled the door in its frame, it didn’t move.
It was locked from the inside.
Julia’s palms clammed up around the brass doorknob. She hadn’t seen Samantha, the new housekeeper, leave the manor.
At least an hour, if not two, had passed since Hilary’s criticisms had caused Samantha to lock herself within.
Julia knocked softly. Her mind jumped to the worst possible conclusions as she waited for any sounds of movement. Julia let out a relieved sigh when the door cracked open.
Samantha’s face peered through the gap. She squinted groggily at Julia with mascara panda eyes; obviously, Samantha had cried herself to sleep.
Samantha rubbed her eyes with balled up fists, smudging her mascara even more. “Am I in trouble?”
“No,” Julia assured her. “Are you okay?”
Samantha looked down at her simple housekeeper uniform and then up at Julia.
“I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“This job.” She tugged off the apron around her waist and thrust it at Julia. “I quit.”
Samantha bolted across the entrance hall, grabbed a light jacket from the stand, and ran out into the storm, leaving the door open behind her. Julia hurried to the door and stared out into the dark. The ferocious wind whipped the rain against her, chilling her to the bone. She put her hand over her eyes to get a better look through the storm, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.
“Samantha?” she called, the pounding rain swallowing her words. “You can come back in and wait for this to pass.”
Julia waited far too long for a response. She was tempted to run after her, but she held back. She had Vinnie to think about, and the current state of the weather wasn’t going to make finding Samantha easy.
Reluctantly, Julia stepped back from the door and forced it into its frame against the wind. With her hand still resting on the wood and water dripping from her face and hair, she hesitated, hoping Samantha was a fast and safe runner.
Julia’s stomach curled again before she could give Samantha another moment’s thought. She darted for the downstairs bathroom, making it to the toilet bowl just in time.
Minutes of dry heaving later, Julia sat on the soft toilet mat, her cheek resting against the lid. Drained herself, she understood how the housekeeper had so easily fallen asleep in the warm and snug bathroom.
After forcing herself up off the floor, Julia flushed the water away, covered the bowl in thick bleach, and then moved to the large, brightly lit mirror over the sink. Her reflection caught her off-guard.
Julia tugged at her cheeks. The spotlights above gave her face a pale and hollow cast; she looked ill. Could it be food poisoning? All she had eaten was an egg mayonnaise sandwich she had prepared herself during the mad coachload rush in the café and the crisps in the manor’s kitchen, and neither seemed likely culprits for food poisoning.
Rejecting the idea, she crouched down and opened the cupboard under the sink. A fresh packet of four toothbrushes leant against a dozen rolls of cream toilet paper. She pulled them out gratefully, but what lay behind the toothbrushes caused the bathroom walls to close in around her.
“Pregnancy tests,” she said aloud as her fingers ran down the spines of the boxes.
Julia wavered, her stomach turning again. As tempting as they were, she carefully closed the door and straightened.
“No,” Julia said after spitting out the toothpaste and rinsing the brush under the tap. “I’d know if I were.”
Leaving the nail polish mess, the baby monitor, and the documentary still playing in the kitchen, Julia hurried upstairs. After checking on Vinnie and finding him still asleep, she changed into a pair of pyjamas Katie had laid out for her, turned off the lights, and crawled into the large, soft bed.
She stared through the open curtains as icy lightning spiked in every direction. Her mind raced, but she diverted it from the one thing she didn’t dare allow herself to hope was true.
2
Julia jolted awake in an unfamiliar bed in a cavernous room. It took her a moment to remember where she was, but she was more surprised by the fact she had slept at all. After hours of tossing and turning thanks to her racing mind, she had given up entirely on the concept of sleep.
The curtains were still wide open, giving her a view of the rain through the giant floor-to-ceiling window. Darkness still reigned, but a slight hint of the blackness lifting lightened the horizon. She rolled over, and the clock confirmed her suspicions.
5:21am.
Julia groaned and turned over. She considered attempting to sleep again – functioning on less than two hours of sleep wasn’t as easy as it had been in her twenties. She closed her eyes, but a flash of lightning lit up the room.
Cursing the unpredictable British weather under her breath, she tossed back the warm covers and climbed out of bed. She grabbed a silk dressing gown out of the ornate mahogany wardrobe and walked to the window. The gown slipped on like a glove, the silk heavenly against her skin; it had to be the finest silk money could buy.
Arms folded against her chest, Julia stared out into the darkness. Rain streaked down the glass, and beyond that, the screaming wind bashed the trees from side to side. If the storm didn’t pass soon, the café would have a quiet day.
She let out a groggy yawn and turned back to the bed. It didn’t look as inviting as it should have. The restless hours spent awake had been torture, and she remembered why she had struggled so much in the first place.
Leaving the window, she crossed the needlessly large room to the floor-length mirror. Even with everything oversized and grand, the room still felt empty, making her wonder what Earl Philip Wellington had been trying to prove when he built the manor two centuries ago.
She felt foolish as she lifted her pyjama top. Her abdomen looked no different, and she hadn’t expected it to. In fact, it looked flatter than she had seen it in many years thanks to her recent food and exercise choices. Still, she stared at her soft navel, and for a moment, she let herself indulge in the dizzying thought that she could be pregnant.
She let down her top, dismissing the idea as quickly as she had allowed it in. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be pregnant; she wanted nothing more, but she wasn’t sure if she could bear another negative test.
And yet, the boxes in the downstairs bathroom called out, inviting that disappointment. Every mother she knew, including Sue and Katie, had told her she would know if she were, but at thirty-nine, Julia had spent the majority of her adult life never having to worry either way. Her first husband, Jerrad, certainly hadn’t been in any rush to start a family with her during their twelve-year marriage.
Giving up on the idea of more sleep, Julia went next door to Vinnie’s bedroom. His nightlight still twirled, casting complex and soothing images of the solar system on the faraway ceiling. As she looked down at his tiny frame, his chest serenely rising and falling, she wondered how peaceful it would be to wake and see such beauty, even if he didn’t understand what he was looking at. The dinosaur teddies she had given him were at the bottom of the cot and his blanket was by his feet. She plucked out the toys and pulled up his blanket.
Everyone had always said she was a natural with children, and Julia had to admit the moments spent with her baby brother were some of her happiest. She allowed herself to imagine what it would feel like to have that feeling all the time. Warmth wrapped around her like a soft blanket, only to be ripped away by more thunder and lightning.
After leaving Vinnie’s bedroom, she paused on the landing and realised she had three choices. She could go back to bed and try to sleep, start the day and carry on as normal, or silence the nagging voice in the back of her head for at least another month.
At the top of the sprawling staircase, she paused at Vincent Wellington’s room. Despite never having spoken to the man, he held a special place in her heart. Without Vincent, she wasn’t sure if she would even be alive. Not too many years ago, his medical alarm had saved her from being pushed from the same landing window as Charles Wellington, Vincent’s son and Katie’s brother, by the murderous Lewis family.
With a pang of dismay, she realised that in her headlong rush to bed, she hadn’t kept her promise to Katie. She pushed on
his already open bedroom door and immediately wished she hadn’t.
Gone was the frail man in a wheelchair with a breathing mask, replaced by the sight in front of her. Mechanically, she took a step into the large master bedroom, beckoned by the beeping of the life support machines around him. Beneath the breathing tube jutting out of his mouth and the thin white sheet over him, Vincent was nothing but bones.
Throughout Julia’s childhood and early adulthood, Vincent had been a domineering and imposing man rarely seen away from the manor. The village elders told stories about Vincent as a grossly arrogant playboy willing to throw his money around. A ghost of that man lay swallowed by his spacious, four-poster bed. Perhaps the Wellington money was keeping him alive, but it couldn’t save him.
Julia left the room with misty eyes, closing the door behind. Life could be so cruel. It had taken her mother too young, and now it was slowly taking Katie’s father; Katie had been hiding the burden too well.
Wiping her tears away, Julia recalled the joyous moments to be had between the cruel chapters. Life had given her Barker, the husband she had never dare dream of after her disastrous first marriage. It had given her Jessie, the adopted daughter she hadn’t expected but couldn’t imagine an existence without. As the months passed without a positive result, Julia had begun losing the hope that life would grant her a child.
Her bare foot touched the cold top step of the staircase. She didn’t try to fight the pull to the downstairs bathroom.
The same moment her toes touched the floor of the entrance hall, the lights shining from both the kitchen and sitting room flickered. More lightning flashed, the thunder once again following close behind. After more ominous flickering, the lights died completely.