Secrets. Freya North
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on her birthday. Just before she fell asleep Tess remembered the utility room. A whole room devoted to a washing machine and tumble dryer and ceiling-mounted airer with its pulley system. Off that was the boot room – just for footwear and coats. Imagine that. The lap of luxury. A house that had everything. Buckingham Palace had nothing on this. Bounds Green was far far away. This wasn't running away! This was a new start – a sensible thing to do. An excellent idea! Brave, too. Tess felt utterly liberated.
Joe went to bed stiff and tired. He'd worked until two in the morning. He climbed halfway up to the second floor, observed how the doors were closed on the rooms that were empty, but were ajar on the rooms now occupied. He liked that. Usually house-sitters barricaded themselves in at night. This woman was open. Then he told himself to stop being soft – the baby hadn't slept on her own before and the mother would need to hear her in an instant. And as he tucked down on the floor below, he thought, where there's a baby and a mother – then there's most usually a father, isn't there? And he wondered, for a moment, who he was. And where. And why wasn't he here with them? Was he on the scene? Or was he the reason Tess had suddenly turned up on his doorstep, babe in arms?
A girl and her tot in his house was one thing, a whole bloody family unit would be quite another. Boyfriends lounging around and playing man of the house were not on the job description. And then he touched upon the fact that little over twenty-four hours ago, he had not known this woman at all. And he still didn't. Yet here she was, without references, without even giving him her surname. Here she was in his house having brought her life into his home.
She can make changes to a couple of the rooms, he thought, but that's it.
Joe came into the kitchen, still fugged from a heavy sleep. He was wearing pastel-striped pyjama bottoms, the same woollen socks from yesterday, and a T-shirt. Tess glanced at his arms and thought, he has a tan – in March.
‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Been up long?’
‘Since the crack of dawn,’ Tess answered curtly. ‘I'm not used to everything being so quiet everywhere. The dog's been sick – does it happen often?’
He looked at her, standing there with her hands on her hips and a tea towel he knew wasn't his slung over her shoulder, her sleeves rolled up as if she was ready to fight.
‘Where?’
‘I've cleaned it up,’ she said. ‘I wasn't going to leave it there.’ She folded her arms. She looked peculiarly defiant and Joe found he didn't know what he was meant to say but felt she was waiting for an apology and fast.
He glanced at the clock and then regarded Wolf who didn't look like a dog that'd just been sick. The dog was engrossed in a hearty lick of his nether region, his tail spread across the kitchen floor like a length of old frayed rope. ‘Sorry – I overslept. I don't usually. And no, Wolf isn't sick often. You should have left it for me to deal with.’
‘What – with Em around?’
Now he felt guilty – as if he'd brought a lack of hygiene into the home of a child. Ridiculous – this was his house, wasn't it! And only her first day. He looked over at her sternly but she shrugged and popped her hair into a pony-tail. He'd quite liked her spirit yesterday – but not this morning when he'd just woken up.
‘It's not a problem,’ she said as if she sensed his reservation. ‘I just thought you needed to know.’ Now her equanimity made Joe feel a different sort of guilt, which was just as unnerving. All the more so when Tess then handed him a cup of tea in the china cup and saucer she'd left outside his study last night and he'd left, unwashed, in the sink. He sipped, giving himself time to think, but he was distracted as much by the unblinking attention of the infant as by the very good cup of tea.
‘So, you haven't done this job before?’
‘No – it's a brand new adventure.’
He thought she must mean venture. ‘What did you do in London?’
‘Nails.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Manicures, pedicures.’
He glanced at her nails. They were unspectacular, unvarnished and there was a Mister Man plaster around one. If these were the tools of her trade, they were not a particularly good advertisement. Manicures and pedicures? He didn't feel such a career could have suited her. He reckoned she looked more like a potter, or a photographer's assistant, or a landscape gardener at a push. He couldn't see her in a salon. She was pretty behind her slightly unkempt exterior – but her hair didn't have a particular style, her clothes were nondescript, asexual, and well worn. The lace of her left trainer was shorter than that of the right – the bow being tied on the penultimate eyelets. He thought, OK – fashion is not her thing. He thought, she hides behind her hair. He thought, you wouldn't notice her if you passed her on the street. He thought, perhaps that's a look she's honed.
There's more, Joe thought, noticing a twitch of discomfort cloud her face. A nail-person, whatever they're called, doesn't stand there fidgeting with her own – it's bad for business.
‘Well, actually, I'm trained as a beautician,’ Tess pre-empted, ‘a beauty therapist. Highly qualified, in fact.’
‘I'm not sure there's much call in Saltburn,’ Joe told her. ‘There are a couple of salons already. You might have luck further afield.’
‘But now I'm looking for a change and that's why I'm here,’ she said, as if she'd been mid-sentence.
‘A change?’
‘That's why I'm here,’ Tess said and she folded the tea towel briskly to signify the matter was closed.
‘Well – welcome to your first day. I need to go through my diary with you.’
‘Of course,’ Tess said, ‘but perhaps when Em has her nap after lunch.’
‘Well, actually I would rather—’
‘I ought to figure out where I am,’ Tess interrupted and Joe, to his bafflement, found himself saying, OK, get your coat and I'll show you around town.
Joe had overslept, for the first time in his adult life. Strangely, the sound of someone else was less intrusive than the usual silence. It was as if, with the clatter and attendance of someone else in the house, Joe could sleep longer. He hadn't yet checked a single email. Nor had he shaved because the hot water had sputtered lukewarm in his shower. And when he walked into the kitchen, he was met with a reprimand for his vomiting dog and a change to the order of his day.
‘Joe?’ She was calling him. ‘Five minutes? Ten?’
Twenty would have suited him but he agreed to ten.
Tess had driven in daylight but her urgency to arrive at the destination had precluded any appreciation, or awareness even, of the new landscape. The drive had been arduous, it had all felt interminably uphill from London; even through the monotonous flatlands of the Fens and the plains around York, she'd still sensed she was climbing north. She had never driven such a distance and her eyes had continually darted to the fuel gauge. She needed the journey to be done on what she had in the tank. But having never been further north than Milton Keynes, she didn't know how to judge it. It had added stress to the journey, but not enough to warrant thoughts of retreat. ‘Space, Em,’ Tess had said, over and again. ‘Proper space.’
And this is the sentiment she is repeating today as she walks down the drive with Joe. Em in her buggy. Wolf loping circuitously alongside.
‘It wasn't the pollution or the second-hand aspect of London air and water,’ Tess tells him, ‘I just felt hemmed in. There are places – in the city – where the buildings are so tall and packed they appear to converge and steal a part of the sky.’
‘Living place plotted and pieced by subdividing space into a size that is simply