Charlotte Stein - Sweet Agony

CHARLOTTE STEIN

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Mischief

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.mischiefbooks.com

Copyright © Charlotte Stein 2015

Charlotte Stein asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007579518

Version: 2015–04–21

Contents

Cover

Title Page Sweet Agony CHARLOTTE STEIN A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright Copyright Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen More from Mischief About Mischief About the Publisher Mischief An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London, SE1 9GF www.mischiefbooks.com Copyright © Charlotte Stein 2015 Charlotte Stein asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007579518 Version: 2015–04–21

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

More from Mischief

About Mischief

About the Publisher

The advert says ‘Seeking Housekeeper’, which I guess sounds innocent enough. Even the other stuff underneath is only pretty weird, rather than very. It just asks for excellent tea-making skills, and no social huggers, and an enthusiasm for order, and to me all of those things sound reasonable. They don’t ring alarm bells in my head.

But the house does.

I sit for around ten minutes across the street from it, in my battered little Beetle with the red vinyl seats. Part of me really, really wanting to go in and save my own skin. But most of me too scared to do anything but stare in horror. Honestly, if you looked up Dickensian in the dictionary you would find this place. It looks as though someone called Mrs Migglethwump lives here, after her husband ran off with the maid on their wedding day.

The front of it is the kind of grey you only get after natural disasters. Some apocalypse happened to this place and this place alone, and now it sits like a bad tooth in a mouth of pristine white ones. It even seems vaguely crooked, in a way that should be impossible. The other houses are ramrod-straight. There is no space for it to slant to the side – it just looks as though it does.

Malevolence is probably making it happen. I think malevolence might be making a lot of things happen. All the windows are blank, black eyes, and each one seems to follow me wherever I go. I glance away for a second and can almost feel them, pressing into my body. Then I turn back and they pretend to be all innocent again. They never watched me reach for the newspaper on the seat beside me. They are just windows, busy minding their own business. There is nothing to worry about here.

Apart from the garden that time forgot.

Lord, the garden that time forgot. I get out of the car feeling strong and brave, almost proud of myself for getting so far in the face of this hideousness. And then I see the garden, and falter. My feet seem suddenly lined with lead. I think of what I will have to do to get across what is really only a small square at the front of the house, and have to wonder if this is all worth it. Those nettles alone look positively ravenous. Somewhere in amongst all the rubble and rambling weeds, I can see what looks like a bike.

I put one foot in there and I’m going to be eaten alive. They will probably find me three years later, with seven-foot dandelions sprouting out of my eye sockets. One false move and the hidden portal down to hell might swallow me whole – and that isn’t even the worst of the problems here. No, that comes when I attempt to get into the garden anyway.

And realise the gate is rusted shut.

If I want to get in, I am going to have to climb over the thing. I am going to have to hike my skirt up and lift my leg like a dog doing a wee, and when I do my underwear will be on display. Every eye in that evil house will see the two holes near the sagging elastic and the faded image of Spiderman on the bottom, then most likely curse me for all eternity.

All of which seems pretty silly, until I actually start my attempt. I bunch my skirt up into my fists and begin to step over, and just as I do I hear the person who lives here. They make a sound like someone moaning from inside some terrible abyss, so cold and alien that for a second I barely recognise it for what it really is.

Then it rushes over me in a hot flood: laughter. The person inside is laughing at me, in the bitterest, haughtiest way possible. You could stick that awful noise in the House of Lords and have it shout at the Prime Minister. It could attend a swanky soirée entirely independent of the person it comes out of, and no one would blink an eye.

But I do my best not to care. I grit my teeth and keep going, no matter what he does to throw me off. I think he actually snorts when I almost lose a shoe to a particularly vicious patch of brambles, and I know he laughs again at the state of my tights after a fight with the lost bike. This time it rings out as clear as a bell, if bells were super haughty and filthy rich.

Yet somehow I still make it to the door.

Only to be told:

‘Not today, thank you.’