‘Are you all right?’ she said, interrupting my thoughts.
‘Oh – yes. Sorry. You’re Constance Holden?’ I said. My voice tightened. I shouldn’t have come, I thought. Better never to have come.
Constance’s clever eyes looked in my face. ‘You’re here for the interview,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Come in.’ She did not smile, nor offer her hand. She simply stepped to one side.
I went into the hall, feeling sick. I turned to watch her close the door, fumbling slightly with the latch. That was when I noticed her fingers. Her knuckles were swollen, her thumb jutted awkwardly from the side of her hand, and her other fingers didn’t span upwards neatly in the right direction. Her hands looked as if they belonged to someone else, sewn on in a cruel experiment, possessing a mind of their own.
She saw me staring at them, and I looked hastily away at the walls. She had pitted dusky pink against old green furniture, and a low, long shelf on one side of the hall was lined with at least twenty misshapen pots. ‘These are lovely,’ I said, too brightly, gesturing.
‘From the Yucatán peninsula,’ she replied. Her voice was strong, unwearied. Present.
‘Have you lived here long?’ I asked.
‘I’ve owned this house for nearly forty years,’ she said. ‘But I haven’t always lived here.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘What’s your name again?’
‘Laura Brown,’ I said. The name tripped off my tongue as easily as if it were my own.
Who dusted those pots? I wondered. What would happen if a coat hem knocked one off? Death, probably. My eyes began to roam, drinking in everything I could see. I felt like I was hunting this woman – but clumsily, and she would know exactly what to do to avoid me.
I asked if I could use the bathroom, and Constance pointed with her unruly fingers towards a door under the staircase.
It was just a small water closet, tastefully devoid of any maritime theme. I clicked the lock, and sat on the loo with my head in my hands. The space was dark and gold and velvet, a little room inside tall walls. I sat in this gem of a cubby hole, trying to wee quietly. I had done a crazy thing to get into this house. But I was scared of it. I splashed water on my face and told myself to get a grip.
‘Shall we do this in the front?’ Constance said, after I emerged. She was still standing in the hall, like a guard in her own house.
‘Thank you.’
‘Do you understand what I’m looking for?’ she said over her shoulder, leading me into the front room. The October afternoon light played through the huge bay window. Beneath our feet were Turkish rugs, and around us, the unusually high walls were painted in gunmetal blue. Prints were hung quite higgledy-piggledy; I wanted to examine every one but knew I couldn’t. The armchairs and sofa were covered in velvet roses and looked tired but comfortable.
‘They didn’t tell me a huge amount,’ I said. Constance rolled her eyes. ‘But I’ve read Green Rabbit.’ She stopped in her tracks. ‘It’s—’
‘You’re not a Ph.D. student, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Thank god.’
She looked at me again. My face felt like it had lost a layer of skin. Then she moved to an armchair and lowered herself into it. It partially swallowed her up. ‘Please sit down, Miss Brown.’
‘Laura, please.’
‘How old are you, Laura?’ she asked.
‘I’m thirty-five next July.’
‘A crab?’
I looked at her with surprise. I did not take her for one who had an interest in the stars. ‘I am.’
‘Do you like to hide?’
‘I hope not,’ I replied.
I couldn’t get at her. Constance had got to me first and I didn’t know the rules. I didn’t have any weapons, I didn’t feel bright or sharp or whatever it was I suspected Constance wanted me to be. Constance was too strong, too rude, too used to bending the world to her will. I’d never been spoken to like this by anyone before. The normal rules of politesse clearly did not bother her.
She held up her hands. ‘It’s these,’ she said. ‘Severe osteoarthritis. They keep pussy-footing round the whole thing, so when the girls turn up – and it’s always girls – they don’t realize how much help I really need.’
‘And how much help do you need?’ I said.
She looked at me appreciatively. ‘I live alone,’ she said. ‘There is no significant or insignificant other. I can dress myself. At the moment. As long as the clothes are put together with zips, not lots of little buttons. I can turn on a kettle. Pour a cup. I can open a book, and I can read it. But it’s the neater motor mechanics I’m finding hard. It’s pull-on loafers for my feet these days. Spaghetti bolognese is a fucking disaster. I will probably never peel my own prawns or drink a bowl of soup in public again.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Thank you.’
‘Can you write?’ I asked.
Constance looked at me hawkishly. Then something in her face seemed to give way.
‘Shall I make us a cup of tea?’ I said.
*
She directed me to the kitchen, and I walked through to the back of the house, which opened out into a medium-sized, beautifully designed kitchen that looked onto a small courtyard garden lined with junior-sized fruit trees and large planters full of mint. I opened cupboard after cupboard until I found Constance’s mugs. Her collection belied any sense of elegance and power evident in the rest of the house. They were from the school of the tired velvet armchairs, faded mugs from Cadbury that had probably come with Easter eggs wedged inside them long ago, alongside SAVE THE CHILDREN, SAVE THE WHALE, and I ♥ BIRDWORLD, with an emu on the side who’d seen better days.
‘Are you picking the tea leaves too?’ Constance called.
‘Coming,’ I said, grabbing I ♥ BIRDWORLD.
I returned to the front room bearing her tea. ‘I’ll just put it on the side to cool down.’
She looked at it dubiously. Her hands sat in her lap, and I wondered how often she drank, or ate, in front of others. ‘I’m finishing a novel,’ she said. ‘It’ll probably be the last one I write.’ I felt unease pushing from the middle of my body like a black dove against my ribs. ‘I can type, but very slowly,’ she went on. ‘I hate computers. I prefer to write by hand. But my handwriting’s atrocious. So I’m in a bit of a bind.’
‘I see.’
‘I don’t get up early,’ she said. ‘So I wouldn’t expect you to come in before ten. I have coffee, then I write till one o’clock in the afternoon, stopping for lunch.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t exactly know how this will work.’
‘What’s your novel about?’ I said, and immediately regretted it. I saw it in her face; the displeasure and resignation fighting with the desire to tell me – or to try, at least.
‘Would you be interested in helping me?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And I wouldn’t ask a question like that again.’
She smiled, holding up her hands. ‘Aside from all this boring business, can you manage a diary?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Can you work some evenings? Cook for me? Can you cook?’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘And what are you really looking for, out of this position?’
I found myself lost for words.
‘I see,’ said Constance, looking dubious. ‘I’ll be frank, Laura. You’re the oldest candidate the recruitment agency and Rebecca organized for me to meet. I don’t think you’re remotely old, obviously. It’s just all the others are in their early twenties. They look like they want to get on somewhere, you know? This is an interim thing for them. A limbo. And to be quite frank, I think most of them were scared. Would you be able to tell me why you’re here?’
‘Have you read my CV?’ I said.
She batted the air with her hands. ‘I took a glimpse. They all look the same, to be honest. And people always make half of it up, anyway. I’d prefer to talk to a person. I’m a good judge of charact
er, you know.’
‘Of course.’
‘So why do you want this job? Are you just looking for anything at the moment?’
‘No. Something specific,’ I said.
‘Oh? What?’
‘I would like – to be useful,’ I said.
Constance laughed. ‘You would be very useful.’ She leaned back in the armchair and surveyed me. ‘But would I be useful to you?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You’re telling me that working here would be an entirely altruistic pleasure?’
‘Well – no. I mean, I need a job. There’s that. And I think this would be an interesting position. And I need a change,’ I added. Feeling some truth upon the air, at last, I felt my cheeks turn hot.
It was as if she smelled it too. ‘A change?’ she said. ‘You’re not happy where you are?’
‘I’ve taken some shifts in a coffee shop. It’s not – stimulating.’
‘But if you worked here, there would be no one else to talk to, except me. And I wouldn’t call making cups of tea any more stimulating than making cups of coffee.’
‘You sound like you’re trying to talk me out of it,’ I said.
‘I just want you to understand. I’m not here to entertain you, to tell you stories. I need – essentially – a maid who can type.’
Her abruptness, her asperity – I understood why many might have been put off by Constance, or might have wilted under her glare. ‘I’m not expecting anything from you,’ I said, and I had to look away, hot-faced from my lie. When I turned back to her, she was waiting for me to speak again. ‘Miss Holden—’
‘Connie, please.’
‘Connie. I would love this job. That’s the truth. I will do what you want. I will leave you alone when you want to be alone. I will cook for you. I will type for you. Your hands are yours, and they always will be. But you can have mine too, if you would like them.’
Constance looked taken aback. Possibly no one had offered themselves to her for a long time, in any shape or form. Her eyes even briefly moistened, but she blinked, and I looked away to save her embarrassment. I suspected she could not countenance the idea of weeping in front of me. In truth, I had not expected such an outburst from myself, but perhaps some unconscious part of me knew that this moment couldn’t be let go. I didn’t know how it would work with the recruitment agency, but I was on the cusp of something that might be here today and never seen again. I was already in too deep – I needed her to want me more than the others. I needed her to want to make this work.
She scrutinized my face, as if she was divining a mystery or looking at a confusing work of art. ‘There’s another thing,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘The recruitment agency Rebecca used.’
A sick feeling swooped into my stomach. ‘Yes?’
‘What percentage of your earnings will they take?’
‘Er, twenty per cent?’
‘Mmm,’ said Constance. ‘For doing what, exactly? Every other person they sent me was a wet blanket. They’ve wasted my time.’
‘I guess that’s part of the search, though,’ I said. ‘The match-making process,’ I added jokingly, and immediately regretted it.
‘This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to call the recruitment agency and tell them the search is off.’
‘Oh?’ My heart beat faster. If Connie mentioned my name to this recruitment agency, my cover would be blown. They would have no record of Laura Brown. The only person who knew my name was Rebecca.
Connie misunderstood my hesitation and raised an eyebrow. ‘Do your principles forbid you to agree?’ she said.
My mind was racing. ‘I’ll call the recruiters myself,’ I said. ‘Tell them I’m not interested in the job any more. To take me off their books. I could tell them I’ve found something else?’
Connie nodded. A paranoid part of me wondered if some suspicion she held about me had been confirmed. But if this was the case, why was she so keen to take me on? ‘You should probably do that,’ she said. ‘But I’m going to let them know I’m not looking any more.’
‘OK,’ I said. This couldn’t end well.
‘And then come to me privately,’ Connie went on. ‘I’ll pay you direct, in cash. And I’ll tell Rebecca that the recruitment agency has found me someone and I’m finalizing the details myself.’
I felt slightly lightheaded. ‘But – won’t Rebecca want to sort it for you herself?’
Connie shrugged. ‘Unlikely. It’s hardly her remit, and she was a bit miffed having to deal with it in the first place. She thinks I’m cantankerous and I’m sure she’s scared of me.’
I thought back to Rebecca’s harried manner on the phone, her desire to get this matter off her hands as soon as possible. We need someone urgently. There was every chance these two facts might work in my favour.
Connie smiled. ‘All right. It’s settled. Good to save a bit of money, don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ I said, feeling the adrenaline drop through me. ‘I suppose it is.’
I was worried, but I decided not to over-think it, and to see instead how far my luck would take me. I imagined the rooms above our heads right now, cupboards and drawers full of letters and diaries – even photos – that might contain a portrait of my mother, and by extension, me. If finding them meant cooking some vats of bolognese, I would take the risk.
‘Excellent, Laura,’ said Constance. ‘Right then. I’ve got a good feeling about you. When can you start?’
*
We said goodbye, agreeing that I would come at ten a.m. in two weeks on the Monday. I walked to the station feeling extraordinary. Connie’s invitation to go inside her world had wrapped its shining bonds around me as if I were a chrysalis she’d spun with her crooked fingers. For thirty-four years, I had offered the world one version of myself. Within minutes of Connie’s company, I’d cast it off.
15
Joe’s reaction to my job news was decidedly underwhelming. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ I snapped. ‘You’re always telling me the coffee shop has no room for development.’
‘Oh come on, Rose. You know why not. This is weird. Are you going to tell this woman what you know about her from your dad?’
‘Not yet.’
He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. ‘You’re in her house. And you’re going to lie to her.’
‘No, I’m just not going to tell her.’
‘Won’t she see your surname and ask questions?’
‘I’m not using my real name,’ I said.
Joe put his head in his hands. ‘Oh, god. Rosie, no. This is dangerous.’
‘It’s fine. I needed – to protect myself.’
‘It’s not fine. It’s not fine at all. What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know!’ I shouted. ‘I just – I just wanted to do it, OK? I needed to do something. To change something.’
He looked at me in alarm. ‘To change something?’
I could feel tears coming. ‘Yes.’ The last thing I wanted was for him to voice the very doubts I had myself. I didn’t want someone I trusted thinking this was a bad idea, a sort of madness. ‘I just wanted to see,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘You could be arrested for this.’
‘I’m not going to be arrested.’
He sighed. ‘Well, I don’t want you to be disappointed.’
‘Trust me, Joe. When it comes to my mother I couldn’t be any more disappointed than I already am.’
He put his hand on my shoulder. It felt like a lead weight and I wanted to shake it off, but I knew that would shoot us into the next level of an argument and I couldn’t face it. ‘You might get hurt,’ he said.
‘She’s an old woman, Joe. What’s she going to do – batter me to death with her walking stick?’
‘Rosie, you know that’s not what I mean. I know I can’t ever understand what it must be like for you, to know your mum left. And
to not have any answers. But I really don’t think this is a good idea.’
‘Well, I’m doing it. And you can hardly talk about good ideas.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Joe, I have supported you with your burritos and your van, and all of it, for so long.’
‘Rose, they are very different things—’
‘—And I’m asking you to support me. In this one thing. No questions asked. Just support me.’
‘OK,’ he said, but I felt it was only to defuse the situation, to draw my voice back down the vocal scale where it had been creeping up to ‘shrill’.
‘Does your dad know?’ he said.
‘No, and I don’t want him to. It’s just too complicated. This is my thing.’
‘OK,’ said Joe, looking miserable. ‘OK.’
*
That night, I texted Kel: can we have dinner? Got something to tell you.
She replied: ??? I can do Tuesday night?
I waited to see if this would actually be the case, because there would often be last-minute cancellations as she and Dan juggled childcare. We agreed to meet at our favourite place, a ramen restaurant down a tiny passage in Soho, where the windows were always steamed up and the bao were always sublime.
‘So?’ she said, sliding onto her bar stool, and breaking open a pair of chopsticks, even though we hadn’t ordered yet.
‘I’ve got a new job,’ I said.
I saw it, the moment – so brief, but so finite in her eyes – of disappointment. It pricked my heart, and I realized then how much I’d been pinning my hopes on her. But Kelly had been waiting for me to tell her that I was pregnant; that was the hope she’d been pinning on me. I just knew it. She knew my ups and downs around the issue of motherhood, and she wanted them conclusively solved. News of a baby would have brought her more joy than news of a job. My best friend, who loved her work so much, who knew how hard I was fighting to find my path.
‘Oh my god!’ she said. ‘Good on you. What is it?’
The Confession Page 10