Our Little Secret (5 page)

A gagging order? I wonder what he knew? And I can’t help wondering how a couple this wealthy and successful can have so little information available online about them. Maybe they’ve paid someone to keep all that from the prying public eye, too.

Should I be worried about what I might be walking into? Perhaps. But a part of me is more excited by the mystery of it all. What do I know about how the super-rich operate? Nothing. Nothing yet at all.

But I can’t wait to find out.

Because that’s what this is, right? An adventure. And it’s way too late to back out now.

9

I’m engrossed in an offline game of
Candy Crush Saga
on my phone when the driver’s muffled voice jolts me back to reality. It’s not coming through the speaker, but I realize that we’ve stopped. Curious, I stare through the tinted window. The driver is talking to a guy whose face I can’t see, in some sort of gatehouse. Ahead of us, there’s smooth tarmac road leading over the brow of the hill. There are lots of tall leafy trees.

This must be it. This must be where the Parkers live. On a grass verge there’s a very plush sign, carved from tastefully sawn-off tree trunk, saying ‘Thousand Acres. Private Estate. Please report to the gatehouse.’

I quickly gather up all the papers strewn around me on the seat and shove them in my handbag, then scramble to tidy up the Coke can and stray peanuts. I press the button to open the window and stare out. We’re moving again and it’s lovely to feel the wind on my face.

I’ve heard of gated communities before and, let’s face it, I’m used to the concept of estates – but only council ones, like the rough one where my school was, with its boarded-up windows, cheap booze stores and dodgy-looking junkies. In all my life I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s as if the very, very rich have portioned off a private patch of paradise. Even the road is the most perfect road you’ve ever seen. It’s so clean, you could practically eat off it. I think of Ryan. My God, how much would he love skateboarding down this baby?

On either side I can see driveways leading off, and get glimpses of the giant mansions at the end of them. There isn’t a soul in sight, let alone another car. I can hear birds singing and the air is super-fresh. Even the manicured gardens look as if the flowers have been given a Technicolor makeover, like in those old movies.

We drive on for what seems like miles, the houses getting more and more spaced apart. I glimpse tennis courts, pools, Ferraris and four-by-fours. I can see only one person, way in the distance. As we get closer I realize it’s a woman in a turquoise velour tracksuit with diamanté studs across the shoulders. She’s skinny as a rake and is fully made up, despite looking like she’s out for exercise, in pristine white trainers. She’s walking four small shih-tzu dogs, but somehow it’s obvious that she’s someone’s dog-walker – that, like me, she’s staff.

Then there’s a loud zooming noise and a black Porsche speeds towards us. I turn my head to watch it shoot up the hill, almost taking off at the brow. I guess speed restrictions don’t apply here.

Finally, after what seems like forever, we turn off the road into what appears to be the last drive. The driver obviously has some gismo, because some tall iron gates open as we approach. They are black and ornate and look like they belong at Buckingham Palace.

There’s no sign of a house, but the drive bends into the distance, lined on either side by wide strips of almost fluorescently green grass and dense oblong hedges.

I sit forward on my seat as, at last, the drive slowly begins to curve to the left and I finally see the house. I can’t stop myself gasping in shock. And then I swear out loud.

‘Fuck!’

It’s the size of it, I guess. The sheer scale of it – and the wealth. The house must be modern, but it’s made of the kind of pale sandstone they build stately homes out of, back home. It’s like Downton Abbey’s suave American nephew. There are two big towers on either side of the front, with imposing stone falcons at the top of them. There must be a hundred windows, most of them closed with white shutters inside.

The drive terminates in a vast gravel turning circle. There’s a gushing fountain at its centre.

On the other side of the fountain, near the house, there’s a removal lorry with gold lettering on its side and men in long brown overalls taking what looks like a giant guilt-edged canvas down the ramp and up the sweeping stone staircase towards the front doors, which are open.

The car comes to a stop some way behind the lorry and I can see lots of other workmen, shunting ornate vases inside the house. On the steps I notice a woman directing affairs. At first I think it must be Marnie Parker, but then I realize that it’s old Gundred from the interview.

I wasn’t expecting to see her here. She certainly didn’t warn me that she would be here. She looks different from the last time I saw her. She’s wearing slim-cut designer black trousers, with a thin, gold-chain belt, which actually show off what a taut figure she’s got, and a black silky shirt buttoned up to her neck. Her hair is loose and I realize that she’s probably a good ten years younger than I had her down for.

The driver opens my car door, but doesn’t look at me as I get out and mumble my thanks. I make up the steps towards Gundred.

‘Hello!’ I call.

‘Ah, you’re here,’ she says, but not in a friendly way. She sounds harassed, like I’ve turned up at an inconvenient time, when she’s the one who’s rushed me here.

She immediately continues to direct the removal guys, who are humping the heavy picture with extreme caution. She grabs my arm and forcibly moves me out of their way.

‘How was your journey?’

‘Fine, thanks,’ I answer, turning to see the driver taking my pink case out of the trunk and putting it on the bottom steps, as if it might contaminate his hand. He doesn’t look at me as he steps back inside the car, and Gundred doesn’t acknowledge him. In a moment, the car crackles off around the drive and towards the back of the house.

‘It’s a bit busy here today,’ she explains. ‘As you can see.’ She sighs, clearly anxious. ‘Laura?’ she calls out loudly towards the house. ‘Laura!’

A girl comes rushing out of the house. I say ‘girl’, but she’s older than me. She has her hair tied back in a ponytail and is wearing creased white shorts and a navy-blue polo shirt. It’s a fairly unflattering and androgynous combination. Oh God, is this the staff uniform? Will I have to wear it? It’s hardly any better than the FunPlex uniform.

‘Yes, Mrs Gundred? How can I help?’

She has chainmail braces on her teeth, like a fourteen-year-old. She looks like they occupy her entire mouth and she hates speaking. She squints through nasty plastic-framed glasses. Everything about her is awkward: from the way she stands all hunched up, to the way she wrings her hands nervously. Her fingernails are bitten right down.

‘This is Miss Henshaw,’ Gundred explains. ‘Will you take her and show her room, please?’ Then she adds to me, more kindly, ‘Give me half an hour and I’ll show you around properly.’

Laura, the girl, looks at me nervously, her eyes darting to the floor almost immediately, as if she’s too embarrassed to look at me.

‘This way, if you would, Miss Henshaw,’ she says.

‘Please, call me Sophie,’ I insist, giving her my most friendly smile, but I catch a look between her and Gundred, who shakes her head. It’s just a tiny beat, but an important one, I realize. There are strict rules in this place.

But surely – please, God – they’re not going to insist on calling me ‘Miss Henshaw’ the whole time? It makes me feel like a crusty old ballet-school pianist, but I sense it’ll take me a while to get to know how things work around here.

I go down the steps to grab my bag, but Laura rushes past me to seize it. She sees herself as lower down in the pecking order than me.

‘Please, let me,’ she says, but is obvious that I don’t have a choice.

I follow her into the house, my eyes greedily looking around, waiting for the Parkers to appear. We’re in a vast hallway with a black-and-white chequerboard floor, and a massive coloured-glass sculpture-thing hangs down from a glass dome. It’s like the Venetian-glass one in the V&A Museum that we saw on a school trip. Only bigger. I guess you’d need fifty mill from a house sale, to afford a place like this.

I’m on tenterhooks, expecting any second to hear the kids running towards me. I have presents in my bag for them: sweets from England that I bought in Duty Free. I’m determined to make a good impression right from the get-go, but I can see now that this is not the kind of house where anyone is allowed to drop a sweet wrapper. Or eat sugar, even. Perhaps sweets were a bad idea.

But I can’t help being distracted by the house. It feels more like an art gallery than a house. Off to the left I can see a glass wall and, beyond it, a room with a gleaming parquet floor. It’s so shiny and so long I can immediately imagine doing a sock-slide right across it. I guess it’s where the art must be going, from the lorry outside, as there are several canvases already stacked up against the wall.

There’s a corridor stretching off to the right and a circular staircase spiralling up, with a black handrail going round and round, like a wheel within a wheel – Mum’s favourite Dusty Springfield track flitting briefly across my mind.

Everything is perfect. And I mean perfect. There’s not a scratch on the walls. It’s extraordinarily clean.

‘We’ll take the service lift,’ Laura says. ‘This way.’

So, the Parkers aren’t coming out to introduce themselves, I realize. I’m to be shown to my room. Not seen and not heard. Is this how it’s going to be?

Laura takes me past the end of the staircase to the left and presses a button on the wall. A panel of the wall slides open and there’s a carpeted lift inside, with mirrored walls. We enter in silence and Laura presses one of the unnumbered buttons.

Laura stares at the floor and I look at her reflection in the mirrors. I’m starting to feel paranoid. Have I got something in my teeth? Do I smell? Why won’t she look at me?

‘Do you work here?’ I ask her, desperate to fill the silence as the lift moves off.

She nods. ‘Sometimes.’

Her answer leaves me even more confused. ‘Are the Parkers here?’ I ask.

She shakes her head. ‘Oh no. Not now,’ she says.

I don’t know whether she means that the Parkers aren’t here now, or whether I shouldn’t ask about them now.

The lift is so silent, I don’t even feel it moving, let alone know it has stopped. But suddenly the door opens and we’re on another floor. This time, it’s like a house. There are windows overlooking the landscaped grounds, stretching off to a forest of trees in the distance. It’s so English. Like one of those stately homes my grandparents used to take me to look round when I was a little kid.

‘Just along here,’ Laura says, stepping out ahead of me, pulling my case along the carpet, its wheel squeaking embarrassingly, like she’s just run over a mouse.

It feels showroom-new. Like the cream carpet has never been walked on, the powdery grey-green walls just painted. I guess it must be, if they’ve just moved in. There are wires hanging from sockets yet to be fully fitted.

At the end of the corridor is a bay window with a life-size brass sculpture of a naked man. He’s comically well endowed in the groin department. In fact, I would definitely say he has a semi. I want to giggle, but I stop myself in time.

Laura gets to a white wooden-panelled door on the left and stops. ‘This is you,’ she said.

She opens the door and wheels in my case and I step inside. Then, just when I’ve got inside, she shuffles out and closes the door, without a word.

I open the door and see her scuttling along the corridor.

‘Thank you,’ I call after her.

‘You’re welcome,’ she says, but doesn’t turn around.

God, she’s weird.

I look the other way. The corridor is still empty. Apart from nudey brass man, who seems to be looking at me.

I smile and go inside my room and shut the door. Then I sigh and take it all in.

Wow! I’ve really arrived.

10

The room is prettily decorated in pale blue and white, and is filled with sunlight from the wall of windows. A long padded seat runs beneath them.

I flip off my Converses and pirouette across the carpet to the enormous circular bed. Then I flop down on it on my back. I gasp in surprise as the bed below me rises and falls with my weight.

At first, I feel seasick. I’ve heard of waterbeds, but have never actually been on one. Let alone a circular one. I pull up the fluffy eiderdown and sheet and mattress cover, and look at the mattress.

Bloody hell! it really is an actual waterbed. I lie on my back on it and rock my pelvis, smiling to myself as I ride the afterwaves. You could shag on here for hours and not have to move a muscle!

I roll over with difficulty, pressing my face into the sumptuously soft pillows. I’ve never smelt anything so clean. Can this really be all for me? This is like a proper guest suite. I expected a little box room. Or to be near the kids’ rooms, wherever the hell they might be, but this is simply amazing.

I get up and trot over to the white door on the other side of the room.

‘Get out of here!’ I gasp.

There’s an enormous white bathroom the other side, with an old-fashioned claw-foot bath in the centre of it, as well as a power-shower cubicle. It looks like it could be in the centrefold of a
Homes & Gardens
magazine. It’s like the poshest of posh hotel rooms that I could ever dream of. And it’s mine. Just mine. None of Dad’s shaving kit, or Ryan’s toothpasty-gob on the side of the sink, no mouldy patch on the ceiling or noisy fan. No time limits on reading in the bath. It’s just heavenly.

I rush back to my bag and grab my phone. I have to show Tiff this. She just won’t believe it. But again, as I hold up my phone, I see there’s no signal. Or Internet connection. I take a picture anyway, but it’s so annoying I can’t send it.

Damn it.

I loaf over towards the windows by the bed and peer out. The green lawns stretch away from the back terrace of the house in manicured perfection.