16

The first day ticked on.

I unpacked my bag. My activewear took up surprisingly little room in the enormous dresser. Three pairs of running shoes were lined up below, mocking me with their incongruity.

What had suited my old life in Melbourne was grossly out of place; I was grossly out of place. I left my copy of The House of Brides safely tucked away in my bag and stashed the bag under the armchair. The house remained silent. Elizabeth and Tom had disappeared, and Max had never returned from wherever it was he had escaped to earlier. I couldn’t hear Daphne, even though I knew she was in her room. The children were gone. I was unsure of what to do next.

So I did what anyone would do in my situation. I snooped.

I headed downstairs to the solid door dividing the family living quarters from the main part of Barnsley House. Expecting it to be locked, I thumbed the latch and pushed heavily. It gave way immediately, and I fell into the corridor beyond.

It was freezing. The heating had obviously been off in this part of the house for a long time—maybe since the accident. It felt cold enough to be true. I closed the door behind me, and it disappeared into the paneling.

In the still corridor, The House of Brides came back to me. There was a bedroom somewhere upstairs in the east wing where Gertrude had done most of her writing. I knew there was a library somewhere as well. And then there were the rooms that would postdate the book. The restaurant, for example. A commercial kitchen. I was at the base of an enormous staircase, which seemed to be the T-intersection of the house itself. The house seemed to be built mostly along the top of the T, with all the rooms looking out to sea, while the utility section of the house was crammed into the stumpy base. Feeble sunlight filtered in through the stained-glass window of the landing but failed to disturb the gloom of the hallways on either side of me.

I headed to the left, past closed doors, until I reached a larger set at the end. They were constructed from black steel, more modern than anything else in the building. I detected Daphne’s touch. I pushed the door open, and a giant conservatory revealed itself. The Summer House. The restaurant had been aptly named; the walls were entirely glass, and inside was even colder than the corridor. I zipped up my vest and pulled my sleeves down over my hands, thumbs into the specially designed holes.

The tables were still set. Wineglasses stood in position, covered in a light coat of dust. Cutlery, only slightly tarnished, flanked starched napkins. The chairs were upholstered in the softest pink velvet. I stroked one, almost reflexively. Velvet always has that effect on me. “They were my idea.” I jumped, knocking a wineglass over and upending a dish in the process. Sea salt and dust spread across the linen tablecloth. “Max wasn’t mad on them.”

Daphne.

Her Australian accent was more pronounced than I had expected, after all the years she had spent here. My vowels were already softening after only days.

I turned to look at her. She was moving slowly, quietly. Elizabeth was right. She was tiny. Her blond hair was slightly stringy, her once distinctive fringe longer and pushed to the side of her heart-shaped face. “They’re lovely,” I said, for want of anything better to say.

“You’re Australian,” Daphne replied. My vowels weren’t soft enough.

“Yes.”

Daphne moved closer, her hand at her side, using the backs of the chairs for support as she moved through the room. Her frame was dwarfed by the clothes she was wearing: a faded oversize tea dress and a long cardigan. She cupped one hand under the lip of the table and in a cluster of capable movements used the other to sweep the salt into it. Looking for somewhere to deposit the dusty salt and finding nowhere, she smoothly deposited it back into its original dish. “Who are you?”

It was a reasonable question, but Elizabeth’s warning ran through my head: It would be best if Daphne doesn’t know you’re here.

Before I had a chance to answer, Daphne spoke again. “You’re a bloody nanny, aren’t you?” She sighed and pulled back a chair, wrapped her long cardigan around her. Something clinked in her pocket. “I told them I was fine. They won’t let me near the children, you know.” Her words slurred slightly. It was only midmorning, and she was drunk. I was starting to see their concern. “Fetch a cloth from over there.” She pointed in the direction of a sideboard. I followed her instructions and took a cloth from underneath. “And one for me too.” For someone so small, she was quite adept at giving orders. I could imagine she would be formidable in a busy kitchen. “Now look busy.”

I followed the direction of her head to the corner, where I could now see a small white camera, almost camouflaged in the paintwork. Daphne picked up a wineglass, so I did too, half-heartedly rubbing some dust about while she spoke. “I suppose they’ve told you about the accident. Max and Meryl.” She said Meryl’s name in much the same way a child would talk about a schoolyard bully. “I was driving. We hit a deer. Agatha was badly injured.” Her voice had gone strangely monotone, and the glass shook in her hand.

“Were you injured as well?” I concentrated on my glass, playing it up for the camera, even though I could barely see what I was doing without my glasses. Whoever was watching would be impressed by my thoroughness. A familiar buzz went through me, the thrill of deception.

Daphne hesitated. I recognized the hesitation. Lie or tell the truth: it never gets any easier. But I couldn’t tell her that. “Yes. Yes, I was. Quite badly.”

“Why won’t they let you near the children?” It was a dangerous question, and could be enough to set her off. Especially in her state.

She placed the glass down, used her fingers to stabilize the base. Despite her condition, her glass gleamed. “Would you like a tour of the house?” she asked brightly. As if she hadn’t even heard my question from moments before.

“That would be lovely, thank you. I thought no one would ever ask.”

“You seemed to be doing a pretty good job on your own.”

We moved slowly. Daphne must have been light on her feet at the best of times, and that morning, with her feet clad only in hand-knitted socks, she barely made a sound. It would be easy for her to move undetected around Barnsley. “It’s hard to picture it now, on a summer’s day, in the full swing of lunch service,” she said.

I nodded and tried to imagine. “The sun streams in the windows, and all you can see is green grass and the blue of the water. It’s spectacular. There’s nothing like it.”

Daphne pushed through a concealed door. She reached out her hand, instinctive even in the dark, and rows of powerful fluorescent lights illuminated the room. Polished stainless-steel counters reflected in the brilliant light. State-of-the-art ovens and stovetops seemed to be waiting for the chef to return at any moment. For Daphne to return.

“Will you cook again?”

Daphne looked at me, frightened. I recognized the look in her eyes. Terror. Fear of failure. More than that, the fear of failure after great success. I saw it in the mirror myself, some days. “A woman from the village comes in to keep this area clean,” she said before switching off the lights again and leaving me in complete darkness. “At my request.”

The tour continued along the hallway.

“On this side”—Daphne gestured—“are the guest areas. A drawing room.” She whipped the door open just long enough for me to see that it was the room I had peered into earlier. The curtains were closed and the room was in darkness, but the shape of the bay window was unmistakable. “It used to be the family’s dining room once upon a time. They still use it on special occasions.”

“I think I’ve read about the dining room in The House—” I stopped myself. Too late. Daphne looked at me suspiciously.

“Have you?” she asked, and then her face went blank. The thought had slipped away.

She continued walking, opening door after door just long enough for me to steal glimpses of dark and dusty rooms within. Her breathing grew labored, her steps ginger.

“Lounge. Bar. Morning room.”

By this stage we had passed the stairwell and were at the other end of the building. “And above us are the family bedrooms?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“We can leave it there, if you like.”

“There’s something upstairs I’d like you to see.” She paused. “Seeing as though you’re a House of Brides fan.” It was hard to read her expression in the half dark.

“Upstairs? I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Maybe I can help you back to bed?”

Daphne started to climb the stairs. The rest of the house was silent, but I felt as if Max could reappear at any moment.

“You need to know what you’re getting into.” She was puffing, muttering more to herself than to me. I was beginning to wish I’d taken Elizabeth’s advice, and stayed clear of Daphne.

“Why has Max . . . er, Mr. Summer . . . not made any adjustments to the house for Agatha?”

Silence, apart from the breathing. “Like a lift? Or some ramps around the place?”

“Yes. I know what you mean,” Daphne snapped.

“Do the doctors think she will be in a wheelchair forever?”

Daphne produced some keys from the pocket of her cardigan and held them up in the light of the stained-glass window. The clinking—not a bottle after all. She seemed to be looking for one in particular. They all looked the same to me. “They thought so at first. But now, maybe there’s a chance she won’t be. It’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

We came to the top, and found ourselves at the cross passage of the house. It was mostly too dark to see much. In front of us was a solid wall with one doorway; to our left, a smaller passageway. I could see that this was the backside of our bedrooms, the upstairs slightly consumed by our modest quarters. There seemed to be some rooms in that direction, but the majority were to our right, along a large hallway that turned and disappeared beyond my vision. “The guest rooms,” Daphne said, each word a struggle.

The combination of the poor light and my equally dismal vision made it hard to read the placards. One stood out, though; I remembered it from the book.

“The Yellow Room.”

Daphne shook her head and passed by the Yellow Room. “The Island Room.” She wrenched back the curtains with a strength I had not imagined, and the room was revealed. It was a corner room, more like a suite. The décor was classic but not twee: sturdy-looking antiques and a squishy armchair upholstered in tweed. A brass lamp on the bedside towered over a small pile of Penguin Classics.

“Named for its view of Minerva Island,” I volunteered.

Daphne ignored me. She ran her hands under the mattress. Picked up the books and turned them over. Her manic behaviour was unsettling. She was unsettling. I could see why they needed someone to help with the children. She picked up a cushion from the chair, unzipped it. I was just about to leave her alone when her face relaxed and she withdrew her hand.

Something tiny and gold lay upon it. “I want you to take this for me.”

“What is it?” I asked, disingenuously, for even in the gloomy light and with my terrible eyesight, I could tell it was a key.

“I want you to keep it safe for me. You have no ties to this place. No one will suspect you.”

A sound escaped from my mouth, but Daphne didn’t seem to notice. “If anything happens to me, I want you to use this.” She pushed up against me, holding the key to me, her eyes darting. When I didn’t make a move, she grabbed my hand and forced the key into it. Up close, the stench of alcohol I had been expecting was absent, but in its place was a strangely chemical smell. Something about her was not quite right.

“Have you ever been to the island?” I asked, desperate to return to normalcy. I tucked the key in my pocket, resolved to give it to Max later.

Daphne came and stood beside me, hugging the cushion to her chest. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think that’s any concern of yours.”

The voice took me by surprise. Thomas appeared first, and then, moments later, his owner. “I saw the curtains were open. What are you doing in here?”

“I was just showing this girl where you . . . ,” Daphne stuttered.

“The school bus is due any minute,” Max interrupted.

“Yes, Mr. Summer,” I said, trying to draw his attention away from his wife, who was frozen in position by the window, her arms still wrapped around the cushion. She was trembling slightly, but a slight flush rose on her cheeks, and her eyes were defiant.

“Go on, then,” Max said.

I looked back at Daphne, and she nodded slightly, as if giving me permission to leave. The terror I had noticed earlier, in the kitchen, had returned to her face. I had no choice but to leave her there with Max.

As I shuffled out into the dark hall, there was only the light from the Island Room to guide my way down the dark passage. Moments later they shut the door softly behind me, and I was completely in the dark.