The Shadow in the Glass by JJA Harwood (any book recommendations txt) 📕

a difficult time,’ Mrs Fielding was saying. ‘Lizzie will be very much missed. I need not say that the manner in which she died will affect us for many years to come. But I would like to reassure you all that you will be safe here. I will be asking Mr Pembroke for permission to change the locks. I’ve known him since he was a boy and he has your best interests at heart. He won’t let any harm come to you.’

Eleanor kept her face neutral.

‘We will have to make up the shortfall now that … now that Lizzie is no longer with us,’ Mrs Fielding continued, blinking very fast. ‘But I have reason to believe that this will not be for long. Master Charles will be arriving from Paris soon, and shortly after his return we will be able to engage more staff. Until then, I hope I may depend upon your usual patience and hard work to see us through this difficult time.’

She waited. Aoife clapped, but stopped when she saw no one was joining in.

They were dismissed. Eleanor and Aoife were sent up to the third floor to clean the bedrooms. Aoife went to change Mr Pembroke’s sheets – thankfully, he was in the study on the floor below, and had not heard them coming – and Eleanor went into Mrs Pembroke’s old room.

It was exactly as it had been on the day she died. It always shocked Eleanor to see it like this, when her own bedroom on the family floor had been disassembled so quickly. Mrs Pembroke’s brushes were still on the dressing table. Her nightgown was still folded on the pillow. There was a candle by the bed, and a trace of smoke still lingered in the air. There was a pocket sewn into the padded headboard for a book of matches. One of them was missing.

Eleanor made sure to hide the evidence of her own secret trips into Mrs Pembroke’s room. Drawers were pushed in at exactly the right angle, brushes were realigned on the dressing table. But she was not allowed to be there unless she was cleaning; Mr Pembroke was. He did not need to be careful.

Eleanor crept over to the dressing table. She’d sat here as a child and let Mrs Pembroke brush her hair. The mirror was still covered; the black gauze had been draped over the glass after Mrs Pembroke’s funeral and it hadn’t been touched since. She couldn’t look at the bed. Three years ago, she’d seen the shape of Mrs Pembroke’s body beneath the white sheets. Even now, the sight of them made her shudder.

She picked up one of the brushes instead; a few strands of red-gold hair were still trapped in the bristles. There was a letter beside it, dated a few days ago, which began ‘My darling Emmeline’. Cushions on one of the chairs had been flattened. The spot was directly opposite a painting of three small girls hanging over the dark fireplace. The oldest of them could not have been more than three or four years old, the youngest barely a few weeks. All three had an oddly waxy, stiff look about them. They were the Pembrokes’ three daughters, and all of them had died before Eleanor came to Granborough. Mrs Pembroke had told her their names when Eleanor had first arrived – Beatrice, Eugenia and Diana – and explained that though they were gone, she still loved them, like Eleanor loved her mother.

The memory was so clear. Mrs Pembroke had leant down, taken both of Eleanor’s hands in hers – the sleeves of her black crepe dress had crinkled when Mrs Pembroke had touched them – and said, ‘I nursed them, just as you nursed your poor mother. You need not feel so alone,’ and that was when Eleanor had cried, after months of staring into nothing.

Now, Eleanor felt strangely untethered. Here, Mr Pembroke wrote letters to his long-dead wife, and stared at the picture of his long-dead children. If he cried, she could not picture it.

She could not bear to think of him in this room. How a monster like him had married Mrs Pembroke, the best woman Eleanor had ever known, she would never understand. Eleanor turned the letter over so she wouldn’t have to look at it, slapped the cushions back into shape and shoved the window open to let out the smell of smoke. She’d make it as if Mr Pembroke had never been here.

But that would be easy, she thought, with a readiness that frightened her. All she would have to do was make a wish and he’d end up like Lizzie …

Eleanor’s hand slipped on the window latch and she yelped. She sliced open one of the three scratches on the side of her hand that had only just scabbed over. She bundled it up in her apron, trying not to think of Lizzie. Of course the wish hadn’t done that, of course it hadn’t …

There was a knock at the door and Aoife came in. ‘I heard a noise. Are you well?’

‘It’s just a scratch. I caught it on something. Are you—’

Aoife burst into tears.

‘Oh, Aoife,’ Eleanor said, rushing over to her. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s the cage,’ Aoife sobbed. ‘I kept looking at it all empty and then I thought of Lizzie and I just … I just …’ Aoife buried her face in her hands. Eleanor rubbed her back and shushed her like a baby. ‘I want my mam,’ Aoife wailed.

Eleanor remembered the way Mrs Pembroke had stroked her hair after a nightmare and held her hand. Mrs Pembroke would have known just what to say, but all Eleanor had was silence and a lump in her throat.

‘Are you going to tell her what happened?’ she asked gently.

‘I can’t!’ Aoife sobbed. ‘She’d go mad for fretting! And with Micheál so poorly and all … she’d make me come back, Ella, and how’d we pay for the doctor then?’

‘You could always look for another place.’

‘Daisy