Moonlight (11 page)

"There really isn't any need to go to any trouble,” Winnie called after her.

"Hush, hush now, my dear.
It really isn't any trouble,” the old woman smiled, reaching the counter where there was a computer. 

While Winnie waited for the old woman to check her database, she looked at all the rows of books. She wondered about all the words printed in the shop
and the stories they told. A
s she stood and thought about all the different stories created by all the different writers in the world, she knew she would love to have a look at one of Thaddeus’s books of poetry. She would find it a curious thing to hold it in her hands and look over all the neatly printed words. She thought it must be a very precious thing indeed to have written a book, to which people you had never met, would read and share your words and ideas. Winnie wanted a copy of Thaddeus’s poems so she could see what words and ideas he had wanted to share with others.

The old woman looked up from the computer and said, "I'm sorry, dear, but there doesn't seem to be a record of any such poet. You did say Thaddeus Blake, didn't you?"

Winnie just nodded, disappointed and confused.

"Well he just doesn't exist. There isn't any such poet, my dear,” the old woman smiled.

She thanked the woman for her help, and with a frown, Winnie left the bookshop.

Winnie spent the next hour or so buying the groceries which Thaddeus had asked for. She went about this chore systematically as her mind puzzled over what the old woman in the bookshop had told her.
Again, Winnie had become suspicious of Thaddeus, but she wondered if there wasn’t an explanation, how crazy or weird, why he didn’t come up on the shopkeeper’s database.  Okay, so Thaddeus had told her he was a poet and that's what he spent his nights alone writing. As he had explained himself the very first night that they had met, he liked the peace and quiet of the night and the solitude it provided. So maybe
his writing was no more than a hobby?
T
hen again, hadn’t he said his reason for being in London was to meet with his publisher? She wondered. Perhaps he wasn’t yet published? But this just only filled Winnie’s head with more question
s about her eccentric employer.
Like she planned to ask him about
Frances
, she decided to also tell Thaddeus about her uneventful visit to the bookshop. Winnie paid for the groceries in the supermarket, and left. Her mind was so muddled with her own thoughts, that she missed the newspaper stand outside with its bold black headline, which read:
Local woman and baby found butchered
.

As Winnie made her way back up the hill with the heavy bags of groceries swinging from her fists, she knew she would have to be careful how she raised the issues of his dead wife and the bookshop visit. Thaddeus was her employer after all, and he might not be too happy if he
thought she had been snooping on him. Although Winnie’s suspicions had been raised, she still needed the job until she had raised enough money to run again.  

As she stood and unpacked the shopping in the kitchen and stored it away in the cupboards, Winnie pushed her doubts and fears to the back of her mind. She would deal with them later - when Thaddeus woke.  Winnie fixed herself a ham sandwich for lunch and relaxed at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a packet of Cadbury’s chocolate fingers she had added to the groceries. 

An hour later she set about cleaning the house.
Winnie
found a duster and a can of polish in a cupboard beneath the kitchen sink and moved through the dining room. She dusted and polished the long table until its surface was gleaming. Wiping away the dust which had built up around the window frames, she decided that if the weather was warmer tomorrow, she would venture outside and clean the windows. The window by the chair she was going to sit and read in was particularly grubby she noticed, and you could barely see out of it. Winnie walked around the room, dusting the bookshelves and knocking away the beginnings of cobwebs that had crept between the books. She figured that dust and cobwebs must be a continuing problem in a house this size, and once she had finished cleaning all of the rooms, she would have to start right back at the beginning again.

Winnie spent an hour or more just dusting the dining room and by the time she had finished, her arms and back ached.
The pain clawed its way across her shoulder blades and dug at the small of her back. She hung her arms loosely by her sides,
rolling
her shoulders
and stretching her spine as she left the dining room
and crossed the hall. Winnie reached the door which led into the lounge and
paused. She backtracked a few paces and stood before the oil painting in the hall
which hung opposite the picture of Thaddeus. She stared up at the picture, letting her eyes travel over the painted face before her. The
woman’s face was a little longer and narrower than her own, but the colour of her hair and eyes matched Winnie’s. The women in the painting did look a lot like her. With her flesh breaking out in goose bumps, Winnie knew that she was looking at a painting of
Frances
. Then, as she slowly passed the paintings of the other women, she thought with a strange disquiet, that in an uncanny way, she looked a little like all
of them. Not knowing if her imagination was working overtime and that she was now becoming suspicious of everything and anything connected to Thaddeus, Winnie told herself not to be so dumb and turned her back on the paintings of
Frances
and the other women. To try and clear her mind of her nagging doubts and ever-growing paranoia, Winnie took the iPod, put in the earphones, and spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning the lounge and kitchen while listening to
Alone Again
By
Alyssa Reid
as loud as she could bear.

At about five p.m., Winnie
noticed that
the
house had
begun
to
grow dim as the winter sunlight began to fade over the hill
. She
passed
through the house, switching on lights. In the lounge, she switched on the lamp next to the chair where she had been asked to sit and read. Taking the clothes from the back of the chair, she made her way upstairs to get changed into them.
In her room, Winnie
discarded the clothes she had been wearing that day, placing them in the laundry basket along with the rest of her
dirty clothes. It was then Winnie noticed
the
blouse with Thaddeus’s bloody handprint on it and she wondered if the cut had now healed. 

Winnie put on the violet top and black skirt Thaddeus had left out for her. She found a black pair of shoes with a small heel amongst the many other pairs in the closet.
S
etting her hair and her makeup, she stood before the mirror and wondered if this was really how
Frances
had looked when she was living and breathing. Desperate not to spook herself out,
Winnie left her
room and made her way down the landing.

As she moved along the wide
corridor with its many doors, she noticed that one of them was slightly ajar. She stopped outside. No light came from within.
Winnie tapped lightly
on the
door with her knuckles. There was no response from inside. Glancing quickly back over her shoulder, she gently pushed open the door and ventured inside.

The room
was in complete darkness. Winnie fumbled with her hand along the wall and
flipped on the
light switch. A single bulb overhead cast a glow of pale light into the room.
Winnie went to the windows to draw back the thick, heavy curtains which hung over them. She pulled them back and a shower of dust fell from them. The curtains smelt musty and old, as if they hadn’t been aired for some time. Then, much to her dismay, Winnie discovered that the windows behind the curtain had been boarded over with planks of wood. Each piece has been fastened to the window frame with several nails. With a frown across her brow, she turned and looked at the room. It was
poky. Probably one of the smallest
rooms in the
house,
she
thought.
The air in the room
smelt stale and rancid, and she
screwed up her nose. A narrow bed lay against the far wall. Beside it there was an ancient-looking rocking chair. A small wooden table sat opposite the chair with an old-fashioned Singer sewing machine. Winnie went over to the table. Looking closely at the sewing machine, she discovered it worked manually by turning a small wheel which protruded from one end, and with the aid of a wooden pedal that lay on the floor beneath the table. A velvet-covered needlework box lay beside the ancient machine and very delicately, Winnie lifted its lid. Reels of fine cotton and lace lay neatly in the box and she ran her fingers gingerly over them. Needles, threads, old buttons, and china thimbles were also neatly placed inside. Winnie lowered the lid and turned around. Across from her
was a dressing table, which looked like some kind of antique. There was a hairbrush with coarse yellow bristles and a marble back which had been decorated with gold, along with a powder puff and silver hairgrips. A china statue of a ballerina stood gracefully to one side. Winnie picked it up and felt its cool surface. She held it close in the dim lighting so she could marvel at its fine beauty. Holding it close to her face, she could see it was covered with tiny blue cracks. After a few moments of study, she placed it back in its original position. A row of drawers were carved into the dressing table, and curling her fingers around one of the gold handles, she eased one of them open. Winnie reached inside and pulled out some photographs.

Holding them up in the light, Winnie studied the pictures. The first was a recent colour photograph of a frail old woman. By the look of her sallow, paper-thin skin, Winnie guessed her age to be at least ninety, maybe even older than that. Her hair was white and wispy, and it stood out from her narrow skull like springs. Dark smudges of age and ill health coloured the weighty bags of flesh which hung beneath her watery eyes. Deep lines of age ravaged her face, giving her a drawn and pointed look. Studying the picture, Winnie wondered if it wasn’t a picture of Thaddeus's grandmother. There was another picture, again of the old woman, taken in the room which Winnie now found herself in. The old woman was stooped forward in the rocking chair and she was staring up out of the photo. Winnie turned to the next photograph. Again, this was of the old woman. She was seated in a wheelchair, outside the house. It was dark
and if it hadn’t have been for the shaft of moonlight, Thaddeus, who stood beside the woman in this picture, would have been hidden in shadow. His right hand was rested on her left shoulder. A smile danced across both of their lips. 

"What are you doing in here?" Thaddeus suddenly asked from behind her.

Winnie jumped, sending the photographs spilling to the floor. She spun around to face him as he stood in the doorway. "Hey, Thaddeus, you made me jump," she breathed.

Thaddeus crossed the room, his dark eyes fixed firmly upon hers. As he drew near, Winnie saw that tonight the colour of his eyes were almost black. He stopped before her, and stooping, he bent down and gathered up the photographs. Thaddeus placed them back in the drawer and shut it.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked again, his eyes never leaving hers.

“I saw that the door was ajar and thought maybe you were in here,” she mumbled, feeling like a thief who had been caught stealing.

“Well as you can now see, I wasn't,” he said, searching
her
eyes. Winnie looked past him and gesturing towards the dressing table drawer, she said, "Those photographs, Thaddeus,
were
they of
your grandmother?"

"Yes," he replied, his voice flat.

“Where is she now?” Winnie pushed.

"Look, Winnie,
I am
not discussing this any further
with
you,” he said, his voice not angry but firm. “I've warned you I have my eccentric
ways and
requests, and one of them
is that you’re never
to enter this room
again. It is
private. You have no business in here.”

Winnie tried
to
ease her way out of
the
uncomfortable situation she was now faced with and said, "Thaddeus, I
wasn'
t snooping around
.
Like I said, the door was open, and I didn’t know I
wasn't meant
to come in here. I'm sorry."

Thaddeus's eyes
began to defreeze and warm slowly. “Well now you do know, so please don’t come in here again.”

Winnie
gave
him a half-smile and Thaddeus gestured her back towards the open door. On the landing again, Thaddeus closed the door behind them. Then looking her up and down, he said, “Thank you for wearing the clothes I left out for you.”