From the Inside

by Collette Heather

  Briefly, I wonder if she had intended to steal the dress, too.

  “Mrs Crawford,” she stutters in a breathy rush. “I’m so sorry, I was cleaning and the wardrobe door was open. I saw this dress just hanging there, and it’s so pretty, and I wanted to just hold it against me, like, you know, pretend that I live here, and stuff.” Her voice deepens, as if her throat is thickening with unshed tears. “It’s just, I ain’t never had nice things.”

  Yet again, I am struck by her East London accent – I can’t say that I’ve ever heard people talk like that outside of the movies. She sounds so Eliza Dolittle to me, like a caricature of what a Cockney accent should sound like. Not quite Dick Van Dyke level, but close.

  “You know you’re not allowed in here,” I say gently.

  I discover that I am trembling – not because I am mad, but because I hate confrontation.

  “Yeah, I know. And I’m real sorry. And I just saw the dress when I was passing…”

  “From the hallway? Through two closed doors? And did my lipstick just happen to fall into your hand and get stuck when you were cleaning our en-suite bathroom that you weren’t even supposed to be in?”

  “I’m real sorry.”

  I stick out my hand, palm up. “Can I have my lipstick back, please?”

  She hesitates for a moment, and I wonder if she’s going to continue with this charade. It weren’t me, guv, I half expect her to say.

  Instead, she says nothing and hands it to me.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  She lowers her eyes, her cheeks flushing. “I’m sorry. I… I dunno what to say.”

  I’m not remotely angry. If anything, I feel sorry for her. Mostly, I just feel relieved because I knew that she had sticky fingers, and now I have a legitimate reason to get rid of her.

  “I’m sorry, Isobel, but I’m afraid that I’m going to have to let you go.”

  “Oh no, please don’t. It won’t happen again. I mean, it’s not like I’ve done anything like this before.”

  “We both know that’s not true,” I say, but there is no malice in my voice.

  “Will you tell the agency?” she asks in a small voice. “Please, I need this work. I’m behind in the rent, and they’ve cut my hours in the supermarket and the pub where I work. I’m stuffed if the agency blacklists me.”

  “No, I won’t tell the agency. But I’m sorry, neither can I have you working here. I’ll just tell the agency that I don’t need a cleaner anymore.”

  I realise how foolish that statement is as soon as it exits my mouth, but it’s too late now. Now I’m going to have to find a different agency, or advertise the position somewhere else, independently.

  Just wonderful.

  “What if I said I’ll never do it again?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and mean it. Because part of me wants to believe her, yet at the same time, I know for a fact that she will do it again. I’m not especially disgusted at her, but neither can I trust her in my home.

  She nods. Her eyes are now sparkling with tears. She’s on the brink, but she seems to be mostly holding it together. I gaze helplessly into her saucer-like, blue eyes, thinking how pretty she could be with a little bit of makeup, pampered and styled hair, and decent clothes. But even with her long, mousy hair scraped off her face in a high bun and her face bereft of makeup, she is extraordinarily pretty. According to the agency, she is twenty-four-years-old, but right then she seems much younger. I’ve never seen such a smooth forehead before, and her full mouth is so perky and soft-looking.

  “I’m sorry, too,” I find myself saying. “But you’ll be okay. You’re young, you’re beautiful, you have the world at your feet.”

  Just don’t make the same mistakes I did, is on the tip of my tongue, but I manage to bite it down in time.

  “The world at my feet?” she says sadly. “I didn’t even get my GCSEs. I thought about modelling, but I’m only five four, and I’d have to go on a diet, and I don’t like the idea of the sleazy stuff. My boyfriend says I should, but I don’t know…” Her voice trails off as she looks around the bedroom. “I’ll never have any of this,” she says, waving her arm expansively.

  Her statement gives me a guilt complex. I’m not sure that I deserve any of this, either. Sometimes, I feel like an imposter in my own life. I watch her look down at my dress as if only then realising for the first time that she is still clutching it.

  “I’m sorry,” she says again, turning her back to me and shoving the dress back on the hanger. I notice how her hands are trembling.

  “What dress size are you?” I ask impulsively. The beige pullover that she wears is so big and baggy it completely swamps her figure. It’s hard to tell if she’s overweight, or if she’s one of those skinny, well-endowed girls, whereby loose-fitting tops just hang straight down from the chest and make them appear to have a thicker middle, even when they don’t.

  “A size twelve,” she says.

  For a moment, I fancy that her shoulders stiffen defensively. She finishes putting back my dress and turns around to face me.

  “A size twelve?” I say. “I don’t think so, you look nearer my size.”

  She emphatically shakes her head. “No way am I a six or eight. Believe me, this jumper hides a spare tyre.”

  “I don’t believe you. I was just going to say, take the dress.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  I shrug. “I hardly ever wear it. I think it would look nice on you.”

  “It would never fit.”

  I don’t believe that for a second, but neither do I argue the toss. She is clearly embarrassed, or perhaps insulted. I wonder if I’m coming across as patronising and smug. It certainly isn’t my intention.

  “Shall we go down to the kitchen?” I say.

  *

  Once in the kitchen, I sit her down at the large, oblong, designer plastic table on the other side of the kitchen Island. She gazes forlornly out at the back garden through the glass panels. I wonder what she’s thinking. I wonder if she’s seething with jealousy as she looks at the big, outdoor swimming pool that is currently covered by a blue pool blanket, due to it still only being early Summer.

  I feel sad for her. And weirdly guilty, like I am the thief, not her. Like this is her life, and I’ve stolen it from her. I know I’m being utterly ridiculous, but my imposter syndrome sometimes runs away with me.

  I busy myself over by the white, blocky sideboard, hunting for my chequebook.

  “To whom should I make this out?” I ask when I at last locate it.

  She hesitates, tearing her gaze away from the glass panelling with obvious reluctance, as if unsure of what to say. “My name, I guess. But I’ve, erm, been having problems with my bank lately. I’m not sure that they’d even accept a cheque made out to me.”

  I spin around on the spot, eyebrow raised. I’ve never heard of such a thing before. Unless, of course, she owes the state money. If she has a county court judgement against her, I suppose it would mean that any monies made payable to her would get sucked up into pre-existing debts.

  Whatever. It is none of my business.

  “Fine,” I say.

  Abandoning the chequebook, I instead open a drawer. It’s where we keep our emergency stash of money. I lift up the false bottom and scoop up the twenty-pound notes – five-hundred pounds in total.

  I hand it all to the shocked girl. “As far as the agency is concerned, I’ve given you one week’s notice. You’re still coming here for your next five shifts, for which you will be paid. Except you’re not coming here ever again. This is just extra for your trouble.”

  I don’t tell her that I would’ve written a cheque for a grand. Five-hundred is all I have in cash, so five-hundred will have to do.

  She stares down at the money, her eyes shining and her bottom lip trembling. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “How about, I’m sorry, I’ve learned my lesson and I’ll never steal from my employers again? You were lucky that it was me who ca
ught you.”

  A look flashes over her face, one that I can’t quite fathom. I honestly don’t know if she’s touched by my treatment of her after having caught her stealing, or if the look is due to me coming across as a sanctimonious, patronising, smug, over-privileged bitch.

  “I’m sorry,” she says again.

  I see her to the door, certain that I shall never hear from Isobel Stamford again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  With each month that passes, Luke is getting home later and later from work. It used to be six-thirty that he walked through the door, but lately it’s nearer seven-thirty, more often than not. Plus, he has taken to socialising after hours with work colleagues with increased frequency. One time, a few months back, in March I think, he didn’t come home until the early hours of the morning.

  And he’s growing increasingly distant with me. It’s not anything big, but he doesn’t share as much with me as he used to. He no longer discusses the miniature of his day with me. He barely engages in any type of conversation – nothing meaningful, anyway. We don’t talk about world affairs, or books, or films, or music, or fitness, or any of the other stuff that we used to talk about.

  Sometimes, I wonder why he even bothered marrying me.

  And then I wonder why I married him, the fact I was three months pregnant aside, when we tied the knot.

  I wouldn’t say that I had been on the rebound, exactly, when I met him, but my head was still in a bad place. I was still reeling from the death of my mother, and I was so ashamed over the affair that I’d had with a married man. I had been single at the time, but that is hardly the point. It was wrong of me, and it sickens me. I was so sickened and ashamed, in fact, that when we got found out, I handed in my notice at the school where I worked in Brighton as a gym teacher, cashed in every last penny of my savings, rented a room in Whitechapel and went self-employed, reinventing myself as a personal trainer.

  An old girlfriend, also a teacher from St Stephens – the school in Brighton where I worked – informed me that Josh Montgomery, the fellow teacher with whom I’d been having the affair, had taken his own life.

  Except she wasn’t my friend anymore. My actions had completely ostracised me from my old life. I had been well and truly dumped like the proverbial sack of shit.

  And I couldn’t say that I blamed a single one of them.

  As I sit here at seven forty-five, eating in silence across from my husband, I can’t stop thinking about Josh. It’s not that I miss him – I don’t – but his death affected me deeply. It still does.

  As does the subsequent death of his daughter.

  As much as I try not to dwell, I quite often find myself thinking about Josh’s wife, Daisy Montgomery. I have never met the woman, but I know exactly what I have taken from her. She must hate me, and quite rightly so. I should imagine that she lays the blame for her husband’s and daughter’s deaths squarely at my feet. I probably would, too, if I were in her shoes.

  This is one of the reasons why I have never reached out to her to apologise for my actions. I can’t see what good it would do, stirring up old, festering wounds. It is better to let sleeping dogs lie, and all of that. What’s done is done and I deserve her hatred.

  The other reason is that I am a coward.

  So I am sitting here, wondering if I truly ever loved my husband, or if I flung myself into a relationship with him to escape the recent hurt of my past.

  And I am wondering this because he is so distant lately. I just simply don’t feel connected to him at all anymore. But I want to feel that again. At least, I think I do. I just don’t know. I am so confused.

  “So I had to fire the cleaner today,” I say, after my enquiries about his day are met with monosyllabic – but still polite – answers.

  That gets his attention. The shepherd’s pie pauses en-route to his mouth. “What on earth for?”

  “She was going through my stuff. She was stealing things from me.”

  “Things?” he asks sharply. “What things?”

  “Personal things. Perfume. Lipstick.” I don’t mention the Tampax, because maybe she just came on her period and I’m being mean and petty.

  “The agency is supposed to be one of the best in London. They thoroughly vet anyone they take on.”

  I bristle slightly at his faintly patronising, dismissive tone. Doesn’t he believe me?

  “Well, they didn’t vet Isobel Stamford all that well, did they?”

  “I suppose that the agency has plenty more cleaners where that one came from.”

  “I shan’t be using that agency again.”

  “Why not? Sure, we got one bad apple, but there’s always one that slips through the net. It’s a reputable agency, I’m sure that we’ll be entirely compensated for our troubles.”

  “I gave her the money from the drawer.” I know that he’ll know exactly which drawer I’m talking about. “And I promised that I wouldn’t tell her agency, precisely because they do have so much sway. If they knew, she would never get another cleaning job again.”

  He gawps at me. “That’s surely the whole point? She’s a goddam thief.”

  “I think she’s sorry. She’s young, and she made a mistake. I don’t want to be the one to wreck her life over something that’s ultimately so trivial.”

  “Where else, exactly, are you going to find a cleaner?”

  He speaks with exaggerated patience, like I am a disobedient child, rather than his wife and equal. I hate that tone.

  “I’ll put an ad in the classifieds.”

  He lets out a bark of laughter. “Right. God only knows who you’ll pick up doing that.”

  “Just an ordinary person, looking for work, I should imagine.”

  “It’s up to you. You’ll have to be in charge of the interviewing, and the hiring.”

  “Maybe we could just not get one at all?”

  “I’m not having my wife scrubbing all day. You have enough to deal with, with Bella, as well as the cooking and the running of the house. Just leave the menial work to others, okay?”

  Maybe I’m being harsh, but I don’t believe that he’s speaking out of any real concern for me. I’m beginning to think that he just sees me as his property, as this pretty object that looks good in his home. His trophy wife. I don’t think that he ever wants me to go back to work.

  And I think that he also sees me as an incubator for his babies.

  Yes, Luke wants more children, but what he doesn’t know is that I’m on the pill. I fell pregnant quickly and easily with Bella. No sooner than we had said, let’s have kids one day, then so it happened. As such, there’s been no talk of IVF, or any kind of intervention. I sincerely hope that conversation is way in the future, or, better yet, doesn’t happen at all.

  “Thank you for dinner, it was lovely,” he says without any real emotion. He arranges his knife and fork on the plate, scrapes back the white, plastic chair in the blocky cube design over the polished concrete floor, and gets to his feet. “I’m going to grab a shower.” He kisses me on the top of my head, patting me like I’m a dog or a child.

  I too, stand up and clear away the debris, feeling so incredibly alone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It only takes a few minutes to clean up the remnants of dinner. I don’t even bother with the dishwasher as I tidied and washed up ages ago while I was cooking.

  Out in the wide hallway, I head for the winding staircase to go and check on Bella. I put her down half an hour before Luke got home. She’s such a good sleeper – she’s never had colic and she hardly ever screams.

  Upstairs, I gaze down at her sleeping form in the cot. She sucks on her dummy, or plug, sporadically, a funny little slurping sound that brings a smile to my lips. With a feather-light touch, I sweep back the downy, strawberry-blonde hair, then back out of the room, my eyes never leaving her.

  Leaving the door wide open, I head for our bedroom. I can hear the hiss of the shower coming from the en-suite, and the happiness I felt from gazing down a
t Bella evaporates.

  If I’m honest, I don’t even know why Luke wanted children, yet alone why he wants more of them. He is not unkind to Bella – far from it – but he is decidedly apathetic. He barely interacts with her.

  The suit he was wearing today is slung on the king-size bed, and I automatically go over to it. Once a fortnight, his suits are dry-cleaned. As I am in charge of laundry, I scoop up his shirt – an item of clothing that he changes every day – and then inspect the suit. He’s worn this dark grey suit for three days straight now, and the trousers are starting to look a little lived-in, a little shiny around the seat.

  I pick up the jacket to see if it passes the sniff test, despite the fact that I’ve already decided that it’s going down the hall to the laundry room where it will wait in the bag with the other suits to be transported to the drycleaners on Monday.

  I inhale… then jerk rigid in shock. I can smell perfume. Not his usual Chanel Pour Homme, but something distinctly floral and musky. Something feminine.

  It doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself, yet not believing it for a second. It’s probably just from the tube.

  Despite owning a brand-spanking-new, black BMW-440-M that is stowed in the garage, Luke very rarely uses it to go to work. He much prefers to take the tube, not least because there’s nowhere to park in Liverpool Street. The tube is reliable, and traffic jams don’t come into the equation.

  Yes, some woman on the tube was wearing a strong dose of perfume, that was all, and Luke just happened to be standing shoulder to shoulder with her.

  But the smell was on his shirt, too, clinging to the collar. Faint, but most definitely there.

  The shower continues to hiss and splutter, and I stand there in a dreamlike state, feeling like an actor in a play who has forgotten their lines.

  Because this kind of thing is supposed to happen to other people, not to me.

  Oh yeah? a little voice taunts in my mind. This is payback for the lives you destroyed when you were the other woman…