The two girls waited, but a few minutes later they heard the front door slam. Milly ran to the window and as she looked out she caught her breath. ‘Mummy’s going.’
Pearl sighed in a bored way. ‘Of course she’s not going.’
‘Dixon is putting her suitcase into her car,’ Milly gasped.
Pearl sat up, a look of horror on her face. ‘But I want her here.’
Seconds later they heard the engine start, followed by the sound of wheels spinning on the gravel. Pearl hurled herself at the window, but by then all they could see was the car’s taillights heading towards the open road.
* * *
The rest of the week was very confusing for Milly. Her sister spent most of her time either sulking in the conservatory or generally making herself thoroughly obnoxious with the servants. Her eyes were sometimes wild or, at other times, dark. She talked to herself all the time.
‘We’ve got to do something . . . She’s a she-devil . . . Daddy doesn’t know what he’s doing. Mummy says he’s bewitched.’
Milly struggled to understand – Pearl’s mumblings didn’t make a lot of sense and they were scary.
Their father spent a lot of time on the telephone, then various builders turned up and were all sent to the cottage. Although their mother had left instructions with Mrs Cunningham that she and Pearl were not to go down there, a couple of times Milly sneaked over the ha-ha and hid under the eaves to see what was going on.
It soon became obvious that the builders were making some structural alterations inside. It looked as if a proper fireplace was being installed and the chimney sweep turned up. Each day a succession of vans and commercial vehicles arrived to offload everything from new bedding and furnishings to a small dining table and a vacuum cleaner. Their father was making the tiny cottage into a palace, and not only that, but a stream of would-be servants had arrived and now he was ensconced in the morning room doing interviews. There was still no sign of Mother.
On Thursday a beautiful grey enamel free-standing electric cooker arrived in a Paine Manwaring & Lephard van, and some men in brown overalls installed it. Bodkin, who was tidying the little cottage garden, came to fill the space under the eaves with logs. Milly felt a little embarrassed to be found out, but the gardener was kind enough to pretend it was perfectly normal for the child of the house to be hiding there, so she stayed to help him stack the logs.
After they had finished, Milly hurried to the house for her lunch. As she washed her hands in the downstairs cloakroom, she heard the servants talking in the kitchen.
‘An electric cooker?’ Mrs Cunningham exclaimed. ‘Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs. How come she can have an electric cooker while I’ve got to make do with this old heap?’
‘Probably because the master is buying it and not the mistress,’ said Dixon.
‘Who is she anyway, this woman?’
Milly peered into the kitchen through the crack in the door. Dixon hadn’t verbally replied but he was raising his eyebrows.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Mrs Cunningham.
‘What do you see?’ Martha asked.
‘Never you mind,’ said Mrs Cunningham.
‘Oh,’ Martha tut-tutted, clearly disappointed. ‘Why is it that grown-ups are so mysterious? Why shouldn’t you tell me?’
‘You’re too young,’ said Dixon.
‘That’s daft,’ Martha said crossly. ‘I’m a working woman now.’
The two older servants glanced at each other with a grin, then Mrs Cunningham said, ‘Well, if you must know, she’s his fancy woman, and she’s coming to live here. She’s not well and he wants to look after her.’
Martha took in her breath. ‘Is that why the mistress has left him?’
‘What do you think?’ asked Dixon.
Martha seemed horrified. ‘Oh but that’s awful. Poor madam.’
Behind the cloakroom door, Milly pushed her spectacles up her nose as her throat constricted. Her mother had left her father? Was this true? And what did it mean? When she’d asked Daddy where Mummy was, he’d only said she’d gone to the London flat for a while. Milly was going to ask Mrs Cunningham and Dixon what they were talking about but, as soon as she appeared in the doorway, everybody went back to their work and seemed to be very busy.
Milly thought about telling Pearl what she’d overheard, but Pearl was still acting strangely so she didn’t dare. Anyway, Pearl would probably say, ‘It’s just gossip. Take no notice.’
But as the week went by, and their mother still hadn’t returned, Milly became more anxious. When Martha and Dixon began packing the girls’ trunks ready for their return to boarding school, Milly had a new worry. Mummy still hadn’t bought her some new shoes, and she couldn’t possibly manage for a whole term in her old ones. She mentioned the subject to her father, but he was in a hurry to be somewhere else.
‘Your mother will sort that out,’ he said, rushing through the front door. ‘Ask her.’ But Mummy wasn’t here, was she?
On the Saturday before the girls went back to school, there was a ripple of excitement when an ambulance pulled up outside the house. The two girls rushed to the window and saw Dixon exchanging a few words with the driver before he drove off again.
‘I’m going down to the cottage,’ Pearl announced.
With her sister gone, Milly hid herself away in the boxroom to play her dressing-up games one last time. She never liked raised voices and rows, so she avoided them whenever possible, and it was something of a relief to know that she’d be out of the house the next day. She was in the middle of a fantasy about being Joan of Arc when Pearl burst into the room.
‘She’s in the cottage,’ she said breathlessly.
‘Who?’
‘Who do you think? Father’s tart.’
Milly didn’t understand the expression and it must have shown on her face because her sister threw her hands into the air. ‘His friend,’ she spat. ‘His fancy woman, the bitch who has sent our mother away.’
Milly’s jaw dropped.
Pearl paced up and down the room. ‘Oh, I could kill her. How could she do it?’
