‘We start filming in a week!’ Laura screeched.
‘I know!’ Gabe shouted back. ‘Do you think I don’t know? You’re not the only one working your arse off for this.’
Laura put her head in her hands. ‘You are the face of this show, Gabe. People have to like you. You just beat up a clergyman in broad daylight because you didn’t like the cut of his jib. How is that helpful?’
‘He accused me of flirting with Macy. As good as accused me,’ Gabe shot back.
‘Well, I expect you were,’ said Laura.
‘I was not.’
‘You’d flirt with your own shadow if you thought no one was watching,’ Laura teased him. She knew she needed to lighten the mood. That her own stress was rubbing off on Gabe, and everyone, and making everything worse. But unfortunately Gabe took her comment the wrong way.
‘Now you’re being ridiculous,’ he said crossly. Thrusting his hands deep in his pockets, he stomped off like a sulky schoolboy.
‘He’s only angry because he knows I’m right,’ Laura said to Eddie, who’d sat and watched the entire contretemps in silence. Suddenly the stress of the day got too much for her. She pinched the bridge of her nose to try to stop the tears from coming, but it was too late.
‘Oh God. Sorry,’ she sniffed. ‘I think I’m just exhausted.’
Eddie walked over and wrapped his arms around her. ‘It’s all right. Everyone’s on edge. But Gabe’s right, the vicar won’t press charges. It’ll blow over.’
‘Will it?’ sobbed Laura.
‘Of course it will. But you must try to relax, you really must. You’ll make yourself ill at this rate.’
‘I know,’ Laura nodded, burying her face in Eddie’s shirt, which smelled incongruously of wood polish. He really was a lovely man.
‘Edward!’
Releasing Laura as if he’d just discovered she was made of molten lava, Eddie turned round. Annabel stood in the kitchen doorway, a picture of rage. Gabe must have left the door to the yard open when he stormed out.
‘Darling! What a nice surprise. I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘Obviously.’
That’s all we need, thought Laura. More misunderstandings. She thought about saying something, trying to explain, but Annabel’s expression made it clear she was in no mood to hear it.
‘I need you to talk to Milo.’ Annabel was talking to Eddie, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. ‘Right now.’
‘Of course,’ said Eddie, chastened. There was nothing going on between him and Laura. But after everything that had happened, he could hardly blame Annabel for thinking the worst.
Laura watched from the window as Eddie scurried across the farmyard after his rigid-shouldered wife. What a bloody awful day.
Valley Farm, 1. Marital Harmony, Nil.
Magda Bartosz clutched her small suitcase tightly in her left hand as she climbed out of her decrepit Ford Fiesta. It felt wrong, parking her rust-bucket of a car outside this spectacularly beautiful house. Like littering. But she was already late, thanks to an accident on the Lewes bypass, and there was nowhere else obvious to leave it. Smoothing down her skirt, Magda hurried up the steps to the front door, then hesitated.
Perhaps one doesn’t knock at the front door of a grand house, when arriving for a trial as a live-in maid? Is there a back door? A servants’ entrance? Or does that sort of thing only exist in Downton Abbey?, she thought.
Magda had been in England for a few years now, working as a companion-cum-housekeeper for an old woman who had since died. But English customs and traditions still baffled her, especially the ones that pertained to class. Magda herself had been born into an old and distinguished but impoverished family in Warsaw. Her proud, high cheekbones, smooth forehead and regal, aquiline nose bore testament to the better life once known by her ancestors. But everything that had once been refined and beautiful and pleasant about Magda’s life had evaporated long ago. So long ago, and so totally, that she rarely even thought about it any more.
I’m here now, she thought.
I’m lucky to be here, in this heavenly place, with a roof over my head and food and wages.
I must make this job work.
I must make the family love me.
Crunching across the gravel, she followed the path around the side of the house, past the noisily rushing river. A heavy wooden door led directly into the kitchen. Magda knocked loudly, but there was no answer. Tentatively, she tried the handle. It opened with a creak.
‘Hello?’
She stepped into the flagstoned room. It was spotlessly clean and smelled of fresh flowers and something baked and sweet and delicious. Something with cinnamon. For a moment she panicked that Lady Wellesley had already found a cleaner. But that couldn’t be right. Magda had received an email only yesterday confirming today’s arrangements.
‘Helloo?’ Setting down her suitcase, she ventured into the hall. The house appeared to be empty. A set of narrow, winding stairs led off to the right. Magda walked towards them. If there were a part of the house for servants, this was probably it. Suddenly she froze. A noise was coming from upstairs; a dreadful, primal moaning sound, as if someone had been injured.
Instinctively, Magda moved towards it. She heard it again, a woman’s voice. Her heart was pounding nineteen to the dozen. What if an intruder had attacked Lady Wellesley? What if he was still in the house somewhere? But she couldn’t run, nor could she call the police. At the top of the stairs now, her palms sweating, she burst into the room. ‘Are you all r …?’
A naked blonde with a phenomenal figure was lying on the bed, her back arched and legs spread. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. On the floor at the foot of the bed knelt a boy, also naked, his head very firmly planted between the girl’s thighs. The girl saw Magda first. Letting out an ear-piercing scream, she pulled the bed sheet around her like a shield. Startled, the boy turned round too.
‘Hello.’ He flashed Magda a sheepish smile. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Magda blurted, blushing to the roots of her hair. ‘I didn’t mean to … I thought someone had been hurt.’
Just then all three of them paused at the unmistakable sound of the front door opening and closing downstairs.
Seconds later a man’s voice boomed through the house like a giant’s. ‘Milo!’ Eddie roared. ‘Where are you? I want a word. Now.’
The smile melted off the boy’s face like butter on a hot stove. ‘Fuck.’ He turned back to the girl wrapped in the sheet behind him. ‘Dad’ll go ballistic if he finds you here. Hide!’
‘Where the fuck am I supposed to hide?’ demanded the girl. Not unreasonably, thought Magda, as – other than the bed – there wasn’t a stick of furniture in the room. Clearly this was a largely unused part of the house. Magda also noticed that the girl’s accent was distinctly EastEnders. Unlike the boy, who seemed to have a whole handful of plums in his mouth.
‘Please. Help us.’ He looked pleadingly at Magda. It didn’t seem to bother him in the least that he was still stark naked.
‘I … how?’ Magda stammered. Sir Edward Wellesley’s heavy footsteps could be heard thundering up the stairs.
‘Stall him. Please. Just till I can get Roxanne out of here.’
Magda stepped out into the corridor, closing the door behind her.