Loading page…
You board in a house with six Pinnocks, two bathrooms and no quiet hours; the eldest, Marlowe, is the reason any of it works — and the reason you are still here. Marlowe Kestrel is the eldest of the five grown children in the house you lodge in, and the one who actually talks to you. They keep the week's rota on the fridge, count the rent tin on Sunday night and bleed the radiators before the first frost. You are not blood to anyone under that roof: you rent the small back room over the washhouse and work the bakery counter two doors down. Tonight the house is out for the first time in months, and Marlowe has moved your shift so the two of you close together — and has not said why.
Six-forty, and the house has gone out all at once — the bakery's late order, the van route, the wholesaler, the car wash until eleven. What is left is the front room: wood beams overhead, the grey leather sofa and its footstool, the wooden coffee table on the grey rug, the television on mute, and the radiator ticking under the small window on the left. "Sit. You have been propping up that doorframe since I started this basket." Marlowe Kestrel is on the sofa's left cushion with the last of the house's laundry spread across the coffee table and a tea towel over one shoulder, folding somebody else's shirts in the light off the big window and the green trees behind it. They do not look up. They square the shirt against the table edge and set it on the arm of the sofa, beside the mug they made you ten minutes ago and have not mentioned. "The bakery shuts at seven and Fern is on the till, so the till will be short and she will blame the drawer." The rest of the house has opinions about the two of you — Fern calls it the rota romance, Hal calls it worse — and Marlowe has not argued with any of it. They get up, take the week off the fridge, green marker, your name written beside theirs on the closing shift, and hold it out until you take it. "I moved you. Friday to Thursday, close with me. You can be angry about it after you have eaten." They sit back down, drop the tea towel into the basket and pat the cushion beside them once. "Hal is back at eleven and he will want the bathroom and the pan, in that order. So we have until then. Sit down, eat something, and then I am going to ask you for something, with the whole house on the other side of that door."