Fragile Read online

  ‘I can see there’s a lot to be done.’ I made a point of looking at the bookshelves and desk, letting him know I saw his tidiness underneath the mess. ‘I know you’re looking for a secretary but I could also take on the cooking and cleaning, if you’d like. That would free you to organize things in here.’

  His fingers slackened as if I’d loosened a screw inside him, a small but vital adjustment. ‘You mean a housekeeper? I’ve had one or two, in the past.’

  ‘But not recently.’ I smiled an apology.

  It was an oddly charged impasse; I could feel my fingers fizzing. I still expected him to send me on my way, but something was stopping him. Politeness? Or another reason, one I couldn’t see.

  ‘I suppose . . .’ His hand fell free of the box. ‘I could show you the rest of the house.’

  I followed, close enough to catch his scent; it was like green ferns growing in the shade. He wore grey flannel trousers and a blue shirt, brown leather lace-ups. His shoulders were broad, the rest of him narrow. When he turned the corners in the house, his shadow shrank to a thin blue line.

  The rooms in Starling Villas were stacked one on top of the other, three on the ground floor and three on the first. Tall, square rooms, plagued by panelling on the walls and across the ceilings and in the shutters of the windows. I’d need a broom to reach the worst of it. The dining room had an elaborate ceiling rose from which a naked bulb was strung like a laddered stocking under a ball gown. His tour had an odd effect on me, simultaneously repelling and attracting, I suppose because I was being shown how much hard work was here. But I’d wanted to be inside the house as soon as I’d spied it hiding on the high street. I’d recognized Starling Villas, and it recognized me.

  Hello, it whispered as I followed Dr Wilder through its rooms, Hello, you.

  I grew giddy standing beside him in room after room, seeing the scale of the task I’d be taking on. Each room he showed me was empty. But Joe had been here, I was certain. The house reeked of the kind of warmth he craved, indulgent, decadent. It would take weeks to search every shelf and cupboard, and even then I might not find the evidence to prove it. But Joe might come back here. And while I was searching, I could hide. Thanks to Meagan Flack, I needed to hide.

  ‘It’s three floors,’ he said, ‘four, with the basement. But the top floor is an attic. You won’t need to clean there.’

  Where the servants once slept, I said to myself. Starling Villas had been grand in its day. The living room had a marble fireplace with urns carved at either end. I’d seen similar urns in funeral homes, but those served a purpose. These were ebony, he said, warning me to be careful how I cleaned. His tour was full of warnings. I listened to each one but it didn’t alter the fact that I knew I was going to live here in Starling Villas, with him.

  ‘My bedroom.’ His hand was on the door handle.

  I met his eyes. There it was again, that loosening in him. Easier this time, as if I’d oiled an internal working. He didn’t see me as a threat; why should he? This was his house, we were playing by his rules. The muscles in his wrist and forearm shortened as he opened the door.

  His bed was made, but I could see the shape of his head in its pillows. Bedside cabinets to either side, a paperback book on one, a lamp and an alarm clock on the other. The furnishings and bedding were pale and looked pricey, but the sheets hadn’t been ironed and the carpet needed vacuuming. Long jade-green curtains hung either side of the sash window. A mirror was mounted on the wall at the foot of his bed, so extravagantly ugly it could’ve been a prop from a horror film, its frame a nightmare chiselled with crouching mice and pointed ears of wheat. He saw me staring and said, ‘I like the glass to be cleaned using white vinegar and newspaper,’ which explained the strange smell in the room.

  He shut the door, moving on with the tour. ‘Two other bedrooms . . . The bathroom, of course.’

  Tiled in white, cobwebs on the ceiling and behind the lavatory. Why had he advertised for a personal assistant when it was a housekeeper he so badly needed? But what we need and what we want are rarely the same thing. What I knew of Dr Wilder’s wants could be written in the palm of my hand. I could come to know them, in time. If I stayed, if he let me. I’d make him let me. The house had shivered as I’d set foot inside. Had he done the same? Did he possess that much sense?

  ‘And this is the garden room.’

  We were on the ground floor again, in an extension at the back of the house. The garden room was cold, and mostly made of windows. Green-black plants grew into the glass, spidering in all directions. Waxy-faced orchids lit the edges of the room. A clock ticked behind us. I’d heard it from the first floor and feared I’d hear it in whichever room would be mine, its ticking keeping me awake at night. My skin pricked in alarm. Insomnia and I were old enemies. I’d stolen so many of Meagan Flack’s sleeping pills, I’d lost count. Tick-tick-tick. Was it possible I was the one making the mistake here? I was aware of him watching me, measuring my discomfort.

  ‘The kitchen’s in the basement.’ He stood with his hand on the banister rail. ‘Let me show you.’

  I followed him down the spiral steps.

  The kitchen was large and its ceiling low, with built-in shelves and a blackened stove shackled to one wall. A scarred table ran the length of the room. The sink was a porcelain trough below a window that looked out onto the shallow yard where stone steps led up to the railings I’d spied from across the street.

  ‘I like my housekeeper to keep things clean and in order.’ Dr Wilder glanced around. ‘I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘Of course,’ as if I couldn’t look at a dirty surface without reaching for the bleach, had never slept in doorways or begged for food or stolen it from bins outside restaurants like the one next door to Starling Villas.

  The kitchen floor was grouted by grease. The whole house was miserly with its dirt, making an obstacle course of cleaning, the kind requiring ritual and patience, and a battery of bottles and cloths. Hard work, top to bottom. But I’d never been afraid of hard work. Of many things, but never that. Traffic swept the street above us. The kitchen held on to the sound as if each bowl and cup was filled by it, even the spoons. The traffic might have been miles away, or it might have been carriages and traps. I felt as if I’d stepped out of London, and out of time. Over the table, an ancient bronze lampshade hung from a frayed flex. A fire hazard, if ever I saw one. I’d seen plenty.

  ‘Everything you need should be here.’ He frowned, but it was a footnote to the decision he’d clearly made somewhere between his bedroom and the garden room. He was going to take me on. I was here to stay. I nearly smiled.

  ‘The housekeeper role would be on a trial basis,’ he said, ‘to see if we suit one another. I hadn’t really thought about anything other than employing an assistant. To be honest, I am not sure I want a housekeeper.’

  ‘Of course.’ I was going to make Starling Villas shine, he’d see. In no time, I would be invaluable. And I was going to find whatever was hiding here. I knew so much about hiding.

  ‘Will you have far to commute?’

  His question stung me from my fantasy.

  ‘I’ve only just arrived in London.’ I pre-empted his next question: ‘My references might take a few days. But at the other houses where I was housekeeper, I always lived in.’

  Dr Wilder shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible here.’

  We eyed one another. He’d forgotten the boxes, being down here in the kitchen, but to escort me from the house he’d have to walk back through their havoc and be reminded of the task he was facing, alone, without me here to help.

  ‘It’s out of the question,’ he said.

  ‘Then I’m very sorry.’ I held out my hand. ‘I’m very sorry that this won’t work out. It was a pleasure meeting you.’

  My prediction proved accurate. One look at the boxes in the hall and he withdrew his objection, taking me to the top of the house, to a chilly little cell of a bedroom with tiled walls and a bathroo
m across the landing.

  ‘You would have this floor to yourself. There’s the bedroom and bathroom, and an attic room too if you’re able to do anything with it.’ He opened the attic door, glancing inside. ‘It could use a good clear-out.’

  He wasn’t joking. The attic was mess and work when there was enough of that downstairs, an entire house to keep clean, meals to cook and no fitted kitchen, not even a dishwasher.

  You’re the dishwasher, I reminded myself. But a thrill ran under my ribs at the sight of the attic, my first proper feeling in a long time: I could do something with this.

  Meagan Flack was in the back of my mind, my first taskmaster. She’d put me to work in a house far less orderly than Dr Wilder’s, filled not with boxes but with brats, to use one of her nicer words about us. Not only cleaning and cooking but cuts and bruises, cradling and rocking to sleep. I’d managed that house from the age of eight. By comparison, Starling Villas was a piece of cake, and a place to hide. Because I might wish Meagan in my past, outclassed and outpaced, but she was out there – looking for me. Hunting me, because of what I’d done. Everything I’d done.

  Dr Wilder shut the attic door. He hadn’t looked directly at me, not once. Had I beaten him unconscious and robbed him, stolen his papers, set fire to his bed and the towers of boxes, he would not have been able to give the police a proper description. Perhaps my height, ‘Five foot three or four’, and my colouring, ‘Dark hair, pale skin’, but not my age (eighteen) or my eyes (indigo blue) or the deep star-shaped scar editing my right eyebrow.

  ‘Well then, Miss . . .’

  ‘Nell. Please.’

  He made a movement with his head, not quite a shake. Distaste in the shape of his mouth; no first names. ‘Miss . . . ?’

  ‘Ballard. Nell Ballard.’

  ‘Well, then. Welcome to Starling Villas.’

  3

  A fly was stalking the window towards a spider web which’d appeared overnight, unless Meagan Flack was only noticing it now. She’d missed a lot of things, lately. Like the mould growing at the back of the wardrobe that’d turned her clothes green, or the mushrooms in the airing cupboard, skinny and pale as upturned fingers. Every inch of the flat was riddled with damp, and dirt. You stopped seeing it after a time. Had to, when you’d bigger things on your mind, like finding the little bitch who’d put you in this dump where even the flies were suicidal.

  She lit a cigarette, ‘First of your five a day,’ shaking out the match before it could ignite whatever poisons were lurking in the cracked flooring under her feet.

  In films and on television, spider webs were combustible, catching fire at the brush of a match. In reality, it was the dust they collected and not the silk itself which was flammable. People fell into the trap of thinking all spiders made webs, but plenty preferred to hunt their prey. Even those with poor eyesight that relied on touch and smell when hunting. Some species cared for their young, far better than they were given credit for. Like Meagan, who’d run that big house as a tight ship until they’d stopped her. Alarms to get you up, curfews to keep you in, penalties if you flouted the rules. Kids needed boundaries, and discipline. The police were no strangers at Lyle’s but they knew how tough her job was, trying to turn around kids who’d had their hearts broken, or their bones. The unloved, and those who’d been loved too much. Angry kids, sad kids, sly kids. They came to her in all shapes and sizes. She never once turned a kiddie away. Not even one like Nell Ballard, with trouble written right through her. ‘Little Nell,’ Meagan called her, even after she filled out and there was no little about it. ‘Little Nell, my success story.’ If she found her – when she found her – she’d give that girl a curfew she’d never come back from.

  The window wouldn’t open, sending her cigarette smoke straight back into her eyes. She was watching the street for the postman, or postwoman with her musclebound calves and peaked cap. Mostly what they delivered was junk and bills. Final reminders, the one thing that never changed. Not even Nell Ballard had been able to change that.

  ‘This is Nell. Nell, this is Mrs Flack, your new foster mum.’

  Ten years ago, that was. The day before Nell’s eighth birthday, no one thinking to let Meagan know this latest kiddie needed a cake and balloons and a present wrapped in paper. She’d have bought a card, at any rate, if Social Services had been doing their job properly. As it was, the paperwork arrived a week after Nell, too late to make a fuss. Fuss never helped anyone.

  ‘Well, say hello.’

  She was a quiet one, was Nell. That should’ve put Meagan on her guard from day one. Better they came in kicking and screaming, since she’d a cure for that. Those like Nell who stood in silence, fixing her big eyes on everything, those were the ones who gave her the worst trouble.

  ‘It was your birthday,’ she said when the paperwork came through. ‘Day after you got here. You should’ve said. I’d have baked a cake.’

  Eight-year-old Nell watching the smoke rise from Meagan’s cigarette, as if she knew she’d never baked a cake in her life. ‘Next time, eh?’ She tapped ash into a saucer, nodding at the child.

  Nell accepted this, as she did everything in those early days. The room she had to share, sheets that brought her out in a rash, food that did the same. Never once complained. Meagan had a cure for complaining, but she hadn’t one for silence.

  ‘You should’ve said’ – turning the girl by her shoulders so she could see how bad the rash was – ‘I’d have given you something for it.’

  Nell waited to be released before dragging her dress back over her head. That look again, as if she didn’t believe a word coming out of Meagan’s mouth. But she knew to keep her lip buttoned. Fast to follow orders, slow to take fright, keen to be needed. She’d tried to make it work with her stepdad, Meagan read that much between the lines of the social worker’s report, tried to make herself wanted and when that didn’t work, to make herself needed. An eight-year-old who knew how to iron a man’s shirt? That wasn’t any more normal than the rest of it.

  After a week or so, she tried to get the girl to open up, out of idle curiosity and because it helped to know what she was up against. ‘Put you to work, did they?’

  ‘I didn’t mind.’ Nell was folding clothes from the washing line. ‘I like to help.’

  ‘That’s good. Plenty to be getting on with here. I do what I can but . . .’ She shrugged.

  That look again: Liar. Nell kept folding clothes as if she could make everything small and neat, tidy it all away. She didn’t flinch when Meagan snapped at her over the iron – ‘What’s this death trap doing out?’ – just tucked away her new knowledge about Meagan’s temper as if it were a clean vest. The house had never been so orderly. It set Meagan’s teeth on edge – things the girl found as she sneaked around clearing out cupboards and drawers. Overdue library books, final warnings from the vampires trying to drain her dry, letters from mums and dads she’d never passed on, all left like reproaches on Meagan’s bedside table. ‘What’s this then?’ Flapping an envelope at the girl.

  ‘It looks like a bill.’ Eight-year-old Nell gazed back at her. ‘It was at the back of the airing cupboard.’ She watched Meagan as if her anger were a live thing she was learning, waiting to see where it would land. ‘I’ll put it in the bin, shall I?’

  Some of the kids amused themselves turning stones in the garden, inspecting their undersides for insects and worms, whatever was wriggling underneath. Nell was like that, only with people.

  Sharp little thing, Meagan had thought.

  She hadn’t stopped thinking it, until Joe Peach arrived on the scene.

  The thought of the pair of them, Nell and Joe, made her crack her hand at the window. She opened her palm to see a fat black smear, before scraping the dead fly onto the windowsill where the wood was crumbling, rotten as the rest of it.

  The flat was temporary, a concession from the council. They’d had to rehouse her after what happened at Lyle’s. They’d have rehoused her in a prison cell, if they could’ve
made it stick. Plenty thought she deserved that. Even the police, who used to respect her for the way she handled the kids in her care. She was lucky, that’s what she was told. Lucky to have escaped a murder charge, even with no body to be found. Manslaughter would’ve been worse, with its implication of neglect and stupidity. Meagan was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. And if she’d been neglectful, it wasn’t in ways they could measure. Lyle’s had been held up as an example of how to run a good foster home. Until Little Nell decided to bring it all crashing down.

  Meagan smoked to the filter, grinding it out on the underside of the windowsill.

  Where was the spider?

  Her web looked empty, still vibrating from the shock of Meagan’s hand swatting the fly. The spider was hiding, keeping out of sight in case she scared off her prey. Spiders could wait for weeks, or months. This one would re-spin her web each day if she felt like it, perfecting the design to attract what she was after, when she was good and ready.

  4

  Now it was just the two of us in Starling Villas, me and Robin Wilder.

  ‘Settle in,’ he said vaguely, ‘and we’ll talk about a rota.’

  I was to work for him off the record, cash in hand, no references or National Insurance number. London was full of desperate people without official identities; he could’ve had his pick of us. Not the pretty girls but those like me, ready to try anything for the chance of a roof over her head and a hot meal inside her. It was easy for him to rationalize my readiness to take this job. Rationalizing his own reasons was trickier but I told myself that’s what the rota was for, to make our arrangement feel more formal. He had boxes to sort, and he’d had housekeepers in the past. How many others had stood in his hall, hearing the hard ticking of his clock and fearing they’d go mad from lack of sleep or the way he looked right through you as if you weren’t there?