The Housekeeper Read online

  The Housekeeper

  A twisted psychological thriller

  Natalie Barelli

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  A note from Natalie

  Acknowledgments

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events and incidents other than those clearly in the public domain are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2019 Natalie Barelli All rights reserved.

  * * *

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Furphies Press

  NSW Australia

  Paperback ISBN: 978-0-6482259-7-3

  Large Print ISBN: 978-0-6482259-9-7

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-6482259-8-0

  1.1

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  Cover design by coverquill.com

  Chapter One

  I am sitting in a large leather armchair, a reading chair. It is so comfortable that I never want to leave it. It’s square, like a hollowed-out cube, and when I rub my hands slowly along the top of the thick arms, I find it’s even softer than it looks. The leather is made to look old—distressed, they’d call it. It’s not really my style, but it is, without a doubt, the most comfortable chair I’ve ever sat in. It’s also north of two thousand dollars, so you’d want it to be.

  I am waiting for the guy who is going to interview me. This is his store: BHive Furniture. I don’t really want to be here—except for the chair—so I am going to get it over and done with and then I am going home.

  He walks in and frowns at me. I get flustered at how much I’ve been enjoying his furniture and stand up immediately, feeling the blush creep up my neck, and shake his hand.

  “Hello, I’m Jack. What’s your name again?”

  “Claire.”

  He does a little flick of the head—just a tiny one—and smiles, like he’s waiting for a punchline.

  “That’s my name!” I chirp in the light, singsong voice I use when I want people to like me. But I bet he thinks the name is a bad match. I know I do. It’s such a pretty name, and completely wasted on me. Claires are tall and elegant. They are kind, sunny individuals with open faces and good intentions.

  I am none of those things. I am about as un-Claire as you can get. I am overweight and lazy, I have bad skin, my hair is always limp no matter how many products I rub in it. Everything about me is washed out, beige. I should be called Charolais or something. Or Bovinia. Although April says I’m not overweight, just a little behind in my gym routine.

  Jack releases my hand and wipes it quickly on his jacket pocket.

  “Okay, well, it’s this way.”

  * * *

  Sometimes, when I take the time to think about it, which admittedly isn’t often, I do think I’m strange. I didn’t used to be, but circumstances have tipped me over that invisible edge. Now, everyone else seems normal and well adjusted. They have friends and go to book clubs, they live in the suburbs and watch their kids play sports on Sundays and have barbecues afterwards. They throw dinner parties and drink crisp Chardonnays out of tall stemmed glasses and laugh at each other’s jokes, then remember a shared anecdote and argue about who remembered it better and the whole thing will look like an old episode of Friends. Meanwhile I sit in my room and eat Doritos dipped in salsa while binging on old Revenge seasons.

  I have one friend: April. I met her through Craigslist when I was looking for a place to live. Large 1BR in 2BR apt SOHO All Inclusive!

  My room is nothing flashy—and I did think calling it “Large” was a stretch, no pun intended—but it’s big enough for my double bed, wedged as it is between the wall and a dresser, and it has a closet with a tall mirror on the front that I’ve covered up with a strip of wallpaper. The window looks onto the back courtyard, which I’m not crazy about. I’d prefer the street, but at least it’s quiet—unless it’s winter, which is when the oil heater under my window starts to go nuts, making noises like someone has taken a sledgehammer to it, and I wake up with my heart somersaulting in my chest.

  April works hard—she’s an HR lawyer, or something to do with employment, and she’s constantly busy. She was able to get herself a mortgage, which, to some extent, I am paying off. Sometimes she’ll even accept goods instead of money, like the St. Laurent bag I stole from a store once but pretended was gifted to me in exchange for posting a pretty picture of it on social media. She didn’t seem concerned by the tear where the security tag had been.

  “You’re an influencer?” she had asked, wide-eyed. Sometimes I worry about April. It would be too easy to take advantage of her, which seems kind of weird if her job is to make sure others are not taken advantage of. She only asked because of my social media habit, and maybe because I lie occasionally. One day when she asked me what I was doing all the time on my screen, I showed her other people’s glamour shots and pretended they were mine.

  The truth is, I only work two mornings a week, and on other days I spend an average of six to eight hours scrolling on my phone and trolling people on Instagram. Is that strange? I don’t know. Sometimes I tell myself that I don’t live in a dark basement eating mold off the walls, so I’m okay. I’m not crazy, just a little obsessive.

  My addiction to Instagram started like everyone else’s addiction to social media: I wanted to see what all the people I once knew were doing now. These were girls I just about grew up with. Girls who shared the same luxurious lifestyle as I had, whose parents frequented the same exclusive clubs, who even used the same shopping assistants, the same stylists, as my parents. Girls who vacationed in the same locations as we did: Telluride in winter, St. Barts in summer, the Hamptons or Cape Cod on weekends. I didn’t know anyone outside that world until I got shut out of it.

  After a while, stalking my old friends became more than a hobby. These women were living my life, essentially. I imagined myself in their photos, my face cut out and stuck over theirs. I imagined being married to their husbands or engaged to some hot guy who’d gone to an Ivy League university and was now running his father’s hedge fund. Like them, I would have small children by now, as well as an incredibly important and glamorous job. Like them, I would be incredibly busy, what with juggling my perfect life and my perfect career and my perfect kids! But I’m not busy—unless you count my two mornings a week of dubious employment at Dr. Lowe’s office—which is why I have time to stalk.

  It goes without saying that my pr
ofile has nothing to do with me. Who wants a sad, pathetic twenty-four-year-old loser in their timeline? No. My fifty-five followers think that I am a “freelance publicist/eternal optimist.” My posts are collages of stock photos, me-not-me in exotic places, my fake office with its fabulous vision board, my hot boyfriend (the back of his head anyway) in bed, crumpled sheets down his back. It’s incredible how easy it is, really, and I’m not even trying, I’m only interested in stalking my old “friends.”

  So no, I’m not an influencer. That goes without saying. But I gave April the St. Laurent bag in exchange for a whole month’s rent, so that was good.

  Now I am only at this job interview because of her. I would never have bothered otherwise, but she has this thing, this faith in me, I call it. She insists on trying to pull me out of my misery. She’s like a missionary sent to promote the power of positive thinking in a foreign country, with me being the foreign country.

  “I don’t want to be pulled out of it, April. I like my misery. It’s taken a lot of effort to be this miserable. Why would I throw it all away?”

  “You’re so melodramatic. I really don’t know why you put yourself down all the time. You’re very pretty—just, you know, take care of your skin, put some makeup on. Go out for a walk every day, and you’ll lose a few pounds in no time. You won’t recognize yourself.”

  “You’d make an excellent motivational speaker, you know that? Or a cult leader.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing, that’s all. Get a job. Go out more. Make some friends, you’ll find out.”

  “Whatever. Any more Doritos in the bag?”

  The owner of BHive Furniture is a good friend of April’s. He mentioned to her in passing that they were looking for a new admin person, someone who could check inventory, issue invoices, and—this was the clincher for her—someone who could manage their social media marketing. She recommended me.

  “It’s perfect for you. You’re just the person they need.”

  But back to April, who had this fixation about me applying for this position.

  “I already have a job, April.”

  “Answering the phone two mornings a week isn’t exactly a career. Even if it is well paid, for what it is.”

  April often wonders out loud how I manage to pay $1,320 in rent on two mornings’ work a week at a small medical office in midtown. Like most people, if I could not work at all, I wouldn’t. But whatever money my family ever had is long gone, so when I dropped in to see my doctor for my antidepressants prescription, and his part-time receptionist had just quit because a patient had puked on her open-toe shoes, and the office had descended into total chaos, I said, “I’ll tell you what, Dr. Lowe, I’ll work the phones for you today and you don’t charge me for the next five visits. How about it?” By the end of the day he’d offered me the job. I was the receptionist two mornings a week from eight a.m. until noon for a measly eleven dollars an hour, whereupon Sally, the other receptionist, would take over.

  In my second week, I arrived twenty minutes early and walked in on him enjoying some “me” time with some big tits fetish website.

  “You can feel mine if you like. One hundred bucks,” I said.

  I have big breasts, and they’re not being used right now. I figured I may as well put them to work. That worked out fine, so much so that for a weekly hand job and a boob feel, my salary went up two hundred and fifty dollars. Like I said. I’m lazy.

  Needless to say, April doesn’t know that part, and when she says, “Every job has its dignity, no matter how menial,” she means even answering phones.

  “But you’re capable of so much more, Claire! Don’t you want a career? Build a life?”

  “No, I don’t. And I don’t have any experience. Not real experience, not like a marketing person.”

  “It’s not a marketing job, Claire. It’s an admin position. With plenty of scope. That’s the beauty of it, don’t you see? You could become a marketing person, because you would be so good at this!”

  “Well, I don’t have anything to wear for a job interview anyway, so that settles it.”

  She gave a small shake of the head. “You always exaggerate.” And before I could stop her, she was in my bedroom, pulling out clothes from my wardrobe and throwing them over her shoulder and onto the unmade bed.

  “You have all these beautiful clothes, Claire. Why don’t you wear any of them?”

  “Because they don’t fit me. I don’t even know why I keep them.” I took the silver evening dress from her grasp and returned it to its rightful place, balled up at the back of the closet.

  In the end, she settled on a tailored blazer and matching flare pants in a small black-and-white-check pattern.

  “This is mine?” I asked, taking the coat hanger from her. I didn’t even recognize it. I wondered if I’d stolen that, too. “Forget it. I’ll look ridiculous.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll look great. Professional but also edgy. Influential.”

  Lazy people can be pretty stubborn, and I’m no exception. But no one could withstand April when she set her mind on something. In the end, it was easier to give in, even though I knew full well I had virtually no hope of getting this job.

  But now that I’m here chatting with Jack and his business partner Kate, something shifts. It takes a moment to figure out what, but then it clicks. I’m having a good time. I begin to think that maybe, just maybe, I could do this.

  “Tell us about yourself, Claire.”

  I’m hardly going to tell them the truth. But this is an admin job, and I can operate a computer and answer calls. I also have a talent for acting, which is something I’ve realized over the years and have used to my advantage many times. Anyway, April must have said lots of nice things about me, because Jack and Kate want to know if I have any thoughts about marketing the brand on social media. As it happens, I do. They listen, they like my ideas, they take notes and ask questions, they thank me for my suggestions, they laugh at my jokes, which always makes me bolder, and by the time I leave thirty minutes later, I am thinking that this job could be fun. Jack and Kate seem really nice, and now I wish I’d worn something else. This outfit I have on belongs on someone tall and slim, someone who oozes confidence. A proper Claire. Then, yes, sure, it screams cool, edgy. On me, it says… I don’t know. Clown.

  I step out of the building just as a woman walks past with her dog on a leash, some small black stocky thing that immediately barks at me, saliva dripping from its exposed fangs.

  “Coco! Enough!” she shouts. Then she looks at me apologetically. “Sorry, I’m so sorry. Coco!” But she’s barely strong enough to restrain that thing, and as she pulls at the leash with both hands, her pretty pink Kate Spade handbag somehow slides off her arm and onto the sidewalk. There’s a split second where I consider grabbing it and making a run for it, but, notwithstanding the barking beast, I’m in a good mood.

  “Don’t worry about it!” I say, waving my hand. And let’s face it, this is Manhattan, the Upper East Side. You can’t walk five feet without getting entangled with some Italian leather leash with hand-sewn edges, a Dior-clad socialite at one end and a Tibetan mastiff at the other.

  She gives me a small smile, picks up both the purse and the dog, and walks away briskly on heels so thin and sharp she could play darts with them. I reach for my cell to call April.

  “How did it go?” she yells into the phone.

  “Yeah, good. Where are you?”

  “Subway, Delancey—one sec.”

  I turn onto Park Avenue, wedge the phone in the crook of my neck and fish around my bag for my MetroCard.

  It’s hot and sticky, the kind of day that sends everyone in and out of stores in search of air conditioning, and I’m sweating. It’s also lunchtime, and therefore seriously busy. Avoiding people takes some skill.

  A waft of perfume makes me look up. Something about the scent triggers a distant memory that I can’t quite catch. Or maybe it’s the familiar smell of money that makes my nostrils tw
itch.

  I am right next to Alex Moreno’s Salon, where everyone in this neighborhood gets their hair done. An elegant woman, midforties maybe, dressed in a light metallic ensemble and now sporting a perfectly layered shoulder-length cut, has just walked out. She’s probably called Claire. I glance briefly inside without thinking, and there’s a split second when the whole world stands still.

  It’s her.

  Chapter Two

  I stop so abruptly that someone behind me knocks my shoulder, sending me stumbling forward. I turn around to glare at the young man. He takes out one earbud and makes a frustrated clicking sound with his tongue. I hiss at him, bared teeth, and he jumps back before giving me a wide berth. I retrace the last couple steps so that I am again standing in front of the salon.

  “Did you hear what I said?” April’s voice in my ear. I forgot I still held the phone, and yet I am clutching it so hard against my ear it hurts the cartilage.

  “You’re breaking up, April. I’ll see you at home.” I hang up.

  She’s here, in New York, in Alex Moreno’s Salon. I’d say I couldn’t believe my eyes, but I know I’m right. It’s not so much that I recognize her, it’s that I feel her. Like the sight of her brought back memories that slice right through the barely healed scars.