Chapter Five

      I consider writing him a note of apology but have almost no idea where to begin. I’m still not sure what happened. I want to believe that he is just an awful nightmare of a man, driven mad by a deep desire to insult me. But the more I think about it, the less it looks that way. I keep seeing my hand on his shoulder, as though I was giving him an injury. He was just defending himself, in a way I would probably understand better, if the imaginary intimacy argument was not so good.

      But unfortunately it is. It sounds like something I would do. I could probably build a castle in the sky out of nothing more than stones, given half the chance. And God knows I want to, considering the state of my life to date. I grew up in a two-bedroom house with four brothers, all my feelings crammed down to nothing to avoid pain. In truth, before I came here I thought my feelings had died. I thought giddiness and singing were for rich girls.

      I had no idea I could be happy.

      And happiness, once felt, is hard to get rid of. It stays with me even as I try to dismiss it as unreal. I get down on my hands and knees and scrub his floors, and when they are all gleaming I do them over again. I fight with his frightening garden, clearing away the weeds and debris inch by inch until my hands are sore and sometimes bleeding.

      But even as I do, even as I do my best not to tell myself over and over that he just thinks I am gross, or that some transgression of mine has driven him mad, it creeps up on me just the same. How else could it be when the very house I’m living in is him? Everything in it represents some aspect of his personality, and all of it is so fascinating that I can’t help looking and touching and exploring. I can’t help being interested in him all over again.

      And especially when I find his study.

      Oh, God, his study. Why did he have to leave the door unlocked? He never has before, but for some reason on Wednesday morning I find it standing ajar. Like a beckoning finger, I think, then quash that image. He probably just wants me to clean there, I tell myself, though I can see the problem with that rationale the second I let it out.

      It still means I end up in the room, looking at his things. Though really, can I blame myself? The room is a million times more intense than his parlour. It belongs to my dreams of dark towers owned by witches. Every shelf is heaving with extraordinary items, from antique pocket watches to stoppered bottles to actual honest-to-God glass eyeball collections. The latter I find behind a bust of some bearded old dude while I’m dusting.

      Not that I am really dusting at all.

      After a while I can admit that I’m just rifling through his things, like a thief in the temple of him. I mean, I barely know how to dust. Mostly I just move layers of it around, sneezing. More of it ends up on me than on the duster, and the room doesn’t look any better for my being in there. If anything it looks worse, because now all the stuff has been moved around. There’d been a certain order to it all – and now that I can see that, I wonder what his reaction will be.

      Death by firing squad for touching his things, I think.

      Yet even that doesn’t put me off. It has almost no chance of doing so, once I’ve noticed the book on his desk. A book that he is most likely reading? There’s no way I can resist that. I was beginning to think his love of literature was exaggerated. Twice I’ve found myself searching cupboards for all those words that must be waiting for me somewhere, and now here they are.

      The mere idea of restraining myself is ludicrous.

      But God knows, I try. With the end of my duster I try to push the book further under the newspaper he has folded over it. And when that doesn’t work, I do my best to imagine his reaction. I conjure up that apoplectic face and that voice filled with vitriol, then wait for it to subdue. I wait, but somehow it doesn’t seem to be holding me back. I always thought my thirst for literature would one day kill me, and this is pretty much proof.

      Though I swear, I only intend to take a peek. Just a little peek, but of course a little one leads to a bigger one, and a bigger one leads to me sitting down, and me sitting down leads to me greedily devouring the whole thing. Partly because Charles Dickens is ten times better than anyone says, and he drags me along despite my best intentions.

      But mostly because his is not the only writing in the book. There are other words, written in the margins. Harcroft’s words, written in the margins. I know they are his – I recognize the cramped, narrow writing from his notes. It always makes me think the strain of talking to me makes him press too hard on the paper, but now I can see it’s just how he is.

      I can see everything about how he is.

      His character is in every line, so that I can almost hear his voice in my head when I read. ‘I would possibly give your heartfelt opinions on the poor a little more credence if you had not divorced your wife for a teenager via a letter in the newspaper,’ one of the notes says, because apparently even Dickens does not escape his contempt.

      Or his withering analysis.

      His seven-paragraph screed on the final scene between Little Dorrit and Arthur is so excruciating that I think I have secondhand embarrassment for a fictional couple. My face gets hot, not just because he is more or less right but because this is what he thinks of two people having intimate contact. He thinks it seems like two birds squabbling over a wet crust. He thinks it an inexplicable turn in an otherwise just about passable story.

      God, he probably thinks my hand on his shoulder was an inexplicable turn in an otherwise just about passable story. I bet he thought I was ruled by sloppy, inconvenient emotions that he has no use for. Hell, I think I might have to agree. Here I am practically licking the words he wrote in a book, when I should be dusting or cleaning or bringing him a cup of tea. At the very least I need to be doing something other than snooping in this desperate manner.

      If only to spare me the expression on his face when he catches me.

      He looks even worse than last time. His lip curl is so exquisite it hardly seems like one. You could probably call it a pout and paint a fancy picture of it, though it would need a rather ominous title. And Now the Hour Cometh, I think. But then I want to explain my heinous actions – really quickly. Before he decides to murder me.

      Is he going to murder me?

      It certainly appears that way when he just stands there staring, without speaking, for what feels like half an hour. By the time he does say something my insides are practically in a knot. I have to wrench them apart before I can do what he asks me to, though most of me would rather not. ‘I think you had better follow me,’ he says, and all I can think is: oh, my God, now I’m going to meet my doom for repeatedly daring to transgress against him in a bird-squabbling-over-a-crust manner.

      It even seems that way, as I mimic his long, slow pace. Like I’m taking part in my own funeral march, I think, then want to stop and run in the other direction.

      Doubly so when we get to the door.

      For some reason the wood is painted red, which never bodes well in this situation. Not when every other door in the house is a normal, natural colour. Behind this one he probably has a room full of whips and chains – or maybe the bodies of his former wives. Why else would it be locked? He has to take out a big bunch of keys to open it, and they are not the kind to reassure someone like me. They are heavy and rusty-looking, on a big ring that he has to turn and turn to get to the right one.

      And the right one is a curling knot of wrought iron. It makes me think of spooky stories about haunted mansions, and even more so when he fits it into the lock. It