Freya North 3-Book Collection: Secrets, Chances, Rumours

And she sat down and looked around her and thought, how did I come to be here?

How on earth did I come to be here?

Chapter Two (#u06c02d94-66a4-5805-89c8-0183a4ad55c2)

Joe could hear her, clattering around. He listened to his furniture being moved and he wondered if he minded. When all went quiet he reckoned she was making the beds – he'd heard the yawn of the linen cupboard door being opened repeatedly, as if she was searching for the best thread-counts. The other house-sitters had always come so prepared. Some had come positively armoured, especially those from agencies. They never seemed much interested in his offer of a home from home – instead, they turned up bringing portable habitats with them – boxes and suitcases of pillows, towels, lamps, TVs. One young man brought his own cutlery and a bespoke wooden container for it, the Scottish lady brought her own armchair and Joe doubted that she ever sat in one of his. It was as if they pitied Joe or disapproved of the contents on offer and so constructed their self-contained pods within the fabric of his home. Which was probably why they were happy to move on – however long they stayed, the charms of the old house never seduced them and Joe ended up thanking them far more than they thanked him.

He had helped Tess in with her bulging suitcase and numerous bags that appeared to contain solely the accoutrements required by a toddler. There was an iron on the passenger seat of her car and a box on the back seat billowing wafts of the Cleveland Gazette. She told him it contained two bone-china cups and saucers and would he mind if she put them in the kitchen. They were her Grandma's, apparently, and made tea taste its best. The footwell in the back was taken up with carrier bags full of vinyl LPs, which Joe said she was welcome to unpack in his sitting room. There were also three taped-up cardboard boxes in her boot. He'd offered to bring these in – but she'd said, they'll stay there, thank you very much, as if they were in disgrace.

That was a couple of hours ago. He hadn't seen her since, but she'd been calling down to him at various intervals. Checking it was OK for her to swap the lampshade in ‘her’ room for the one in the top bedroom. And did he mind if she brought in the bedside drawers from the other bedroom. And could she move the single bed in Em's room through to the furthest bedroom because the iron bedstead concerned her and the paint was probably lead-based. And if she moved the Persian rug from that furthest bedroom into Em's room, would that be all right? Because then the iron bed wouldn't put unsightly dints into it and anyway what a shame for such a lovely rug to be stashed away in an unused bedroom. Joe really didn't need the details, or the rationale, and in the end he shouted from the bottom of the staircase, mi casa su casa– sorry, but I really need to crack on with my work. And she called down, oh! sorry! And he called up, don't worry. And she called down, OK! sorry again! And he didn't call back up. But he found that he did wait until he heard the floor-boards creaking again before he closed the study door.

He saw to his emails, organized his diary, looked through his file and then went to sit at his drawings. It was always the same when he next looked at his watch. He tapped it, held it to his ear as if it had malfunctioned and could not possibly be telling the correct time. It was gone nine o'clock and it was very quiet upstairs. Even in the silence, another's presence in the house was palpable and a few minutes later it became apparent that it was so quiet upstairs because actually she was downstairs, in the kitchen. Help yourself, he'd said earlier and he assumed she was now doing just that. He was tempted to wander in on the pretext of a cup of tea and was about to do so when a glance at his drawings and their glaringly overdue incompleteness drew him to his desk.

But then she started singing.

He wished she wouldn't.

Not that she couldn't hold a tune.

Just that it was a distraction.

He switched the radio on and tuned it to the World Service and turned the volume down so the voices sounded hushed, reverential, as if in a library. He concentrated on the plans in front of him, his initial freehand drawings on torn scraps Blu-tacked around the large sweep of graph paper; notes and measurements and calibrations pinned around his desk.

It was odd having young female energy in the house. It was unexpectedly compelling, really. New and different. But of what concern was it to him? He'd be away, mostly. France at the beginning of next week. London. Possibly the Far East later in the year. A trip to California in the late autumn. Various interludes in Belgium in between.

Concentrate.

It's only the house sitter finding her way.

Tess was making an omelette when she caught sight of a photo of Joe propped against a milk jug on the Welsh dresser. She had wondered whether she should offer to cook for him too, or if that was more a housekeeper's job than a house-sitter's. She decided not to. Anyway, there were only two eggs left and he looked like a three-to-four-in-an-omelette type of bloke. She'd make him a cup of tea instead, builder's tea not gnat's pee, and leave it outside his study door, knock once and then disappear. Perhaps she'd make it in one of her own teacups. Or would that be rude? Would that suggest she thought his crockery not good enough? Or was she being slightly ridiculous? First she needed to have her food and a sit-down. Her back was nagging – she'd never driven such a distance and then manoeuvred so much furniture before unpacking her life to make things just right for Em, now sound asleep in her new room. She took her plate to the table, picking up the photo of Joe on her way. He was younger then; his hair not so flecked. Bare-chested and tanned, wearing baggy khaki shorts, work boots and a hard hat. There was a bridge in the background. San Francisco, perhaps. He was smiling, looked ecstatic, actually. Probably grinning at a girlfriend, Tess thought. They probably swapped positions and somewhere there's a picture of her in front of this bridge too. Is it San Francisco? Perhaps not – isn't the Golden Gate Bridge a reddish colour? She put the photo back. Glanced at a postcard in pidgin English from a Giselle Someone, postmarked Brasil a couple of years ago. Tess liked to browse recipes while she ate but there appeared to be no cookery books, only an old National Geographic on top of the pile of unopened letters and discarded post on the kitchen table. She tapped Joe's chest in the photo. Bet you're one for the ladies, she thought.

She sat down and gazed at the food on her plate. She marvelled at how Em had been so compliant, eaten well, welcomed sleep so amiably for once. Tess smiled at the thought of her daughter snuggled down for a really good night's sleep. In a house. Fingers crossed she'd sleep through tonight – Tess knew she was in desperate need of a few hours’ total rest herself and she wasn't sure how Joe would react to Em's midnight or dawn chorus. Or Wolf for that matter. She felt she'd done a good job making Em's room homey and suitable; finding a low bookshelf in one of the attic rooms on which she'd arranged Em's toys invitingly. She'd vacuumed the Persian rug and placed it centrally so that Em had somewhere warm on top of the bare floorboards on which to play. She'd tacked up the paper border she'd bought ages ago but had never fixed to the rented walls in London. Funny how she'd thought to bring it with them. She'd used sellotape, lightly because she planned to ask Joe if she could do it properly, with paste. She'd ask him tomorrow because by tomorrow she suspected there'd be a lot more to ask him. She'd make a list in bed.

The omelette tasted so good. She hadn't eaten all day because her car had needed fuel more than she had and there had only been money for the one of them. She thought she was possibly romanticizing the omelette – she'd been so hungry even stale bread would have tasted ambrosial. She looked around her and realized she liked this kitchen so much because all the stuff was owned, it all belonged to someone, it belonged here; it hadn't been bought on the cheap for tenants past, present and future. Mi casa su casa, he'd said. Don't mind if I do, Tess said under her breath as she took her plate to the sink. Conversely, she also sensed that she could relax because if the phone went in this place, it wouldn't be for her. And no one could come thumping on this front door for her because they couldn't know that she was here. She was a lifetime away from London and it was a relief. As she boiled the kettle, she thought how she was making tea for Joe and a new life for herself.

She hovered outside his door. She could hear a radio. She didn't even know what he did for work, what it was that took him away for periods long enough to require a house-sitter. She didn't even know his surname. She put the mug down and knocked gently, twice. Heard huffing and panting and was taken aback for a moment before she remembered Wolf.

It was not yet ten o'clock; too early to turn in though she was fantastically tired. However, recalling how the bath had taken an age to run for Em, Tess decided to start it now. While it was filling, she would make a final check of the car. It looked a little lonely, very small, out there on the gravel drive.

‘Thank you for bringing us here in one piece and on a single tank,’ she whispered. In the boot, the three cardboard boxes. She poked one accusatorily, as if it was animate. There was probably little call for the contents up here in Saltburn but Tess could not have left them behind. She might hate them and level blame against them, but there was a little bit of her inside them too. She dug around in the two smaller boxes, retrieved a pot from one and a tube from the other. ‘Made With Love,’ she muttered, as if reading the label for the first time. She was about to twist the lid off one, a moisturizer, but resisted when she remembered the twelve-month shelf life once opened. Anyway, she'd packed a tub of Nivea which was still almost full. The thought of it brought her grandmother to mind. She'd have given Tess short shrift. Put Tunisian what on my face? she'd have said. How much do you charge for one of those tubes, did you say? Good God, girl, she'd have chided, what's wrong with Nivea?

What's wrong with Nivea indeed? If only I'd asked myself that question in the first place. Suddenly Tess was tearful. One of her earliest memories was deep in that iconic navy-blue pot. Her grandmother's face slathered with the thick, white, gently-scented cream, used in such quantity and applied in such a way that it coated her face in little peaks like a miniature mountain range, like Christmas cake icing. Her skin had been very good, Tess reminisced and, looking back into the boxes in the boot of her car, she liked to think that her grandmother might have liked her hand-cream at least. Made with love. Too bad she didn't live long enough to see any of it. But there again, thank God she hadn't lived to witness the current mess of it all.

I miss her still.

Tess shut the boot gently and walked back to the house, quickening her pace as she wondered if she'd been lost in thought long enough for the bath to have overflowed.

Inside, however, the pipes were still clanging and protesting at having to deliver another bath and the water was retching in fits and starts out of the tap so Tess went for a walk through the house again. At last, she could take time to run her fingers over things, see what books were on the shelves, find out which channels were available on the TV, feel the heaviness of the curtains, sniff at the fireplace to tell whether it was real or gas, test out all the chairs and sofas and find the one most comfortable to her. She pressed her face against windowpanes to look outside from every window even though it was dark.

The house really was immense – not just because she was conditioned to thin stud-walls subdividing the meagre space characterizing the London rental market. Here, the doors were definitely wider, the furniture larger, ceilings higher, floorboards broader, stairs longer. She could imagine turning cartwheels in the expansive hallway when she had the place to herself. She wouldn't need to talk in a whisper when Em went to bed, she could sing at the top of her voice and not wake her.

Sitting curled in a cavernous armchair in the grander sitting room, Tess invited the notion of a dog sprawled at her feet – even if it was to be a giant, mangy old thing. She knew little about dog breeds, but she very much doubted that Wolf was anything other than a mutt. Surely no one would actively breed dogs to look like that? There was something of the greyhound about him, but with none of the requisite grace in either conformation or movement. His colouring suggested German Shepherd but his coat was fashioned along his back and the top of his head with the wiry curls of a terrier, while limp-long stringy sections, which alluded more to an old mop than any breed, hung down from everywhere else. He had one blue eye and one brown, which gave his face a lopsided look enhanced further by him being apparently unable to keep his tongue in his mouth. It was like a flap of chewed leather always lolling out on one side or the other. His owner said he was harmless. Perhaps it would be a good experience for Em too.

Tess thought, why have a dog if he has to leave him here so frequently? And then she thought, why choose a dog who looks sewn together in big clumsy blanket-stitch from a melange of various elements animate and inanimate? Do owners grow to look like their dogs – or aren't they meant to be attracted to breeds that look like them? Well, there was little physical correlation between Wolf and Joe – the dog really was as eye-poppingly ugly as his owner was easy on the eye. Opposites attract, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, don't judge a book – Tess ran through her grandmother's sayings as she left the sitting room to check on her bath. Then she hovered at the top of the stairs, wondering whether to call out goodnight, two flights down.

What's he doing in there? Why is he working at this time on a Friday night? Why does he need a house-sitter anyway – what is it that takes him away? Shall I call down – is that the correct etiquette?

She ran the palm of her hand over the newel post as though it were a priceless orb. There was no female presence in this house, that was for sure – the dust and drabness attested to that. Hence the need for me, Tess thought, grateful.

As she soaked in the bath, alternating one big toe and then the other up inside the tap which was a long-held habit she found meditative, she wondered if running away hadn't just been easy, but actually a very good thing to have done. It was going to be a better life for Em, with all this space and fresh air. Tess told herself she was hurting no one and no one would miss her, really. She'd texted a couple of her friends and told them she'd be in touch, that she was going away for a bit, added the mandatory Txx so that they wouldn't worry. Tamsin would worry but she'd known Tess long enough to trust her and root for her. They'd probably assume she was going to Spain on a long overdue visit to her father. Or up to Edinburgh to see her older sister. She sank down in the bath, up to her chin. It was hot and her tired limbs needed it. She'd used a squirt of her shampoo for bubbles because she hadn't wanted to help herself to Em's all-natural, camomile-scented hypo-allergenic bath-soak with added baby-sensitive moisturizer. Tess's supermarket own-brand shampoo suited her needs just fine. Appley and fresh and satisfyingly foamy. What a day. All that driving. Here now – a new place. Unlike anywhere she'd ever been. Unlike anything she'd ever done. Sometimes – especially when she'd been low or trapped awake by her worries – she'd wondered about such houses but hadn't really expected them to exist.

When she finally climbed into bed half an hour later, she started to worry about the enormity of what she'd done, that she was in a huge house in the middle of nowhere and no one knew she was here apart from the man downstairs tucked away in his study. How stupid to have thought she could drive away from London and leave her secrets in the flat in Bounds Green. Then she told herself she was too tired to think but tired enough for her thoughts to run wild. Be sensible.

She turned on the bedside light, planning to formulate a list of queries for Joe, but caught sight of her mobile phone. The signal was scant. No messages or missed calls. She gave but a moment's thought before removing the SIM card and cutting it in half with blunt nail scissors. Then she turned off the light and lay in the darkness, soothed by the stillness. Eventually her eyes made their acquaintance with the shadows. Wardrobe. Drawers. Standard lamp from Em's room. Mirror from the back bedroom. Painting of a seaside pier. Lloyd Loom chair brought down from one of the attic rooms. Today's clothes heaped by the door to wash tomorrow. Across her body, under the bedclothes, the soft throw she'd brought with her which Tamsin had given her on her birthday. Just before she fell asleep Tess remembered the utility room. A whole room devoted to a washing machine and tumble dryer and ceiling-mounted airer with its pulley system. Off that was the boot room – just for footwear and coats. Imagine that. The lap of luxury. A house that had everything. Buckingham Palace had nothing on this. Bounds Green was far far away. This wasn't running away! This was a new start – a sensible thing to do. An excellent idea! Brave, too. Tess felt utterly liberated.

Joe went to bed stiff and tired. He'd worked until two in the morning. He climbed halfway up to the second floor, observed how the doors were closed on the rooms that were empty, but were ajar on the rooms now occupied. He liked that. Usually house-sitters barricaded themselves in at night. This woman was open. Then he told himself to stop being soft – the baby hadn't slept on her own before and the mother would need to hear her in an instant. And as he tucked down on the floor below, he thought, where there's a baby and a mother – then there's most usually a father, isn't there? And he wondered, for a moment, who he was. And where. And why wasn't he here with them? Was he on the scene? Or was he the reason Tess had suddenly turned up on his doorstep, babe in arms?

A girl and her tot in his house was one thing, a whole bloody family unit would be quite another. Boyfriends lounging around and playing man of the house were not on the job description. And then he touched upon the fact that little over twenty-four hours ago, he had not known this woman at all. And he still didn't. Yet here she was, without references, without even giving him her surname. Here she was in his house having brought her life into his home.

She can make changes to a couple of the rooms, he thought, but that's it.

Chapter Three (#u06c02d94-66a4-5805-89c8-0183a4ad55c2)

Joe came into the kitchen, still fugged from a heavy sleep. He was wearing pastel-striped pyjama bottoms, the same woollen socks from yesterday, and a T-shirt. Tess glanced at his arms and thought, he has a tan – in March.

‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Been up long?’

‘Since the crack of dawn,’ Tess answered curtly. ‘I'm not used to everything being so quiet everywhere. The dog's been sick – does it happen often?’

He looked at her, standing there with her hands on her hips and a tea towel he knew wasn't his slung over her shoulder, her sleeves rolled up as if she was ready to fight.

‘Where?’

‘I've cleaned it up,’ she said. ‘I wasn't going to leave it there.’ She folded her arms. She looked peculiarly defiant and Joe found he didn't know what he was meant to say but felt she was waiting for an apology and fast.

He glanced at the clock and then regarded Wolf who didn't look like a dog that'd just been sick. The dog was engrossed in a hearty lick of his nether region, his tail spread across the kitchen floor like a length of old frayed rope. ‘Sorry – I overslept. I don't usually. And no, Wolf isn't sick often. You should have left it for me to deal with.’

‘What – with Em around?’

Now he felt guilty – as if he'd brought a lack of hygiene into the home of a child. Ridiculous – this was his house, wasn't it! And only her first day. He looked over at her sternly but she shrugged and popped her hair into a pony-tail. He'd quite liked her spirit yesterday – but not this morning when he'd just woken up.

‘It's not a problem,’ she said as if she sensed his reservation. ‘I just thought you needed to know.’ Now her equanimity made Joe feel a different sort of guilt, which was just as unnerving. All the more so when Tess then handed him a cup of tea in the china cup and saucer she'd left outside his study last night and he'd left, unwashed, in the sink. He sipped, giving himself time to think, but he was distracted as much by the unblinking attention of the infant as by the very good cup of tea.

‘So, you haven't done this job before?’

‘No – it's a brand new adventure.’

He thought she must mean venture. ‘What did you do in London?’