Фрида Макфаден – The Housemaide / Горничная. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 2)
She guides me through the house in painstaking detail, to the point where I’m worried I got the ad wrong and maybe she’s a realtor thinking I’m ready to buy. It
“And here is…” She flings the door open. “Our home theater!”
It’s a legit movie theater
After a moment, I notice Mrs. Winchester is looking at me, waiting for a response.
“Wow!” I say with what I hope is appropriate enthusiasm.
“Isn’t it marvelous?” She shivers with delight. “And we have a full library of movies to choose from. Of course, we also have all the usual channels as well as streaming services.”
“Of course,” I say.
After we leave the room, we come to a final door at the end of the hallway. Nina pauses, her hand lingering on the doorknob.
“Would this be my room?” I ask.
“Sort of…” She turns the doorknob, which creaks loudly. I can’t help but notice the wood of this door is much thicker than any of the others. Behind the doorway, there’s a dark stairwell. “Your room is upstairs. We have a finished attic as well.”
This dark, narrow staircase is somewhat less glamorous than the rest of the house – and would it kill them to stick a lightbulb in here? But of course, I’m the hired help. I wouldn’t expect her to spend as much money on my room as she would on the home theater.
At the top of the stairs is a little narrow hallway. Unlike on the first floor of the house, the ceiling is dangerously low here. I’m not tall by any means, but I almost feel like I need to stoop down.
“You have your own bathroom.” She nods at a door on the left. “And this would be your room right here.”
She flings open the last door. It’s completely dark inside until she tugs on a string and the room lights up.
The room is tiny. There’s no two ways about it. Not only that, but the ceiling is slanted with the roof of the house. The far side of the ceiling only comes about up to my waist.
Instead of the huge king-size bed in the Winchesters’ master bedroom with their armoire and chestnut vanity table, this room contains a small single cot, a half-height bookcase, and a small dresser, lit by two naked bulbs suspended from the ceiling.
This room is modest, but that’s fine with me. If it were
But there’s something else about this room. Something that’s bothering me.
“Sorry it’s small.” Mrs. Winchester pulls a frown. “But you’ll have a lot of privacy here.”
I walk over to the single window. Like the room, it’s small. Barely larger than my hand. And it overlooks the backyard. There’s a landscaper down there – the same guy I saw out at the front – hacking at one of the hedges with an oversized set of clippers.
“So what do you think, Millie? Do you like it?”
I turn away from the window to look at Mrs. Winchester’s smiling face. I still can’t quite put my finger on what’s bothering me. There’s something about this room that’s making a little ball of dread form in the pit of my stomach.
Maybe it’s the window. It looks out on the back of the house. If I were in trouble and trying to get somebody’s attention, nobody would be able to see me back here. I could scream and yell all I wanted, and nobody would hear.
But who am I kidding? I would be lucky to live in this room. With my own bathroom and an actual bed where I could straighten my legs out all the way. That tiny cot looks so good compared to my car, I could cry.
“It’s perfect,” I say.
Mrs. Winchester seems ecstatic about my answer. She leads me back down the dark stairwell to the second floor of the house, and when I exit that stairwell, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. There was something about that room that was very scary, but if I somehow manage to get this job, I’ll get past it. Easily.
My shoulders finally relax and my lips are forming another question when I hear a voice from behind us:
“Mommy?”
I stop short and turn around to see a little girl standing behind us in the hallway. The girl has the same light blue eyes as Nina Winchester, except a few shades paler, and her hair is so blond that it’s almost white. The girl is wearing a very pale blue dress trimmed in white lace. And she’s staring at me like she can see right through me. Right through my
Do you know those movies about the scary cult of, like, creepy kids who can read minds and worship the devil and live in the cornfields or something? Well, if they were casting for one of those movies, this girl would get the Part. They wouldn’t even have to audition her. They would take one look at her and be like,
“Cece!” Mrs. Winchester exclaims. “Are you back already from your ballet lesson?”
The girl nods slowly. “Bella’s mom dropped me off.”
Mrs. Winchester wraps her arms around the girl’s skinny shoulders, but the girl’s expression never changes and her pale blue eyes never leave my face. Is there something wrong with me that I am scared this nine-year-old girl is going to murder me?
“This is Millie,” Mrs. Winchester tells her daughter. “Millie, this is my daughter, Cecelia.”
Little Cecelia’s eyes are two little pools of the ocean. “It’s nice to meet you, Millie,” she says politely.
I’d say there’s at least a twenty-five percent chance she’s going to murder me in my sleep if I get this job. But I still want it.
Mrs. Winchester pecks her daughter on the top of her blond head, and then the little girl scurries off to her bedroom. She doubtless has a creepy doll house in there where the dolls come to life at night. Maybe one of the dolls will be the one to kill me.
Okay, I’m being ridiculous. That little girl is probably extremely sweet. It’s not her fault she’s been dressed in a creepy Victorian ghost-child’s outfit. And I love kids, in general. Not that I’ve interacted with them much over the last decade.
Once we get back down to the first floor, the tension leaves my body. Mrs.Winchester is nice and normal enough – for a lady this rich – and as she chatters about the house and her daughter and the job, I’m only vaguely listening. All I know is this will be a lovely place to work. I would give my right arm[7] to get this job.
“Do you have any questions, Millie?” she asks me.
I shake my head. “No, Mrs. Winchester.”
She clucks her tongue. “Please, call me Nina. If you’re working here, I would feel so silly with you calling me
“Thank you… Nina,” I say.
Her face glows, although that could be the seaweed or cucumber peel or whatever rich people apply to their faces. Nina Winchester is the sort of woman who has regular spa treatments. “I have a good feeling about this, Millie. I really do.”
It’s hard not to get caught up in her enthusiasm. It’s hard not to feel that glimmer of hope as she squeezes my rough palm in her baby smooth one. I want to believe that in the next few days, I’ll get a call from Nina Winchester, offering me the opportunity to come work at her house and finally vacate Casa Nissan. I want to believe that so badly.
But whatever else I can say about Nina, she’s no dummy. She’s not going to hire a woman to work and live in her home and take care of her child without doing a simple background check. And once she does…
I swallow a lump in my throat.
Nina Winchester bids a warm goodbye to me at the front door. “Thank you so much for coming by, Millie.” She reaches out to clasp my hand in hers one more time. “I promise you’ll be hearing from me soon.”
I won’t. This will be the last time I set foot in that magnificent house. I should never have come here in the first place. I should have tried for a job I had a chance of getting instead of wasting both of our time here. Maybe something in the fast-food industry.
The landscaper who I saw from the window in the attic is back on the front lawn. He’s still got those giant clippers and he’s shaping one of the hedges right in front of the house. He’s a big guy, wearing a T-shirt that shows off impressive muscles and just barely hides the tattoos on his upper arms. He adjusts his baseball cap and his dark, dark eyes lift briefly from the clippers to meet mine across the lawn.
I raise my hand in greeting. “Hi,” I say.
The man stares at me. He doesn’t say hello. He doesn’t say “quit trampling my posies.” He just stares at me.