as though the occupant had leapt up in haste, scattering the sheets and thin quilt. There was talcum powder on the carpet, and the print of a bare foot. But the bathroom was respectable, the toilet flushed, the bath mat damp, the towels neatly folded on the rail.
She checked her watch. She had nearly caught up. The rooms were supposed to be done by ten, or Mrs Fry would have something, a lot to say about it. She wouldn’t get rid of Anna though. Anna had managed to keep this job for five months. She didn’t complain to anyone about minimum wages. She was reliable. She’d never had a day off in the time she’d worked for the hotel. She was never late. She kept out of the way of the guests. She always finished her work and she always did it properly. People never complained about the rooms that Anna had cleaned.
Down here in the basement, she could have a cigarette. She could have a break. The extractor fan in the windowless bathroom was roaring away. She reached into the pocket of her overalls and took out her cigarettes and lighter. Five cigarettes a day. Her ration. She lit up, leaning against the bathroom wall, blowing the smoke towards the fan. She hated the smell of smoke.
The last room in the basement was cramped and uncomfortable. She pushed past the closed bathroom door, stumbling on something, and ran her eye over the room. The wardrobe was small, crammed against the narrow back wall next to the French windows that opened on to the yard. The window nets were damp with condensation and stuck to the glass. The dressing table was against the long wall opposite the bed. The gap was so narrow, Anna had to turn sideways to squeeze between them. The room was…She looked round. The bed appeared unused, but there were clothes thrown across it – a woman’s jacket and skirt. A shoe lay in front of the French windows. The other shoe was in the narrow entrance way. She’d trodden on it on her way in. The occupant must not have checked out yet.
Anna stripped the bed and dumped the pile of clean linen in the middle of the mattress. Unused or not, the beds had to be changed. She picked up the shoes and put them in the bottom of the wardrobe, put the skirt and jacket on a hanger. Maybe this occupant was one of the rare visitors who stayed for more than one night. The room was cold, unlike the stuffy dampness of the other basement rooms. A line of cold seemed to run down her back, and a draught blew around her ankles. She buttoned her cardigan up round her neck.
The vacuum cleaner was plugged in from the corridor. She switched it on, but the poor suction told her the bag would have to be changed. More time. She dumped the full bag in her cleaning tray and, with the speed of familiarity, fitted a new one and gave the small expanse of carpet a thorough clean. She ran her cloth over the skirting boards and over the surfaces of the dressing table and the small bedside table. The ashtray was unused, and the tea tray untouched. Something sticky smeared under her cloth, leaving a brown stain. She rubbed it clean. She felt dissatisfied with the room, as though she’d forgotten something important. She looked at the nets sticking to the window, and decided to wipe the condensation off. It might get rid of that…that was it! – that slight taint in the air that made the room feel unclean. For a moment, she thought she smelt burning. A sense of unease, a sickness, began to stir in her stomach.
The window moved as she wiped it, and she realized that it was open slightly. Someone had opened the French windows and left them ajar. That was why it was so cold in here. Why would someone do that? Running away rather than pay the bill? And leave a good suit and a pair of shoes? Someone who wanted fresh air? And leave the room so insecure? She shook her head, puzzled. If there was one thing she’d learnt as a hotel cleaner, it was that you couldn’t explain the way people behaved away from home. She pulled the windows shut, slamming them to lock the bar. The smell was probably coming from the bins in the yard. It would go now that the windows were closed.
Just the bathroom to do now. Anna had left the bathroom until last. She looked at the white painted door off the narrow entrance lobby to the room. It was shut tight. Guests usually left the bathroom door open, the steam drifting out into the room with the smell of soap and shampoo, or less pleasant smells; towels carelessly dumped on beds, on carpets, on chairs. She put her fingers on the door handle. She didn’t want to open that door. Stupid fancies! She pressed the handle down and pushed. The door stayed shut. She frowned. Locked? Now she came to listen, there was a trickling sound and the sound of water running in the pipes. She knocked. Silence. Surely, if there was someone in the bathroom, they would have come into the room and told her to leave the cleaning until the room was free. She checked her watch. She had lost all the time she had gained earlier. She was running late again. Mrs Fry would be down shortly to find out what she was doing. The thought galvanized her, and she pressed the handle down harder and pushed against the door. This door stuck sometimes, she remembered now. But there was a feeling of sick anticipation in her stomach. Something in her mind was trying to make her turn away. Don’t look! Forget!
The door resisted for a moment then flew open. She was suddenly in the bathroom, in the hot, steamy air, and the smell was there, heavy like the smell in the meat market at home. Sour. Cloying. Unclean.
The drip, drip of the water as she creeps through the bushes. The smell of burning is still in the air, but it is a smell of old burning. Ashes, the remains of a fire. Fires mean warmth and parties and music and voices. Voices! She stops, listens. Silence, just the dripping of the water. But coming through the smell of burning is something else, heavy, sweet, rotten.
She can see the house, now. It’s just outside the village, on the edge of the trees. The burning must come from the village, of course, not from her house. She peers through the leaves. She listens for the sound of her mother calling to the children, or her father laughing with the men as they took a break. They’ll all be worried. She’s been gone, what, two nights? Three nights? ‘I’m back…’ she whispers, looking through the leaves at the shell of her house, at the bundle lying half in and half out of the door, tiny on the ground, with the sole of a shoe pointing towards the bushes where she is hiding. The rain must have put the fire out. She can see the water dripping from the eaves and the remains of the roof.
Her foot squashed in something and she looked down, recoiling instinctively, mechanically wiping her foot on the carpet. The floor was wet. Something dripped on to her neck and she jumped, turning round. Condensation was dripping from the ceiling, and the walls glistened. A steady trickling sound came from the bath as though the shower was running, just a bit, turned down very low. The shower curtain was pulled across, pink and translucent. The water ran and trickled, gurgling in the pipes, making the plughole of the basin echo.
Someone was in the shower. That was her first thought. Someone in the shower who ran the water in a slow dribble, someone who ignored the sound of movement, the vacuum, the banging and knocking attendant on cleaning. Someone…The broken door in front of her now. Through there, mother, father, the table where they all sit to eat and talk and the little ones running around and the smell of… Sour, rotten.
Slowly, she put out her hand and pulled the curtain back.
She thought it would be her mother.
The woman – it was a woman, she could still tell that – was slumped in the bath. She looked…broken, like a toy that had been dropped and crushed. Her face – Krisha…? – her face, like Krisha’s doll, they’d trodden on Krisha’s doll and the doll’s face was distorted and smashed, the eye sockets and eyes not quite aligned, the mouth cracked into a feral grin. Krisha’s doll! Water dripped from the woman’s hair as it trickled from the shower. Ribbons. It’s like… Her first thought was that there should have been more blood. Then her legs felt weak and she was cold all over. Her mouth was full of saliva and she was dizzy. She couldn’t stop herself. Her knees thumped on to the floor. She felt the wetness on the floor seeping through her stockings on to her legs. Her hands slipped on the side of the bath, trying to keep her from falling down into it. Don’t let it touch me!
She pulled herself to her feet,
