The Unseen Read Free Page B

bright, south-facing corridor. As if the architect had thought the corridor more deserving of sunlight than the servants. Cat puts her bag down at the foot of the bed, surveys her new home. Plain, whitewashed walls, a small iron bed with a brass crucifix hanging above it; a bible on a woven straw chair; wash stand; threadbare curtains. There’s a narrow cupboard for clothes, and a patchwork quilt folded at the foot of the bed. With quick steps, Cat crosses the room, takes the crucifix from the wall and flings it out of sight beneath the bed. It hits the pot with a musical clang. Where they touched the smooth limbs of the metal cross, Cat’s fingers seem to sting. Rubbing her hands on her skirt in agitation, she shuts her eyes and fights off memories of an object so similar; of Jesus watching her solemnly from a high wall, oblivious to her torment. Then she stands at the window, looking out at the lane and a field of ginger cattle beyond. Such a wide empty space. She thinks of her friends in London, of Tess with her eager green eyes, always excited about something. The thought makes her ache. She has no address she can write to, no idea where Tess will end up. Tess might not be as fortunate as she, in finding another position. I am lucky , Cat tells herself, bitterly. She has been told it enough times, of late.
    Behind her, the door swings itself shut, nudged by some stray breeze. Cat freezes, every muscle pulling tight. She stands ramrod straight and tries to breathe when the air seems too thick all of a sudden. It’s not locked , she tells herself. Just shut. Not locked . She turns slowly to face the door, braced as if some horror waits there to be discovered. The small room’s walls bow inwards around her, clinging to her like wet cloth. Her knees shake, and she totters to the door like an old woman, certain as she turns the handle that she won’t be able to get out. The metal knob rattles in her hand as she turns it, and as she pulls the door open a few precious inches, she knows that it is her shivering that makes the handle shake. Her heartbeat tumbles like a waterfall, and she leans her face against the pitted wood of the door, waiting to feel calm. Never again , she thinks. Never, never, never .
    Hester arranges herself at the walnut desk in the front parlour, with the household ledger open in front of her. It’s the position she adopts for her weekly meeting with Mrs Bell to discuss menus and household accounts and the arranging of chimney sweeps, grocery deliveries and bicycle repair men. And she fancies it gives the right impression – feminine but businesslike; commanding yet approachable. The afternoon sun lies pooled and yellow on the oak floor, showing up the lazy dance of dust motes and houseflies. Hester flaps a hand irritably at a fly that comes too close. She finds their hairy bodies indecent, and hates the way they go dry and hard after death, lying down on the window sills in their final moments, crossing their bristly legs as if they expect to receive a last blessing. She is immensely relieved that she won’t have to sweep them up from now on. Mrs Bell has been hard pushed to keep up with the cleaning and the cooking both – heaven knows the woman can hardly be expected to work at speed. She wishes Mrs Bell wasn’t quite so very fat. The squeaking protest of the floor gave away herapproach as soon as she left the more robust stones of the basement, and she is hardly an elegant sight. A woman should be soft, of course, her outline one of curves rather than angles, but one had to draw the line somewhere. There is little point in Mrs Bell trying to keep it all in with a corset. Years ago she wore one, and it merely squeezed her flesh up and down from the middle, so that she could scarcely sit or turn her neck. Watching her manoeuvre had been both horrifying and impossible to resist.
    Hester can hear her now – creaking and thumping her way from the kitchen. She sits straighter in her chair, and