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.