The Maid's Diary(62)

“Hey, Daisy,” Vanessa says. “I was just thinking about you—I was wondering if you and Jo—”

“You do use the Holly’s Help cleaning service, right?”

There is a pause. “Yes. Why?”

Daisy clears her throat. “Do you know who your maid is? Have you personally met her?”

“Of course, yes. What’s this about?”

“What’s her name?”

“Are you having a problem with the service?”

“No, I was just wondering if we might have the same maid.”

“You mean Kit?”

Heat flushes into Daisy’s chest. “Yes—yes, I think that must be the same one. Kit Darling?”

“Is she doing an okay job for you guys? Why do you ask?”

Daisy feigns a big sigh. “Seems Kit has some scheduling conflict, so we have a new cleaner. I wanted to send her a thank-you note—and I—you wouldn’t happen to know where she lives?”

Vanessa is silent for a moment. Daisy can hear the questioning in Vanessa’s pause, and she realizes she must be coming across as really strange. Especially after their weird lunch. She needs to take it down a notch. “It’s okay. Never mind. I was just hoping to send her a thank-you note.”

“You could send it via her agency,” Vanessa offers.

“I’ll do that. Thanks.”

“Hey, before you go. Do you and Jon want to come round for dinner? I’d love for you to meet Haruto properly this time. And for us both to meet your Jon. I was thinking maybe Halloween night? It might be nice to do something a little special. Before we’re both surrounded by diapers and leaking breasts and sleepless nights—while we’re still both vaguely autonomous human beings?”

Daisy laughs. But anxiety bites as she recalls her confession about Jon. What if Vanessa brings it up in front of Jon? She was clearly shocked. Daisy should never have mentioned it, but she was not herself that day. Her paranoia stirs again, winding tighter around her chest. She glances out the window at all the anonymous faces walking past the café. Wind gusts and bare branches bend. She senses winter coming today. It brings a dark feeling.

“Daisy? Are you there?”

“I—yes, dinner would be amazing. I’ll check with Jon, but I’m sure he’ll be fine with it.”

“Around six p.m.? Cocktails—or mocktails—to start?”

“Sounds great.” Daisy forces a laugh. “And yes to the mocktails. I’m done with my pregnancy wine experiment. After not having alcohol for so long, and mixed with hormones—I must have overdone it. I was not myself. I’m even having trouble recalling parts of our conversation. I didn’t say anything terribly weird, did I? Because if I did, please just forget it.”

Vanessa hesitates, but only for a nanosecond. “No problem at all. So we’ll see you guys Thursday?”

Daisy agrees, then kills the call. She feels totally off center. Vanessa is probably now wondering why she pressed about the maid. Daisy hears Charley’s words in her head again.

“I—oh, wait, I get it. This is about Kit, isn’t it?”

Kit Darling was cleaning Rose Cottage when that Chucky thing appeared in their letter box. Daisy’s neighbor said no one else apart from the maid had approached their house.

Could her maid—the person with a key to her home—have been the one who sent the other notes and commented on Daisy’s Instagram account? The person who got inside her car? Like a bolt of lightning, Daisy is hit with an image of her and Jon’s spare car keys hanging in the hall closet. The maid had access to those.

Could Kit the maid also have stolen her diamond? What else might she have gotten into?

Daisy feels ill. It’s totally possible. But why on earth would this maid do these things?

The image of the Chucky with knife stabbing stabbity stab stabbing rises into her brain. The image is followed by those words: I hope your baby dies. Dies. Dies.

Anger thumps harder and harder into Daisy’s blood. She grows fidgety and hot and irrational. She crunches the napkin with the word Darling on it into a ball in her fist, and she swears.

If “Kit” is doing this, I will find and stab that maid myself.





MAL


November 1, 2019. Friday.

Mal shrugs out of her wet coat and hangs it on a hook in the hallway of her duplex.

“Peter?” she calls out as she sits on the bench to remove her boots.

There’s no answer. It’s late, but all the lights downstairs are on. Anxiety sharpens. Quickly, Mal pads through to the kitchen on socked feet.

Peter is at the kitchen table. He glances up from the newspaper he’s reading and smiles. It’s warm inside. He has the gas fire going in the living room.

“Hey, hon,” he says as he lowers his paper. “How’d the rest of the day go? You locate the victim?”

Mal’s chest squeezes. For a cruel second it seems all is back to normal. Cautious, unsure whether her husband is just having a good, lucid moment, or if it’s wishful thinking on the part of her exhausted brain, she says, “Not yet. I—I’ve forgotten what I’ve told you already,” she says as she opens a cupboard and takes out a wineglass. She pours herself a glass of red wine, holds the bottle out to him. “Would you like some?”