The Serving Girl // Book 2 in the Rosie Grey series

Chapter Thirty-Two

When I returned to the house after speaking with James, I didn't say anything to Miss Jenkins and she didn't ask any questions. Instead, she set me the task of peeling a handful of potatoes for supper that evening without saying more than she needed to. I knew I would have to tell her what James and I had discussed, but I didn't want to tell her until I had decided what I would say. Making the decision to leave seemed easy enough but figuring out how to tell them that I needed to leave would be far harder than I thought it would be.

How do I tell the people who had been so kind to me that I could no longer work for them? In truth, I didn't know how. It wasn't as though I could say the words and then return to peeling the potatoes as if I hadn't spoken. I hadn't had the courage to admit the truth about the factory for two weeks, and even then, it had been forced into admission. This was different. With the factory, I thought they wouldn't believe, that I would spill my heart out to them, and they would think I was lying to them. This time, I would have to tell them that I had made the decision to go. I was terrified of how they would react.

So, I sat at the kitchen table with a pile of potatoes in front of me and a small knife in my hand and peeled them without complaint. The bandage on right hand shifted slightly and the cut across my palm dug into the handle of the knife, but it didn't bother me. Miss Jenkins pottered around the kitchen, cutting meat up and dropping vegetables into pots of the boiling water. I knew I would miss watching her work when I left. Miss Jenkins had an almost systematic way of cooking, managing to keep the counters somewhat clean despite the amount of work that was going on.

"Have you almost finished there?" Miss Jenkins asked as she filled another pot with water and placed it on the stovetop.

"Almost," I replied. I sliced the knife across the skin of the potato and watched it fall into the table. "Done."

"Excellent. Just put the peelings in a bowl and I'll give them to Samuel later on."

"Alright."

"When you're done, you can clean up the pantry a little bit. It's a mess in there."

"Yes, Miss Jenkins."

I used my left hand to scoop the potato peel up and drop it into the bowl Miss Jenkins had passed to me. Being asked to clean the pantry reminded me of the previous time I had been forced to remain out of sight, right before Zachariah climbed the tree and everything started to go wrong. It had been that day that had set off the chain of events that led me to where I was when Miss Jenkins asked me to repeat the task that had caused so much harm already. I knew it was stupid to blame everything on a singular event, but if I hadn't been in the kitchen that day, I never would have known Zachariah had climbed the tree.

I sighed to myself and pushed the chair back against the floor. Whilst Miss Jenkins continued to prepare the supper, by dropping the potatoes into the water on the stove, I grabbed onto the cane and slipped into the pantry. It always seemed to end up in a bigger mess by the end of the day then it did at the start, Miss Ealing had never been able to keep the pantry clean when she cooked. Although Doctor Ealing had insisted I used the cane to get around, I leant it up against the table at the side of the room and opted for limping from one side of the room to the other instead.

Despite my fears of returning to the pantry, I found the task to be somewhat relaxing as it gave me a chance to think without Miss Jenkins or anyone else around. I may have set my mind of leaving the Ealing household, it may have been my final decision, but I couldn't help but think I was making the wrong one. Even with everything that had happened, leaving just didn't feel right. I knew I had to go, but how could I do something that felt so wrong in so many ways?

"I saw that James was here earlier on," Matilda's voice said behind me. I turned slightly, dropping the bag of flour onto the side as I did so.

"He was," I said.