“No, Sue is my housekeeper.”
Kate stares at her. “Oh, okay, er… I was hired as the new administrator. Sue told me to come up today.”
“You’re the what?” The woman’s face is dark as midnight.
“The er, the new administrator?”
“Is that a question or a statement?”
“I’m sorry,” Kate says, “I think there’s been a misunder—”
“Like hell there has,” the old woman curses. “Sue!” she hollers over her shoulder, louder than Kate would have anticipated, given her age. “Sue!”
A door slams somewhere on the main floor and Ozzie shifts against Kate’s leg. A moment later, another woman emerges from down the hall. She’s somewhere in her fifties, heavyset with a square face and large jaw surrounded by greying hair tied back in a ponytail. She’s dressed in leggings and a loose jumper. Sweat beads on her forehead.
“Our new administrator has arrived,” the older woman says, tossing a hand in Kate’s direction.
Sue stands off to the side, eyes darting between them.
“Hi there,” she says, accent rolling over the R’s like a drum. “I’m Sue. The housekeeper. We spoke on the phone. Now, Audrey,” she directs at the old woman, “please just listen for a mo—”
“I told you no!” Audrey barks. “I have everything under control.”
“Except you don’t,” Sue insists. Kate stands, frozen, watching the exchange with mounting alarm. “You need someone to help with the day-to-day, and the off-season is the time to get someone trained up. That’s why I hired Miss Mercer here.”
“Without consulting me.”
“Yes, without consulting you.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew this is how you would respond, you stubborn old goat.”
“Listen, I—” Kate begins, but Sue cuts her off.
“Miss Mercer, why don’t you go show yourself around? Choose a room. They’re all empty but for Audrey’s on the second floor.” She flashes Kate a stressed smile, her eyes imploring her not to leave.
If it weren’t for the pull Kate feels to retrace her parents’ steps, that’s exactly what she would be doing. This is a disaster. Sue hiring her without the knowledge or consent of the hotel’s owner? It’s embarrassing for all three of them.
“Sure,” Kate says. She might as well explore this Gothic queen of a house before she’s booted right out of it. She tugs Ozzie toward the stairs.
“She’s not staying,” Audrey snaps at Sue, who retaliates in a low whisper.
They continue to bicker as Kate scales the staircase. Her mind is already skipping on ahead, planning what she’ll do if the owner won’t let her stay, if this job didn’t exist to begin with. She’ll have to tell Adam she needs to move back into the flat again until she finds a place of her own. She wishes now she’d waited until tonight to call him.
She rounds the landing to the second floor. The air is still, like the basement of a library, and smells like lemon cleaner. Her footsteps are muffled by a thick, dark blue carpet. The diffuse golden light from the hallway sconces outside each room glints off the polished wood door frames and banister. At the end of the corridor, another set of stairs leads to a third floor.
How many rooms are there? she wonders. The house is even larger than it looks from the outside.
All the bedroom doors are open. They’re painted the same navy as the front door with gold words stenciled into them instead of numbers. Kate spots Lily and Lavender. She pokes her head into the latter. The walls are papered in a dusty purple damask print, and she catches a whiff of lavender from the clutch of stems in a pewter vase on the dresser. This room has two single beds, so Kate moves on down the corridor, stepping into each room as she passes: Sage, Wisteria, Lilac, and Fern, all decorated in keeping with their names, and at the very end of the hall: Elder. It’s the only door that’s closed, so she assumes this must be Audrey’s room. She smiles wryly at the fact that the aged proprietor should have the room named Elder.
Ozzie has been tight on Kate’s heels, and he follows her up the narrower staircase to the third floor; still carpeted, but less grand than the main stairs. She turns right at the landing and pokes her head into Willow (her favourite yet), Marigold (far too yellow), and Oak. The last room is tucked into a little alcove of its own: Rose.
Kate takes a deep breath, thinking of her mother, and pushes the door open wider. With a name like Rose, she expected pink or red, but the walls are papered in white with a striking black floral pattern. White curtains frame both large windows, falling into pools on the floorboards. The white duvet is piled with dark green accent pillows, and a matching throw blanket covers the foot of the bed. A couch, armchair, and glass coffee table are clustered in the corner of the room in front of an old television. Kate catches a glimpse of the woods out the window, a border of green speckled with gold and red. A realization dawns on her. “Wait a minute…”
Ozzie raises his head as she reaches into her purse for the small photo album from her parents’ honeymoon. She locates the photo she’s looking for in the pile of loose pictures stuffed into the back.
The wallpaper is different in the photo, but the dresser is identical. The sofa is the same size and shape too. It’s just been reupholstered in a more modern fabric. In the photo, her mother is perched on the edge of it, a stream of sunlight from the window behind her creating a halo around her auburn head. Her mouth is open in a wide smile, eyes glittering with good-natured annoyance; the expression she always wore when Kate’s dad took the piss out of her about something. He had a sarcastic streak that was often funny but could sometimes wound, if he was in a depressed mood, or drank too much that day. Even now, she can hear their voices, her dad’s low cackle. Her eyes blur with tears and she holds the picture to her chest.
“They were here,” she says to Ozzie. “They stayed in this room.”
Kate sits down in the same spot as her mother and closes her eyes, trying to leech some long-forgotten ray of her mum’s quiet, reserved energy out of the cushion. She’d like to believe it’s possible. Some people do. But Kate doesn’t really know exactly what she believes anymore. Loss has a way of challenging everything we thought was true and right in the world. The lucky ones are drawn closer to whatever it is they believe about the universe, comforted by the idea of a god with some master plan for everyone. Other people just drown in the unnerving knowledge that life is random. It’s fair, in a way, that we’re all beholden to the outcome determined by the same set of dice, but fairness can be cruel sometimes. It stole her parents from her. It was the nail in the coffin of her failing marriage. It stole something else deep inside Kate, too, something she’s not sure she can ever get back.
A knock on the door jolts her. Audrey is standing in the doorway, Sue behind her.
“Go on,” Sue says.
Audrey steps into the room. Ozzie tugs toward her but Kate holds his leash firm, wiping an errant tear.
“Gracious,” Audrey sighs. “There’s no need for tears.”
“No,” Kate says, embarrassed. “It’s, er… It’s the room. My mother’s name was Rose. I lost her recently, that’s all.” She pushes the memories away like crumbs falling to the floor. She’ll clean them up later. “It’s a beautiful room.”
Audrey’s knotted fingers flex on the handle of her cane. In the hallway, Sue clears her throat.
“I’ve agreed to let you stay on a probationary basis,” Audrey says. “Sue has made some convincing, however pigheaded”—she shoots Sue a withering look over her shoulder—“arguments about the amount of work required for the continued administration of the Oakwood. It may be time for a bit of help. We’ll give it a go until Christmas, perhaps. Are you agreeable?”
A strong sense of relief floods Kate’s veins. Now that she’s in the Rose Room, she desperately wants to stay.
