The Factory Girl // Book 1 in the Rosie Grey series

Chapter Fourteen

The day of Matilda's party sent the house into a spin. Normal chores were heightened, and Miss Jenkins became ruthless when it came to scrutinising everything me and Esther did, though I was out of the way for most of it. The party was to take place in the evening and whilst Esther and Miss Jenkins prepared the food, I was asked to clean the house from top to bottom. It was a task that was easier said then done, but it meant I was out of the kitchen and away from Miss Jenkins who had started to seem eerily like the foreman. It seemed stress and the obsession with perfection could lead to the worst in people, though I believe the foreman was just a bad person.

Being asked to clean the house not only gave me the opportunity to escape the chaos of the kitchen, but it also allowed me to walk about the house with relative freedom. I was able to slip into rooms I had previously passed and see more of what they contained. Hours went by and I could be lost in amazement moving from one or to different rooms, cleaning and seeing what little things the Ealing's had to hide. I was in awe of what was hiding in the small spaces of the Ealing house, the things that had been brushed to the side and all but forgotten.

Having cleaned most rooms on the bottom floor, my last room to tackle was the library. It was filled with books that went from floor to ceiling, each one bound in leather and kept in a specific spot. There was a small, metal stepping stool tucked in the far corner of the room most likely used for grabbing the books closer to the ceiling then to those on the floor. The shelves were a dark wood that had gathered a large amount of dust, as had the tables and chairs that sat around the room. It looked as though no one had been in there for a very long time.

In front of a large at the back of the room sat two soft chairs with a small table in the middle. The table was stacked with an assortment of leather-bound books, a thin layer of dust coating the top one as well as the surrounding table. Pulling a cloth from my apron pocket, I started to dust anything I could reach and even went as far as to drag the small step from the corner of the room to dust the higher books on the shelves. There was not one book on the shelves that didn't have dust on it. The Ealing's appeared to have so many books in so many rooms that their actual library had been neglected. There were a lot of old books in that room and given half the opportunity, I would have sat and devoured each and every one of them.

Moving across the room with my cloth, the amount of dust in the air increased and I found my nose twitching with each book I wiped my cloth over. The more books I dusted, the more my nose twitched until I let out a sneeze that seemed to echo around the empty room.

"Bless you," Robert said, appearing in the doorway. He was all dressed for the party, wearing a black bow-tie and dinner jacket over a white shirt which was tucked into a pair of black trousers. His shoes appeared to reflect the light that came in through the window and his hair had been neatly parted and combed to the side.

"Thank you. There is so much dust in here, you might be able to draw a picture in it. How has no one been here for so long?" I asked.

"I don't know, I suppose everyone has been too busy. That and there are books dotted throughout the house, so you don't need to go too far to find one. I would give anything to spend a day in here reading the books that have been neglected, but I don't have the time, what with working at the office and all."

"It seems a shame, for these books to just lay here and gather dust like they're not wanted."

"I agree. I'll mention it to Father and see what he says, it would be nice to see this room put to some use again. Perhaps you could take some of the books to work on your reading skills. If Mother and Father agree to let you stay, you'll have Sunday afternoon's off and could use that time to brush up on your reading skills."