to share a glass of wine? Save me from drinking the whole bottle?’
She felt herself ricochet between desire and reticence like a ball caught on a bagatelle. Yes, Tess wanted to say, yes please. Adult company. Someone to share an evening with. Someone with a nice stomach. Who can smile so well. Someone currently standing casually against the doorway of the bathroom just a foot or so away. But it is easier to be harsh on herself, lecturing herself as she lowers her head and rubs Em dry that she is here for a very different purpose than sewing seeds of friendship or being charmed by a member of the opposite sex. She's been rubbish at so much else over recent years, but this house might provide the fabric for her at least to be an excellent mummy and a fine house-sitter. And that'll do. That'll really do. She is not going to ask for more than that.
‘Thanks,’ she says, ‘but I'd better not. I'm a bit headachy. I'm going to have an early night.’
When Joe shut the front door and Tess watched, unseen, as he drove away at eleven o'clock the next morning, she mourned the glass of red wine that had never been. But then Wolf sauntered by and headbutted her and Em was squawking and Tess told herself to get a grip and get on with it.
‘What'll we do, gang? Fresh air?’
Wolf, it soon transpired, would be taking Tess and Em for a walk. She didn't dare let him off the lead so he plunged and strained, dragging her and the buggy in his wake. The steep downward gradient of the hill on tarmac was onerous enough but when Wolf led them into the woods and the path became an uneven assault course of hairpin bends, it was quite terrifying. How safe she'd been in London – nothing more than the occasional raised paving stone to negotiate.
‘Wait!’ she said. ‘Halt!’ she said. ‘Sit!’ she said. ‘Stop, you great oaf, just stop.’ They stood in the dappled lilac-green light of woodland. Em and Wolf looking expectantly at Tess. With her composure and breath back, and Wolf having to walk with a peculiar high-stepping slo-mo gait, Tess became leader of the pack. The steep woodland suddenly opened out and levelled off in a little dell of meticulously organized Italianate design. Raised flower beds in intricate quatrefoils and curlicues currently nurtured embryonic planting that would no doubt proliferate as the weather grew warmer. Running in straight lines around the beds, a pathway plotted with regularly placed benches and punctuated by stone columns currently skeletal but which, by the summer, would be cloaked in extravagant floral displays. It was eerily quiet and though Tess tried sitting, she soon moved away.
They walked on until again the woods gave way to open meadows and a river over which catkins trickled off branches and there was a Poohsticks bridge. She found a bench for herself, plied Em with rice cakes and threw sticks for the dog. He seemed unable to track any of them but was eager to belt off in the approximate direction, bounding back to Tess as if to say, again! again! again! It made Em laugh. And it made Tess consider how pleased she was that Joe hadn't said anything about a dog because if he had, she wouldn't have taken the job. But the dog's character had won her over; his doleful mismatched eyes and soppy head-cocking were so appealing that she was now immune to his bizarre appearance. It was a novelty, having a pet part-time. And it was going to be a good thing for Em, Tess justified.
‘Fetch,’ she said, though she sat on her hands. Wolf looked at her in confusion. ‘Fetch,’ she said, hurling something imaginary which Wolf bolted off for. Daft bugger. She stroked him affectionately when he came galloping back. His ears felt like the rags she had in the back of her car. They were of a similar colour, and just as frayed. ‘Dog-eared,’ Tess laughed. ‘Come on, let's go home and get you two some lunch.’
Pushing the buggy uphill as it dinked and lurched over the pathways, while having to haul an exhausted Wolf lagging behind her was a slog and Tess decided she wouldn't be pitching quite so many imaginary sticks for the dog tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow she'd venture a little further – not afield, but into town again. Today it felt enough to have walked and walked in the woods, to have found the Italian Gardens and the river.
Back at the house, rooting around in cupboards for a tin of baked beans, she came across a jar of preserved apricots over two years out of date. And a dead moth. And then sugar that had congealed into a solid block. Next to it, a lidless jar of Marmite with a layer of fluff furring the surface. Further inspection revealed plenty more in there – crumbled packets, tins with unfurling labels, sticky bottles. But the baked beans at least were in date and there was still half the loaf of the good bread Joe had bought yesterday. She glanced at the clock. Lunch-time. Where would Joe be right now? When exactly would he be back?
The afternoon was washed away by rain which came down like old-fashioned beaded curtains so, while the child and dog were napping, Tess made a start. The only apron she could find, in a scrunch with a collection of old batteries in one of the kitchen drawers, had a cartoon illustration of a naked female body on it, complete with foam breasts that, with time and storage, had puckered like a bad boob-job. Never mind, it would have to do. After all, there was no one here to see her. The kitchen table now had a usable surface large enough (since Tess had liberated it from the piles of Joe's stuff) for her to place items to be kept. Anything out of date, or just plain dodgy (some yellowish powder that was neither sugar nor flour, some worrying dried brown pellets, the apricots, Marmite and moths) she dumped in a bin bag. The cupboards she would disinfect before reorganizing. She looked everywhere for cleaning fluid and though it appeared Joe bought Fairy liquid in bulk and had plenty of pristine cloths that looked nothing like his dog's ears, that was about it.
She thought of the dog. And the baby. And the hill. And the enclave of shops. And the hill back. And the ache in her arms and the nag in her shins. The woods were one thing – she'd liked the company of only oak, ash, hazel and alder; the solitude had made her feel so together. Human contact, she anticipated, was quite another. Too much, too soon. On her own, she could be busy and in control – but how would she answer if someone said, hullo, love, are you new to these parts? Anyway, she wanted Em to have another half-hour's sleep and by the look of Wolf, sprawled halfway across the kitchen floor, he needed the same. She rooted around in the utility room. More Fairy liquid. And cheap washing powder. Even at her most impecunious, Tess had never scrimped on buying leading brand, dermatology-tested hypo-allergenic tablets.
Better make a list – prioritize what's essential. Where's a pen when you need one? Probably up in her bag, hanging on the back of the chair in her bedroom. But two flights of creaking stairs risked waking the baby so she looked around the entrance hall, searched through the drawers of the console. Found a biro. A glove. Some loose playing cards a fair few short of a full deck. A necklace of paperclips. But no scrap paper. Well, there was a Chinese takeaway menu and an address book but all the pages were densely written in the copperplate hand of a much older generation. She cursed herself for having so ruthlessly chucked out the heap of scrap on the kitchen table. Joe had laughed and had said, OK, I get the hint. He had taken some of the papers away while authorizing her to bin the sizeable mound still on the table.
Joe's study. Tess hovered by the door. What were the rules and would this be breaking any? An invasion of privacy? Out of bounds? It hadn't been discussed. He hadn't given her the house-sitter's pack he'd mentioned. She turned the handle, half expecting the door to be locked but it wasn't.
A floor-to-ceiling bookcase ran across two entire walls, the proliferation of spines serving the eye like detailed wallpaper. On the third wall, a collection of frames. Diplomas it looked like, some authenticated by red sealing wax. Certificates. Awards. An old print of a run of classical bridges that Tess knew had to be Venice. Against this wall, a large old writing desk with an inlay of moulting green leather and a stack of drawers with brass hinge handles to either side. A specialist would wince, no doubt, that it was in desperate need of French polishing and the leather, frayed and papery, should be replaced entirely, but Tess felt that would be missing the point. The swivel chair appeared to be a little skew but she imagined that it was perfectly aligned for Joe. The fourth wall wasn't really a wall at all, dominated as it was by full-length French windows looking out to yet another aspect of the garden. From the main approach, the house appeared as an imposing solid