Hatherleigh, by Rosamund Kettle

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

Nell had been at Hatherleigh Grange for three weeks before she heard the piano.

It was past midnight and she was lying awake in the attic, too cold to sleep, when the music came up through the floorboards: slow, broken phrases, the same few bars begun and abandoned and begun again, as though someone were trying to remember a tune they had once known well. She sat up. The only piano in the house was in the music room at the end of the east corridor, and the music room was locked. Mrs Venn had told her so on her first morning, in the tone she used for things that were not to be discussed. ‘That room is not cleaned. You will not go in it. You will not ask.’

Nell did not ask. But she listened, and on the nights that followed she heard it again, always after midnight, always the same unfinished tune.

She knew where the key was kept. Everybody below stairs knew. It hung on its own nail inside the housekeeper’s parlour, apart from the others, with a faded green ribbon through its bow. On the Friday, when Mrs Venn went into Exeter on the carrier’s cart, Nell took it.

Her heart was going so hard as she climbed the east stairs that she thought it must be heard in the kitchen. At the end of the corridor the music room door was painted the same cream as every other door in the house, and that, somehow, was worse than if it had been black.

The key turned easily. Somebody had oiled the lock.

Inside, the shutters were closed, and in the stripes of light between them she saw a room that was not abandoned at all. There was no dust. The fire was laid. On the piano lay sheets of music covered in pencilled notes, and beside them a cup with a skin of cold tea, and a pair of man’s spectacles folded on top of a newspaper from Tuesday.

And in the armchair by the window, with a rug over his knees, sat a young man with a grey face, watching her.

Nell knew the face. It hung in the front hall in a black frame, with a brass plate beneath it. Captain Edward Harland. Missing, believed killed. Arras, 1917.

He did not speak. He only lifted one finger to his lips, very slowly, the way you would to a child, and she saw that the hand was shaking so badly he could hardly hold it still.

Nell backed out and locked the door and ran.

Mrs Venn came back at four. She was in her parlour a long time, and then she sent for Nell. She was sitting at her table with the key in front of her, and Nell saw that the green ribbon had been threaded back through the bow and tied, neatly, before it was laid down.

‘You have been in the music room,’ Mrs Venn said. It was not a question.

Nell waited to be dismissed. She had already counted the shillings in her box and worked out the fare home.

Instead Mrs Venn looked at her for a long while, and something in the housekeeper’s face, which had been closed for three weeks, seemed to give a little, like ice in a thaw.

‘He takes his tray at seven and at one,’ she said. ‘And at night he cannot always sleep. You will not speak of it, to anyone, ever.’ She pushed the key across the table. ‘There are two of us now.’

“Nell is presented as a foolish girl whose curiosity puts her in danger.”

To what extent do you agree with this view?

You should write about:

• your thoughts and feelings about how Nell is presented in the extract
• how the writer has created these thoughts and feelings

You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer.