The Drawer

The photograph was in the drawer of the bedside table on the wife's side of the bed. The one with the lavender hand cream and the rolled-up silk eye mask and the half-empty pack of Nytol that Maeve had been politely not noticing for three weeks.

She had not meant to look.

She had been changing the sheets. The drawer was open. The drawer had not been open when she came in — Maeve was certain of that, she was always certain of that, it was one of the things she was paid to be certain of — and now the drawer was open, and there was a photograph on top of the silk eye mask, face-up.

Maeve looked at the photograph.

The photograph was of a girl, maybe twelve, maybe thirteen, in a school uniform Maeve recognised. The girl's hair was pulled back in a French plait that someone else had done for her, badly, the left side flattening down where it shouldn't have. There was a small chip in the girl's front tooth, just visible because the girl was almost-smiling, the way kids do when someone they don't quite trust is taking the photo.

The school uniform was St Brigid's. Navy blazer. Red piping. The badge on the breast pocket sewn on slightly crooked because Maeve's mother had sewn it on at eleven o'clock the night before the first day of Year 8, and Maeve's mother had been three glasses in by then, and had said that's good enough, it's good enough, and had gone to bed.

Maeve dropped the sheet she was holding.

The girl in the photograph was Maeve.

—

Maeve's hands did not shake. This was a thing she had taught them, over years, not to do. They did not shake when her mother died. They did not shake when the man at the council told her there was nothing they could do about the rent. They did not shake when the agency phoned to say the Belgravia couple had specifically asked for her, by name, and the bonus would be three hundred pounds a week on top of the agency rate, and she had said yes before she had finished the call because three hundred pounds a week was three hundred pounds a week.

Her hands did not shake now.

She picked the photograph up by the corner, the way she had picked everything up by the corner her whole life, because that was how you did it if you wanted to keep something nice. She held it up. She turned it over.

On the back, in handwriting Maeve did not recognise, in blue biro, was written:

Maeve Brennan. Age 12. St Brigid's, autumn term 2009.

Underneath, in a different hand — same blue biro, smaller, sharper:

Found her.

—

The first day Mrs Wakeham had opened the door of the townhouse to Maeve, three weeks ago to the day, she had said, 'Oh. Yes. Come in.'

Mrs Wakeham was in her early fifties. Mrs Wakeham was thin in the way that some women in Belgravia were thin — not from happiness, not from health, from a kind of vigilance. She wore cashmere in a colour that was somewhere between dove and bone. She had small expensive hands.

She had said, that first day, while Maeve stood in the marble hallway with her cleaning kit and her shoes off because the agency notes had said shoes off, 'You're younger than I thought.'

Maeve had said, 'I'm twenty-eight.'

Mrs Wakeham had said, 'No, that's about right. I was thinking of you as a girl, somehow.'

Maeve had not known what to say to that. She had said, 'Where should I start?'

Mrs Wakeham had said, 'Anywhere. You decide. I'm sure you know what you're doing.'

And Mrs Wakeham had walked away down the long marble hallway in her cashmere the colour of bone, and Maeve had thought, she's lonely, that one, and had started in the kitchen because the kitchen was always where you started, and had not thought any more about I was thinking of you as a girl, somehow, until three weeks later when she opened a drawer she had not opened, and saw a photograph she had not been meant to see, and read, on the back, in handwriting she did not know:

Found her.

—

She had to leave the bedroom. She could not leave the bedroom with the sheets half-done. She had to finish the sheets first. She had to finish the sheets first because if she didn't finish the sheets first, Mrs Wakeham would know that something had happened, and Maeve had not yet decided what Mrs Wakeham was allowed to know.

She put the photograph back into the drawer. She did not slide the drawer shut. She left it the way she had found it — open, the photograph face-up on the silk eye mask, the lavender hand cream upright, the half-empty pack of Nytol slightly askew. She tucked the corner of the fitted sheet around the mattress. She smoothed the duvet. She plumped the four pillows in the order she always plumped them — the two small ones first, then the two large ones, then the small ones back on top — and she stood in the doorway, and she looked at the bed, and she made it look as if no one in this room had done anything other than change the sheets.

Then she went downstairs.

Mrs Wakeham was in the morning room with a cup of green tea and a book she was not reading. Maeve knew Mrs Wakeham was not reading the book because Mrs Wakeham had been on page 47 of The Salt-Wind Almanac for nine days, and Maeve had been dusting around the book for nine days, and the bookmark had not moved.

Maeve said, 'Mrs Wakeham, I've finished upstairs. I'll do the front room next.'

Mrs Wakeham looked up from the book she was not reading.

Mrs Wakeham said, 'Maeve, dear. Have you got a moment? Sit down. I think we should have a little chat.'

Maeve's hands did not shake.

She sat down on the small embroidered chair opposite Mrs Wakeham, the chair that Mrs Wakeham had once told her had been her grandmother's, a wedding gift in 1947, please do sit on it, that's what it's for, dear, and she folded her hands in her lap.

She said, 'Of course, Mrs Wakeham. What about?'

Mrs Wakeham put her cup of green tea down on the marble side table. The cup made a small definite sound against the marble. The sound was the sound of a woman who had decided, some time ago, exactly when she was going to put the cup down.

Mrs Wakeham said, 'You were a pupil at St Brigid's, weren't you, dear. From 2008. Autumn term, Year 8.'

Maeve looked at Mrs Wakeham.

Mrs Wakeham looked back.

Mrs Wakeham said, very gently, 'I've been waiting for you for a very long time, Maeve. Please don't be frightened. We have rather a lot to talk about.'

And in the morning room of the Belgravia townhouse, on a Tuesday in November, with the cup of green tea on the marble side table making its small definite sound against the silence, Maeve Brennan — who had not let her hands shake when her mother died, who had not let her hands shake when the council man had said there is nothing we can do, who had not let her hands shake when she had picked up a photograph of her twelve-year-old self out of a drawer she had not been meant to open — Maeve Brennan felt her hands begin, very quietly, to shake.

She did not stop them.

She said, 'Who are you.'

* * *