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Chapter Two

I try to respond in a normal manner to all of this. But the trouble is, everything just gets more fascinating from there on in. For a start, he somehow disappears before I can get through the door and see his face. I find myself in a narrow, slightly slanting hallway, so utterly alone I could have stepped through a portal to the netherworld.

And the room past the open door to my right does nothing to dispel this impression. I am ready to gasp when I see it, and probably not in the right way. Most people, I expect, faced with this, would be appalled or amused or feel some other emotion that I apparently don’t possess. Instead I think I reach something like giddiness. A grin immediately tries to smear itself all over my face, and only the sense that he must be watching somewhere hauls it back.

He must be behind some secret wall, spying.

Because that is what the room looks like – as though it has secret walls that someone could spy behind. It seems to have around twenty-seven corners, even though I could swear that twenty-seven corners are not possible for a fairly small rectangle. There should be no more than four, I think, yet, when I take a step in, twelve more jump out at me. I could swear the sides of the fireplace are that illusion where you step closer and a passageway is revealed.

I suppose the wallpaper helps. It looks at first glance to be made up of a million skulls, and it is no relief to realise they are just ornate black flowers repeated over and over. My eyes still cross when I look at it. I have to glance at other things, only to find that other things are just as brilliant and terrifying.

He has an old-fashioned street lamp in one corner, complete with a flickering candle behind the dusty glass panels. In fact, the street lamp is the only thing lighting the room. The sun has no chance of filtering through the closed and extremely heavy purple curtains, and where a ceiling light should be there is just a blank space.

But that only makes everything seem stranger and even more mysterious. It’s like looking through syrup at a scene from the nineteenth century. There are thick rugs on the floor and the fireplace is real and as I stand there I realise the sound I’m hearing is the somnolent tick of a grand old clock on the mantel.

By the time he speaks I think my limbs have gone a little weak. I want to sink into this heaven, and his voice does nothing to assuage that. It rolls into the room in one long ribbon, so deep and sinuous I could almost overlook his instructions. I could, if they were not completely bizarre and insane.

Oh, God, I think he might be insane.

‘Turn the chair beside you around, so that it faces the window. Once you have, you may be seated,’ he says, which I suppose is not that bad really. However, when you put it together with him speaking those words through a door, it all gets a lot stranger.

They suggest only one thing: he does not want me to look at him. He disappeared on purpose, so I could not catch so much as a glimpse – an idea that sounds bonkers but is pretty much borne out by all the evidence. I mean, what other explanation could there be? I thought he just wanted to leave me fumbling and unsure, then make some grand entrance. He seemed the type to make a grand entrance.

But now I feel less certain.

Maybe he has a problem, I think, a terrible and awful problem that he can never let anyone see. I read the other day about a man with a foot for a hand, and although I feel fairly confident that this was a lie it’s about all I can imagine now. He will come in with shoes on the ends of his arms and gloves on the ends of his legs, then scream in agony when he sees I ignored his instructions.

All of which is utter nonsense, I know, but I just go ahead and sit facing the window anyway. It seems best, considering all the real problems that he might actually have. He could have had his face blown off in the war, or some form of agoraphobia that means he can’t cope with people looking, and despite the high probability that he is just a haughty arsehole I want to respect these possible issues.

Though I will admit that it gets hard when I hear the door open. I want to turn so badly I can feel it in my teeth. I have to clench everything just to keep myself contained, but parts of me still do their best to escape. My heart almost lunges out of my chest at the sound of him drawing up his own chair. All the hair on my head seems to be prickling and bristling, as though he had taken a handful of it without me knowing.

And then just yanked.

‘I can see you fidgeting, you know.’

‘I would probably be doing it less if we were having an ordinary interview.’

‘And what would you consider an ordinary interview?’

‘Both of us occasionally making awkward eye contact.’

‘Sounds ghastly, if you ask me.’

‘I doubt I ever would.’

‘Would what?’

‘Ask you. You seem like the very last person to discuss the possible merits of eye contact with, considering our current positions.’

‘I have very good reason for this request.’

‘And that reason would be?’ I try, even though I know it will fail. I understand it will before he even emits his little snort of derision.

‘You ask too many questions.’

‘Well, I just thought if I was your housekeeper…’

‘If you were my housekeeper, what? You will feel the need to ask me irrelevant things in a constant and ever more intrusive manner?’

‘I would have thought it was necessary. I mean, what if you have a foot for a hand? I might accidentally kneel down to put on your shoes, only to find fingers where your feet should be. That seems at best like an embarrassment we could avoid,’ I say, then almost marvel at myself for doing it. That thing is happening again. That thing at the door where I got to say all the things I was never able to before. All of these insane leaps in logic just bound right out of me, so utterly ridiculous that he is rendered speechless.

God, I love rendering him speechless.

‘Did you really just accuse me of having a foot for a hand?’

‘I think “accuse” is a little strong. I have nothing but sympathy for your plight.’

‘There is no plight, you ridiculous creature. My hands and feet are where they are supposed to be, I can assure you.’

‘So the problem is your face.’

‘I see what you are clumsily attempting.’

‘I thought I was attempting it quite well, actually.’

‘Then allow me to disillusion you immediately. Your technique is that of a sixteen-year-old boy fumbling at the underwear of my mind.’

‘I could try harder. Probe more deeply.’

‘You believe I wish to be probed? No, dear me, no, that won’t do at all. See, it is exactly as I predicted: you are in every way unsuitable for this position. I cannot possibly have some snooping reprobate rummaging through my life,’ he says, at which point I know I should be insulted or annoyed. He said I was a teenage boy. He called me clumsy. He thinks I am some criminal who snoops.

Yet somehow all I can think is:

He said ‘reprobate’.

He said ‘disillusion’.

He uses the sorts of words I’ve waited all my life to hear spoken aloud – words I barely know how to pronounce because the only time I’ve ever encountered them has been in books. I had no idea that ‘reprobate’ curled that way, or that ‘disillusion’ sounded so small to begin with and then so big at the end. Though, granted, part of that might be down to the way he talks. His tongue practically makes love to each syllable.

I feel like his sentence should smoke a cigarette, directly after the full stop.

I think I might need to smoke a cigarette, directly after the full stop. Something is sure happening to me. I seem to be sweating just about everywhere and my breaths are coming hard and high, like he is a hill and I just ran up him.

Only that sounds agonising, and this is the opposite.

This is so sweet I would do anything for another taste.

‘Do you think you could say that word again?’

‘You honestly want me to repeat one of the things I just said, despite the fact that most of them were sneering insults?’

‘Are you kidding? The sneering insults were the best parts.’

‘Well, that settles it. I can’t hire you. You are quite mad.’

‘You cannot possibly decide that, based on me enjoying you saying the word “reprobate”. You turned the letter R into Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. People will probably be playing that letter O at funerals. There is nothing unreasonable about enjoying how the whole thing sounded – not to mention the fact that you said it at all. I mean, who says “reprobate” these days?’ I ask, and again there follows a silence. A big one, that he seems very bitter about once he finally responds. How dare I make him momentarily speechless, I think, and what he says bears that out.

‘People who have read these things called books – you might have heard of them, papery things with lots of squiggles inside,’ he says, and I attempt to hate him here, I really do. I stiffen at the implication, and when I speak my voice is cold.

‘Oh, you mean the things I used to hide under my floorboards so no one would take them away from me?’ I tell him.

But then he goes and says this:

‘Are you suggesting that you had books stolen from you? That these books were somehow forbidden you? By whom? Tell me at once who this monstrous individual is so that I can immediately have them arrested,’ he says.

And I think he actually means it. There isn’t so much as a whiff of facetiousness about his words. He honestly thinks my parents were monstrous, just because they hated me reading. No one has ever thought they were monstrous because they hated me reading. A teacher once shouted at them for forcing me into shoes three sizes too small, and occasionally an official-looking person would come around and write things down about my bruises and the spoiled food and the constant cans of Carling everywhere.

But that was about it, when it came to outrage over their behaviour.

A fact that I then point out to him, in a roundabout way.

‘You can’t have someone arrested for flushing books down a toilet.’

‘Well, that just speaks volumes about our current justice system. If I had my way I would not only arrest this miscreant but have them flogged in the town square,’ he says, and I feel sure he means that too. So much so that the urge to look at him again is suddenly too keen to withstand. I have to take deep breaths just to stop myself doing it.

Then sublimate it into something else.

‘Tell me honestly: did you time-travel here from 1865?’

‘I wish I had. And possessed the means to travel back.’

‘Even though people bathed a lot less then.’

‘I could accept body odour in exchange for a bit of peace.’

‘You think being alive in 1865 would give you peace?’

‘I think at the very least I would fit in more than I do here,’ he says, though I don’t think he means to. At least I don’t think he means to sound so despairing about it. After the words pop out he seems to make a little tutting noise, and it isn’t aimed at me. It’s aimed at himself. He let out some dark hint of who he is, and it irritates him.

It irritates him so much that he immediately tries to get rid of me in what may be the most ludicrous way possible. ‘Well, it was nice meeting you, farewell,’ he says, as though we just finished on a pleasant note and he is now up and shaking my hand.

Despite the fact that we are both still seated.

And he hasn’t asked me a damned thing.

‘But you haven’t even interviewed me yet.’

‘Of course I have – I enquired about your reading habits.’

‘That hardly constitutes an interview.’

‘Very well then, tell me what you would expect of an interview.’

‘You should ask me my name.’

‘Assume that I have.’

‘Molly Parker.’

‘I see. And then…?’ he asks, and here’s the best thing:

I think he genuinely has no idea.

He needs me to tell him.

‘Then you tell me yours.’

‘Why? I’m not interviewing for any position.’

‘So you want me to go around your house calling you something I just made up,’ I suggest, and practically hear him shudder. It almost makes me want to do it anyway – think up ridiculous monikers and have him be disgusted by all of them.

Snooty McBogtrot, I could call him, then I have to suppress a laugh.

Twenty-two years of never having anything to laugh about, and suddenly it overwhelms me to the point where I have to hold it off. I have to use both hands.

‘That sounds like the very worst thing I can imagine. You may call me Mr Harcroft.’

‘Seems rather unfriendly and impersonal.’

‘I think you will find that I am a rather unfriendly and impersonal man. You will also shortly discover that I am singularly exacting, ruthless in my attention to detail and completely without regard for any and all emotional whims. I brook no challenges to my authority and expect to be deferred to without exception when it comes to the precise system I use to govern my household,’ he says, then quite obviously waits for me to be horrified. The problem is, though, that if he is, he will be waiting for ever. I don’t know how to be horrified by all of this. It seems so strange and fantastical that all I can do is marvel at all of it, from the seating arrangements to his furniture right the way through to his every odd word.

He governs his household, I think.

Is it any wonder I say what I then do?

‘So I got the job then?’ I ask.

After which there is a silence so delicious I could grab it in my hands and eat it alive. He honestly thought I would balk at that, I can tell. He even tries to go one better a moment later, with his directions as to what I should do next. ‘You will be sleeping in the attic,’ he says, as though the attic is his version of the top of a terrible tower. He wants to be the evil wizard who has somehow imprisoned a princess.

But he has to know he can never be. My life before was the prison: this is the escape. And it continues to be, no matter what he says or does. ‘Go there directly and remain until your duties begin in the morning,’ he tells me, and the very last thing I feel is fear. I fizz with the idea of finally seeing his face instead. I wonder and wonder about how a man who uses the word ‘miscreant’ will look, and am actually disappointed when I turn and find he has already disappeared.

Though even that soon fades.

There are other delights to uncover – like the pictures on the walls on the way up the narrow staircase, each one creepier than the one before it. I think they might even deserve the label gothic, which sounded so exciting to me when I first read about it that I secretly dyed a net curtain black and wore it as a headdress in the middle of the night. Now I get to live amidst it, in the form of faded photographs of old bearded men who could well be his ancestors.

He has ancestors.

And if that were not exciting enough, there is the room I am supposed to stay in. Does he understand how exciting this room is to me? I imagine he could never do so, since this is his ordinary and everyday life. But to me none of this is ordinary and everyday. The very presence of a brass double bed is enough to place it outside those boundaries. Even the mattress crosses the line, because at home I used to sleep on folded-over towels and two sleeping bags.

Certainly I’ve never had anything like this.

Nor have I had experience of a room that just belongs to me. I have no concept of drawers that I can just stuff with my things – to the point where I can barely fill one of them, and then only because of my two big jumpers. And though the window is more of a skylight, it lets in the dying glow of the day like nothing I’ve ever seen. I stand on the bed just to look through it, and see all of London spread out before me.

I see my life, as it could really be.