One
Climbing the stone steps towards the front door, Lana could hear shouting coming from inside the house. ‘Loyalty! That’s rich, coming from an adulteress,’ bellowed a male voice.
Lana frowned. What was he doing here on a Thursday morning? Mr Ellis, the male half of her employers. The half she was wary of. The selfish half. For several months, Lana had suspected his wife, Emily, was having an affair. The hand-washing basket was always full of La Perla lingerie; there were too many Moyses Stevens bouquets delivered without gift cards. And most women don’t pack their passport for a yoga weekend in Edinburgh with the girls – not yet anyway.
Lana paused, keys in hand, listening to Mr Ellis’s sneering tone. ‘I used to think you had taste. What happened? Were all the interesting men uninterested in you?’
Emily didn’t miss a beat. ‘At least he showed an interest in me! Which is more than you’ve done for years.’ The last word was dragged out, as if to emphasize the passage of time. ‘I sometimes think you don’t realize someone actually lives in this house! You just drop by for a shower and a change of clothes. Thank God I’ve got Svetlana for company.’
Hearing her name, Lana’s hand shook; the keys fell, jangling onto the stone doorstep, and she dropped to her knees. The tiles were slick with a hoar frost, and cold dampness seeped through her trousers. The shrill sound of an argument still rang out from within. Lana had plenty of experience of marital spats and considered them – like mobs of tipsy football supporters – a hazard best avoided, but she had never heard this couple argue. That would require them being in the same room, which didn’t happen often.
With a shiver, she scooped up the keys and weighed up her options: come back later or let herself in and skirt around the drama.
‘Maybe if you did something effing interesting, I would notice you,’ scoffed Mr Ellis, still at full volume.
His wife was on cue. ‘If you don’t find me interesting, why do you care if someone else does?’
Ouch! Lana could feel the venom in those spiteful words – arrows intended to pierce the heart. She dried the keys on the front of her sweatshirt as a bitter winter wind sliced through her trousers, making her legs feel like they’d been dipped in snow. She gritted her teeth and inserted the key, turning it slowly, quietly, like a teenager letting herself in long past curfew. She nudged the door open a crack and crept in sideways. Her entrance coincided with a fresh salvo of expletives from the sitting room – Mr Ellis was not in a forgiving mood.
Two West Highland Terriers scampered towards Lana, claws tapping on the polished parquet flooring, ears flat against their heads, tails tucked under their tummies. Wondering briefly if there’d been a time-out to feed the dogs, she knelt and stroked their wiry hair. ‘It’s all right, my lovelies,’ she whispered.
‘Face facts, Emily,’ shouted Mr Ellis. ‘You caused this.’
Lana pictured Mr Ellis scowling at his wife; no wonder Emily had sought refuge with another man. Lana considered him arrogant, serious, and downright rude, the sort of person you would snigger at, if you saw him trip and spill a takeaway coffee down his shirt. Whereas, if Emily did that, there would be a crush of bystanders, tissues in hand, competing to help. Lana only saw him on the occasional Saturday morning. His favourite place to spend Saturdays – and every other day – was the office. She tiptoed down the hallway, listening to Emily’s raised voice, surprisingly loud for someone only five-foot-three inches tall. ‘Stop blaming me! I didn’t fire you, Paul did.’
Fired! Lana stopped instantly, as if a policeman had shouted ‘freeze’. Her heart was beating faster than rain drumming against her greenhouse roof in a winter storm. So, that’s why he wasn’t at the office. Was he going to be here all day? Every day? Getting underfoot, messing up rooms she’d just tidied, and demanding cups of coffee as if she was a vending machine. She had a fleeting memory of her school days and a strict supply teacher, who’d taught her German for a month when lovely Mrs Ambrose was off sick. The replacement teacher made the class learn all the vocabulary from the “supermarket” chapter of the textbook, rather than teaching them nursery rhymes and carols. Lana could still sing the first verse of ‘Silent Night’ in German, but she also still knew the vocabulary from die selbstbedienungsladen . All of it.
An alarming question popped into her mind. Could they still afford her wages? She stepped closer to the sitting room and leaned towards the wall. The dogs moved with her as if joined by elastic.
‘But you caused it,’ snapped Mr Ellis. ‘Paul loved spelling that one out.’
‘Paul fired you because you’ve had a running feud with him for years.’
There was a bitter laugh from Mr Ellis. ‘If you don’t stop dancing on that pinhead, you’ll fall off. You try working with that stuck-up prat! Oh, wait, but you’ve never worked, have you? Well, now’s your chance. I’m setting up on my own. Paul’s spread rumours, and the headhunters won’t touch me. You went to secretarial college, you’re hired.’
‘No way!’ screamed Emily. ‘I’m not working for you .’
‘And here we are, back at go. Effing Paul. So, we fire Svetlana, and replace her with a PA.’
Lana’s stomach lurched. Thoughts were whipping through her mind so fast she couldn’t separate them. It was like trying to catch one of those white butterflies that threatened her brassicas, chasing it around the plants, snapping her hands in vain. What was her notice period; what would she do about Janet; where would they live? And who was this Paul they kept mentioning?
‘You will not fire her. Lana has worked here for fifteen years, she has earned this family’s loyalty,’ shouted Emily. Lana crossed herself as Emily lowered her voice. ‘I will not lead my mother’s life. I’m not running this house like Mary does. Her housekeeper only comes in a few hours a week.’
Grasping her lifeline, Lana concluded she had heard enough. A constant refrain from her childhood was playing on a loop in her mind: Eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves . She retraced her steps – the dogs following obediently – opened the front door and slammed it shut, then raised her voice and cried out, ‘Tosca, Floria, come.’ At her feet, the dogs cocked their heads to one side and whined, their tails giving a half-hearted, confused wag.
Emily burst into the entrance hall, the folds of a heavy silk dressing gown flapping around her legs, and like a ghost, glided silently up the stairs. Heedful that Mr Ellis might pursue his wife, Lana grasped two collars and trooped downstairs.
She let the dogs into the garden, flicked the kettle on, her mind spinning with the implications of what she’d overheard. Securing another position as a housekeeper wouldn’t be tricky, but finding one that provided “ all found” accommodation – rent, utility bills, and council tax paid by the employer – in a flat in Knightsbridge, within her notice period? Lana wasn’t obsessed with the area, but Lana didn’t live alone, and the other resident of the basement flat in Ovington Square had a superglue-like attachment to the Knightsbridge postcode. Which was why, despite Mr Ellis and his mean-spirited insistence that, irrespective of the temperature, her heating only went on for six hours a day, Lana had stayed for fifteen years. Should she be concerned, or was her loyalty about to be repaid?
She marched to the freezer, flicking her thick, black-framed glasses off her face. Lana had been short-sighted since childhood, but her close-up vision was perfect. She sometimes questioned if that would still be true if she had followed her dream to become a PA, and for the last thirty years stared at computer screens rather than the inside of toilet bowls. The cord securing her glasses tugged against her neck, reminding her she was also shackled... to Janet.
It might be a Thursday, but no doubt Mr Ellis would expect a cooked breakfast. She removed a neatly wrapped package, recognizing her own writing, “ Breakfast X 1 ”, and briefly wishing it said “ X2 ”; if the Ellis’s son Alex was here, Lana would be serving breakfast informally in the kitchen, and the couple would have been more discreet. Acrimony would have been limited to Alex and his father, and their rows resembled English summer storms - occurring frequently, often being savage and unpleasant, but short-lived.
She stared at the frosty air, seeing not cartons of homemade soup and casseroles, but the basement flat behind the wall against which the freezer rested. Would Mr Ellis alter her package? Was this the opportunity he had been waiting for to evict her?
A warning beeping noise sounded – was that prescient ? Her chest tightened as if someone was kneeling on it. What if she did lose this job? To rent a one-bed flat in Chelsea would cost more than her monthly salary. She banged the freezer door shut, telling herself not to fret – she had her own guardian angel. For the last fifteen years, Emily had paid someone to wash her hair twice a week; those manicured hands weren’t going anywhere near a bottle of bleach.
Half an hour later, Lana was puffing her way up the stairs with a loaded tray. Although the same age and height as Emily, with a penchant for sweet treats rather than exercise, Lana was stockier and unfit. She rapped on the dining room door.
‘Come in,’ said Emily in a tight-clipped voice.
Inside, Emily had her back to Lana, but was sitting unnaturally upright, as if someone had warned her there was a wasp crawling over her back. Mr Ellis was at the other end of the table, his face puce-coloured, his lips drawn and tight. Both were rigid with tension, sitting like a pair of dogs waiting for the fetch command after their favourite toy has been thrown. Lana tried to muster some sympathy – imagine discovering your spouse was having an affair and losing your job the same day – but she couldn’t. She’d never been married, nor lost her job, and it was tough to empathize with someone so haughty.
Keeping her eyes down, Lana strode to the sideboard. She heard Mr Ellis ask if there were any weekend commitments, but without a hint of interest in his voice, and Emily started talking about her Pilates class in a forced jolly lilt. Lana picked up the cooked food, thinking to herself, all three of us are trying to appear natural, as if we’re pushing a luggage trolley through an airport’s “nothing to declare” channel, hoping not to be searched.
Lana put a plate in front of Mr Ellis, her thanks for delivering an unplanned cooked meal, a sharp sotto voce: ‘Tell her, Emily. You’re not being fair.’
From the other end of the table, Emily spoke in an equally hushed voice. ‘ Not now .’
Lana put a platter of fruit – mango, pineapple, de-stoned cherries, a sprinkling of berries – beside Emily. ‘Thank you, Svetlana,’ said Emily, without glancing up.
‘Emily.’
‘Not now , Mark!’ snipped his wife.
The housekeeper picked up a mug of green tea.
‘We’ve always been good employers, and I’m not about to take a leaf out of the bank’s book,’ said Mr Ellis. ‘You may think you are being kind, but you are not. Tell her, or I will!’
The mug wobbled, hot tea slopped over Lana’s wrist, and she flinched. Today, she was going to lose her job. Today. And this was Mr Ellis’s idea of being kind. Hateful man. She set the mug on Emily’s coaster, then picked it up and used the end of her apron to wipe the handle dry.
‘NOW!’ snapped Mr Ellis.
Beside Lana, there was a faint grunting noise. ‘All right,’ said Emily. ‘Svetlana ...’
Lana wiped her hands on her apron and crossed her arms, feeling her heart hammering against her wrist. A blonde coiffed head turned her way, the face arranged into a strained smile. Emily was toying with her linen napkin, rubbing it through her fingers as if testing the material. ‘We need to have a chat about your position,’ she said.
Lana tried to dislodge her tongue. It was stuck to the roof of her mouth, which was so dry it felt as if someone had taken a sponge and mopped out all the moisture. Her voice came out in a croak. ‘Now?’
‘When we’ve finished in here,’ said Mr Ellis.
Of course, thought Lana, he hadn’t meant right now. He’d keep her sweating – why let your housekeeper’s life interrupt breakfast? She stalked to the sideboard and collected the tray; fifteen years of loyalty didn’t seem to buy you much slack from the Ellis family!