The Lake House Caretaker – Part 1: Keys in the Post

The house stood at the end of a long gravel drive on the shore of a grey, still lake, its windows shuttered and its garden gone to moss. The agency had sent Anya a single sheet of paper and a set of iron keys. Check the boiler weekly. Do not enter the east room. Owen will help.

She had read the last line four times.

Owen arrived on the first morning in a battered green pickup, rain dripping off the brim of his cap. He was broad and quiet, with weathered hands and the patient face of a man who had fixed a great many boilers in his life.

"You're the caretaker," he said, looking her over.

"I'm the artist who needed a winter job," said Anya. "Are you the one who knows where the boiler is?"

"I'm the one who knows everything about this house," said Owen. "Including the east room."

"Nobody will tell me about the east room."

"Then I'm not going to tell you either," said Owen, and walked straight past her into the hall.

Over the next week he came every morning. He fixed the boiler, unblocked the drains, replaced a cracked pane in the back porch, and said very little while he did it. When she asked him questions, he gave short, dry answers. When she stopped asking, he began talking about the lake: the way the mist rolled off the fells in the early morning, the herons that stood motionless in the shallows, the summer his father had rowed a stranded sheep across to the far shore.

"You like this place," said Anya, on the Thursday, watching him scrape ice off the porch steps.

"I was born here," said Owen. "I'll die here, probably. I'm not allowed to leave because I'm too stubborn to be useful anywhere else."

"That's very dramatic."

"It's very Cumbrian," said Owen, and almost smiled.

She set down her sketchbook. Her pencil had been drawing the lake all morning: the grey water, the pale shore, the shape of his shoulders as he worked.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Yes."

"What's in the east room, Owen? Really?"

He stood up slowly and looked at her, rain on his cheeks, his face unreadable.

"My sister's studio," he said quietly. "She was a painter. She died two years ago. Nobody goes in because it's the only room in the house where she still is."

Anya's throat tightened. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," said Owen. "I wanted you to know, because you've been drawing the lake like she used to. And I don't want you to be frightened of the room."

"Then show me," said Anya. "If you'd like. Not the room. Just the sketches. Would you?"

Owen was silent. Then he nodded, very slowly.

"Yes," he said. "But only if you tell me what you see when you look at the lake. Honestly."

"I see someone who's been waiting for a long time to be asked," said Anya softly. "Green?"

"Green," said Owen, and his voice cracked, just slightly. "Very green. Come on, then. Let's see if she'd approve of your pencil."