Chapter Three
The best way I’ve found to get myself through the last few months of the year has been by telling myself one thing: next year has to be better than this year.
I usually find New Year’s Eve quite depressing. It’s such an anticlimactic night, for so many reasons. I think the expectation of a new beginning being possible always kind of bums me out. People make New Year’s resolutions – promises to better themselves, to stop doing bad things, or at least start doing good ones. But why does that have to start on 1 st January? Why not better yourself today?
I make no such promises on New Year’s Eve. Well, not usually. This year I haven’t made a resolution, but I have been telling myself over and over that 2021 was going to be better. It’s going to be my year. I’m going to make it my year. Ha!
I suppose that’s what last night was all about – starting as I mean to go on. I’ll be putting an immediate stop to it now, as fast as you can sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’, which incidentally I hate too. I don’t know what it is about that song that brings me to tears.
I’ve pulled my long blonde hair into a bun on the top of my head, and I’ve retrieved my clothes from various locations in the bedroom.
Speaking of the bedroom – wow. I thought the bathroom was impressive but this room is something else.
It’s an old-fashioned room, but intentionally so, with lots of dark wood and retro patterns. But then it also has a modern streak, with plenty of gadgets, and a large TV mounted on the wall. Somehow the old and the new come together perfectly. The main star of the room though is the huge wooden fourposter bed at its heart. I didn’t notice it, when I slept in it last night, or when I was (presumably) awake in it last night.
I run my hands along the wood, admiring the shapes carved into it, and its silky-smooth finish, but as I get to the head of the bed I notice the scarves tied to each of the bedposts. Are they… are they for…?
Ah. Right, time to go.
I gather my things, slip on my heels and hurry into my coat before heading downstairs.
It’s a large, curved staircase that leads to a big, heavy front door.
‘I need to get going, see you later,’ I call out, about as casually as I can, but I’m freaked out.
Those were clearly restraints, on the bedposts, which is either a sex thing or something more sinister. I am so close to surviving 2020, so I really don’t want to get murdered, but I want it to be a sex thing even less. My idea of kinky is leaving the lights on.
‘Wait a second,’ I hear Rowan call from another room. I can hear a panic in his voice which only terrifies me further.
‘I can’t really hang around, I’ve got a party to get ready for tonight, as much as I’d love to stay for coffee,’ I lie.
‘I don’t think you’re going anywhere,’ Rowan says, standing in the doorway, holding a knife.
I do my best to ignore him and turn to the front door. I try to open it but it’s locked.
‘Can you let me out please?’ I ask politely, but I can’t quite hide how freaked out I am.
‘I can’t open that door,’ he replies.
I notice that Rowan is wearing an apron that says ‘prick with a fork’ on it – somehow this comedy apron only makes him seem more sinister.
‘Look, Rowan, I know you’re my boss,’ I start tactfully.
Well, the mistake people always make in horror movies is to freak out and scream and try to run away. I always wonder why more people don’t try and sweet-talk their way out of situations. My survival strategy is to pretend I’m cool with whatever is going on, and hope that makes it less appealing, but also gets me on-side. I really don’t want to be murdered today.
‘My name isn’t Rowan,’ he replies. ‘And I’m not your boss.’
Screw playing along.
‘OK, open this door, right now, or I’m calling the police,’ I say as I remove my phone from my pocket. I noticed it was flat when I was upstairs but he doesn’t know that.
‘I genuinely can’t open the door,’ he insists. ‘And… just… look out of the window.’
He says this in a way that sounds like it is designed to calm me down but it only serves to further freak me out.
‘Don’t move,’ I demand, still brandishing my phone, even though the only way it could help me right now would be if I threw it at him.
I pull back one of the curtains that hangs either side of the front door. My eyes are immediately drawn to the snow that is piled high against the glass. As I look above it, into the garden, and down the long driveway, I notice that I can’t really notice anything. All I can see is snow.
‘Are you telling me this door can’t open because of the snow?’ I reply. ‘Because doors open inwards. So, if you’ll just open it…’
‘I don’t have a key,’ he replies. ‘This isn’t exactly my house.’
‘This isn’t exactly your house or this isn’t your house?’ I reply.
No, I’m not sure what the difference is either, but they both sound bad.
‘Both, I guess,’ he replies.
I just stare at him for a moment.
‘Look, full disclosure time: My name is Chris, and I didn’t say I was your boss, I said I work for your boss.’
I glance around the hallway – I don’t know what for. Another door? A weapon? That’s when I notice the framed photo on the sideboard. It’s my boss, Richard, with his wife and kids. The four of them all dressed up in their warm clothes, smiling on a ski slope somewhere.
I glare at Chris as a horrible realisation occurs to me.
‘Are we in Richard’s house?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘Are we supposed to be in Richard’s house?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Not exactly or no?’ I reply. I can feel the blood boiling in my cheeks.
‘No,’ he admits.
‘Oh, God. I need to get out of here – how do I get out of here?’ I ask in a panic.
‘I only have a key for the garage door,’ he explains. ‘But–’
‘Oh my God,’ I say, cutting him off. I have one big horrible realisation a second before Chris reminds me himself. ‘Doesn’t Richard live on an island?’
‘A tidal island,’ he corrects me. ‘But yes.’
‘That’s where I am?’ I reply.
‘Don’t you remember, we got a train, then a taxi…’
‘Now that you mention it, yes,’ I reply. ‘But I didn’t realise I’d travelled to the sea .’
‘Look, come into the kitchen, I’ll explain everything,’ he says. ‘How we ended up here, our current predicament, and so on.’
‘Our current predicament?’ I repeat back to him.
‘Just come to the kitchen,’ he says. ‘I’ve made pancakes – everything is better with pancakes.’
I glance at the knife in his hand and realise it’s actually a pallet knife. I suppose the apron makes more sense now that I know he’s been cooking. My mind went to a dark place when I was thinking it was to protect his clothes from my blood.
I follow Chris along the hallway and into the kitchen. Yet another massive room, with all the mod cons, coupled with that country mansion charm.
‘My mum always said Agas make the best pancakes,’ he tells me as he starts another one. ‘Of course, she inherited hers, when my gran died and we moved into her house. We didn’t have Aga money.’
I really don’t have time for his cute small talk – how can he just stand there, chatting so casually, flipping pancakes without a care in the world.
‘So, we work together,’ I say, changing the subject. ‘But you’re not my boss?’
‘Did I say I was your boss?’ he replies curiously.
‘I’m sure you did,’ I say. ‘And I could have sworn you said your name was Rowan, not Chris…’
‘Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,’ he says with a casual shrug. ‘You could have misheard me? I’m your boss’s assistant.’
‘Oh God,’ I say – for maybe the millionth time. ‘I can’t believe I shagged my boss’s assistant… in his house… in his bed .’
‘Huh,’ Chris says thoughtfully. He sounds almost amused. ‘There’s so much to unpack there. Let’s start with the fact that, the part you seem to be the most upset with, in all of that, is the thought of sleeping with an assistant.’
‘Don’t you dare flip this around on me,’ I reply angrily. ‘You’re responsible for all of this. I really, really need to leave.’
‘And I keep telling you, you can’t,’ Chris says again.
He grabs the remote and flicks on the TV on the wall in the kitchen. Then he gets back to his pancakes.
I sit down at the island in the middle of the kitchen, as the gravity of what they are talking about on the news hits me. It turns out, while we were sleeping, the snowstorm that had been threatening to hit for days, has hit – and it’s much worse than they expected, especially here in the north.
‘Shit,’ I say softly.
They’re showing clips of people in different locations and it’s bad. It’s really bad. There’s no traffic. No public transport. People are stranded in various places – I am stranded here . In my boss’s house. Without permission to be here.
Richard Adams, whose house this is, is the big boss of the law firm I work for. I say firm, but that makes it sound smaller than it is, he started one of the first chains of law firms. He has offices all over the country so I’m not surprised at all that he has such a big house. Last night was our post-Christmas party – a classy affair at a luxurious 5-star hotel so, when I hit it off with Chris, why couldn’t we just check in there? I remember we went to a club afterwards, and I kind of remember ending up here, but the night gets blurrier as it goes on.
‘How did we end up here?’ I ask, hoping he knows.
‘Richard left me his car keys and asked me to drive his car back here and park his car in the garage. I was under strict instruction to drive back here today and lock it safely away. When I drove him to the party from here yesterday, he locked the door that leads from the garage to the house, and he put the key in the glovebox. I guess I took it out, when we were looking for somewhere to go, and we ended up back here.’
Chris tells this story like it’s no big deal.
‘So, his car is still in the city?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ Chris replies.
‘And I’m stuck on an island, in his house, with no way of going anywhere, and we’re not supposed to be here?’
Chris thinks for a second.
‘Well, yes,’ he says. ‘But look on the bright side – I didn’t drive while I was drunk!’
‘Where is Richard?’ I ask, ignoring his so-called silver lining.
‘He’s gone skiing with his family for New Year,’ Chris replies. ‘So at least the place is ours for a few days.’
‘Would you listen to yourself?’ I say, jumping to my feet. ‘We’re trespassing here.’
‘Only technically,’ Chris replies with a smile.
‘Chris, I’m a paralegal at Richard’s law firm – do you think he’s going to buy for a second that I believe this might be OK?’
Chris places a plate of pancakes down on the island in front of me.
‘Just calm down for a minute and eat these pancakes,’ he insists. ‘Look, thankfully Richard doesn’t have CCTV, and he’s away for a few days, and if we can’t leave here then he can’t get back. If there’s been a snowstorm he won’t be expecting me to have driven his car back this morning, so we’re off the hook. We just need to be out of here, with no sign we’ve been here, as soon as we can.’
I realise that we don’t have much choice, and that there’s nowhere else we can go, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. Why, why, why did I do this? This is why I never do anything like this, because this is a disaster.
‘We just need to make the best of it,’ Chris says. ‘It’s a big, sick house and it’s all ours. For now.’
I puff air from my cheeks and try to let out a little of my stress. I suppose he’s right but I’m still terrified we’re going to get in trouble.
‘We do need to make sure no one can tell we’ve been here though,’ he says.
‘Of course,’ I reply.
I squirt a generous amount of golden syrup on my pancakes and take an even more generous bite. OK, these are great.
‘With that in mind… we have a problem.’
My stress comes charging back – not that I’d let go of much of it.
‘What?’ I ask through my first – and probably only – mouthful of breakfast.
‘We had more to drink when we got back last night,’ he says. He places a bottle of whiskey on the island in front of me. About a quarter of it is gone.
‘I’ll stick with syrup, thanks,’ I say.
‘Oh, now who’s making jokes,’ he replies with a grin. But then his smile drops. ‘This is a problem though. We drank this. This was a new bottle. I just looked it up, to see where I could replace it.’
‘Don’t tell me you can’t buy it,’ I reply.
‘Oh, no, you can buy it,’ he says. ‘But it costs ￡1,600 a bottle.’
I place my head in my hands and massage my temples.
‘I’m guessing you can’t afford to replace that either?’ he says.
‘Nope,’ I reply. ‘And it will be even harder to do when I’ve lost my job. Or from prison .’
My God, this just gets worse and worse.
‘Any ideas?’ he asks.
‘Just, let me think for a second,’ I insist. ‘Just let me…’
How have I got myself into such a mess? How am I going to get myself out of it?’
‘I’ve got it,’ I say. ‘When my sister and I were younger we used to sneak sips from our mum and dad’s bar.’
‘Oh, how fancy and rebellious,’ he says sarcastically.
‘OK, first of all, it’s not fancy, it was just a wooden cupboard in the dining room that opened up when we had company or whatever, and all teenagers do stuff like that. Second of all, shut up, I’m trying to help.’
‘Sorry,’ he says, retreating. ‘Go on.’
‘We would top up bottles from other bottles,’ I explain. ‘To replace what we had drunk. You could only do so much with water, before you could tell it had been watered down, but if you moved it between bottles – especially from the less used ones…’
‘So, you’re saying we need to refill it?’ Chris says.
‘Yes, we just need to find the right thing to replace it with,’ I say.
‘OK, great, see now you’re getting into the spirit of things,’ he says with a smile.
‘No, clearly it was last night when I got into the spirit of things, today is about damage control. So, I’m going to drink this coffee, and then I’m going to set about seeing what I can find,’ I say, trying to be practical, because what choice do I have?
Tonight is New Year’s Eve and I was supposed to be going out with my friends. I’m just hoping the snow clears up as the day goes on. Then I can get a taxi to the train, a train home, and I can leave Chris here to sort out this mess. His mess.
There’s no way I’m letting him take me down with him.