Chapter 2 #2
I was idly weighing how hard fin-dom could possibly be as a career choice when I heard footsteps on the stairs. I quickly flipped the stack of letters over and forced a smile. Mother drifted in, freshly showered, wearing her tatty old Chinese silk dressing gown.
“You literally have your own house, why is your robe here? Wait, which bathroom did you use?”
“You have fabulous bed hair this morning, darling,” Mum said, standing behind me to run her hands through it.
“Technically, this is sofa hair.”
She kissed me on the forehead. “I love it when the sun catches the red. It reminds me of your father.”
Sadness, or guilt, or something like it, stabbed through me, and I craned up to peck her on the cheek.
“Ooh, coffee,” Mum said, launching herself towards the pot.
She shouted up the hallway for Aunty Karma to come down, then plonked herself in her usual spot, sharing the corner next to me.
The lights above our heads flickered. Mum fingered the mail.
I picked it up and lobbed the whole stack onto the counter by the butler’s sink before she could spot the notice from HMRC.
She reached for the coffee pot and poured the steaming black liquid into her cup.
I told her about fixing the toilet as I cut another piece of toast into soldiers.
“Good for you, darling! That’s a few pennies saved.”
“Pennies?” I was so indignant I put down my knife. “I’ve saved us hundreds of pounds.”
“Congratulations, darling!”
Aunty Karma appeared in the doorway in a white terry towelling dressing gown.
“And whose robe is that?” I asked.
Karma selected the chair opposite Mother. “What are we congratulating?”
“William,” Mother said, pouring out the coffee. “He managed the toilet last night, all by himself.”
Aunty Karma frowned.
“Six hours it took me,” I said, dipping my soldier into my egg. “I didn’t think I was ever going to winkle it out.”
Aunty Karma grimaced. “Do you think it’s your diet?”
Mother laughed. When I explained I’d spent my night coaxing a dead wood pigeon out of a two-hundred-year-old S-bend, Aunty Karma howled, too, which made Mother start up. It was like an incontinence commercial. Then something caught Aunty Karma’s eye, and she stopped.
“Is that a camera?” She folded in on herself, shielding her face.
I glanced up at the corner of the ceiling.
“They’ve set them up all over the house. Don’t worry. They’re not turned on yet. No one’s filming you in your nightie.”
“Every camera is filming, if someone wants it to be filming.” Karma shuffled around to turn her back to it. “You never know who could be watching.”
I sat there in astonishment, toast soldier poised in mid-air.
“Aunty Karma, you don’t have to tell me, of course. I make no judgement. Who among us hasn’t sinned? But… are you on the run?”
Mum rolled her eyes and cut into a grapefruit.
Aunty Karma shook her head. To have seen her the previous night, at her paganest witchiest, you would never have guessed my mother’s best friend was a weekend warrior of the dark web.
To be honest, Mum and I normally took extreme care to avoid any topic that might bring up the subject.
Everyone’s tedious when they’re on their soapbox.
Ask me whether Brandon Osmond’s A Kingdom of Vipers and Valour series is better epic fantasy than D.
R. R. Fanshaw’s Knights-Errant trilogy, and you’ll see what I mean.
“If you’d seen the things I’ve seen online,” Aunty Karma said, “you’d be more protective of your privacy. Someone could easily hack into the system. Someone could be watching us right now.”
“I wish you’d told me earlier. I’d have done my hair.”
“You can laugh, William, but—”
I held up a hand. It was time to change the subject or we’d be here all day. “The correct form of address is ‘my lord,’ if you please, Aunty Karma.”
“You cheeky little upstart, I used to change your nappies! You might be built like a shire pony, William Winters, but you’re not too big to put over my knee.”
“In front of the cameras? What would that footage be worth on the dark web? If it’s enough to rewire the west wing, I’m game.”
“William, really!” Mum said, horrified.
“Needs must, Mother.”
Aunty Karma shook her head. “I don’t know how you can voluntarily live with cameras everywhere like this.”
“I’m not. I’m moving up into the folly this afternoon. There are no cameras up there.”
“The folly?” Mother said, her eyes glazing. I hadn’t had the heart to tell her until now. I knew how she’d be. Avoiding her gaze, I went to dip my soldier but discovered I’d run out of dippy egg.
“Do we have any more soft-boiled eggs?”
“Why the folly, darling?” Mum asked.
I sighed. “They need my bedroom for filming.”
The folly was the one cool thing the ninth baron had built.
It was an Italianate tower on the eastern side of Buckford Hall, rising two floors above the rest of the house.
It had been my father’s study. It was, in fact, a bit of a bachelor pad.
Over three floors, it had all the essentials—a bed, a library, a kettle, and an oak desk with a genuine secret drawer.
The top floor was a belvedere with a spectacular view. “Has anyone seen Bramley?”
The kitchen lights flickered and stuttered again.
“Why don’t you move into the Dower House with me? Think of the fun we could have! We could stay up all night playing whist, charades, Scrabble—”
“I think you’ve answered your own question, Mother dearest.”
“Dungeons and Dragons, then? We never did finish our last campaign—”
“Bramley!”
Mum reached across to muss my hair. “Golly, I must have been such a terrible mother.”
I shrugged her off.
“It’s vital everything goes smoothly,” I said, and caught myself glancing over at the stack of mail, trying not to imagine the vast sums of money the letter said I needed to find and the consequences if I didn’t.
“We need this show to be a success. If I’m living on-site, I can make sure everything’s working exactly as it should.
No clogged plumbing, dicky electrics, or falling masonry. ”
Mum wasn’t giving up. “Why not move into the old servants’ quarters instead? You’d have a lot more space.”
“They need it for filming. The cast who are playing servants will be living in it. Bramley!”
I knew why Mum didn’t want me moving into the folly.
It had been my father’s lair, and we’d left it untouched these past three years.
For my mother, I think it was a kind of memorial.
For me, there simply hadn’t been much reason to go in there.
It stirred up too many emotions I didn’t want to feel. But now, needs must.
“You bellowed, my lord.” Bramley stood in the kitchen doorway, covered in cobwebs and dust.
“Good God, man, have you been wrestling the ghosts?”
“I’ve been in the cellar, my lord. I fear the television equipment might be overloading the circuitry.”
As he spoke, the lights flickered off, then on, then off again—which was how they stayed. This was not good news.
“Oh dear,” Mum said.
I stood, my breakfast apparently over. “Well, at least you can stop worrying about the cameras, Aunty Karma.”
Bramley cleared his throat. “Shall I get the electrician up from the village, my lord?”
“Why are you so obsessed with calling the local tradesmen?” I muttered, heading for the cellar and certain electrocution. “Are you on commission or something?”