Page 33 of The Housekeeper's Secret

Really, it was none of her business. No concern of hers at all.

There were worse places to spend a hot week in high summer, Jem knew that all too well.

The hills were purple with heather and above them the sky was an endless arc of blue. Buried deep in its overgrown park, Coldwell dozed in the sunshine. Despite the disruption of the tradesmen, it was hard to imagine a more peaceful situation.

And yet he was far from at peace.

It reminded him of another summer, seven years ago, of another empty, dust-sheeted house, when his search for Jack was just beginning. He had gone to Ward Abbey in Norfolk, the last place he knew his brother to have been, but had found the house closed up, the skeleton staff on board wages.

Undeterred, he had got work at the home farm, as a casual labourer helping with the harvest. He’d loved being outside and working on the land. The job was more physical than he was used to; more exhausting, but infinitely more rewarding than carrying trays and polishing silver, and he’d put in the effort to involve himself with the other workers, no matter how tired he was. He eavesdropped on their gossip, asked guileless questions about the abbey and the Halewoods, and went with them to the tumbledown pub in the little hamlet when work was done for the day. He played on their cricket team against a neighbouring village, as the maids from the big house draped themselves along the railing of Lord Halewood’s pavilion to watch.

He wasn’t proud of what he did that summer, and he knew his mother wouldn’t have been proud either. He’d never thought of himself as the kind of person who would pretend interest in a girl and use her to serve his own ends. Especially not a girl like Annie Harris: sweet, naïve, willing.

She had been so eager to impress Jem that it hadn’t been hard to persuade her to sneak him into the empty house. In the glowing evenings she led him through its staterooms and up its staircases, uncovering its treasures. Unlike Coldwell, there were no locked doors at Ward Abbey. Tobias Forbes (Frensham) was either too arrogant or too stupid to guard his secrets carefully.

Jem had got complacent. Overconfident. It had been too easy.

Until it had all gone spectacularly wrong.

It had been a charge of larceny that had got him arrested. He’d been dimly aware of the stable lad who was sweet on Annie Harris but had dismissed him as insignificant, an easy rival to overcome. That was his first mistake. The silver spoons with the Halewood crest they claimed to have found beneath his mattress in the hayloft had been planted during the search… he was no thief. But he couldn’t claim to be guilt-free either. He had hung around after Annie had seen him out one night and climbed back into the house through a window that he’d unlatched. And he had quite deliberately used the girl and led her on too, though that crime didn’t appear on his charge sheet. The law was much less concerned about a servant girl’s heart than an aristocrat’s silverware.

The judge at Norwich Assizes had instructed him to ‘reflect on his poor choices and learn from them.’ It was wise advice. In the six months that followed, in the narrow, stinking cell and the dripping exercise yard of Norwich Gaol, Jem had plenty of time to go over what had happened at Ward Abbey and identify where he’d slipped up. He’d reflected and he’d learned.

He knew better now.

And so the long days passed slowly, marked by the ticking clock in the kitchen, the distant deathwatch tap of Mr Kendall’s hammers, and the fizzing drone of bluebottles in the pantry. He carried out the mundane tasks Mr Goddard set him and helped the stable lads prepare for the motorcar. He slipped through the house at dusk, checking that it was secure. Resenting every locked door he tried and looking for a chink in Coldwell’s armour of secrecy.

There was too little to stop his thoughts straying to Mrs Furniss. Remembering the feel of her fingers on his bruised skin. Remembering the way her hair, when it wasn’t pinned up in its daytime knot, curled softly around her face. Remembering the glimpse of her collarbone at the neck of her nightdress and the way she’d looked at him, all her brisk certainty gone.

He could relate to that.

It was a feeling he was beginning to know very well indeed.

June 27th

The rain isn’t stopping. Whatever action is planned has been delayed because of the weather, and so we are waiting. Everyone feels the strain, but some find it harder than others. The bombardment continues, and the noise makes it worse. Joseph is not coping well. I’m worried about him.

He joined up right at the start. August 1914. He saw it as a chance to be a hero, I suppose, and make up for what he did, or perhaps run away from it. He didn’t even have to lie about his age. The recruiting sergeant asked for his date of birth and Joe said he didn’t know exactly. The sergeant signed him up without any further questions.

The trouble is, there’s nothing heroic about army life. Boys like Joseph wouldn’t be so keen to join up if they knew how much time you spend sitting around listening to other men playing the mouth organ badly and arguing over cigarette cards. There’s too much time to think.

That’s why I’m writing this, even though you’ll never read it. In these long days of waiting, it feels better to do something. It’s a relief to put it on the page after keeping it in my head for so long.

And it gives me an excuse to relive every moment of that summer.

Chapter 12

After the weeks of unbroken sunshine leading up to it, coronation day began with lowering clouds and a strange heaviness in the air, which was as warm and thick as porridge. For Kate, it also began with a dragging ache, low in her stomach, and a scarlet stain on the bedsheet.

Later, coming back from lighting the fire under the copper in the laundry (she knew all too well it didn’t do to let bloodstains set), she encountered Mrs Gatley, decked in her best coat and hat and bearing a cloth-covered tray. She frowned when she saw Kate, stopping suddenly, so that Mr Gatley, following in her wake, almost cannoned into her and upset the trug of strawberries he was carrying.

‘You’re not ready! Ten o’clock sharp, that’s what I was told, so’s we’d be in plenty of time to find a good spot to watch the procession. You’d better be quick.’ She seized the trug from her husband and set off purposefully again towards the kitchen door. ‘I’ll just put these in the larder and tell Johnny Farrow to wait. I’m up to my ears in strawberries up there. You’ll have to make jam tomorrow. They won’t keep beyond that.’

Kate followed her inside. ‘I’ll do it this afternoon. I’m not coming to the coronation parade.’

‘Not coming? Whyever not? I’d have thought you’d be glad of the chance to get away from this place. Change of scene.’ In the gloom of the larder Mrs Gatley peered more closely at her. ‘Not sickening for something, are you?’

‘No.’ Kate gave her a resigned smile. ‘Only the regular thing.’

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