Millie was ten years old when she decided life might be less embarrassing if her parents were not around. She was sitting on the steps at the front of their hotel when the thought first occurred to her. She didn’t want either of them to suffer. It would be better if it were quick, like a car crash, or a lightning strike whilst they were on the beach. But they were rarely on the beach, so that particular solution was unlikely.
The hotel’s front steps were a favourite spot for Millie, a perfect place from which to observe the world whilst remaining largely unnoticed. The hotel faced almost due south, and the dark grey slate was always warm when the sun shone. Her fingertips ran back and forth along the edge of the step she was sitting on, the smoothness of the machined surface calmed her. There were chips and scratches of course, a century of being battered by suitcases had left scars.
“You out here again?” her father said, as the front door closed, and he hurried past her towards his car.
The Glendale Hotel was separated from the beach by a wide road. Several cars were parked on the far side, noses angled in towards the pavement. Her father’s car was there, a white Mercedes convertible, described by him as a ‘classic’, by her mother as a death trap. On that day, the cars parked overnight were mostly black and white. They reminded Millie of a piano keyboard. She was learning to play the piano. It had proved harder than she expected, and her parents wouldn’t let her practise when guests were in residence.
The Mercedes backed into the road, and her father waved as he drove away.
If her parents died suddenly, she would inherit the family business. But her parents did not leave her that year. In fact, it would be another nine years before Millie became the sole proprietor of the Glendale Hotel.
She was the fifth generation of her family to have lived there. It had always been a hotel, but its name changed several times during its life. Millie’s favourite was the Crofts Temperance Hotel and Spa, a name her grandmother disliked and changed to the Glendale when she inherited it. Unusually, the ownership had been passed down through the female line of the family, part by chance, part by design. And, as Millie had no siblings, she was confident it would one day be hers.
“Have you seen your father?” It was her mother asking from the half-opened front door.
“He just went out in the car.”
“Bastard.”
The door slammed shut.
It was yet another of their unfathomable arguments – more common in the summer when they were busy with guests. Millie wondered sometimes if they would divorce, but her mother had screamed once, in a particularly loud dispute, that her father would never get his hands on the hotel. So, she thought it unlikely. He had grown up in Westbeach too, in a small house by the harbour.
The town was not large, nor small enough to be considered chic. At one end, where a patchwork of sand and shingle merged into a rocky promontory, it boasted a small harbour, circled by narrow stone houses. Most were now empty during the winter months, blinds dropped, lights turned on and off by timer switches, rooms sleeping quietly until their owners returned.
The front door opened again. Millie did not need to look round to know that it was her mother. There were only a few guests in residence as it was a Saturday morning.
“If you see your father return, tell him I want to talk to him, urgently.”
Millie looked at where her father’s car had been parked and the beach beyond. The Glendale Hotel was at the centre of the seafront, facing the sandiest stretch of the beach. It was one of a dozen villas built in the mid nineteenth century as small family hotels. The advent of foreign holidays had seen some of the smaller properties become private residences, but a few survived as guest houses, supported by a straggle of loyal and aging summer visitors.
There were six steps descending from the entrance door to the street. Once pristine polished slate, they were now crazed with zig-zag repair lines of pale grey cement. The exterior of the building had also suffered from its perfect, but exposed, location. Seasons of salt spray and storm-blown sand had matted the paintwork on the ground floor windows. And the lower parts of the pebble dash walls were stained with an ochre tinge. The interior had aged more gracefully.
“Stop daydreaming and come help change the sheets.”
It was her mother again. Millie sighed and followed her indoors.
The entrance hall still boasted a rather grand staircase with bannisters and newel posts stained and polished to resemble mahogany, rather than the humble pine from which they were made. The walls, once richly decorated with flock wallpaper, had long since been painted in more subtle pale greys and soft whites. Millie trailed up the fourteen steps to the first floor. She automatically turned left and reached for the handle on the door of room number one.
“Not that one,” her mother hissed. “The Gilberts are staying for a fortnight and they’re not up and about yet. We’ll have to do their room later.”
Millie suspected Mr Gilbert was lying dead on the carpet, behind the door, murdered by a wife who rarely appeared for breakfast. The door opened and Millie took a step back towards her mother.
“Oh, good morning, Mr Gilbert.”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs Tucker. My alarm didn’t go off. Have I missed breakfast?”
Her mother put a protective arm around Millie’s shoulders.
“I’ve left the colds out. I’ll pop down and make you a pot of tea in minute, but I can’t do you a hot breakfast at this time, but I could do some toast.”
Mr Gilbert apologised again and thanked Millie’s mother profusely. The door closed with Mr Gilbert sealed inside his room once more. Millie imagined it was his wife who must have been murdered, and he now had to find a way to dispose of her body.
The Glendale could have been a dreary place for a child to grow up. But, in the summer holidays, when Millie had no schoolwork to distract her, she would invent stories about the guests and write them in a journal which she kept hidden under her mattress.
She was aware, even at a young age, that husbands and wives do not always adhere to the promises they made to each other when they wed. Not those made in solemn vows, nor those acknowledged during church sermons. Never coveting your neighbour’s wife was one that they appeared to ignore frequently. Her parents both claimed to be Catholic, although she suspected neither believed in a God. The cause of her early disillusionment concerning the sanctity of marriage could be directly attributed to the parties her parents hosted in winter.
The Glendale, throughout Millie’s teenage years, survived on little more than a bed and breakfast clientele. Only a few guests took their evening meals there, and those who did were the older, seasoned regulars. They represented a cohort which was thinning every year, in both their numbers and their hair. Millie’s duties after school and at weekends, saved her parents the cost of an extra member of staff, and gave her the opportunity to spy on the guests.
During the summer months, Millie and her parents lived in the top floor of the building, leaving the three lower floors exclusively for paying customers. Millie’s bedroom was in the roof space, accessed by a flight of narrow wooden stairs at the end of a meandering corridor. The ceiling pitched at a variety of unusual angles, and the room incorporated an ornamental turret with a balcony just large enough for one small chair. Millie believed the room placed her above and beyond the reach of partying adults and their strange liaisons. That attic bedroom was her private sanctuary.
It was from the stairs to her bedroom that Millie learned about infidelity. She suspected that not all adults were involved in such deceits, but certainly her parents and their close friends were amongst the fallen, as Sister Eleanor called them.
During those winter months, when there were no guests, her parents would hold parties every two or three weeks. She had overheard people talk about those gatherings in hushed voices. In one of the local shops, Millie had learned to linger, inspecting fruit or magazines, blending into the surroundings. There she would listen to unguarded conversations. Most of the remarks were in coded terms or unfinished sentences, but taken together, they told a story that Millie believed.
On the nights when her parents held those parties, Millie would sit on the bottom step of the flight of stairs to her room and listen to the music, laughter, and occasional snatches of conversation. Sometimes there would be the sound of footsteps approaching from the ground floor, but they never reached the private apartment – as her mother called their domain.
Strange cries, as though someone was in pain, would occasionally drift up to Millie, the noise muffled by closed doors. Any concerns she had for the occupant’s safety, would soon be assuaged by giggles, or outright laughter, coming from those same rooms.
At the time Millie didn’t know precisely what was going on, but she instinctively knew it to be something you didn’t ask questions about at breakfast or mention to your parents over dinner.
What Millie guessed, but was only confirmed many years later, was that everyone attending was rather friendlier with each other than they should have been.
It was not until she was in her mid-teens that Millie came to fully understand the nature of those parties. She was at school when enlightenment dawned. In Sister Eleanor’s class, the young nun instructed the girls in botany and moral science. Not that much older than her pupils, Sister Eleanor engaged them with her joyous enthusiasm for the plant kingdom. But she was also steadfast in her resolve to educate them in the serious matter of spiritual morality and the sins of the corporeal body.
The Sisters of St Mary in the Field Convent School could not, or would not, explain to Millie what was happening when she described those evenings her parents hosted. Even when she included as much detail as she could, the sisters pretended an ignorance worthy of their calling.
“Pray for them, dear Millie, as we will also do.”
Behind her back she heard them talk about what would become of her soul if she were not rescued from such an evil influence.
Millie wondered, if the nuns had a direct line to God, maybe they would request a thunderbolt, and all would be resolved – providing it didn’t damage the building when it struck her parents.
The morning after a party, Millie would always be the first to breakfast, ready with a smile and a cheerful offer of eggs and bacon as soon as any overnight guests appeared in the kitchen. Reactions varied.
“Oh God, no, just coffee if you have any.”
“Brilliant, any chance of toast too, and mushrooms.”
She found it fascinating that the couples taking breakfast together were not necessarily the same pairs who had arrived the night before. Some combinations were familiar, often repeated at every party, some were new. Some were hesitant, some embarrassed, some simply hungry.
Millie’s parents died when she was barely out of her teenage years, but not from a bolt of lightning delivered by a judgemental God at the request of a convent of nuns. Millie didn’t murder her parents either – at least not directly. Apart from not having the least intention ever to do so, she knew the sisters would have condemned it as a mortal sin.
Sister Eleanor’s constant edict was that everyone has wickedness in them but should strive to rise above it. She was the youngest of the sisters. She hinted once that she had known Millie’s parents from a time before taking holy orders. She said the word ‘known’ in a half whisper, almost as though scared of the sound it made. She never specifically said she didn’t approve of Millie’s parents, but always took a deep breath before she spoke their names and, just after speaking of them, would sometimes whisper, “For those who have fallen, we pray for redemption.”
At first, Millie couldn’t place a memory of Sister Eleanor ever visiting the Glendale, but her parents’ circle of friends was large and forever changing. Dressed now in a gown and veil, she bore little resemblance to any of the young women who had attended her parents’ parties. Later she revealed that she and Millie had met in her parents’ kitchen. But Millie was still struggling to make a connection.
“You made me some breakfast and a glass of orange juice. I couldn’t eat it fast enough and left rather hurriedly.”
A half memory surfaced of a frightened woman who took her breakfast alone. Millie had thought it strange at the time, but that incident never featured in any of her stories as she never understood what was behind it.
Millie started to help the sisters, in particular Sister Eleanor, in the convent vegetable garden. Her parents were rarely interested in what she was doing, so they never enquired as to where she was spending her time. They might have found her choice of hobby unusual, but Millie doubted they would have been concerned about her association with the convent.
She was with Sister Eleanor one Saturday morning. The two of them were alone, taking a break together on a bench in the convent garden. It was then that Sister Eleanor first expanded upon her past and Millie’s role in the decisions she made.
During their break from weeding, Sister Joanna, the Reverend Mother, brought a tray with two mugs of tea. Once the two of them were alone again, Sister Eleanor explained further.
“You were a very polite young girl. I met you at your parents’ hotel and I was concerned for your safety. In fact, you were one of the reasons I recognised the foolishness of my ways.”
“Were you a sister at that time?”
“I had sisters, two in fact, but no, I hadn’t taken Holy Orders then.”
Millie asked her if she had been a guest at the hotel. Sister Eleanor paused before admitting that she wasn’t exactly a guest, and that it had been during a rather chilly February.
“You were at one of my parents’ parties?” she whispered, surprised that Sister Eleanor could have ever been associated with those events.
She appeared to shrink within her habit as though she were a snail retreating into its shell.
“It’s just that the hotel is usually closed to guests during February,” Millie explained.
Sister Eleanor admitted that she had attended one of ‘those’ parties. The word ‘those’, contained a hint of venom that Millie had never heard before in her voice. Sister Eleanor shuddered and tipped the last dregs of her cold tea onto the bare earth.
“It was a previous life. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
Millie was surprised but tried not to show it.
“They were unusual parties,” she said, trying to draw out more information. Millie was curious to know a little more about Sister Eleanor’s past.
All she would say, was that it had been a gross error of judgement, but she had been very young and confused about many things in life – including the true intent of those parties.
“When you made me breakfast the next morning there were just the two of us, and you made me feel comfortable. You calmed my spirits.”
Millie thought she could recall that morning, but it was still a little hazy. Sister Eleanor had introduced herself as Ellie, and she had come to breakfast alone and still in the dress she had worn the previous evening – which wasn’t that unusual. Ellie ate like a mouse and spoke very quietly. Most of the people Millie met on those mornings were jumbled in her memory, but Ellie, or Sister Eleanor, had been different and she now recalled that morning in some detail.
Millie sometimes liked to tease those overnight guests by asking innocent questions, such as, “Did you sleep well?” or “Was the bed comfortable?”
“My parents haven’t changed much.”
“I have to say I’m not entirely surprised. I do pray for them. You will have to be very careful. Tell me, do those parties still take place?”
Millie nodded and sipped her tea which was already cool. But she didn’t want to finish it. Sister Eleanor might continue to talk while they remained on that bench.
“You didn’t like mushrooms,” Millie ventured.
“I still don’t, fortunately we don’t grow them here.”
Sister Joanna reappeared to collect the empty mugs. Millie drank hers as Sister Joanna waited, even though it was now cold. The conversation had left her mouth dry.
Sister Eleanor taught Millie about tending to and nurturing vegetables on those Saturday mornings. She instilled a curiosity in Millie, and out of that grew an enthusiasm. Millie asked her parents if she could have a vegetable plot at the Glendale.
The garden at the rear of the hotel was long, and at the far end there had been a vegetable garden, probably in Millie’s grandmother’s time. It was, by then, overrun by brambles, but youthful vigour and a lack of friends to distract her,meant Millie could make steady headway. She continued to help at the convent garden but was rarely alone with Sister Eleanor. Whether that was by design or accident, she did not know.
There were, however, a few moments when they were close enough to communicate without being overheard.
“When I was young,” Millie said, without looking at Sister Eleanor, “I wished for something terrible to happen to my parents so that those parties would end.”
Sister Eleanor paused in pulling a parsnip from the earth.
“Wishing for something bad to happen to someone is a sin, my dear. Have you confessed those thoughts to a priest?’
“No, I haven’t. But it was a long time ago. Could I confess to you Sister Eleanor? Does it not count telling you?”
Millie knew that the sisters were not in qualified to hear confessions; but she didn’t much like Father Peter because he was supercilious and smelled of boiled cabbage.
Sister Eleanor shook her head, keeping her eyes fixed resolutely on the parsnip, and spoke quietly.
“I wished much the same for your parents at one time, but I have since repented for that sin.”
Millie should have been surprised but wasn’t. There was no reason why someone else wouldn’t have judged her parents as she did, or harboured the same thoughts, albeit for different reasons.
“But you never planned to do anything?” Millie asked.
Sister Eleanor lifted and brushed the earth from two parsnips, placing them carefully in her basket. She didn’t answer the question immediately but exhaled slowly – and for longer than seemed possible, without deflating like a pricked balloon.
“I found God,” she said, with the last of her breath.
There was nothing Millie could think to say in reply. She had attended a Catholic school and had been a regular member of the congregation on Sunday mornings, but she didn’t ‘know’ God in the way Sister Eleanor claimed to. He was, and forever remained, a stranger to Millie.
They didn’t speak of her parents after that morning. Millie’s own vegetable garden grew and demanded more of her time, so she visited the convent only on the occasional Saturday. Sister Eleanor took care to ensure they were never alone again.
It was in the summer of the following year that Millie decided to steer her life in a different direction. Even though her examination grades were excellent, and the sisters encouraged her to apply for a degree course, she explained that she was more interested in pursuing her passion for plants rather than academia. Millie’s vegetable garden had, by that time, surpassed all her expectations in terms of productivity. Some of the yield was used in the hotel kitchen, and the remainder donated to the sisters at the convent.
With some amusement and a level of incredulity, which Millie thought was even below their level of common decency, she persuaded her parents to offer occasional vegetarian meals to residents. They indulged her whim, believing it would be a failure and that she would see the foolishness of such an idea and move on to a more sensible career. Millie managed to speak to Sister Eleanor about her long-term plans, and she suggested Millie explore the possibility of going to horticultural college.
“But I can grow all the basic vegetables I need now, why do I need years of learning Latin names for plants?”
“There is somewhat more to it than that. And I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Lawton College.”
“You studied horticulture?” Millie asked, never having enquired about Sister Eleanor’s life before she became attached to the convent. She had never elaborated on how she met Millie’s parents, or what she had been doing at that time. Those parties attracted a strange assembly of her parents’ friends and acquaintances, so it was no real surprise to Millie that a gardener and future nun might be among their guests.
“I gained a degree. Like you, I had a flare for gardening – a talent I thought. But life changed in ways I never expected or planned. I took the wrong path in God’s Garden.”
Her voice dropped as she said those last few words, and Millie presumed she was referring to her parents’ parties. She asked Sister Eleanor and saw her face colour. The set of her mouth and narrowing of her eyes suggested that her reaction was caused not by embarrassment but by anger. Sister Eleanor broke off a stem of rhubarb and cut the leaf off with one flick of an old kitchen knife.
“Maybe it would have been better if my childhood wishes had come true.” Millie said quietly.
Sister Eleanor knew exactly what she meant without Millie having to expand upon her words. The fact that it was still in the back of Millie’s mind shocked Sister Eleanor.
“You can’t think like that, my dear. You need to concentrate on your own life, your own future. You should not be harbouring such dangerous and dark concepts.”
Millie’s hands were steady as she put the rhubarb in an old wicker basket. But to change the subject, she told Sister Eleanor about her idea for the hotel restaurant, who showed genuine interest. She asked for details about the menu Millie had in mind and was upset that her parents’ reaction had been so negative. She nodded thoughtfully when Millie said they expected, and probably hoped, she would fail, but they weren’t actively standing in her way.
“I hope you don’t fail. But it would have been a shame if you hadn’t at least had the opportunity to try.”
“They will let me do it, but I can’t start yet. They said that running a restaurant when the hotel is closed would be too disruptive to their winter break.”
Sister Eleanor asked if they meant the parties. Millie shrugged and told her they probably did, but that now she usually went to stay with a friend on those nights or locked her door and played music in her room.
Sister Eleanor picked up a rag and concentrated on cleaning the knife she had been using.
“I understand,” she said, and frowned. “I wish I could do something to help.”
Heavy autumn rain halted Millie’s progress on her expanding garden. But the weather was interspersed with occasional days of bright, clear skies and fleeting memories of summer days. November brought winter early with frequent mists and hoar frost decorating the windows of the hotel each morning.
Millie’s parents were once again scheduling their parties, and both were in particularly good spirits. Millie spent most of her spare time in her loft bedroom, planning menus and what she would plant next season. The vegetarian options had proved popular over the summer. Even the number of outside diners had slowly increased. Her parents were indifferent to her success, claiming it was merely a novelty with which people would soon lose interest.
Millie knew that closing the restaurant during the winter would be a setback to establishing regular customers. The possibility of offering private functions, when there were no guests in residence, was another idea which Millie had been formulating. But it was squashed when her parents made it quite clear they wouldn’t even consider it.
The events of one January night changed all Millie’s plans. A repeated ringing of the front doorbell woke her. It took a few moments for her to realise that her parents must be out and wouldn’t be answering the door. Still half asleep, she stumbled down the narrow stairs from her room, wrapping her dressing gown tight around her, trying to keep out the chill of the morning air.
“Okay, I’m coming,” she mumbled, yawning as she opened the door.
There were two people standing there, in uniform, police uniforms.
“Hello,” she said, having no idea why they would call that early.
“Excuse me, miss, but are you Millie Tucker?”
Millie nodded, feeling a different type of shiver run over her body when she recognised the serious tone in the question.
“May we come in, Millie? It’s concerning your parents.”
There had been an accident. It could have been predicted as her parents’ lax attitude towards their marriage vows was replicated in a similar disregard for drinking and driving. The small, brightly coloured sports car, purchased with that summer’s profits, had wandered across the central reservation of the road and glanced against a minibus travelling in the opposite direction. Nobody in the other vehicle had been harmed.
Millie’s mother had been at the wheel when it happened, and the police investigation concluded that she must have overcompensated when the initial contact with the other vehicle was made. According to the accident report, read out at the inquest, their sports car swerved back to the near side of the road, skidded, and then somersaulted several times, after which it left the road completely and flew into a stand of sturdy beech trees. One smaller tree gave way under the collision, but the older trees remained firm, and the car ended up wedged between their trunks, folded in two. Millie’s parents had both suffered fatal injuries. They died instantly, long before emergency services arrived at the scene.
Millie was nineteen years old at the time of the accident. She spent weeks in a confused and dreamlike state, not being able to fully comprehend what had happened. Although it was a scenario she had envisaged at a very early age, the reality was not how she had imagined it would be. She hadn’t realised how much there would be to do, with post-mortems, registering of deaths, arrangements for both the funerals, a wake and, of course, the solicitors and accountants’ work in executing their wills. She was alone and exhausted by it all. It was fortunate her parents had both made wills, and had taken out life insurance policies, a surprise to Millie. The ownership of the hotel passed into her hands without any legal complications.
Millie found solace by planning her vegetable garden that winter and, by spring, had decided to continue running the hotel. But she wanted to change the ethos of the business into something in which she could believe in and commit herself to completely. Her finances were in surprisingly good health, and Millie found herself not having to worry about a business plan, although her bank manager constantly advised her otherwise. She made a few changes to the hotel. The decor was simpler, brighter, and she gave the hotel a new name – the New Temperance Hotel. Millie also changed the menu, offering only vegetarian dishes with vegan options.
Not unexpectedly, she did lose some of the hotel’s regular, seasonal guests, but only a few, and they were soon replaced by younger clients. The restaurant grew steadily busier during the spring, and the books looked like they would balance at the end of the first season. She had taken on two new members of staff to help in the kitchen and dining-room. Millie hoped she would be able to offer some of the staff work throughout the year, particularly if she kept the restaurant open.
It wasn’t until early summer that Millie returned to the convent, hoping to see Sister Eleanor in the garden with a fork in her hands. There was a reticence from the other sisters to explain why she wasn’t there, and Millie detected an edge of embarrassment in their failure to be forthcoming about her actual whereabouts.
“I don’t hold her to blame,” Millie insisted. “And I know I should have come to see her before now, but my life has been so busy with the hotel refurbishment and the restaurant and everything.”
“It was God’s will,” came a voice from behind her, a voice she recognised.
Millie turned to see Sister Joanna, the Reverend Mother, with her hands buried in the folds of her sleeves.
“Sister Eleanor has sadly left our order.”
“She’s left? You mean she’s gone to another convent?”
“She has been released from her vows.”
The sisters remained unseen at church ceremonies, secluded in their own gallery. Millie had assumed that Sister Eleanor had attended her parents’ funeral, but she never actually saw her.
“Why had nobody told me this? Is she still here? In town? Can I see her?”
“She is staying with us for now. It has been a long and arduous process for her, and for us. Much soul-searching and many hours of prayer are required at such times.”
“May I see her? I’d like to talk to her, tell her that I bear her no ill will, that I know the accident was in no way her fault.”
“I will tell her of your wishes, but I am not sure it would help either you, or her, to meet at the moment.”
“Would you tell her she is welcome to visit me, that I really would like to see her and that I miss her.”
Millie didn’t want to specifically mention the hotel, because she didn’t know how much was known about Sister Eleanor’s previous life. Sister Joanna nodded curtly and told Millie she would pass on her message. Millie knew she should have gone to see Eleanor before. It had just been bad fortune that she had been driving the convent minibus that day. The police, the passengers in the minibus, everyone concerned had exonerated Sister Eleanor from any blame.
The Reverend Mother said she shouldn’t anticipate a swift response to her request.
“Now, you must excuse us. It is time to prepare for prayer.”
It was a surprise, a few days later when Jacqui, Millie’s housekeeper, told her there was a woman at the front door who refused to come into the hotel. Slightly annoyed, because she was potting-on plants at the time, Millie peeled off her gloves, slipped her feet out of her gardening shoes and brushed the front of her jumper, to remove a few flakes of potting compost.
For a moment she didn’t recognise the woman framed against the sunshine. Her blonde hair was worn in a short bob, and with a slight figure, she looked young, almost girlish. But fine lines on a tanned face contradicted those first impressions.
“Sister Eleanor?” Millie asked, an uncertainty showing in her tone of voice. Millie recognised her visitor’s eyes, but her hair had always been covered before. It changed her appearance completely.
“Just Eleanor now, or Ellie.”
“I’m so glad you came. You must come in.”
Ellie remained on the doorstep, not moving. “I never apologised.”
“There was no need. It wasn’t your fault.”
Millie reached out and took Ellie’s hands, both of which were wrapped tightly around the handles of a black-nylon holdall. Her knuckles showed white against sun-browned fingers.
“I don’t want to interrupt. I just wanted to say goodbye, properly, in person. And to say that I’m sorry.”
Millie took hold of the handles of Ellie’s bag, giving her no choice but to step forward as she gently pulled her into the hotel. Ellie reluctantly stepped over the threshold and looked around at the entrance hall. It had been redecorated since she’d last seen it. Her eyes crept up the stairs. Millie guessed she was thinking about the last time she had been there.
“Come through to the kitchen. I’ll put the kettle on.”
Ellie followed her. She had little choice as Millie had taken her bag.
“Where are you going to stay?” Millie asked. “You’ve left the convent, I presume?”
“I am going to stay with my sister.”
“Are you leaving today?”
“It’s not convenient for my sister as she is redecorating. I have arranged to stay in lodgings in town, just until she has a room prepared.”
“You could stay here. I have spare rooms in the apartment. There’s lots of space, and it would be no trouble.”
Ellie looked down at her hands and whispered so quietly that her words were almost missed.
“That would be very kind, but I couldn’t, not given that I was responsible for…”
Ellie had run out of breath and couldn’t finish the sentence.
“My parents’ accident? I never held you in any way responsible, nobody did. They led their life carelessly. Something like that was bound to happen.”
“But, you see, I recognised their car.”
Millie couldn’t see how that was significant. The bright orange, noisy, convertible sports car was typical of her parents’ indulgences. Nearly everyone in the town would have recognised it.
“Do you remember me telling you about that childhood dream?” Millie said. “I used to imagine something like that would happen. I was shocked when it did, but not really surprised. Maybe I’m guilty of wishing it into happening.”
Ellie shook her head. Millie took her hands again to reassure her. She looked so different now, that Millie had trouble connecting Ellie with Sister Eleanor. Blue jeans, a little too new to look comfortable, a dull green pullover and bright white trainers were not the habit of a religious devotee – although Millie had always suspected Ellie was not entirely suited to her cloistered life. Her previous existence had always been concealed, but maybe not so far under those sombre outer clothes.
“I didn’t brake when I saw them.” The words burst from Ellie’s lips in a sudden rush. There was a liquid quality to her eyes when she looked up at Millie. They looked as though they might dissolve completely and run down her cheeks, leaving two empty sockets. “I knew it was your parents.”
Millie pulled Ellie in close and cuddled her. Words tumbled from Ellie between sobs of grief.
“It was my fault. I could have avoided them. I killed them.”
Millie rubbed her back gently, assuring her that it must have all happened so fast, she couldn’t have had time to take evading action.
“It’s okay, Ellie. It wasn’t your fault. They had been drinking.”
The name Ellie, rather than Sister Eleanor, still felt slightly strange on Millie’s lips, like a child’s name, but then she was holding her and comforting her as you might a child.
“I wanted them to die,” Ellie whispered. “For your sake and for everything they did. I wanted them dead.”
There had been no doubt about the cause of the accident. The minibus had been carrying several sisters back from a retreat. Nobody had questioned their account. Millie’s parents’ car had swerved across the centre of the road. Between sobs, her face buried in Millie’s gardening jumper, Ellie continued her confession.
“I think I turned the wheel towards them, at the last moment.”
At one time Millie had asked if she could confess her sins to Sister Eleanor. Now it seemed it was the other way round.
“I gripped the steering wheel so hard. I saw them. I don’t know what made me do it. I steered towards them, not away from them. I killed them, Millie. I murdered your parents.”
“Have you told anyone else this? Have you told the sisters?” Millie felt Ellie shake her head. “Then it must remain between the two of us.”
Ellie stayed for tea that day. Millie even persuaded her to stay the night in the attic bedroom, above the apartment. The next morning, Millie gave her a tour of the garden. Ellie was impressed by everything she had achieved, both in the garden and in the hotel.
Ellie was most excited with the large conservatory that Millie had added to the back of the building. It was constructed in a style in keeping with the properties’ past glory. Ellie had brightened up considerably from the previous day. She offered one or two pieces of advice on what Millie could do to further improve her the layout of her garden. Millie persuaded her to stay a second and then a third night.
Ellie fell in love with the attic bedroom, and Millie helped her unpacked her meagre belongings and arrange them in the drawers and wardrobe. Millie started to clear out her old childhood books. She hadn’t slept up there since her parents died, but Ellie asked if she would leave them.
“I’d like to read some of them again. They remind me of my own childhood.”
Day by day, Ellie relaxed and began to tell Millie more about her life. Her sisters were several years older than her, and none of them had ever got on that well. One lived in Australia, the other in Scotland. She hadn’t seen either since before she had taken holy orders. Millie was surprised that Ellie was only eleven years older than herself, their birthdays separated by four days. The habit of a nun, the many hours spent tending the vegetable garden had aged her appearance. But that impression of a young woman, when Millie had met her at the front door of the hotel, had been more accurate.
Ellie never left the New Temperance Hotel. She helped in the garden, and with the cooking, and had a deep fund of knowledge with regards to horticulture. She was an expert in preserving crops and even came to run small residential courses. They advertised for groups who wanted to learn more about the hotel’s extensive vegetarian garden and cuisine.
Ellie remained in the attic room, asking little in return for her board and lodging, other than peace, and the occasional replenishment of practical clothes. She wore simple cotton dresses by choice, jumpers on cold days and heavy gardening boots most of the year. It was a style of dress that suited her and in which she looked comfortable. She kept her hair short, almost boyishly so. When she smiled, Ellie had a youthful appearance, and she smiled more often as the months passed. People even asked sometimes if the two of them were sisters.
“Only one of us,” Millie would reply. Leaving them to puzzle over her riddle.
During the winter, when the hotel was quiet and the rooms full of echoes of the past, Millie would sometimes hear Ellie crying in the small hours of the night. Creeping up the narrow stairs to her old room, she would sit on the edge of the bed, stroking Ellie’s hair to sooth her.
Every time Millie went to leave, Ellie would grip her wrist and beg her to stay. It was a narrow bed, so Millie had to snuggle close beside her. Ellie remained under the covers and Millie on top of them. They both went to sleep like that, but Millie nearly always woke before the sun rose. She would often find herself cold and cramped and would leave the room quietly, usually managing not to disturb Ellie.
They never spoke about Ellie’s nightly fears over breakfast, but over some months, on nights when Ellie was upset, she would appear by Millie’s bed and slip under the covers when they were drawn back for her.
They were bonded by a common guilt, which they never voiced, but both understood. A thought which Millie had harboured, and which Ellie had partly fulfilled.
Sometime during that first year, they gave up the pretence of separate bedrooms. Millie had her handyman help move a second bed into the loft, under the pretext of making another letting room available. From then onwards, Millie and Ellie slept peacefully together in Millie’s childhood sanctuary.
Sometimes at night, when the wind whistled over the roof tiles, moaning and screaming, like some forgotten or angry ghost, Millie would cross the floor. She would hold Ellie tight, and they would stay silently united until the wind dropped, and the screams died away.