The Housekeeper

by Suellen Dainty

  All the envelopes were addressed to her. The first was puckered with age and the seal had disintegrated into sticky strings. Inside was a receipt for £225.87 from a company called West Country Investigation Services. A rusted staple attached a typed page to the receipt: “As per your earlier letter, please note that the Coroner’s Report stated there were no personal items left by the deceased, apart from clothing which you have asked this agency to dispose of. Any further correspondence from the Coroner’s Court will be forwarded directly to you.”

  The second envelope, identical to the first, was thicker. The corners were worn away and the pages inside peeked through. I tore it open and pulled out the contents. Another short note about further correspondence. Another receipt stapled to a sheaf of pages, the rust bleeding into the paper. Probably a list detailing their expenses.

  Later, I returned to this moment again and again, examining everything about it. Was there a sense of excitement, a shiver that so many unknowable spaces might be filled? But I only remember thinking that the West Country Investigation Services might have bothered to type up their list of costs instead of writing it out by hand.

  I’m coming back for you, next week or soon after that. We’ll be together for Christmas! Imagine that. I’ll catch the train. I’m feeling so much better. Did you mind, little one, about going to Gran for a bit? She’s a real softie under that hard shell. This time, when I come back to you, things will be different. I’m going to take my pills, the proper ones, and not drink, not even coffee. It’s all going to be good.

  It’s so cold here. Sometimes it makes me dizzy and I have to go back to bed. I should have left weeks ago. I’d be with you now, reading you a story, doing something nice. Sometimes I think it must be pride keeping me away from you and my mother—either that or shame. Probably both. Mothers and daughters, how tangled it all is.

  The heater whirred erratically over the thrum of the engine. I turned it off and pulled my coat around me. Through the silence, I heard my mother’s voice so clearly through the pages. She sounded like honey. I’d always thought of her as something like mercury, mesmeric but impossible to contain. Now I glimpsed the person. She had longed for me just as I’d longed for her.

  I am coming soon, I promise, darling Annastasia. Any minute now. I think I might take the bus instead of the train. I couldn’t come before Christmas. I had this cough that wouldn’t leave. I’m still sick, but I had to write to you anyway.

  I won’t insult you with apologies and pleas for understanding my weaknesses—who I am, the fractures of my mind, the holes in my heart, the gaps in my life. I will not do that to you, the only one I have loved truly, the only one I wanted to be someone for. So when I tell you this, I want it unvarnished by the need for explanation. I want you to know what happened. I was McLeish’s patient in London. I thought he could save me and for a while I think he did. After maybe six or eight months, we became lovers. All this happened long before we went to Kinghurst Place.

  Did you ever think he might be your father? Sometimes I saw you looking at him and wanting his attention. Darling girl, he is nothing to do with who you are. You were already born by the time I met McLeish. I wish I could tell you that your father was a kind and lovely man. I wish I could tell you his name and where he lives. But I can’t, because I don’t know. So hard to say this to you or even myself. I don’t know. I wish I could tell you something else, but I’m trying to be truthful.

  I’d like to tell you that I loved McLeish, that part of me cleaved to him, but that would be a lie. He wanted me, you see. And I saw that as power. I was still young then, and thought that an accidental collision of genes along a cheekbone or an eye was a special gift, a sign that you were chosen for an extraordinary life. But it was just another cage, another set of bars. I knew I was beautiful. Very few people want you for yourself when you are a beauty. Very few are interested. I hope you realize that one day, if you ever read this—I hope you do and I hope you don’t.

  Rowan, what to say about Rowan? The way he managed to control everything about me, down to the way I spoke, the way I lay in the bed, while all the while telling me he was freeing my creativity, that I was his muse, that I made him fly, that together we would be free to soar. Everything was so seductive, so wonderfully exciting, and it was a while before I realized what he was doing—making me crazier than I already was. I’m sure it was by design, not by accident.

  I couldn’t work it out for a while, because it was so casual, so slight. There would be this perplexed look if I told him that I thought this or that. He would lean back in that way of his, and tilt his head. “Really,” he’d say. “Do you really think so?” Then, “Are you sure?” And then “Are you quite sure?” After a while, everything began to blur and collide with each other and make a terrible noise.

  And then he would lie beside me, and curve his body next to mine, the same way he used to do with that stinking woman, and tell me that he would save me. And then he would read aloud poems he’d written for me, and give me those tablets that made me feel like I was wrapped in clouds and floating high above everything, like a goddess. But then the clouds turned into ropes and I couldn’t get free. I couldn’t think anything or do anything. It was like being imprisoned where no light could reach. In the end I pretended to take them then threw them away. That’s when I began to realize that everything about Kinghurst Place was bad. I hope you never remember any of it, that it took me so long to see that Rowan was sicker than all of us put together, sick in an evil, hideous way, and I had to get you out of there.

  It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon. I’d been poring over the pages for almost two hours, reading each one again and again, tracing the outline of each word with my finger. The pages had yellowed, and some were smudged with what looked like earth or grass. Perhaps she had written them outside, warmed by the last of the autumn sun.

  The car park was full. A woman in a beanie knocked on my window and asked when I was going to leave. “Oh, I’m waiting for someone,” I said, hardly able to tear myself away from the pages. “They might be a while.” She disappeared in a huff. I settled back down in my seat. One of McLeish’s poems flitted through my head.

  You will not go

  I will know.

  My will grows as

  Yours does slow

  It wasn’t academic and abstract, a way to convey McLeish’s philosophies. Rob was wrong. It was written for my mother. McLeish had tried to control her through therapy and destabilized her with drugs. He’d abused her and was threatening to abuse me. My mother ran away to save us. I went through the pages again, noticing how often she’d mentioned feeling tired and breathless and giddy—all symptoms of untreated heart disease. Maybe her death had been a tragic accident after all.

  I looked in his eyes and thought I was drowning. I think you know I have this illness. It started when I was 17. The doctors gave me so many pills. I stopped taking them because they made me feel half-dead. Better to die on my feet than live on my knees. You see, I thought then, I thought I could talk myself sane, or that McLeish could talk me sane. But I don’t want to lie to you. I loved the madness. I loved it so much. It was an eternal rainbow, the angel voices, everything glittering and this power and energy rushing from me, like I could fly. I forgot about everything that followed, the weeks of weeping and not being able to move, every muscle weighed with cement blocks, wanting to end it all. And then I would return to myself and see your little tin plates beside my bed, the mud cakes cracked and collapsing, the berries no longer scarlet and sweet but gray and molded, and your dear sad face trying to make everything better. Well, it will be, I promise you. Soon, I’ll be coming for you so soon. I just need to get well again.

  My back was stiff from sitting for so long. I felt a disturbance in the atmosphere, almost imperceptible. The cramped interior of the car was suddenly full of tiny noises. The rub of my jeans against the seat, the intake of air through my mouth, the crackle of hair against my scalp as I shifted about. The
sound of my mother’s voice came up again through the yellowed pages.

  Everything is clearer now. Everything will be clearer when I come. I’ll find us a house, just for us, where you can invite your friends from school. I know you want to go to school. I won’t get anything too big. A little cottage where we can grow vegetables and flowers and be like everyone else. I’m so tired of being different. The effort exhausts me. I’m going to sleep now. I feel very faint. It must be the cold.

  Outside rain began to fall. The quiet jubilation of that moment, the tide coming in at last. Suddenly, I had to see the place of her death for myself. It was the only way I could make sense of it all, to accept what had happened. I turned again to the letters from the detective agency, sure that one had mentioned where my mother had died. Yes, there it was, at the bottom of the page. The exact location was a clearing off a trail called Lower Oak Path in a wood outside Cardiff. If I left Shaftesbury now, I could be there before nightfall.

  Two hours later, pushing past lorries on the motorway, I pulled into an almost empty car park with three unmarked trails leading off it. I had no idea which one to take and walked over to a group of hikers drinking mugs of steaming tea. “Don’t suppose you’d know where Lower Oak Path is?” I asked. “I’m looking for a clearing somewhere along it.”

  A bearded man examined the darkening sky. “You’ll need to get your skates on, but you’ll make it, just. There’s a clearing a quarter of a mile down, near a group of five oak trees. It begins over there.” He pointed to a trail at the side of the car park. “There used to be a map here, with everything clearly marked, but vandals got to it. Kids around this area . . .” I didn’t have time for a speech on rural delinquency. “Thanks,” I said, already walking away. “You’ve been a great help.”

  The day’s light was nearly gone. I strode along the trail, blowing into my hands to warm them and counting my steps. Two hundred, three hundred, and finally four hundred and forty. There was the group of oak trees, just as the hiker had said. I left the trail and walked through the ancient wood until I came to a small empty circle. A deer snuffled at a tree trunk. It froze when it saw me, eyes wild with fear, before turning and racing for cover.

  I was alone again. Everywhere was the smell of dank leaf mold. At the edges of the clearing were scooped out hollows dug by animals seeking shelter and warmth. I couldn’t be sure that this was the exact place where my mother died, but still I imagined her here, alone and shivering. I was deathly cold and I couldn’t seem to get enough air. I was overcome by sadness that she had died here alone in an abandoned trailer, with no one to help her. I stood there until it began to rain, great gouts of water rushing through the bare branches of the trees and splashing up from the mounds of leaves. I ran back to the car and drove back to London. With the sound of every passing car and the flash of every headlight came the chorus, warming me like a blanket. You were loved. You were loved. Your mother loved you . . .

  Your mother loved you.

  I stopped at the corner shop for bread and milk. Imran was ahead of me in the queue of late night shoppers. “You look happy,” he said. “You look refreshed and happy.”

  “I drove down to Dorset today and then to Wales,” I said. “It was very good.”

  “Dorset. I don’t think I know that part. Or Wales.” He moved up a place and lifted his basket onto the checkout. “My sister is here. She’s staying until after Christmas. It’s wonderful to see her again.”

  “Great,” I said. “I bet she’ll have a great time.” He looked puzzled and a bit offended. The dinner. Of course. I couldn’t get out of it now. “You must come over then, the three of you. We’ll make it a pre-Christmas thing. Maybe next week?” He smiled and began unloading his groceries.

  A couple of days later, I ran into Imran at the pulses section, studying the small print on a packet of red lentils.

  “What about next Sunday for dinner? Would that suit?”

  “Yes, that would be wonderful. Thank you.” He looked pleased.

  “How is your sister enjoying England?”

  “She likes it, although she says it’s cold.”

  I laughed. “Good job she didn’t come in February.”

  He tossed the packet of lentils into his basket. “So everything is better now? You look more rested.”

  “Yes, everything is much better,” I said. “I like my new job. So it’s all good. Now, what do you like to eat? Everyone has so many allergies these days.”

  “We eat anything,” he said. “No food allergies where we grew up. We were grateful to have a meal every day. But since you ask, maybe, something plain, something you would cook for your own family.”

  “Got it,” I said. “See you on Sunday then, around seven thirty.”

  I’d never had anyone to dinner in my apartment before, not even Anton or Jude, and I didn’t know what to think about that, except that it felt odd and good at the same time. It would be a squash around the tiny table, but we’d manage. We’d eat something simple, but with a bit of spice. I still had my pestle and mortar, my Le Creuset casserole dishes. I could prepare everything ahead of time so I wouldn’t get flustered greeting my first ever guests.

  Jude rang just as I opened my front door. “I’m in a very good mood!” she shouted.

  “How come?”

  “I bring you good news, my little kitchen fairy friend. Oh, such good news. Where are you?”

  I told her.

  “Go back to the corner shop and buy the Guardian. Page six. Ah, I see His Majesty my husband coming with his prince and princess. Let’s talk later.”

  It was immediately apparent what Jude had been calling about. An article about Rob was at the bottom of the page. I read it standing on the corner, buffeted by the slipstream from passing buses. Apparently he’d resigned from the BBC with immediate effect. Something about personal reasons. But Rob didn’t have personal reasons, only public ones. Maybe he was ill. Something could have happened to Emma. Or Jake or Lily? For a moment, I was back in Wycombe Lodge again, wanting to fashion order out of mayhem, making myself feel better. Then I remembered. They weren’t my family. They never had been.

  I retraced my steps to my flat and opened my computer. There was a picture of Rob at a book signing in Hatchards that weekend. Emma had told her followers to stick to a two-color palette for work. It made for an easier life, she wrote. Nothing else.

  But the next morning, there was another story about Rob, this time in all the newspapers. A retired professor from Princeton had accused Rob of plagiarizing a paper he had written on McLeish twenty years ago for an academic quarterly. Not just the odd phrase or paragraph, but great slabs of words without changing even punctuation marks. Rob had refused to comment, but his silence only fanned the furor. The Huffington Post showed a page from Rob’s book next to a page from the quarterly. Every word was identical. The BBC said that Rob’s program would not be broadcast that week and that the series and his contract had been canceled with immediate effect. Rob’s own website had disappeared overnight. I went into the kitchen and looked out over the rows of rooftops, the sky swimming like water over the jagged horizon.

  * * *

  Faster and faster I run down the towpath, each breath hammering against my chest before I settle into a pounding regular stride. My leg muscles strain. My arms punch the air. I think of the things and the times that almost undid me. Gran’s toxic secret. Her shame about my mother. Her love for me. Her misguided efforts to turn me into someone that I wasn’t. I think of my love for Douglas and then for Anton, always wanting them to fill in my unexamined spaces. My love for Emma and Rob and Jake and Lily, and yes, even Siggy. How I’d yearned to belong to them and to Wycombe Lodge in my futile way. How that yearning fed into my search for my mother and myself and the truth about McLeish. How I’d been overcome by grief and howling rage when Emma and Rob betrayed me. How blind I had been to the way they were, and the way I am. A month ago, even two weeks ago, there would have been a sense of triumph and righteous rev
enge about Rob. I would have gloried in his downfall, Emma’s as well. I’d imagined it often enough. For a moment, the old fury and despair flare up, bright as flames.

  I pick up pace and sprint past the asylum. The small bronze plaque glimmers in the dull light. I don’t stop. I know what happened behind these stone walls. I know what happened in my life. Not everything that happened. No one can say that. But I know enough to leave it behind. The relief is enormous, like I’ve let go of a half-ton weight.

  Air rushes past, chilling my cheeks. There is the smell of snow, something cold and clean—something that belongs to a new season.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m very grateful to Sarah Branham, Judith Curr, Haley Weaver, and everyone at Atria Books; to Kerry Glencorse, Susanna Lea, and all at Susanna Lea and Associates, and to Anna Dorfmann who created such a wonderful cover.

  A huge thank-you to Liz Houghton, who unscrambled so much, both in my brain and on the page.

  Thanks to the staff of Le Gavroche restaurant, and its chef patron, Michel Roux Jr., who patiently explained the operation of a professional kitchen to me.

  Thanks also to Lyndall Crisp, Jenny Cullen, Jeanie Evans, Kylie Fitzpatrick, Elisabeth Gifford, Susan Haynes, Corinna King, Angela Lett, Liz Loxton, Michael Lynch, Jennifer McVeigh, Jude O’Donovan, Chrissy Sharp, Tricia Wastvedt, and Helen Westlake.

  Nicholas Dainty and Laura Dainty encouraged me throughout. As always, I owe so much to my wonderful children and I could not have completed this book without them.

  For another great read by Suellen Dainty, be sure to check out . . .

  Suellen Dainty's stunning debut, an insightful and atmospheric midlife coming-of-age tale set in contemporary London and rural France.

  After Everything