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3
ATST.MARY’SBron had been accustomed to the sounds of creaking floorboards and bumbling students, but here his new bedroom was too silent, too warm; he missed the familiar smells of the St. Mary’s boys, the acrid sweat, the cheesy socks. The snoring to which he’d fall asleep like a lullaby. In the night he battled to tear away the heavy eiderdown, wedged as it was into the bed frame, and in the morning he struggled to leave bed, so comfortable was he. When the alarm clock blared, he twisted to shut it off. The blackout blinds accomplished their task well, halting any stream of light from entering through the window. He pressed his face into the soft pillows, inhaled the clean smell of lavender and chamomile in the linen, and let out a yawn. His stretch was long and liberating, bones clicking.
To the left of him, the door stood ajar, and were it not for the quilted fluff of the carpet, he might have heard the footsteps of the child who now stood at the end of his mattress. He didn’t scream—he was used to the sudden appearance of faces at his bed—but he was momentarily fazed into a parallel world where past bled into present, where he was both back at St. Mary’s and there at Greenwood Manor.
“Morning,” Ada chirped, making him sit up at once. He glanced around, slightly delirious from his not-yet-woken statebut conscious of the fact he wasn’t wearing any pajamas. He pulled the sheets closer to cover himself, arranging them to appear as though he were just about to get up. Ada didn’t say anything more, and he took a second to really look at her, at her cheeks; her upturned lip formed into a perfect bow; her hair, worn much the same as yesterday, only the scrunchie today was yellow; and her eyes, which pierced into him. She was standing with fists balled at her side, ready to levitate into the air at any second.
Was she waiting for his reply?
He said, “Good morning, Ada.”
“It’s eightAMand breakfast is ready. Daddy insists we wait for you on your first morning, but I am hungry and I shall justdieif I have to wait any longer.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll be right down.”
“You better be,” she said, shutting the door behind her.
There was no time to make use of the luxurious shower. He washed his face and armpits under cold running water in the sink basin and dressed quickly. On the landing, Ada’s voice echoed down the hall. He followed it downstairs and into the breakfast room, where Mr. Edwards was pouring tea and Ada was biting her fingers.
“Ah, at last!” said Ada, spooning some beans from a bowl onto her plate. “We can eat.”
He made his apologies again and said something to soften his lateness: that his phone had died in the night—he hadn’t quite realized the time. He pulled out the chair closest to Ada and sat tentatively beside her.
“What about the alarm clock?” Ada said, now forking some scrambled eggs into her mouth.
“Hmm?” he managed. “Oh. I suppose it didn’t go off.”
“But I’d set it up for you, to go off at seven fifteen so that we could eat on time. Molly was a late riser too. We were always waiting on her. I justknewthis would happen. It’ll be disastrous, daddy.”
At St. Mary’s, he’d always been awoken at ridiculous hours, and a lie-in was but a dreamed-of luxury. He looked down at his empty plate.
“Perhaps the batteries need changing,” piped Mr. Edwards from behind his open newspaper. “Clarence, could we see that Mr. Ellis gets a change of batteries for his, um … alarm clock.”
“Yes, sir,” said Clarence.
“You will soon know never to be late to breakfast, Bron. Ada is one hungry bunny.”
“I’m a beast, and we shan’t wait for you again,” she warned. “I was on the brink of death.”
“Ada, don’t talk with your mouth full,” said Mr. Edwards, setting aside the paper and sipping his drink before passing over the empty cafetiere. “You’ve no need of this, do you Bron? I brought it out just in case you werethatway inclined.”
Bron hoped to win some clout by explaining that he didn’t drink coffee; he pounced to say he thought the taste to be too bitter, and reached for the teapot instead. He winked at Ada.
She nodded. “It’s decided, you can stay.”
“And please don’t worry about ever going hungry. Clarence starts the day at five thirty every morning, so there should always be food aplenty when you wake. We love to eat!”
How overwhelmed he felt, at first by his being late to breakfast and then by the assortment of food available: the fresh bread in baskets, and on the sideboard behind him, a toaster where he could heat it. The assortment of cereals, granola, and milk options too: oat, soy, almond, and cows’. On the table in front of him, a tray of sliced cheese and deviled eggs, a bowl of scrambled; hash browns; mushrooms; pots of jam, honey, marmalade; butter in its dish; jars of chocolate and peanut spread. In the middle of the table and out of anyone’s immediate reach, a bowl of sausages and rashers of bacon. It seemed odd to Bron, who for most of his life had dined on porridge or toast and a glass of orange juice, if he was lucky, that anyone could stomach such rich food so early in the morning. He stood to pour some oats into his bowl, choosing, at least for now, the option most familiar, and added a handful of granola for variety. When he felt no one was looking, he dolloped some chocolate spread on top.
“OH MY GOD!”Ada screamed, at which Bron’s spoon went flying out of his hands. What had he done wrong? He spun around.“Daddy, how could you?”
Mr. Edwards was chewing on a meaty-looking sausage. They all looked down toward his plate at once: what remained of the sausage appearing massacred beside a generous pool of ketchup. Buried under the bread and eggs, too, was a rather unsuccessfully hidden slice of bacon.
“We’re meant to be eating vegetarian!”
“But Clarence put out all this food, darling.”
“I know! I asked her to put out some meat for us—it’s called practicing self-restraint, Daddy!”
