Housekeeper's Happy-Ever-After

by Fiona Harper

‘I’ll have a…’

  Oh, flip. What was the word? She knew she knew it, but it seemed to be speeding away from her, like a dream that was fast evaporating with the last traces of sleep.

  ‘You know…the fluffy, milky drink with powder on top.’

  Charlie didn’t bat an eyelid, bless her. ‘Two cappuccinos, please,’ she said to the barista.

  Ellie leaned forward and looked at the girl over Charlie’s shoulder. ‘And a chocolate muffin, please.’

  ‘Make that two.’ Charlie turned and smirked at her while the barista rang up the sale. ‘That’s my girl. Couldn’t forget chocolate if you tried.’

  If her mother or her sister had said something like that Ellie would have snapped at them, but she found herself laughing at Charlie’s sideways comment. Maybe she was too sensitive these days. And she’d wound herself up into a state about meeting Charlie before she’d even got here. No wonder her memory was malfunctioning. It always got worse when she was stressed or nervous.

  Charlie understood. She made Ellie’s ‘condition’ seem like no big deal. That one positive thought gave her confidence. She was going to ask her. She was ready.

  But the first cappuccinos had been drained and the second round ordered before Ellie finally worked up her nerve. She twiddled the silver locket she always wore between her thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Actually, Charlie, there was a reason I suggested getting together this morning. I need a favour.’

  ‘Anything. You know that.’ Charlie leaned forward and rubbed her forearm. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help.’

  Ellie took at deep breath. She was asking for a lot more than the usual sympathetic ear or moral support at social functions. A lot more.

  ‘I need a job.’

  Charlie just seemed to freeze. She blinked a couple of times. ‘A job?’

  Ellie squeezed her bottom lip between her teeth and gave a little nod, but Charlie broke eye contact and took her time while she folded a corner of the newspaper page into a neat triangle. She glanced up once she’d scored it with a long, red fingernail.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ellie. I only need a couple of people in the office, and I’ve got all the staff I require at the moment.’

  Oh, fab. Charlie thought she was asking her for a pity job—one with minimum responsibilities and no challenges. But Ellie couldn’t give up now. She was desperate. She stopped fiddling with her locket and folded her hands in her lap.

  ‘No. I mean I want you to put me on your agency’s books, preferably for a job where I can live in. I need to…get away from Barkleigh for a while. You must have something I could do? Something that uses my skills? You know I’m a fantastic cook.’

  Charlie nodded and said nothing, but Ellie could see her mind working. She made a rather nice living running an exclusive little agency providing the well-off with domestic staff—from butlers and chauffeurs to cooks and nannies.

  ‘But are you…? Can you…?’ Charlie wrinkled her nose and paused.

  Ellie knew what she was trying to ask, what she really didn’t want to put into words. Was the patched-up and rehabilitated Ellie capable of holding down a full-time job? The truth was, Ellie wasn’t even sure herself. She thought she was. She’d worked hard to put strategies and coping mechanisms in place to help with the memory and concentration problems that were so common after a serious head injury, but she was shaking in her boots at the idea of moving away from everything familiar and starting again somewhere new.

  ‘I just have to work a little bit harder than everyone else at keeping myself organised nowadays. But I can do this, Charlie. I know I can. I just need someone to believe in me and give me a chance, and you said you’d do anything you can to help.’

  Okay, that was playing dirty, but she was desperate. The pained look on Charlie’s face was almost too much to bear. She wasn’t convinced. And if Ellie had been in her shoes maybe she wouldn’t have been either.

  For a long time Charlie said nothing, and Ellie thought she might be creating brand-new wrinkles on her forehead with all the mental wrestling she was doing. Then, slowly, the lines faded.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, staring out of the window. ‘I just might have something. I’ll let you know.’

  The cottage door slammed. There was something very final about the sound of the old door hitting the door frame. Ellie tried to remove the key from the worn Victorian lock, but it refused to budge.

  Today was not going well. Lost keys, a case that wouldn’t shut and a pigeon stuck in the roof had already plagued her this morning. If she had been one to believe in bad omens she’d have run upstairs and hidden under her duvet a few hours ago. But the duvet was freshly laundered, waiting for someone else, and the rest of her life had been divided into packing boxes and suitcases. The cottage was now bare of all personal possessions, ready to be rented out by the week. The holiday lettings company had jumped at the chance of a child-friendly property in the picturesque little village of Barkleigh. Other families would build memories here now.

  She caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth and resumed her negotiations with the lock. The choreographed sequence of turns, pulls and twists had long ago become a matter of muscle memory rather than conscious thought, and finally the key jerked free. It always did in the end. It just needed a little gentle persuasion.

  It was time to leave. Ellie shoved her keys in the back pocket of her jeans and stared through the stained glass panels that filled the top half of the heavy old door. Once, the hallway had been warm and inviting, filled with discarded shoes, coats hanging haphazardly on a row of hooks. Now it was cold and empty, distorted through the rippling glass.

  A large drop of rain splashed onto the top of her head. She shuddered, picked up the last piece of luggage, then turned and walked down the path towards her waiting car.

  Ellie looked out across the fields. An overstuffed dark grey cloud was devouring the sunshine, heading straight towards her. Another plop of rain dropped on the back of her neck and ran down between her shoulder blades. She increased her speed. The boot of her old hatchback stood gaping and she slung the holdall in the back, slammed the door shut and hurried round to the driver’s door. The tempo of the rain increased. By the time she was inside it was drumming an unpromising rhythm on the roof of the car. Warm, earthy smells drifted through the ventilation system.

  She glanced at the handbag sitting on the passenger seat. Poking out of the top was a worn blue teddy bear with one eye and bald ears where the fluff had been loved off. The backs of her eyes burned, but she refused to blink, knowing that any moisture leaking over her lashes would feel like acid. The pummelling on the roof of the car magnified, filling her ears and pulling the world away from her down a long, invisible tunnel.

  Not now. Today of all days I need to keep it together.

  She forced herself to sit upright in the driver’s seat and stared blindly into the blurry grey scenery beyond the windscreen, then turned the key in the ignition. The car rumbled grudgingly to life, coughed once, and promptly stalled.

  Still she didn’t blink, just held her breath for a few seconds, then reached out to stroke the dashboard.

  Come on, girl! Don’t let me down now.

  She pumped the gas a few times and tried again, and when the engine rewarded her with an uneven purr, she released her breath and put the car into gear. She pulled away slowly, rumbling down the country lane, and didn’t allow herself the luxury of looking back.

  An hour later she was sitting behind a caravan on the motorway. It was only going at about fifty, but she made no attempt to pass it. This speed was fine, thank you very much. Driving wasn’t her favourite occupation these days, and she hadn’t been on a motorway in a long time. She distracted herself from the haulage trucks passing her at insane speeds with thoughts of fresh starts and new jobs.

  Everyone had been so happy when she’d come out of hospital after the accident, sure she was going to be ‘back to normal’ in no time. And after a year, when she’d finally mo
ved out of her parents’ house and back into the cottage, her family and friends had breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  That was it. Everything done and dusted. Ellie is all better and we can stop worrying now.

  But Ellie wasn’t all better. Her hair might have grown again and covered the uneven scars on her skull, she might even talk and walk the same, but nothing, nothing, would ever be the same again. Underneath the ‘normal’ surface she was fundamentally different and always would be.

  She focused on the droplets of rain collecting on the windscreen.

  Water. That was all those tiny splashes were. Almost nothing, really. So how could something so inconsequential alter the course of three lives so totally, so drastically? She nudged the lever next to the steering wheel again and the specks of water vanished in a flurry of motion.

  Thankfully, within a few minutes the rain had stopped completely and she was able to slow the squeaking wipers to a halt. Warm afternoon light cut clean paths through the clouds. Her shoulder blades eased back into their normal position and she realised she’d been clenching her teeth from the moment she’d put her foot on the accelerator. She made a conscious effort to relax her jaw and stretched her fingers. The knuckles creaked, stiff from gripping the steering wheel just a little too tightly.

  A big blue sign was up ahead and she read it carefully.

  Junction Eight. Two more to go.

  She’d promised herself that she would not zone out and sail past the turn-off. Getting lost was not an option today.

  The caravan in front slowed until it was practically crawling along. Ellie glanced in her wing mirror. She could overtake it if she wanted to. The adjacent lane was almost clear. Still, it took her five minutes and a stiff lecture before she signalled and pulled out.

  She was still concentrating on remembering to exit at Junction Ten, visualising the number, burning it onto her short-term memory, when a prolonged horn blast startled her. A car loomed large in her rear-view mirror. It inched closer, until their bumpers were almost touching, its engine snarling. Ellie was almost frightened enough to speed up to give herself breathing room. Almost.

  Flustered, she grabbed at the levers round the steering wheel for the indicator, only to discover she’d turned the fog light on instead. She fought to keep her breathing calm, yanked at the correct lever and pulled into the inside lane. What she now realised was a sleek Porsche zoomed past in a bright red blur.

  A sigh of relief was halfway across her lips when the same car swerved in front of her. She stamped on the brake and glared at the disappearing number plate, retaliating by pressing her thumb on the horn for a good five seconds, even though the lunatic driver was now a speck in the distance, too far away to hear—or care.

  It had to be a man. Too caught up in his own ego to think about anyone else. Pathetic. She had made a policy to keep her distance from that type of person, whether he was inside a low-slung car or out of it.

  She shook her head and returned her concentration to the road, relieved to see she was only two miles from the next service station. An impromptu caffeine break was in order.

  It wasn’t long before she was out of the car and sitting in an uncomfortable plastic seat with a grimy mug of coffee on the table in front of her. She cupped her hands round it and let the heat warm her palms.

  The crazy Porsche driver had flustered her, brought back feelings and memories she had long tried to evade. Which on the surface seemed odd, because she couldn’t even remember the accident itself.

  But perhaps it was better not to have been conscious as they’d cut her from the wreckage of the family car, the bodies of her husband and daughter beside her. Not that her battered memory didn’t invent images and torture her with them in the depths of the night.

  She had no clear memories of the beginning of her hospital stay either. The doctors had told her this was normal. Post-traumatic amnesia. When she tried to think back to that time it was as if a cloud had settled over it, thick and impenetrable.

  Sometimes she thought it would be nice to lose herself in that fog again, because emerging from it, scarred and confused, to find her lovely Sam and her darling eight-year-old Chloe were gone for ever had been the single worst moment of her existence.

  All because it had rained. And because two boys in a fast car hadn’t thought that important. They’d been arrogant, thinking those little drops of almost nothing couldn’t stop them, couldn’t spoil their fun.

  She looked down at her coffee. The cup was empty, but she didn’t remember drinking it.

  Just as well.

  Brown scum had settled at the bottom of the cup. Ellie shook off a shudder and patted down her unruly blonde curls, tucking the ends of the long fringe behind her ears. She couldn’t sit here all day nursing an empty cup of coffee. But moving meant getting back in the car and rejoining the motorway. Something she wanted to do even less now than she had when she’d left home this morning. She closed her eyes and slowly inflated her lungs.

  Come on, Ellie. The only other option is admitting defeat and going back home to hibernate for ever. You can do this. You have to. Staying at the cottage is eating you alive from the inside out. You’re stagnating.

  She opened her eyelids, smoothed her T-shirt down over her jeans, swung her handbag out from underneath the table and made a straight line for the exit.

  Back on the road, her geriatric car protested as she reached the speed limit. She filtered out the rattling and let the solitude of the motorway envelop her. She wasn’t thinking of anything in particular, but she wasn’t giving her attention to the road either. Her mind was in limbo—and it was wonderful.

  The sun emerged from the melting clouds and flickered through the tops of the trees. She flipped the visor down to shield her eyes. The slanting light reflected off the sodden carriageway and she peered hard at the road, struggling to see the white lines marking the lanes.

  In fact, she was concentrating so hard she failed to notice the motorway sign on the grassy verge to her left.

  Junction Ten.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHEN she finally arrived, her new workplace was a bit of a surprise. Big shots like her new boss normally wanted their homes to shout out loud how rich and grand their owners were. Yet as she drove up the sweeping gravel drive and the woodland parted to reveal Larkford Place, she discovered a small but charming sixteenth-century manor house surrounded by rhododendrons and twisting oaks. The mellow red bricks were tinted gold by the rays of the setting sun, and the scent of lavender was thick in the air after the rain. The house was so much a part of its surroundings she could almost imagine it had grown up together with the ancient wisteria that clung to its walls.

  For the first time since she’d decided to escape from her life she felt something other than fear or desperation. It was beautiful here. So serene. Hope surged through her—an emotion she hadn’t experienced in such a long time that she’d assumed it must have been wiped clear of her damaged memory banks with everything else.

  The drive swelled and widened in front of the house, a perfect place to park cars. But this wasn’t where she was stopping—oh, no. It was the lowly tradesmen’s entrance for her. She changed gear and followed a narrower branch of the drive round the side of the house and into a cobbled courtyard. The old stables still had large glossy black doors, and Ellie admired the wrought-iron saddle rest that was bolted to the wall as she got out of her car and gave her legs a stretch.

  Once out of the car, she stood motionless in the courtyard and stared at the ivy framing the back door. Wind rippled through it, making it shiver. With measured steps she approached it, pulling the key she’d picked up from the previous housekeeper out of her pocket, then sliding it into the old iron lock. She pushed the wooden door open and peered down a dark corridor.

  The excitement she’d felt only moments ago drained away rapidly, gurgling in her stomach as it went. This threshold was where yesterday and tomorrow intersected. Crossing it felt final, as if by taking t
hat step other doors in her life would slam shut and there would be no return.

  But that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To move forward? To leave the past behind?

  She willed her right leg to swing forward and make the first step, and once she’d got that over with she marched herself down the corridor, her footsteps loud and squeaky on the flagstones, announcing her decision and scaring any ghosts away.

  A door led to a bright spacious kitchen, with a pretty view of the garden through pair of French windows on the opposite side of the room.

  Ellie turned on her heels and took a better look at the place that would be her domain from now on. It was a cook’s dream. The house had been newly renovated, and she’d been told the kitchen fitters had only finished last week. The appliances looked as if they’d walked straight out of a high-end catalogue. They even smelled new.

  A long shelf along one wall held a row of pristine cookery books. She wandered over to them as if suddenly magnetised. Ooh. She’d been eyeing this one in her local bookshop only last week…

  Without checking her impulse, she hooked a finger on the top of the binding and eased it off the shelf. She had plenty of time to explore the house—almost a whole week—before her new boss arrived home from his overseas trip. The wall planner and the sticky notes could come out tomorrow, when her brain was in better shape to make sense of all these unfamiliar sights and sounds. Right now she needed to rest. It had been a long and tiring day and she deserved a cup of tea and a sit-down. She opened the book and flicked a few pages. It was legitimate research, after all…

  It didn’t take long to locate the kettle, the teabags and even a packet of chocolate digestives. While she waited for the water to boil she wandered round the kitchen, inspecting it more closely. What was that under the wall cabinet? It looked like a…

  Oh, cool. A little flatscreen TV that flipped down and swivelled in any direction you wanted. She pressed the button on the side and a crisp, bright picture filled the screen—a teatime quiz show. She’d work out how to change channels later. For now it was just nice to have some colourful company in the empty house, even if the acid-voiced presenter was getting rather personal about a contestant who wasn’t doing very well.