‘Convalesce?’ Jeannie manages a small laugh and lifts her hair from her neck, airing it. ‘Dear me.’
‘Well, I’ll let you get on,’ says Marge, sounding unrepentant, turning to the front door.
Rita follows Marge’s smudged reflection moving across the mottled sky of the mirror. As soon as she’s gone, Jeannie says, ‘My God, she’s not changed a bit. Damn it, she’s clearly been enrolled as one of Walter’s spies.’
A rush of shame and guilt hisses through Rita, like hot water in a pipe. Our little arrangement. Somewhere in the house a cuckoo clock squawks, a shrill mechanical mimic of the real birds outside.
Jeannie sits on the bottom step of the stairs. She rests her face in her hands and peers up at Rita through her long curled lashes. ‘We need to talk, don’t we?’
Her stomach flips. Jeannie knows. She gestures upstairs. ‘The children …’
‘Oh, they’ll survive.’ Jeannie pats the stair. ‘Sit next to me.’
Rita lands heavily, simultaneously horrified and relieved at being exposed. All that’s left is to confess first. ‘I’m so sorry, Jeannie.’
‘Sorry? What on earth are you talking about?’ Jeannie looks at her, bemused. ‘Gosh, you really are a funny old thing, Rita. I wanted to say thank you. For coming with us. Really, from the bottom of my heart.’
Robbed of her confession, she doesn’t know what to say.
A lozenge of toffee-brown sunlight penetrates the dappled, dirty window, revealing a cyclone of dust motes, rotating in the middle of the hall.
‘I won’t lie to you, Rita, you’re in for the most boring summer of your life.’
She can feel heat crawling up her neck like a rash.
Jeannie studies her with a puzzled expression that softens into one of sympathy. ‘Fred’s no longer on the scene, is he? Your butcher chap. I suppose you don’t need to travel back home to see him at least.’
‘No,’ she stutters, floored that Jeannie even remembers Fred’s name. She’s always assumed she ceased to exist for the Harringtons outside her job. Maybe she does. Towards the end of her engagement, although she’d had no idea it was the end, not until that phone call, Fred used to say she’d got so suckered into the Harringtons’ London life she’d not got one of her own; she’d attached herself to the family like a limpet to the side of the Titanic. For some reason it felt too exposing to reveal the deeper reasons she stayed, so she chattered about the salary she was saving, much better than anything she could earn back home, the little house they’d buy one day. She knew he’d never understand the way being in a family, even as staff, bolted down something loose and rattling inside. Nannying wasn’t just a job. It felt necessary on a level she didn’t really understand. When she wasn’t working she felt lost, unrooted. Fred was a good man – and half an inch taller. But there were lots of things she couldn’t tell him.
‘You’re unlikely to find new romance here,’ continues Jeannie, with a sigh. ‘I warn you now.’
This suits Rita just fine. After what happened with Fred, she’s sworn off men for good.
A sharp rapping sound. They both turn. And there’s Marge standing in a doorway, clutching a jailer’s bouquet of keys in one hand and, in the other, held high, laces dangling, a pair of large scuffed leather boots. ‘I just swiped these from the woodshed, Rita. Belong to our woodsman and carpenter, Robbie. He won’t miss them. As I said, you’ll need a good pair of shoes. Look about the right size, eh?’
Men’s boots. Embarrassing.
‘Well, I’ll leave you in peace then.’ This seems unlikely. Marge doesn’t move. The battered leather boots crouch beside her, like dogs awaiting instruction.
‘Is there something else, Marge?’ Jeannie says tightly.
‘I don’t know if it’s my place to say this …’
Then don’t say it, Rita silently pleads, remembering how Mrs Pickering from number thirty-five had introduced, ‘You can always have another, Jeannie,’ in the same way. Jeannie’s hands start writhing in her lap. They always betray her.
Marge licks her front teeth. ‘I heard about your baby, Mrs Harrington,’ she says, the words hurrying out, as if prepared in advance. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
The silence stretches. Rita remembers the morning after the baby was born: the stew of newspapers she cleared up from the master-bedroom floor, soggy with blood; the forgotten heap of stained towels on the window seat; the ferric blast in the air. The empty cradle.
Marge starts to shuffle back into the corridor.
‘Wait,’ says Jeannie, suddenly.
Marge stands to attention. Rita braces.
‘Thank you.’ Jeannie’s hands still on her lap. Her diamond ring glitters in the earthy brown light. ‘For acknowledging my baby existed. Not many people do.’
Marge’s relief is almost palpable. ‘Oh, I forgot. One last thing.’
That’s it. She’s never going to leave, Rita thinks.
‘A man phoned earlier this afternoon. Before you arrived. Asking to speak to you.’
Jeannie straightens instantly, like a thirsty plant, watered. ‘Not Walter?’
‘Most definitely not.’ Marge’s eyes narrow. She watches Jeannie more carefully. ‘Called three times. But he wouldn’t give a name.’
Oh, no. Something in Rita flattens. Not him. Not here.
‘How odd,’ says Jeannie, weakly. The air in the room thins. A moment passes.
‘You have a lovely evening, then.’ Marge retreats, her bunch of keys clinking.
Jeannie covers her mouth with her hand. Rita sits very still, not daring to say anything, listening to Jeannie’s breath quickening, all that damage and desire threading between delicate diamond-weighted fingers.
7
Hera
Don Armstrong used to be Daddy’s best friend. They were at Eton together, and in the old school photo that Daddy smashed against the wall at Easter, they’re grinning at each other rather than at the camera, like they’re in on a joke. Years later, it was Don who took Daddy to the party where he met my mother. The legend goes that outside the party, her stiletto heel snapped off in the pavement grating. Don gave her a piggyback to the taxi rank. Daddy sat in the cab and escorted her safely home to her room in Kensington. ‘A team effort,’ Mother used to say.
In my parents’ wedding album they’re there again, arms hugged over each other’s shoulders. Don, best man, looks pretty much the same as now, tanned, broad-faced, all his features fighting to be top dog, dirty-blond hair. Daddy used to joke – in the days when he made jokes, and Don’s love life was an amusing topic of conversation, rather than a seeping open wound – that Don’s kept his hair because he’s not got ‘bogged down’ with a family, or done a proper day’s work in his life. Don inherited a fortune of stocks and shares, Daddy a doddery old glass company, and a not-profitable quartz mine in Africa. Don got adventures. Daddy got meetings and cone furnaces and striking workers to worry about.
Don would go travelling a lot. Mother would gaze out of the window and say things like ‘Walter, when did we last see Don? I hope he’s not in a fix somewhere,’ and her voice would always sound a bit too high.