Page 10 of Happily Ever After
My imagination was in overdrive. If I breathed quietly I could almost convince myself that there were sounds coming from the Yellow Room next door; quiet, furtive sounds like half stifled sobs, so muted as to only come through as ethereal whispers. My skin tightened into goose pimples again and, to distract myself from spectral thoughts, I tried to imagine Jude, snuggled up with her sturdy husband in her comfortable house, with the sound of the sea in the background, while her adorable children slept on in their beautifully decorated bedrooms with the circus wallpaper, hand-painted toy boxes and racks of alphabetically ordered reading books.
As I was trying not to compare our circumstances, and counting my blessings ferociously that I didn’t need to be woken by being bounced on andPeppa Pig, I felt a touch on my leg. A warm sensation, as though silk were being dragged down my bare skin. I froze, only to unfreeze seconds later when the telltale smell of old and unwashed fishing boat billowed around me and a Siamese head popped out of the side of the bedding to stare at me with fathomless blue eyes.
‘No, no, no, no, no!’ I jumped out of the other side of the bed and stood, cold footed, on the rug. ‘You cannot be in here!’
The Master sat with a sheet draped lightly over his creamy body and his head and tail protruding. His ears twitched and he began, lazily, to lick a paw and swipe it across his dark whiskers, keeping his eyes on mine. The stare was so direct and challenging that I forgot my dismissal of any idea of reincarnation and began to worry whether Oswald reallymighthave come back as a cat.
This idea, coupled with the possibility of a ghost on the landing, the low-level hatred from Lady Tanith, the mundanity of my job and its relentlessness, plus the seemingly hopeless task of findinganythingin a library so cluttered that I would only be half surprised to find mammoths lurking behind some of the cabinets, was too much.
I hurtled myself out of the door. Dawn had broken like an egg over the building, laying a smooth golden yolk of light over everything and I wasn’t sure whether it was the reassurance of daylight or sheer indignation that drove me back along the landing and down the stairs, desperate for escape.
Now I knew where all the doors were, it was an easy matter to let myself out of the door to the kitchens, through a boot room full of antiquated fishing rods, piles of snooker cues, collapsed wellingtons and cast-off garden shoes, and out into the lemon-fresh air beyond.
I ran a few trailing steps, aware that a heavy dew had settled on the grass and showed my passage in glimmering facets, as though a path of diamond had been built behind me. But there were no following phantoms, the cat was now presumably taking possession of my bed in its self-satisfied way, and Lady Tanith wouldn’t be up for a good few hours. This was going to be as good as it got.
Then I spotted the gardener. He had his back to me, doing something with twine and a particularly vigorous-looking bush. I wondered what he was doing out here so early, but as I didn’t know anything about gardening and there might well be jobs that could only be done in the first light of dawn, I didn’t want to question him and look stupid.
‘Good morning!’ I called, trying to sound bright and sprightly, and not as though I’d been terrified out of the house wearing pyjamas that had not just seen better days but witnessed some truly spectacular past decades.
He didn’t even acknowledge me to the extent of a raised hand of greeting. Well, sod him then. I’d add him to my list of grievances although, to be honest, that list was so long that it was beginning to feel a little indulgent.
Round about now, I told myself, as I perched on the edge of the pond and peered between lily pads to try to see the fish I knew were in there, I should be making a friend. Finding a confidante. This was how the stories went, just enough misery to lay the conditions as intolerable, and then someone comes along with sympathy and understanding to listen to my troubles. A best friend for me to explain my mental musings to and to help the reader more closely identify with my inner turmoil.
I raised my eyes from the lack of pond action. Nobody. Nobody for miles, just acres of dew-dotted grass, the long shadows of trees, carefully sculpted beds planted up with long-stemmed flowers that lolled out across the edging like artists after a night on the absinthe. I supposed I could tell my problems to a peony, although that was moving dangerously close to Lady Tanith’s territory and I didn’t think the fish would give a finny fuck about my trials and tribulations.
Hell, I knew life away from everything I’d known would be difficult. But I never thought it would be thislonely. My parents had been omnipresent around the bus, scripting out new episodes for the YouTube channel and then, latterly, there had been the constant comings and goings of a film crew, directors, sound and cameramen, all of whom had ignored me completely. All right, I know I’d said I wanted no part in the whole TV series about travelling around in a bus. And they’d had to sign waivers to ensure that I was never on screen. But that didn’t mean they had to never talk to me or interact with me in any way – and some of those camera guys had been quite good looking. Even so… none of it had been as lonely as life around Templewood Hall was proving to be.
‘Hey!’
It was the gardener. So, he’d decided to notice me now, had he? Although he didn’t approach, he just stood, half-encompassed by a shoulder-level stand of bushes, so that his head stuck out like a particularly convincing statue. I gave him the briefest of glances and then looked away, hoping that my coolness gave a hint at how put out I was about his rudeness at ignoring me earlier.
‘Hey!’ he shouted again and waved an arm. I sighed. Nothing to be gained by being rude back, I supposed. Two wrongs not making a right, and all that. I waved back, a languorous movement of my arm that mimicked the way the long-stemmed plants were beginning to waft in the early breeze. Then I dropped my gaze back to the fish. The ball was in his court now, he could come over and talk to me properly – as long as he wasn’t carrying those scary shears again – or go back to his little enclave of rudeness amongst the bushes.
He did neither. He stopped waving but didn’t approach. He just stood and kept watching me, which meant that he had a front row seat when the fountain spurted into life right beside me and soaked me to the skin.
6
PEMBERLEY – PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, JANE AUSTEN
I had to have a bath to get rid of the smell of pond water, which meant that I was late down for breakfast. Normally this wouldn’t have mattered; it would have been Hugo eating something like a five-year-old who’s been left unsupervised and chatting lightly to me about whatever came into his head.
Today, however, it seemed that Lady Tanith had decreed we would be having a Formal Breakfast. When I came down the stairs with my hair in a towel, because I’d had to wash it – there had been weed in the fountain water – Mrs Compton was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Lady Tanith and Master Hugo are in the Breakfast Room,’ she said with disdain leaking from every syllable. ‘You’re late.’
‘I didn’t know there was anything to be latefor,’ I pointed out.
‘Well, it’s the twenty-first, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ I replied, as though this made things any clearer.
Mrs Compton gave me a look such as might have been given by a stern father to a daughter who has forgotten her stepmother’s birthday. ‘Yes, it is, so you’d better get your gold-digging self into the Breakfast Room before her ladyship disturbs herself coming to look for you!’
My mouth fell open.Gold digger?Was Mrs Compton really calling me a gold digger?
She further compounded her statement by muttering ‘hussy’, and shoulder charging me towards the door to the little Breakfast Room which lay between the Morning Room and the Study, and which served only to play host to orphaned furniture and unwanted paintings as far as I could remember.
‘She’s here,’ Mrs Compton announced me in her own, unique style. ‘At last.’
