The Road Trip(9)

Bye, love you, call me if you need me, my message to her reads.

Ditto, kiddo, says hers. You need me, I’m there.

Usually me and Deb introduce ourselves to a guest as soon as they arrive, but this time I decide to wait until the evening, once she’s gone. No need to confuse matters by giving the impression of two caretakers when one of them doesn’t plan on sticking around.

I make my way up the servant’s entrance to the villa. There’s a cramped spiral staircase that leads from our flat to a small hallway just outside the villa’s kitchen. The door between kitchen and stairway is locked from our side, but I knock loudly anyway. I’ve been burned before, just walking in: I caught a beer-bellied Scottish guest helping himself to some crackers in the nude.

‘Hello?’ I call through the door. ‘Mr Abbott?’

No answer. I unlock the door and step through gingerly. Nobody here. The kitchen’s a tip: baguette ends, empty bottles, rinds of cheese, a whole slab of butter sweating in the evening sun. I tut, then stop myself, because tutting is exactly what my mother would do.

I gnaw at one of the baguette ends as I tidy. Whoever this guy is, he’s used to someone else clearing up after him. And he’s drunk, judging by the number of bottles. I swallow the last of the bread and pause in the middle of the floor. It’s quiet except for the constant static of the crickets outside. I’m not used to quiet up here in the house. Sometimes a family go out for the day, but they’re usually around in the evenings, and most of the time I have Deb with me anyway.

I’m a little spooked. Just me and a strange drunk man in the house. I count bottles. Five beers, a half-drunk bottle of wine.

I check the kitchen once more, poke my head out to see the terrace, then wander through into the villa’s grand entrance hall.

‘Hello?’ I call, more quietly this time.

It’s cooler here, with the big double doors closed tight, blocking out the sun’s heat. There’s a jacket pooled at the bottom of the stairs. I hang it back on the bannister. It’s soft denim lined with fleece – it must have been cold wherever he flew in from. You’d roast wearing it here. As I hang it up I catch its scent: orange-ish, woody, manly.

‘Mr Abbott?’

Through to the reception room, the dining hall, the ballroom, the living room. They’re exactly as we left them when we prepared the villa for new guests. He’s upstairs, then. We never go upstairs when guests are here, unless they ask us up to sort a blocked drain or whatever. Bedrooms are their private space.

I’m kind of relieved. I retreat back to the servant’s staircase and lock the door behind me. The flat’s just as it always is: cosy, cluttered, zero natural light. I sink into the pink velvet sofa and flick on the telly. Some French drama, too fast-paced for me to follow, but really I just want the noise. Maybe I should have asked Deb to stay. I hate this lost feeling I get when I’m left on my own. I turn the TV up.

I’ll try meeting Mr Abbott again tomorrow. Not too early, though. He’ll need to sleep off that hangover.



He wakes me the next day with the slam of his shutters. He can’t get the hang of fixing them back, apparently. I snort, pulling the covers over my head. The mistral’s strong – he’ll smash a pane if he keeps letting everything slam in the wind like that.

He’s talking to himself in the kitchen. I can’t quite catch the words through the ceiling, but I can tell from the up-and-down of his voice that he’s reciting something.

I check my phone. It’s eight in the morning – too early for me to go up and introduce myself. The strange lost feeling that gripped me last night has gone, and I’m glad of the extra space in the double bed. Deb’s such an irritating person to share a bed with. The other night she started sleep-talking about Tory politicians.

I lie back and listen to our solo guest rattling about the house. I wonder what he looks like. I’ve not got much to go on – the waist down, basically, and the voice. I’m guessing dark curls and brown eyes; stubble, maybe; a loose-collared shirt. An heirloom on a chain around his neck.

He sings a few lines of something – a pop song I half remember. I grin up at the ceiling. He’s totally tuneless.

By the time I get out of bed it’s half nine and he’s on the terrace with his coffee. I heard the machine whirring away and his footfall on the walkway outside before I mustered the energy to roll out from under the covers. I overthink my outfit – shorts, skirt, dress? In the end, irritated with myself, I grab a tank top and yesterday’s shorts off the floor and yank them on, pulling my hair up into a bun and tying it there with one of my bracelets.

Mr Abbott’s nowhere to be seen when I get to the terrace. No coffee mug, so wherever he’s wandered off to, he’s taken it with him. I scan the dry, dusty lawns and flowerbeds that Victor the gardener sweats over every Thursday, but there’s nobody in sight in the villa grounds. Maybe I misheard? I head to the kitchen, tugging my hair out of the bun again.

It’s tidier today. There’s a note.



Hello, phantom caretaker. Ever so sorry about the mess last night, I got rather carried away. Off out to explore now, but perhaps you could look at the shutters in my bedroom while I’m out. I can’t fathom how you’re supposed to stop them slamming shut incessantly. The noise is driving me mad.

Dylan Abbott