The Debutante

‘Jo Williams,’ she said, shaking it. ‘Your friend here says she’s found something – a room.’

He looked across at Cate. ‘Really?’

‘While you were resting yesterday…I had a look around,’ she explained, half-heartedly.

‘Well, let’s see it.’ He tried to sound light, but she caught a twinge of irritation in his voice.

She began to feel irritated too. It wasn’t her fault the damn thing existed! Heading down the long hallway, she stopped in front of the last door and swung it wide. ‘Here it is.’

The morning sun was softer; it was a west-facing room and although there wasn’t the same blinding light as the previous afternoon, it was still stunning.

Eyes widening, Jo walked slowly into the centre. ‘I’ll be damned!’

All traces of defensiveness disappeared. ‘Look!’ Cate opened the French windows leading on to the terrace. ‘Isn’t it charming? Have you really never been here? Didn’t you ever wonder about it?’

Jo shook her head. ‘During the war, most of the house was shut up. They lived in just a couple of rooms, which were blacked out, to conserve energy. And afterwards, there was only the two of them – Irene and the Colonel. They never really opened the house up again properly. When you work for someone, you learn not to look too hard or question too much. Everyone has their little ways, after all.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ Jack agreed. ‘Really extraordinary.’

‘I know!’ Cate was excited. ‘But doesn’t it strike you as odd that this, this hidden, locked room, is the most lovely room in the house?’

He looked across at her. Standing in her silk dressing gown, face free of make-up, she looked fresh, younger than her years; full of unguarded enthusiasm. Was this the same woman who was so darkly knowing last night? There seemed to be two of her, or rather, at least two.

‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly, turning away. ‘Perhaps a touch of our famous English eccentricity.’

‘Look at these books. They’ve never been read. Here.’ She pulled one out and handed it to Jack. ‘Every single one of them is new.’

He leafed through it.

‘Why would anyone lock it up?’ Jo wondered.

The question hung in the warm morning air.

‘Perhaps the heating didn’t work or the roof leaked.’ Jack handed the book back to Cate. ‘It’s not uncommon for old houses to have whole wings sealed off.’

‘It’s a mystery,’ Cate insisted.

He shook his head, laughing. ‘A locked door is hardly a mystery!’

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him about the shoebox. She even went so far as to open her mouth. But then she shut it again, quickly. It was private. Her secret discovery.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she agreed, letting it go. ‘Perhaps it all comes down to a leak in the roof.’

Cate headed back to her room, adrenalin pumping. The room had been locked for over a generation – not even Jo knew about it.

Something happened; something she felt certain was connected to the box.

Why else would it be locked? she thought, turning on the taps in her bath and putting in the plug. Maybe Irene planned to have a family to fill this old house but her husband was called to the war. Afterwards, when he returned, who knows? Perhaps he was injured or couldn’t bear to be touched.

Or maybe she’d fallen in love with someone else.

It was a riddle; a puzzle to be solved.

She opened the bathroom window, looking out across the expanse of green meadow and the limitless view beyond.

What life had Irene dreamed of for herself as a young woman? Here, overlooking the sea, she must’ve felt that nothing could fail, that she had everything she’d ever imagined. A beautiful house, a titled husband…Now there was only an old house with a locked room, books that were never read and a shoebox, filled with strange tokens and memories – like a message in a bottle.

She trailed her fingers in the warm bathwater.

Did she have an affair? Who was the handsome sailor in the photograph? Did he give her the bracelet?

Slipping out of her dressing gown and nightie, she stood in front of the steamy bathroom mirror, pinning her hair up.

It was a mystery, no matter what Jack thought. He was too sure of himself for his own good, that was his problem. Self-satisfied and superior and, yes, prudish. So what if he was dismissive of her? She was the one who had the upper hand now and he didn’t even know it.

It gave her a thrill to have a secret in play.

It didn’t matter what he thought of her. In another day, they’d be back in London and she wouldn’t even have to speak to him again.

God, even at this early hour it was so hot!

She pushed the window wider, stretching her arms high.

Jack was standing on the lawn with a mug of coffee. How did she get into that room? He had the keys. There was no way she could’ve picked the lock. She didn’t look like she’d know how.

He paced back and forth in frustration. She wouldn’t conform to anything he wanted her to do or be. In his head he’d composed whole conversations; pleasant little scenes in which he took the lead, showing her what to do and how to do it. But instead she constantly slipped away from him. Despite her golden appearance, she was fast, dark and mutable; like mercury. He couldn’t get a grip on her at all.

And he had the unsettling feeling that she was indulging him; that she found him vaguely ridiculous. He was conscious of being constrained by professional protocol and social niceties while she, in contrast, found her way into locked rooms, landed unfamiliar jobs, slipped into strangely undefined relationships.

There was a noise.

He looked up.

Caught in a ray of light reflected from the windowpane, Cate was standing by the window, naked.

Unguarded and unaware, she stretched her arms above her head, arching her back. Her skin was creamy, her hair white in the sun.

He knew he should look away.

She turned. Her breasts were small, with surprisingly large nipples. They were the same colour as her lips, swollen and pink.

Then she disappeared again, like a fleeting apparition.

She hadn’t seen him.

Her body was different to what he’d imagined; the vague classical ideal of beauty he’d assigned her without even knowing it. Her nipples, swollen and erect from the heat, were instantly erotic. His chaste, romantic vision was corrupted by pornographic longings – licking, sucking…

Turning his back on the house, he forced himself across the lawn where the road joined a field filled with sheep. It was picturesque; the sky a faultless duck-egg blue above a silver strip of sea.