Yesterday, Haina had assigned Elly to the kitchens.
“Your baker’s hands,” she’d said, one sharp fingernail trailing the grooves in Elly’s palm, “they’ll be a great help to us.”
Elly makes her way there now, down the hallway with its cream wainscotting and faded floral wallpaper. It’s a relief to be out of the refectory with all of those strange voices, the food on the table starting to spoil and give the air a cloying smell. The hallway is quiet – she guesses most of the other guests will already be working at their morning chores, tending the gardens, tidying the dormitory, mending clothes. Her chest feels strange, tight, but she loosens slightly at the sight of the kitchen coming into view at the end of the hall. Kitchens have always feltlike safe places to Elly. Cooking, baking in particular, makes her feel calm and useful – the putting together of humble things a tonic for the unpredictability of everything else.
The kitchen at Hex House is the largest one Elly has ever been in, but it’s somehow still homely: the counters made from oak, the tiles underfoot a warm terracotta, hazy sunlight flooding in from large arched windows looking out over the gardens. There are huge wooden beams overhead, hung with pots, pans, strings of fat garlic bulbs and dried herbs. Fresh produce spills from every cupboard, and there’s a larder stocked high with preserves, tins of tomatoes, jars of rice. Even though the day is warm, there’s a fire crackling in the grate. The range cooker is lit, too, but somehow the room doesn’t feel too warm. It’s cosy, comforting, wrapped up in the smell of fresh bread. The range is framed by a brick arch with a complex tile mural underneath. Elly spent a lot of time staring at that mural yesterday, while peeling potatoes. It seems to depict the house: the ornate windows, the wisteria growing up the walls, the crooked chimneypots, they’re all there. But there’s a surrealistic quality to it, too, the flowers not to scale, instead stretching up around the walls like fingers, making it look as though the house is sitting in someone’s palm. Beneath the house, roots reach deep down into the soil, while overhead the sky is filled with birds, birds with golden wings and eyes that seem to glitter with knowing.
When Elly arrives, Grace, who runs the kitchen, is kneading dough with her rough hands. It gives and gives, pliable as a body without bones. Behind her is Keiko,whose eyes hide behind a thick, dark fringe. So far, Elly hasn’t heard her speak. She watches as Keiko hacks at a watermelon with a cleaver, sending gritty pulp spraying across the countertop.
“That arrived this morning,” Grace tells Elly in place of a greeting. Her northern Irish accent is strong and musical. She nods to something large on the counter next to her, wrapped loosely in stained fabric. Elly glimpses white feathers. “Chicken. Big one. Okay to pluck it?”
Elly gingerly puts a hand on top of the fabric. It’s emanating warmth. “It came just now?”
“Yes,” says Grace without pausing her kneading. There’s a peppering of irritation in her tone. She doesn’t seem one to entertain curiosity. Still, Elly has to know.
“Who brought it?” She gestures around the kitchen, at the overflowing fruit bowl and the fridge packed with cheese and meat. “Who brings all of this?”
Grace doesn’t look up. For a long moment, she doesn’t say anything at all, and Elly wonders if she heard her. Grace continues to work the dough, her calloused fingers pushing and stretching. Those fingers – they’re twisted oddly, as if they’ve been broken and reset all wrong. It looks painful, the way Grace forces them into the dough, over and over. What happened to this woman, before she found Hex House?We don’t ask about before, Margot had warned her, so Elly makes herself look at Grace’s face instead. There’s a hardness there, the skin mottled and lined, as if she’s spent a great deal of her life outside. Grace picks up the dough and throws it back down. It hits the counter with a wet slap, sending up a plume of flour. Keiko flinches, then returns to her watermelon. Grace finallylooks up at Elly, frowning. She feels like a schoolchild about to be scolded.
“Who do you think brings it?” Grace says with an impatient huff. “Women. Former guests.”
“But why?” Elly asks. She’s surprised at herself – usually she shrinks from the slightest hint of confrontation, hates to make anyone else even slightly irritated or uncomfortable. But the sense that she’s stumbling through a dream is starting to fade, and in its place is the need for answers. Some, at least.
Grace smooths the grey-blonde hairs that have escaped her bun with the back of her hand. “Some women leave the house, but they never reallyleaveit, you know. It lives in their bones, like.” She cracks her swollen fingers, one by one. The sound is like twigs snapping. Elly winces, but Grace’s expression betrays no pain. “There are a lot of them out there,” she continues, “a kind of… network, I guess. Haina calls them theflock. They help out where they can, bring food and leave it on the doorstep. We never see them. They do other things for Haina, too – search for women who might need the house, that kind of thing.”
Elly thinks about her wedding, about the woman in the orange dress.We’ve been watching you for… some time. She swallows thickly.
“Now,” Grace says, voice gruff again, her head inclining towards the chicken. “I’m not planning on serving that with feathers on. It’s already been scalded. Get to plucking.”
Elly chews the inside of her cheek. She’s never plucked a chicken before, but Grace has already turned back to her dough and Elly is reluctant to test her patience any further.Slowly, she lifts the sheeting. Beneath it, the chicken’s white feathers are turning grey with damp, its limp neck twisted and thin, glassy eyes staring at nothing. Its body is deflated, uncanny. She pulls tentatively at a feather on one of the wings, and it gives, sliding out clean. Elly watches the hole where it came from as something clear and fatty oozes and trickles out. She takes a step back, suddenly lightheaded. There’s a movement inside her belly then, a nauseous rolling, like the baby is recoiling. Elly retches, turning so that she’s leaning back against the counter. Trying not to be sick, she closes her eyes and counts her breaths, forcing her mind somewhere else.
One. Her dad’s hands, covered in clay.Two. Her dad sitting out in the garden, drinking coffee.Three. What would he think of her now?
A gentle touch at the back of her neck. She looks up to see Keiko wearing an uncertain smile, offering a glass of water. She has the most flawless skin, Elly registers distantly as she accepts the glass.
“Thank you,” Elly whispers.
Keiko raises both hands to chest-height and beckons inwards. Elly stares at her, still feeling faint, trying to focus on Keiko’s young, serious face.
“Sign language,” says Grace from behind them. “She’s saying, ‘You’re welcome’.”
Keiko smiles again and then returns to her watermelon. Elly takes a long sip of water. Her sweat has made hair stick to her temples and forehead. When she looks at Grace, she’s frowning, pale eyes narrow. Her gaze settles on Elly’s stomach, and Elly reflexively places her palms there. The skin beneath feels tight, itchy. It’s starting tostretch, she knows. The thought makes her feel as though she’s pitching forward into something, and there’s nothing she can do to stop herself from falling.
“Maybe that’s enough plucking,” Grace says. “Come and take over here instead.”
Elly does what she’s told, running her hands under the tap before sinking them deep into the softness of the dough. Her breathing starts to regulate. This – this is better. It makes her think of all those early mornings in the bakery with Suzanne before the sun had even come up. She tries to conjure her friend’s loud laugh, her mild Scottish twang.What on earth are you doing, you mad thing?she’d say, if she could see Elly now. But it’s no good thinking about Suzanne, about her dad, about any of them. Not until she figures out what the hell she’s doing here, not until she decides what she’s going to do next. She just needs a day – two. Her eyes burn as the dough stretches and folds under her fingertips. Beside her, Grace’s quick hands pluck, pluck, pluck at the chicken. Soon, there’s a mound of feathers on the counter. It looks like another animal entirely now, one with no eyes, no bones.
After a couple of hours of quiet, steady work, the preparations for dinner are complete. The sun beams into the kitchen, making apricot slices of light on the floor. Other guests begin to mill in and out after their morning chores, helping themselves to the plates of cheese, meats and fruit Keiko has set out for lunch.
“You need to eat, Little Mouse,” says Margot, appearing next to her and holding up a grape to her lips. There’s dirt embedded deep under her fingernails from working in the garden. “For your session with Haina.”
Elly accepts the grape, chews on it absent-mindedly. She’d pushed her impending meeting with Haina to the back of her mind all morning, but now she feels nerves start to creep in. She wishes someone would just tell her what to expect. She catches Lakshmi’s eye as she leans against the range, nibbling on a fig.
“Don’t be frightened,” she tells Elly. “Just try to be… open. Think with your body, not your brain.”
“What do you mean?” Elly asks, but Lakshmi just shrugs, swapping her fig for a slice of rare beef, dripping fat and blood down the front of her shirt.
***
