Chapter 4 Kate

ALNWICK, ENGLAND | NOVEMBER 2010

A few hours outside of London, Kate glances at the clock on her car’s dashboard.

“Okay, Oz,” she says. “Hold on. I’ll find us somewhere to stop.”

Ten minutes later, she pulls off the A1 into the small town of Knottingly, where she lets Ozzie out for a quick stretch, then picks up a takeaway salad and coffee at a quirky café. Ozzie’s face appears in the open window as she approaches the car with her lunch. His tail beats a thwump-thwump-thwump against the seat.

In the car, she munches her salad, Ozzie drooling over her shoulder. He loves fruits and vegetables, the oddball.

“Yes, yes, here you go.”

She tosses a chunk of cucumber into the back seat, where it’s instantly swallowed whole. She takes a sip of coffee, which is remarkably good, and checks their status again on the SatNav.

“A couple more hours, Oz. I’m ready to be off the road as much as you are.” She pauses, then fishes in her purse for her mobile, finding it at the very bottom under the detritus of makeup compacts, lip balm, crumpled receipts, and tampons. “All right, let’s do this,” she mutters, dialing her husband’s number. It rings several times before going to voicemail. It’s a workday for Adam, but it’s also possible he’s just avoiding her call. He’s been staying at his brother’s place for the past few weeks.

“Hey,” she says. “It’s me… I’m out now. And my stuff. Most of it, anyway. The shipping company will be by on Thursday to pick up the last few boxes, and my bookshelf.” She’s unsure what more to tell him. There hasn’t been anything left to say for a long time. “My new contact info is on the kitchen counter, if you need it.” She hesitates again, knowing that this is the moment she would normally have signed off with a message of love. She can feel the edges of the hole it leaves, ragged as bite marks. “I’m…” Her nose tingles. “I’m sorry, Adam. Okay… Bye.”

She takes a moment to settle her nerves, then tosses the gear into drive once more.

The view outside the windows becomes wilder and more beautiful as they drive farther north. This landscape is all new for Kate, and she wants the unfamiliar right now. She glances over her shoulder at Ozzie, who’s sitting with his nose smeared against the glass. His eyes are wide, as though he knows they’re on an adventure in uncharted territory.

Kate skirts past Newcastle Upon Tyne as her thoughts swirl. She stayed up late last night to finish the last of her packing. Before leaving early this morning, she double-checked each room, then stopped to look around the empty kitchen, noted the faded rectangles on the walls from picture frames that once hung there. The residue from happier, more hopeful times. There’s nothing keeping her in London, and she feels a thread from her parents’ lives tugging her to the Oakwood, so she’s letting it. Instinct is as good a guide as any once you’ve lost your compass.

A while later, she finally spots the signposts for her destination: Alnwick. She turns onto the high road that runs through the centre of the old town. Low stone walls line either side as they cruise through the village, and Kate is pleased when they reach a traffic light so she can take in the streetscape. It’s filled with an array of boutique shops, pubs and restaurants, some businesses, and charity shops. After the frantic bustle of London, she already feels more relaxed. Safer, somehow. Her shoulders drop a little. They’ve been hitched up to her ears for the past few months.

She drives through the heart of the town and past the grand gates of Alnwick Castle. After another minute or two of twists and turns down a narrow county road and over an old stone bridge, they reach the very edge of the village. She slows down, eyeing the building in the field on her left with mounting curiosity. Though it’s partially obscured by trees, it looks enormous. Her SatNav announces that they’ve arrived at their destination as she reaches a break in the low stone wall, beyond which stretches a long gravel drive lined with gold and auburn-leaved oak trees. She spots a sign on the wall next to the gates.

THE OAKWOOD INN, it proclaims in aged copper lettering.

“Well, Ozzie, this is it,” she says, turning the wheel.

The gravel crunches as she drives along, the green lawns sweeping out in either direction. A dark wooded area forms a dense wall of evergreens behind the inn and an autumn mist hangs over the trees, lending the landscape a mystical sort of ambience.

Kate pulls up in front of the hotel, and her mouth falls open a fraction as she peers up. It’s built in the same beige stone as the buildings back in the town, with three storeys that rise into the overcast sky. The angled roof is all charcoal shingles and Gothic eaves. It looks like a miniature castle, a grand and proud lady who’s been sitting on this plot of land since before there were fairies.

“Whoa,” she breathes, staring at the dark upper-floor windows and feeling as though she’s been transported into the pages of a Brontë novel.

After a moment, Ozzie shifts in his seat, alert to the change in energy now that the car has stopped moving, and Kate is pulled from her reverie. She steers into a spot in the car park—there’s only one other vehicle there—turns off the ignition, and gets out. The temperature dropped as the afternoon wore on, and the clouds overhead block out the weak autumn sun. Kate stretches her arms up, extending her compressed spine like an accordion, then retrieves her purse. She clips Ozzie’s leash to his collar and he bounds out of the car, shaking himself off as though he’s just stepped out of a lake. He pants with excitement at all the new smells.

“Not bad, eh?” Kate says, scratching his ears.

A sign indicates the reception desk is at the front of the house. Kate guides Ozzie to a path up to the navy blue door, where lush ivy creeps across the wall above. She notes the silence; the air is dense out here. There’s no noise from the town a short distance away. She doesn’t even hear any birds. She breathes in the smell of smoke and leaves and damp, smiles at the absence of petrol fumes.

She presses down on the brass handle and steps over the threshold, tugging Ozzie’s leash in tightly. Although Sue said the job and house were dog-friendly, Kate wants him to make a good first impression. He seems to sense this, because he sits down smartly on the entryway rug and cranes his neck to look at her with his large brown eyes. Kate would swear he’s smiling.

“Good boy, Oz, good boy.”

The foyer is an impressive welcome to the house. A wide, majestic staircase straight ahead leads to a landing and the second floor. The stairs are dark walnut with a thick botanical-patterned runner. Overhead, a large gold chandelier illuminates the entryway and the hall that extends toward the back of the house. Kate glances left into a sitting room filled with overstuffed navy armchairs and a sofa clustered around a floor-to-ceiling brick fireplace, the logs crackling away in welcome.

A small reception desk is pressed against the wall beside the door, piled with neat stacks of tourism brochures. Beyond the reception is what she suspects may be a hall closet, then another door, through which she spots a larger, ornate desk with a lamp casting a dim glow over a mess of papers.

The air smells warm, like coffee and sugar, but she feels an unidentifiable draft. She taps the silver bell on the reception desk to alert Sue to her presence. There’s a scuffle on the floorboards down the hall and she straightens, expecting the manager, but a small black terrier emerges from the shadows and trots up to her and Ozzie, whose tail begins to wag as he sniffs the newcomer.

“Well, hello, you,” Kate coos, bending to pat the terrier.

“Can I help you?”

Kate’s head whips up at the voice. A woman is walking down the same hallway whence came the terrier. She’s elderly, and a little stooped. Kate reckons she must be into her nineties. One hand grasps the rounded handle of a cane as the other extends out to the side for balance. Kate remembers her grandmother walking like that, and her heart twinges at the thought.

Kate stands and offers her hand to the woman, noticing as she does so that she has the most remarkable eyes. So light blue they’re grey, and spaced just a little too far apart. Her thin white hair is longer than most women her age, and pulled back into a soft bun.

“Hi, I’m Kate Mercer. I think we spoke on the—”

“Who?” the woman asks.

“Kate Mercer,” Kate repeats, louder.

The woman scowls. “I’m not deaf. What is your business here? We’re closed for the season, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sorry, are you Sue?” Kate asks, sure that she isn’t. The accent is different. It’s English, not Scottish, but there’s something off about it. At any rate, there’s clearly some confusion.

“No, Sue is my housekeeper.”

Kate stares at her. “Oh, okay, er… I was hired as the new administrator. Sue told me to come up today.”

“You’re the what?” The woman’s face is dark as midnight.

“The er, the new administrator?”

“Is that a question or a statement?”

“I’m sorry,” Kate says, “I think there’s been a misunder—”

“Like hell there has,” the old woman curses. “Sue!” she hollers over her shoulder, louder than Kate would have anticipated, given her age. “Sue!”

A door slams somewhere on the main floor and Ozzie shifts against Kate’s leg. A moment later, another woman emerges from down the hall. She’s somewhere in her fifties, heavyset with a square face and large jaw surrounded by greying hair tied back in a ponytail. She’s dressed in leggings and a loose jumper. Sweat beads on her forehead.

“Our new administrator has arrived,” the older woman says, tossing a hand in Kate’s direction.

Sue stands off to the side, eyes darting between them.

“Hi there,” she says, accent rolling over the R’s like a drum. “I’m Sue. The housekeeper. We spoke on the phone. Now, Audrey,” she directs at the old woman, “please just listen for a mo—”

“I told you no!” Audrey barks. “I have everything under control.”

“Except you don’t,” Sue insists. Kate stands, frozen, watching the exchange with mounting alarm. “You need someone to help with the day-to-day, and the off-season is the time to get someone trained up. That’s why I hired Miss Mercer here.”

“Without consulting me.”

“Yes, without consulting you.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew this is how you would respond, you stubborn old goat.”

“Listen, I—” Kate begins, but Sue cuts her off.

“Miss Mercer, why don’t you go show yourself around? Choose a room. They’re all empty but for Audrey’s on the second floor.” She flashes Kate a stressed smile, her eyes imploring her not to leave.

If it weren’t for the pull Kate feels to retrace her parents’ steps, that’s exactly what she would be doing. This is a disaster. Sue hiring her without the knowledge or consent of the hotel’s owner? It’s embarrassing for all three of them.

“Sure,” Kate says. She might as well explore this Gothic queen of a house before she’s booted right out of it. She tugs Ozzie toward the stairs.

“She’s not staying,” Audrey snaps at Sue, who retaliates in a low whisper.

They continue to bicker as Kate scales the staircase. Her mind is already skipping on ahead, planning what she’ll do if the owner won’t let her stay, if this job didn’t exist to begin with. She’ll have to tell Adam she needs to move back into the flat again until she finds a place of her own. She wishes now she’d waited until tonight to call him.

She rounds the landing to the second floor. The air is still, like the basement of a library, and smells like lemon cleaner. Her footsteps are muffled by a thick, dark blue carpet. The diffuse golden light from the hallway sconces outside each room glints off the polished wood door frames and banister. At the end of the corridor, another set of stairs leads to a third floor.

How many rooms are there? she wonders. The house is even larger than it looks from the outside.

All the bedroom doors are open. They’re painted the same navy as the front door with gold words stenciled into them instead of numbers. Kate spots Lily and Lavender. She pokes her head into the latter. The walls are papered in a dusty purple damask print, and she catches a whiff of lavender from the clutch of stems in a pewter vase on the dresser. This room has two single beds, so Kate moves on down the corridor, stepping into each room as she passes: Sage, Wisteria, Lilac, and Fern, all decorated in keeping with their names, and at the very end of the hall: Elder. It’s the only door that’s closed, so she assumes this must be Audrey’s room. She smiles wryly at the fact that the aged proprietor should have the room named Elder.

Ozzie has been tight on Kate’s heels, and he follows her up the narrower staircase to the third floor; still carpeted, but less grand than the main stairs. She turns right at the landing and pokes her head into Willow (her favourite yet), Marigold (far too yellow), and Oak. The last room is tucked into a little alcove of its own: Rose.

Kate takes a deep breath, thinking of her mother, and pushes the door open wider. With a name like Rose, she expected pink or red, but the walls are papered in white with a striking black floral pattern. White curtains frame both large windows, falling into pools on the floorboards. The white duvet is piled with dark green accent pillows, and a matching throw blanket covers the foot of the bed. A couch, armchair, and glass coffee table are clustered in the corner of the room in front of an old television. Kate catches a glimpse of the woods out the window, a border of green speckled with gold and red. A realization dawns on her. “Wait a minute…”

Ozzie raises his head as she reaches into her purse for the small photo album from her parents’ honeymoon. She locates the photo she’s looking for in the pile of loose pictures stuffed into the back.

The wallpaper is different in the photo, but the dresser is identical. The sofa is the same size and shape too. It’s just been reupholstered in a more modern fabric. In the photo, her mother is perched on the edge of it, a stream of sunlight from the window behind her creating a halo around her auburn head. Her mouth is open in a wide smile, eyes glittering with good-natured annoyance; the expression she always wore when Kate’s dad took the piss out of her about something. He had a sarcastic streak that was often funny but could sometimes wound, if he was in a depressed mood, or drank too much that day. Even now, she can hear their voices, her dad’s low cackle. Her eyes blur with tears and she holds the picture to her chest.

“They were here,” she says to Ozzie. “They stayed in this room.”

Kate sits down in the same spot as her mother and closes her eyes, trying to leech some long-forgotten ray of her mum’s quiet, reserved energy out of the cushion. She’d like to believe it’s possible. Some people do. But Kate doesn’t really know exactly what she believes anymore. Loss has a way of challenging everything we thought was true and right in the world. The lucky ones are drawn closer to whatever it is they believe about the universe, comforted by the idea of a god with some master plan for everyone. Other people just drown in the unnerving knowledge that life is random. It’s fair, in a way, that we’re all beholden to the outcome determined by the same set of dice, but fairness can be cruel sometimes. It stole her parents from her. It was the nail in the coffin of her failing marriage. It stole something else deep inside Kate, too, something she’s not sure she can ever get back.

A knock on the door jolts her. Audrey is standing in the doorway, Sue behind her.

“Go on,” Sue says.

Audrey steps into the room. Ozzie tugs toward her but Kate holds his leash firm, wiping an errant tear.

“Gracious,” Audrey sighs. “There’s no need for tears.”

“No,” Kate says, embarrassed. “It’s, er… It’s the room. My mother’s name was Rose. I lost her recently, that’s all.” She pushes the memories away like crumbs falling to the floor. She’ll clean them up later. “It’s a beautiful room.”

Audrey’s knotted fingers flex on the handle of her cane. In the hallway, Sue clears her throat.

“I’ve agreed to let you stay on a probationary basis,” Audrey says. “Sue has made some convincing, however pigheaded”—she shoots Sue a withering look over her shoulder—“arguments about the amount of work required for the continued administration of the Oakwood. It may be time for a bit of help. We’ll give it a go until Christmas, perhaps. Are you agreeable?”

A strong sense of relief floods Kate’s veins. Now that she’s in the Rose Room, she desperately wants to stay.

“Yes,” she says, with forced composure. “That would be lovely.”

Audrey eyes her a little longer, her mouth pinched. She shifts the leg supported by her cane. “I’ve lost a lot of people over the years, including my mother. She died when I was born. I lost both my parents young. I am sorry for your loss. It’s never easy.”

Without waiting for Kate’s response, Audrey turns back down the hall, leaving Sue alone in the doorway.

“She’s all bark, you know,” Sue mutters. “Apologies for the deception, but she needs help and is too damn stubborn to admit it. But here we are. Have you had a chance to poke around the town a bit?”

Kate shakes her head. “Not yet, no. I came straight here from London this morning.”

“I think you’ll like it. Certainly not the same pace as London, mind.” Her grin reaches her eyes. “It does get a wee bit slow between now and springtime, but the shops and pubs are still open. Folks come up here for the castle and the gardens during the high season, and we get swamped.”

“I noticed the house seemed rather quiet.”

“Aye, everybody’s cleared off for the season.”

There’s a beat of silence whilst Kate absorbs this. “So… there are no guests at all during the winter?”

Sue shakes her head. “Nah. Audrey likes it quiet for a spell, ’specially as she gets on, and there’s not many tourists in the winter lookin’ for lodgings anyhow.”

“So it will just be the three of us here all winter?”

“Two; I live in town, and come in to clean. I’ll come by every couple o’ weeks. Like to take the time to be with me grandkids in the winter, anyway. Works out nice for me.”

Kate gets the sense Sue wants her to ask about the grandchildren, but she’s still processing what Sue said.

“Now then, yer room,” Sue continues, brushing past Kate, who finally releases Ozzie. He rushes around sniffing furniture legs. “We have the full cable package. Audrey does love that new baking competition show.” Kate smiles. At least they have one thing in common. “The Wi-Fi password is Sophie. There’s a DVD player there for you too; the DVD collection is down in the sitting room. Just help yourself and be sure to return them when you’re finished.”

Kate wonders silently if either Audrey or Sue has ever heard of Netflix.

They move into the toilet and Sue demonstrates how to coax the faucet to life as Ozzie scoots around their legs, continuing his olfactory tour of the premises.

“And that’s about it,” Sue says when they emerge back into the main room. “Oh, here’s yer keys. That one’s for yer room, this one here’s for the front door. Welcome to the Oakwood, Miss Mercer.”

“Thank you,” Kate says, taking the keys.

Sue heads for the door, then rests her hand on the frame, one conspiratorial eyebrow raised. “If I speak truth, Audrey needs the comp’ny as much as the help. Health’s not what it once was, I’m afraid. She’s done all the admin herself for years, since she took it over from her auntie. But it’s too much now, and with me gone most of the winter… she needed someone. She’s a big ol’ box o’ secrets, that one, but if you can find the right key, there’s a heart o’ gold inside it.” Sue winks before turning down the hallway.

Kate watches her go, wondering about the losses Audrey mentioned. As she steps back into the room, her eyes fall on the name stenciled to the door: Rose. She closes it, glances down at her arm as the knob clicks. Her arms are identical to her mother’s—from shoulder to fingertips. She’s jarred by the memory of feeling those arms around her as she sat in Rose’s lap as a child, relaxing against her chest as her hair tickled Kate’s cheek.

Later that night, Kate brushes her teeth and pops her bite plate in. Some mornings she wakes up unsure whether she’s going to be able to pry her own jaw open. She undresses, then turns off the lights and crawls into the unfamiliar bed, gently shoving Ozzie over to make space. She stares at the ceiling until she finally drifts off into a fitful sleep filled with uneasy dreams of black roses beading with water from the rain. Of dark and deserted roads that stretch out indefinitely, leading nowhere. Silent and cold.