Precious Time by Erica James

her prime she had run the house with military precision, determined, against the odds, to instil in the three children a sense of shared duty. ‘It’s a large house, so I would be grateful if you could all pull your weight,’
    she had told them. On the first day of their holidays, when they were home from school, she would line them up and go through the running order. ‘Damson, I’d like you to do the dusting and polishing in the dining room and, Caspar, you can clear out the ashes from the grate in the drawing room and bring in some fresh kindling. Jonah, I’ve put the silver on the kitchen table for you to clean.’
    ‘Why does he always get the easy jobs?’ Damson had pouted
    mutinously.
    ‘Because he’s the youngest. He’s not as big and strong as the pair of you.’
    Just as rebellious as his sister, Caspar would argue frequently that their father was rich enough to have a host of servants to do the work. But Val would have none of it. ‘We no longer live in an age of servants, young man. We have Mrs Harper to help us, but she is not a servant.’
    Ignoring whatever scornful comment Caspar would make, she
    would clap her hands and send them on their way. And always there would be the same music played at full volume while they did their chores. Even now, Jonah could never hear a piece of Gilbert and Sullivan without wanting to reach for the silver polish.
    The meticulous order that Val so prized was lost when she suffered the first of a series of minor heart-attacks. As she slowly slipped away from them, she took with her the smooth running of the household.
    Mrs Harper, who was well past retirement age, handed in her notice and a succession of local cleaners proved unsatisfactory: the sheer size of Mermaid House overwhelmed them: ten bedrooms and three bathrooms was more than they wanted to take on.
    It was more than any sane person would want to take on, thought Jonah, as he stood in the middle of the chaos. Suddenly he had the urge to hire the largest skip he could get hold of and throw everything into it. How tempting it was to clear the decks and start again. He would give his stubborn, sore-headed father the clean slate he needed. But he knew that that would never happen. Only a nuclear bomb would clear these particular decks.
    But it was a bomb of sorts that he had come here to drop.
    He called to Gabriel again, and helped himself to an apple from the bowl of fruit he bought religiously every week for his father, and which Gabriel rarely touched, then wandered out of the hall. He checked the drawing room, the dining room, and finally the library, where the curtains were drawn to protect the shelves of books from being damaged by sunlight. But there was no sign of his father. He stood at the bottom of the stairs and shouted, his voice echoing in the musty emptiness of the high-ceilinged house. There was no answer.
     
    The irony was not lost on Jonah. Every week he did his father’s shopping for him, and tried to time his appearance at Mermaid House for when he knew his father would be in Deaconsbridge so that he could avoid speaking to him. Now he wanted to talk to him and he couldn’t.
    Where was he?
    Perhaps he had gone for a walk. Well, if he had, there was no point in looking for him. Jonah didn’t have time to mount a search party. He would have to come back another day.
    To his shame, he felt relieved as he retraced his steps the length of the house, knowing that, for now, he wouldn’t have to go through with what Caspar had asked him to do.
     
    He was about to use his own key to lock the back door - Gabriel really shouldn’t leave the house unlocked - when he thought better of it. His father might have forgotten to take a key with him.
    Outside in the pleasantly warm sun and taking another bite of the apple, Jonah looked at his watch and decided he had time to see to the balding tyre on the Land Rover. But when he checked the spare, he found that it was in an even worse