Half Term

So this is my diary. I’ve never kept a diary before. I’ll tell you in a minute why I’m starting one. I like writing and Sister Boniface says I’m good at it, but those aren’t the reasons. First, about me. My name is Ama. I usually have to say it twice to people. It’s short for Amaranth. Amaranth Christelle Obojo. I’m in Year 11 at Cloisters House. It’s a residential school for girls in north London. It’s pretty expensive. I go to boarding school because my parents live in Lagos. That’s a big city in south-west Nigeria.

But I’m not starting this diary to tell you about me. It’s my friend I need to tell you about. Becky Tremayne. She’s from England. She’s in the same year as me. She doesn’t have parents. They died when she was really little. She doesn’t have friends either. Except me. When she’s not at school, she lives with her aunt and uncle. Well, it’ll be just her aunt, now. If you don’t count all the others in the house, like the cook, the servants and all. It’ll take me a while to explain everything. Trust me and bear with me.

Their last name isn’t Tremayne like hers. It’s Fortescue. Uncle Hector and Aunt Florence. Their house is massive. I mean, really massive. I didn’t think people lived in houses like that any more. I thought they’d all been sold off to the National Trust. Becky’s aunt and uncle must have piles of money. It’s like Downton Abbey. They even have housemaids. There’s Mrs Short, the housekeeper. It’s quite funny because she’s really tall. She doesn’t smile much. She’s in charge of the maids, lots of them, who are really young, not much older than Becky and me. They have to do everything like cleaning, making the beds, doing the washing and stuff. Mrs Short keeps all the keys. There are loads of keys. She has a key cupboard on the wall and she doesn’t always lock it. I suppose the maids need to open doors and things without bothering her. That key cupboard is pretty important, for what I’ve got to tell you. I’ll get to it.

I think Becky’s parents were killed in an accident. She doesn’t talk about them much. If she forgets and starts saying something, she stops herself. Her Aunt Florence is like her mum now. Has been for years, since Becky was in infants or something.

Anyway, Becky invited me to stay at her house at half term. It was a week and my parents couldn’t visit. So we took the train. Sister Mary Mark took us as far as Paddington Station. Aunt Florence met us at Kemble. Get this, they have a chauffeur! I thought my folks were pretty well off but a Bentley, well, I mean. It was like floating on air. There was a big TV in the back and a fridge with cokes and stuff.

The house is like a castle. It must have dozens of rooms but we only went into a few. Becky showed me her room. It’s all modern with a smart TV and really cool orange iMac. She still keeps her old toys, Bratz dolls would you believe, and the dressing up stuff she must have had since she was five. I guess she keeps them because the house is so big and they have loads of space.

My room was all blue and white. Becky called it the blue room. She sort of didn’t want to go in there and I didn’t know why, at first. I guessed it was just because it was my private space for the week. The maid who took my case was dithering in the doorway too, till Mrs Short grabbed it off her, tossing her head and tutting, swung it in and plonked it down on a low table at the end of the bed. The sunlight in the room was lovely. There was a great big window facing west, with the afternoon sun streaming in, all greenish and leafy from the trees outside the house. I had a great view of the gardens which looked like they went on forever.

The blue room even had a fireplace but there was a screen thingy blocking it off. Mrs Short said something about it being too warm for a fire but there was a fan heater in case I got cold. One side of the fireplace, there was a door to my own private bathroom. The door was painted white round the edges and its four panels were pale blue. For the blue room, I suppose. Through the door I could see a massive bathtub with four feet, in the middle of the bathroom floor, and a separate shower cubicle with glass doors. It was like a five star hotel.

They left me to unpack my things. Mrs Short said the maid would do it but I looked at the girl and her pale face said she didn’t really want to, so I said no, I’d do it myself. Becky said there’d be tea downstairs in half an hour and I could meet her Aunt Florence then. She didn’t mention her uncle. Not until later.

There was another door, to the right of the fireplace. It was identical to the bathroom door, same blue panels, same white around the outside. It was locked. I looked around for a key, on the mantelshelf, on the top of the door frame, but I couldn't find one. Not then. I guessed it was probably a closet or something. In that, I was partly right.

There was a big wardrobe to the left of the bed, and a tall chest of drawers, so I put my stuff in there. There was way more space than I needed. I tried the bed and I wasn’t surprised at how comfortable the mattress was. Everything in this place looked expensive and top quality. Anyways, I washed my hands and face, then headed downstairs to find Becky and meet Aunt Florence.

Aunt Florence was lovely. She was, like, really ordinary, not the sort of lady of the house I’d been expecting. She could have been any of my friends’ mum. She had soft, ginger-coloured hair, almost shoulder length, around her gorgeous blue eyes. She just looked so elegant, so calm, there on that plush pale grey sofa. I’d be scared witless of dropping something on it if I lived there. She asked me if my room was OK. I told her it certainly was. She asked me if I had any special dietary requirements. Mrs Short stood there with a notebook and pen. I guess she was ready to write down if I was vegan or something. Irena at school has stacks of allergies and they have to be really careful what they feed her but I’ll eat anything.

I wondered why there were two teapots. Aunt Florence asked if I wanted China tea or Indian. I went for China, because it’s light and I really like it. Becky had the same, and so did Aunt Florence. I wonder if the Indian tea got wasted. Maybe the servants drank it later. If it was still hot.

After tea, Becky showed me around the gardens. Well, part of them. It would have taken until after dark to explore them all. There was acres of lawn, and symmetrical flower beds on different levels, even a maze which I wanted to explore but Becky said we could do that another day. We had to be back inside, washed and ready for dinner, she told me.

Dinner was a bit scary, that first day. The table was huge and there were about three sets of knives and forks. I’ve seen that Titanic movie so I know you start from the outside and work your way in. That wasn’t the scariest thing, though. What scared me most was Becky’s Uncle Hector.

He was already sitting there when we went in, at the head of the great big long table. Aunt Florence sat at the other end. Becky sat opposite me, about half-way down. I felt a long way from her. I felt isolated. A maid brought me a big bowl with a bit of green soup in the bottom. The soup was cold and tasted of cucumber. Later, Becky told me it was supposed to be cold. I’d never had anything like it before. After we’d all finished our soup, Uncle Hector spoke.

“Is everything to your liking, Anna?” he asked. His voice was deep and booming. Before I could find mine to answer him, Aunt Florence said softly, “It’s Ama, Hector.”

“I’m sorry,” boomed Uncle Hector. “Ama. Is everything all right for you?”

I nodded and gulped. “Yes, thank you, sir.”

His lips smiled, but his eyes did not. His head moved like my nod in a mirror, more sort of superior than nice. He said something then that I can remember exactly. “The blue room is most suitable, most suitable indeed, for a young girl.” Right after he said ‘young girl’ there was a kind of chuckling rumble in his throat, like a cat purring. I nearly threw up my soup. I looked down at the table and I think everyone else did, too. The servants came and cleared away, then brought us more stuff. The uncle starting talking to the girls who were serving him. I looked across at Becky but her face was sort of blank.

The uncle didn’t speak at the other dinners. There must have been six others because I was there a week, and he was there for five of them. It’s just that first one I remember. The last dinner, the Saturday, was really awkward, because he’d gone by then. Becky still thinks they took him because he’s a Russian spy. Well she doesn’t, but it’s best if she does. That’s how we talked about it after, and how we’ll talk about it again when I see her in class in the morning. It’s our way of dealing with it all.

So, the door. The blue-and-white door.

We got into our half-term holiday routine. Every morning, we had awesome breakfasts, all the cereals you could name in those little just-for-one boxes, piles of fresh fruit, boiled eggs, a huge stack of toast, pots of tea and coffee. Enough food to last the whole day, really. Then we’d go out into the grounds. I solved the maze and escaped, with a bit of help from Becky. She showed me the old family mausoleum, and the wild woodlands where you could spot wallabies and deer if you were lucky.

On the Thursday morning, it was dull and rainy out, so we hung around in the house. There was a smell of cleaning, mixed with the after-breakfast smells, and it reminded me of hotels when I was little and my parents took me on holiday. We could hear the maids bustling about, hoovers whirring, dishes clinking.

We were in Becky’s room, messing around online. The door was open. Mrs Short went past, a bunch of keys in her hand. “Becky, does she have the key to the locked door in my room?” I asked.

I will never forget the expression on my friend’s face. It’s like there wasn’t an expression. Total blankness for a moment. Then she said, “What do you want to open that for? It’s just an empty cupboard. Don’t you have enough space for your things?”

I told her I’d got more than enough space, with all the drawers and the big wardrobe. I’d only brought enough stuff for a week and I knew I wouldn’t even need all that because the maid had taken my worn clothes to wash. I recognised her as one of those who’d served us at dinner. She was a shy-looking girl with a pale, freckly face and red hair. She was the one Becky’s uncle had spoken to after the soup. She’d looked then as though she couldn’t get away from him fast enough, and she seemed in just as much of a hurry to get out of the blue room after picking up my yesterday clothes.

Becky clicked off the iMac’s monitor. She said, “If you really want to see, I’ll get the key from Mrs Short’s cupboard. It’ll be unlocked now, while the maids have got the rooms all open for cleaning.”

She went off and came back a couple of minutes later with a single key, which she tossed to me. I’m good at catching. We both headed to the blue room; Becky stood by while I unlocked the second blue-and-white door.

The lock clicked around easily. It felt like it was used a lot. The door opened outwards, towards me, not like the bathroom door. It was a closet. There were four shelves, empty. Behind the shelves was a blank, wood-panelled wall, not painted. There was no dust on the shelves, though I hadn’t seen the maids open the door while I’d been there.

“See? Just a boring old cupboard,” Becky said.

There was something not quite right about that closet. It didn’t have a closet smell, like spaces that aren’t opened all that often. I didn’t get the impression that the blue room was often occupied. Becky had said her aunt and uncle didn’t have many house guests.

I felt I wanted to investigate that cupboard again, when I was on my own. So, I did something not quite honest. I closed the blue-and-white door and pretended to lock it. But I didn’t lock it. I turned it half way toward locked, then back to unlocked again, before I pulled out the key and handed it back to Becky. She skipped off to return it to Mrs Short’s cupboard, before the housekeeper noticed it was gone.

For the rest of that day, I couldn’t stop thinking about the blue-and-white door. I wondered what would happen if Mrs Short found it unlocked. Maybe she would lock it again and think nothing of it, assuming a forgetful maid had neglected to secure it after dusting.

That night, alone in the blue room, I put my hand on the closet’s door knob once again. It turned easily and the door was soon open. The bedroom light illuminated the space clearly. The wooden shelves lay on battens at either end. I found I could lift each shelf easily and, removing the second one down, I saw something that didn’t really surprise me. As I’ve said, I was sure this was no ordinary closet. What better way to conceal a door, than with another door?

Behind the second shelf was a deadbolt. The back of the closet was itself another door. Once I had all four shelves stacked on end against the bedroom wall, I took a deep breath, drew the bolt and pushed at the panelling. It swung away from me, hinged at the left. Beyond was another space and, in that first moment, that room spoke to me.

I switched on my phone’s flashlight. Thankfully, the room I had discovered did not appear to have any windows. That way, no-one outside would see any tell-tale light that might give me away. As I swung my flashlight around, revealing a rumpled, single bed, a wall-mounted flat TV, and a few scattered magazines, the scenes that had played out behind that hidden-in-plain-sight door were as clear to my eyes as if they were happening right before them.

The magazines were porn, showing men and women in various positions. I didn’t need to turn on the TV to know what it would be tuned to. A nightstand drawer by the bed was partly open, and I could see packs of condoms, and some empty sachets torn open. In a few seconds, everything I had seen in that house fell into place. The haunted, gutted mien of those serving girls. The silent, wooden denial of the housekeeper, forced to preside over her young charges’ debauchment. And what of Aunt Florence? Did she know what her husband was doing, behind that blue-and-white door, that gateway to the pandemonic depths of hell? For if that room shouted out one thing, it was recency. The vile magazines’ pages were soft, uncurled. There was a scent of people here; delicate femininity, disfigured by dread and adrenaline, crushed beneath brutal, toxic androgyny, suffocating, dominating, possessing in every chilling, pre-biblical sense of the word.

I closed the panel door before the room could work more of its foul black magic. I did not sleep at all that night.

By Friday morning, I had it all worked out. When the pale maid with the red hair came to tidy my room, I asked her straight out. She looked shocked and made as if to run away but I grabbed her hand. I think I said, “It’s OK. You can tell me. Together we can end this. Tell me everything.”

She did. I am not going to write it all down here, but the suspicions that had flocked outward from the depths of that torture chamber proved to be one hundred percent founded on fact. Mary - for that is her name - and every one of her young workmates had been the objects of Uncle Henry’s unsolicited, savage attentions on a daily basis, ever since they had come here. They were all vulnerable girls from a special school, who had sought employment in service, hoping for a stepping stone to a normal life of independence.

I made phone calls, and a cover story that Becky and I could pretend was true. Uncle Hector was a foreign spy, and the room behind the closet was where he had kept his code books. They took him away. I honestly don’t know if poor Becky herself had been one of his victims. One day, when she is ready, she will tell me.