To Annie’s absolute delight, she opened the curtains the next morning to discover the world outside had turned white. A dusting of snow covered everything, from the flowerbeds to the tops of the trees. The distant fells were domes of white, and even the lake had silvery patches of ice.
The shower in her en suite bathroom was a bit cranky, and for a while Annie didn’t think she’d get any hot water, but eventually a little trickled out, and after drying and getting dressed she headed downstairs feeling refreshed after a long and dreamless night’s sleep.
Through a window near the main entrance she saw Mr. Fairbrother using a plastic shovel to clear snow off the path from the car park up to the door, a Christmas hat modified with ear muffs stretched over his head. A small upper window had been left open to allow in some fresh air, and the sound of a jovial whistle drifted inside.
Annie watched him for a while, wondering whether she ought to offer to help. When she turned, however, she found Mrs. Growell standing nearby, hands crossed over her stomach. Impeccably dressed in her kitchen uniform, the woman looked like a vampire dressing down for a costume ball. Recovering her shock at finding the woman so close, Annie muttered a brief ‘Good morning,’ and offered a smile.
‘Good morning, Mistress,’ Mrs. Growell said, not sounding particularly happy about it but forcing a hint of a smile. ‘Are you ready for breakfast?’
‘Uh … thank you.’
‘A table has been prepared.’
Mrs. Growell turned and went through the propped-open door into the reception hall, where a table had been set up in front of the fire gently flickering in the grate. Annie followed like a child on her first day at boarding school, and sat down where Mrs. Growell indicated.
‘Coffee or tea, Mistress? Or would you prefer juice? We have orange, grapefruit, or elderberry.’
‘Uh … coffee.’
‘Excellent. Before your meal? Or after? Your grandfather always took it before.’
‘Um, that’s great.’
Annie sat awkwardly as Mrs. Growell reeled off a list of possible breakfast options, eventually agreeing to a bowl of cornflakes and a bacon sandwich. A few minutes later, Mrs. Growell returned with a waiter’s trolley, and unloaded Annie’s order onto the table, along with a bowl of sliced fruit.
‘If your grandfather had eaten a little better, we might have got a couple more years out of him,’ she said, a note of sadness in her voice. Then, recovering her composure, she added, ‘Enjoy your breakfast, Mistress. If there’s anything else you require, please ring the bell.’
‘Um, thanks.’
Mrs. Growell turned and headed for the entrance to the kitchens. At the top of the stairs leading down, she stopped and turned back, pausing to watch Annie for a few seconds. Feeling a little awkward, Annie grinned and gave her a little wave. Mrs. Growell simply nodded, then descended the stairs into the basement servant quarters.
‘Too weird,’ Annie muttered. Her brain didn’t feel like eating, but her stomach disagreed, so a few minutes of thoughtful reflection later, she found the food had all gone. Everything, she realised, in retrospect, had been perfect. The bacon was perfectly grilled, the bread perfectly toasted, even the cornflakes soaked just long enough in the milk to be damp but retaining their crunch.
Annie reached for the bell to call Mrs. Growell to take away her plates, then paused. Despite the reality of the situation, this wasn’t a hotel, and it felt weird having people waiting on her. She got up, stacked her empty plates and carried them to the stairs.
In her hunt for the mysterious Isabella, Annie had seen much of the house and its vast array of rooms and corridors, but she was yet to go down the stairs into the basement servants’ quarters. She felt a little like an intruder as she descended an underlit staircase to a corridor at the bottom.
She was underground now, she remembered. The air felt a little muggy, and the corridor was poorly lit. Doors led off on either side, closed, unmarked. Mr. Fairbrother claimed to live in a cottage near the lake, but perhaps Mrs. Growell lived down here, maybe even Isabella, assuming she wasn’t just a very real ghost.
At the end of the corridor was a large pair of double doors with KITCHENS written on one side and STAFF ONLY on the other. Annie, pretending she couldn’t read, backed up against one door and pushed her way through.
‘Uh … what on earth?’
The kitchen—higher ceilinged than it ought to have been, suggesting it rose into some kind of atrium at the side of the house—was a kitchen in name only. It clearly had cookers and stoves and cupboards like any other kitchen, but otherwise it appeared like the internal workings of a Christmas-themed candy factory, all bright reds and greens and golds. Pipes and pistons stuck out from everywhere, bubbles rose through clear tubes and little toy figures walked along conveyors, falling into chutes which would cause whistles to sound, followed by a rush of air and the figures appearing again out of a little door somewhere else to start the revolving process all over.
Annie clapped her hands together as she burst into laughter.
‘How wonderful!’
A door opened at the end, and Mrs. Growell entered, carrying a large bag of flour in her arms. At the sight of Annie she let out a gasp and dropped the bag.
For a moment everything seemed to go still, a single second lasting for a lifetime as the bag of flour descended through the air.
Then it struck beautiful ornate and colourful tiles, and exploded into a white cloud.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’
‘What are you doing in my kitchen? Get out! I knew you’d be trouble from the moment I laid eyes on you. Get out!’
Annie started to back away towards the door. Mrs. Growell stepped forward out of the plume of flour made worse by air filters in the walls on either side which only served to spread it around. Her face, spotted with flour, looked like a thundercloud as she reached up and pulled a cord on the wall.
A muffled bell sounded somewhere upstairs. Annie backed up and found herself against the doors just as one opened, knocking into her. She stepped forward, slipped, and her plates fell out of her arms.
That same crazy timeless second repeated itself. Annie had just a moment to envisage the crockery shattering all over the floor, then to her amazement, her coffee cup landed face up on a pile of flour, her plate struck Mrs. Growell’s shoe and rolled sideways, and her cereal bowl hit Mrs. Growell in the stomach, only for the woman to stick out a deft hand and catch it, a dribble of unfinished milk trickling down her wrist. Only a fork hit the tiles, where it made a tinkling jump and lay still.
‘Oh, sorry, dear, was just on my way in,’ Mr. Fairbrother said. ‘Did you—oh, blimey.’ He chuckled. ‘Been snowing in here, too?’
Mrs. Growell’s eyes flared, and had they burst into flames, Annie wouldn’t have been surprised.
‘You have the bell,’ she said, almost too quietly to be heard over the sound of the mechanisation. ‘You need assistance, you ring the bell. If you have a question, you ring the bell. If the house is on fire … you ring the bell.’
‘I ring the bell,’ Annie said. ‘Got it.’
‘Out!’
Annie didn’t wait to be ordered again, backing through the door, running back along the service corridor and up the stairs to the main entrance before Mrs. Growell could shoot lasers at her or set loose some hounds of hell on her trail. She slipped on a pair of boots and stepped outside, only then allowing herself to take a long, slow breath of cool, winter air.
She would apologise to the housekeeper, perhaps when Mrs. Growell’s internal volcano had stopped erupting. She seemed to have made an enemy of the woman, but perhaps she had done that already simply by coming here.
As her own thundering heart slowed, and the pretty winter scene began to calm her, Annie wondered about the kitchen. It was like something out of a fairy tale, a room out of a theme park relocated to the middle of nowhere. And with all those weird contraptions rattling away, it was no wonder Mrs. Growell seemed on edge. Being in there all day long would drive anyone mad.
‘Sorry about that commotion, Mistress,’ came a voice from behind her, and Annie turned to find Mr. Fairbrother standing behind her. Flour flecked his shirt but otherwise he looked the same as he had done yesterday.
‘I’m sorry too,’ Annie said. ‘I shouldn’t have gone in there. Next time I’ll just ring the bell.’
‘Ah, don’t worry about that,’ Mr. Fairbrother said. ‘She’s spikey at the best of times. Nothing a hoover didn’t sort in a minute or two. Might be an idea to take you over to the village for a bit, though, let her clear her head.’
‘The village?’
‘Just through the forest there.’
‘Oh, I thought I saw some houses through the trees there. Is it big?’
‘Handful of houses.’
‘Oh, it would be nice to meet a few locals.’
‘They’ll be looking forward to seeing you too,’ Mr. Fairbrother said. ‘Been wondering what was going to happen after your grandfather passed.’
‘Why’s that? What does my grandfather have to do with the village?’
Mr. Fairbrother chuckled. ‘A whole lot. You see, he owned it. Which means that now, it belongs to you.’