The Housekeeper

by Suellen Dainty

  There was mention of an accompanying program about McLeish and Kinghurst Place, to be broadcast at 11:30 p.m. that night. Nothing too odd about that. Just another of Rob’s documentaries. Then I must have clicked the mouse by mistake, because another image swam into view. On the screen was a photograph of a young woman gazing pensively into the camera. Her face was almost out of focus and there was a series of quotations below the photograph. I didn’t recognize the person at first. But less than a second later, everything stopped with a hollow jolt.

  It was me, in my striped T-shirt and jeans, everything below my waist obscured by the kitchen counter. To one side was a crumpled apron. Underneath the photograph were words like “harrowing” and “psychological abuse” and “child neglect” and “extraordinary story.” Each quotation was separated from the next by different vibrant colored dots: acid-yellow, lime-green, and shocking pink.

  My breath rasped like chalk on a blackboard. Each thud of my pulse was a thunderclap. My sight closed in on itself and I couldn’t see anything at all for a while. I sat very still. If I continued to do that, everything might go away. It might not have happened, might not be happening. I could go back to the night of Emma and me drinking wine when it was still warm enough for the doors to be open, with Siggy lying between our feet and the sense of a friendship found.

  Friends gave you bits of themselves. They laid them down on the ground and said, “This is the part of me that no one knows and I entrust it to you.” This is what Emma did that night, her blue eyes blinking through her fringe when she told me about falling in love with another man, about wanting to leave Rob all those years ago, when she told me that I was part of their family. Friends protected each other. This is what I did on the night of their party when I shepherded Emma away from the sight of Rob and Theo; what I had tried to do at Jake’s school. My mind filled with memories that collided behind my eyes. I was shut outside, unable to get back in again. Searching for my mother, crying out her name. Alone in the dark, rustling sounds in the corner, the air in front of me thick with fear.

  My phone rang again. It was Jude. “How did you know?” I asked.

  “I was driving back from the kindergarten, listening to Radio 4, and it was a promotion about Rob’s TV program tonight. No names mentioned, but it had to be you. Did you know, have any idea at all?”

  “No, none.”

  “How did he get hold of all that stuff? You said you hadn’t told him about it.”

  “I hadn’t told him anything. He completely fooled me, said the book was strictly nonfiction and he couldn’t include anything that wasn’t completely factual and there was no proper record of me or of my mother being there. He said he couldn’t write about something if he wasn’t sure about it. Sounds so stupid now, but I always got the impression he was more interested in helping me than anything else.

  “Emma and I had a couple of glasses of wine too many together a few weeks ago, when everyone was out. She told me I was part of their family. I know I drank too much, but I’m certain I didn’t tell her anything about the notebook for the same reason that I didn’t tell Rob. I was ashamed and I didn’t want them to think less of me.” My voice was heavy and slow. It seemed to be coming from a faraway place.

  “Well, one of them got to your notebook somehow or other. And the pictures?”

  “Emma took them, one evening. I thought she was just playing with Lily’s camera.”

  Jude swore into the phone. “Why would she just play with Lily’s camera when she could play with your life instead? I warned you about these people. I told you to watch out. But they can’t publish photographs of you without your permission. They can’t do that to you. I’m sure of it. I bet you could sue, take them down.”

  “There has to have been a mistake,” I cried. “Someone must have taken the camera and posted the wrong photographs. How could everything about me be plastered all over Rob’s website?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jude. “I wish I did.”

  I don’t remember the sequence of events after that. At some stage Jude said I should find a match, set fire to the house, and leave, taking their spoiled dog with me. I think I slumped in the chair for an unknown length of time, paralyzed by an unseen force field.

  I remembered the carefully casual way that Emma had brought the camera into the kitchen that evening and taken photographs of Siggy and me and the vase of autumn foliage. Did she take them deliberately? Or had Rob found the camera and the photographs and sent them to his publisher without telling Emma?

  I thought of Gran, how upset she would be, all her life trying to obscure everything to protect me. I thought about trying to get another job, with people thinking that I’d sold my life story for a few shabby pounds; everyone knowing about my mother and looking sideways at me, wondering if I was like her, if her illness was about to explode inside me. Every now and then I repeated to myself, like a chorus, “It was my life. They didn’t have to do that.”

  When Lily and Jake came home, I managed to say hello. “Are you OK?” asked Lily. “You look a bit pale.”

  “I just need a bit of air,” I said, clipping Siggy’s leash to his collar. “I’ll take a quick spin around the block, and then I’ll be good.” I walked in a giddy blur, weaving from the gutter towards front lawn hedges and fences and back again. At the corner of the street, I stopped and slumped against a tree trunk, remaining completely still until its sharp knobs pressing into my spine forced me into movement.

  Back in the kitchen, I waited for Emma. Every car that passed I imagined to be her taxi. Every sigh and creak I heard, I imagined to be her about to open the door, to walk into the hall, when I would hear the clack-clack of her shoes on the flagstones and then her muffled footsteps on the rug. I don’t know how long I waited. Finally, she was in the kitchen, flinging off her jacket and flicking her hair to one side in that careless elegant way I had once tried so hard to copy. Under her fringe, her blue eyes held mine in an unbroken clear gaze and she smiled. Even then, I couldn’t help thinking for a second that it could all be OK, that there had been a mistake and everything could be returned to the way it used to be.

  “What a day,” she said, pouring a glass of wine. “Can I tempt you?” She waved the bottle in my direction. I shook my head. “Are you sure?” Again, I shook my head.

  She circled the kitchen, sipping her wine in that birdlike way of hers. It was like every other evening. Maybe it was. Maybe nothing had happened. Maybe I had dreamed the whole thing.

  “Cottage pie for dinner! How yummy. I’m going to go up and take a quick bath. I had to go down to Hoxton this morning and walk around for hours with some daft committee. It was so windy. I need to get the grit out of my hair.”

  Even when she came downstairs, hair dribbling in wet patches on her back, in her tracksuit and neon trainers neatly tied in childlike double bows, when she sat on the counter and began her evening drumroll against the cupboards, there was still something inside me that didn’t believe what had happened. But when I shut the oven door and turned towards her, I felt tears scratching at my eyelids. There was the dissociated question of why should tears scratch when they’re only water?

  Emma cocked her head to one side. “Are you all right? You don’t seem yourself.”

  “How did you do that?” I burst out. “How did you take my life and give it away like that? Just for a TV program and a chapter or two in a book? Or was it Rob? Whose idea was it? Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Or that someone wouldn’t tell me? It was on the radio this morning, an announcement for all the world to hear.”

  Her eyes darted off to one side. “I meant to say something, truly I did, but it never seemed to be the right time. I was going to tell you tonight, right now, before the program goes to air.”

  “Really.” I polished the sink tap. Why are you doing this? I asked myself. You should leave, right now. But I couldn’t seem to make myself move.

  “Please don’t be cross, I couldn’t bear it,” Emma said in a small, te
ntative voice. “It was so silly of me, I know, not to have told you before this. I didn’t mean to, honestly. Please, please forgive me. I mean, it’s not so bad, is it? Everyone will forget about it in a week or two. And we both want the same things. Anyhow . . .”—her voice fell to a whisper—“I was going to talk to you, really I was.”

  “And the photographs?” I asked. “You were going to talk to me about them as well?”

  Her hand flew up to her heart, a hollow knock where it landed on her chest bone. “You have to believe me, Anne, that was just a coincidence. I wouldn’t do that to you, you know that. That was a misunderstanding between Rob and me. It wasn’t meant to happen like that.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, gulping back the sadness. “I didn’t tell you about my life because I didn’t know the truth of it myself. I still don’t. Yes, I wanted to find out more, and yes, I hoped Rob might help me do that, but I was so happy here. I didn’t want all that to come between us. So I don’t understand. It’s not like you need the publicity, or the money, or anything. You and Rob have everything—why would you want more?”

  Emma studied the sink. “I can’t explain it just now. I really can’t. You need to understand, we didn’t intend to upset you. We’re all in this together, really.”

  I turned on the oven for the cottage pie. Why? Even as I set the timer, I asked myself the question with no idea of the answer.

  “Look, Rob will be back by dinnertime—why don’t we talk about it afterwards, just the three of us?” pleaded Emma. “You know, we’ve been meaning to ask, Rob and I, if you’d eat with us every night. I know you said you didn’t want to before, when you first started here. We’d like that so much, we’d feel more equal. You know how fond we are of you. Since you came here, it’s been the most wonderful time for all of us, the children too.

  “We felt you’d want Rob’s book to be successful. I thought you would want to help him. I said you were part of the family, and you are, and families, well, we all pull together, don’t we?”

  “And the payoff is that I get to sit with you at dinner instead of washing the pots and cleaning up?”

  She poured a second glass of wine and drained half of it in a gulp. “It’s not like that. Surely you understand. Sometimes things come along and you have to take them.”

  “I’m not a thing,” I said. “Last time I looked, I was still a person.”

  There was sadness and disappointment in her face, a crumpling of her features as though she was about to cry. A couple of seconds longer and I might have fallen for it, the way I might have fallen for it with Anton if he had kept protesting his innocence. I might even have gone to comfort her. But then she started talking to me, like I was a child who didn’t understand the rules.

  “Anne,” Emma said. “You approached us about this job, remember. That was your choice, your decision. Let’s try and be clear on this one. We could just as easily argue that you used us. Surely you can see that. You tried to mine Rob’s expert knowledge, all his academic expertise—you tried to infiltrate that for your own ends. You wanted to find out about your childhood and your mother from Rob, and yet you weren’t prepared to be open and honest with him about your own memories. We understand you didn’t want to tell us because you were ashamed. Rob says that’s not uncommon in families where members have some kind of mental illness. There is still such a stigma surrounding these things. So we’ve forgiven you for that.”

  She stopped suddenly and cocked her head to one side. “Sorry. I thought I heard either Jake or Lily on the stairs. I don’t want them involved in this at the moment.” Her trainers made a short drumroll on the cupboard door. She slid off the counter and stood at a sharp, straight angle. Instead of waving her arms about in that elegant casual way of hers, she folded them and stared at me, like a busy executive concluding a particularly tiresome meeting.

  “Look, why don’t you finish up now, go home, and have an early night. You’ll feel better in the morning—we can talk about this at another time, when you’re calm. OK? You’ll see that nothing needs to change. We can go on as we were. In some ways, it might even be better. It always is when you’ve come through a difficult time. Everyone understands each other so much better. It makes for a stronger relationship.”

  My hands fumbled as I tried to untie my apron. The knots held steady. I ended up pulling it over my head and throwing it on the counter, where it landed in almost the same place as it was in the photographs.

  “I know that it’s come as a bit of a shock,” said Emma. “I really do. But the most important thing you need to tell yourself is that Rob and I, and the children, we care about you very much and we want you to remain part of our family.”

  Without looking at Emma, I hurried out of the house. I strode past the woman walking her Labrador in the comforting blanket of dusk. All the way home in the bus, I pressed myself into a corner, refusing to acknowledge what was so obvious. I scurried back to my flat, past the kebab shop with its cylinders of shaved lamb turning on their spits and greasy potatoes mounded under yellow lights, rushing past Faisal without stopping to say hello.

  It was only when I pushed through the front door of my building and ran upstairs, desperate to unlock my front door, to shut it behind me and draw in some comfort from my own small sanctuary, when I threw my bag down on the coffee table and everything spilled out—my keys, a tattered cookery magazine, and my notebook—that I acknowledged to myself what had happened.

  27

  People only betray those who trust and love them. And then they turn against them. It happens all the time.

  —Rob Helmsley, Madhouse: The Life and Times of Rowan McLeish

  At some time, or times, the actual hour or date never to be made clear, Emma had found the notebook in my bag. She had picked it out and read it. She had either taken photographs of each page on her phone, and later transcribed them, or transcribed them on the spot. Then she had given them to Rob.

  Or had it been the other way around? Had Rob found my notebook and then persuaded Emma to take the photographs? I wanted to think it had been Rob, but it didn’t ring true. Rob wasn’t the sort of man to fossick about in a woman’s handbag. It wouldn’t have occurred to him.

  The inescapable fact was that it was Emma. None of these details mattered much in the end, but I still wanted to know. They mattered to me. Did she find my notebook on that night when we were alone in the house, lolling about in the dining room and drinking wine? When she was in the study, making her phone call, was her eye caught by Jude’s expensive castoff, the sort of expertly crafted item that someone on a housekeeper’s salary could never afford? Did she pick it up and sniff its intricately plaited surface to check if it was genuine leather, or the chemical-smelling plastic of a cheap fake? Is that when she saw my notebook and read it?

  But she was gone for less than ten minutes. Was that long enough for her to read it through and make a copy of it there and then? Or had she discovered it days, even weeks earlier, and dipped in and out of it, taking her time to photograph each page on her phone while I had my head in the oven or the refrigerator, while I was folding their laundry or loading their dishwasher? Most of the time when I was alone in the house, I kept the notebook in my back pocket, so I could scribble things when they occurred to me. But I usually put it in my bag before I started preparing dinner.

  However Emma found my notebook, she must have given the photographs to Rob that weekend. Emma would have known that photographs taken on her mobile wouldn’t be as good for broadcasting or publication as an almost professional camera.

  I paced my sitting room, too agitated to sit. Up and down, up and down. I must have stamped about for some time, because at some stage the man from downstairs banged on my door. Before I could open it, he said he had a migraine, his ceiling was shaking, and could I please stop. I sat down on the sofa, too taken aback to move.

  The thought of food made me nauseous, although I hadn’t eaten all day. It also made me imagine the four of them, probab
ly Theo as well, in the dining room, cocooned in warm candlelight, eating cottage pie and chatting in that clever, witty way of theirs. Emma would have explained my absence to Jake and Lily. They wouldn’t have thought twice about it. They never watched Rob on television. They might not even know what had happened. If they did mention it, Rob and Emma would have dismissed the necessary sacrifice of the hired help who had a nifty way with herbs and ironing shirt collars. Rob would probably have turned everything into one of those moral maze arguments that he was so good at.

  “Who was the more honest or dishonest person in all of this?” he might have asked. “The woman who maneuvered her way into a job in a place where she snooped about in bedrooms, where she went through people’s garbage and developed an unhealthy crush on someone’s husband? Or the husband and wife who discovered the snooping, who were prepared to forgive and let the woman keep her job? Surely she shouldn’t mind that they disclosed parts of her life to the outside world? After all, it was in the pursuit of genuine academic inquiry.

  “And where lay the greater good?” I pictured Rob leaning across the table, helping himself to more cottage pie. He might have spilled a bit on the table and wiped it up with his finger. He might have licked his finger clean with those sloppy table manners of his, and then rubbed his brow, the way he did when he talked.

  “It’s unhelpful to hold on to secrets,” he’d have said. “They fester and they’re corrosive. And the person’s experiences could help others.”

  At this point Rob might have mentioned the number of people who have some incident of mental illness each year. He was good at producing statistics like that. As well, he would have added, the pool of academic knowledge would be that much bigger. Emma would have been sitting at the other end of the table, nodding agreement as she drank.