Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
The Royal Kensington Hotel laundered three thousand pounds of linens daily—the number painted on a sign above the service entrance, as if volume were a virtue. The guests who slept on these sheets would never see this room. They would never smell the chemical fog that clung to her hair and clothes, and probably the inside of her lungs.
They found other things in the linens, though. Things meant to disappear. Things she was safer not reporting.
Once, she’d found teeth. A molar with the root still attached, bloody at the tip. Maryanne, her co-worker, had simply crossed herself and carried it to the bin with a rag.
Minimum wage didn’t earn much more of a response than that. Menial workers only touched the evidence of other people’s lives. They were the invisible class, used and unseen. Necessary, but rarely acknowledged, and it was best not to attract attention.
“Daisy… Earth to Daisy.”
Blinking out of whatever daydream she’d been lost in, Daisy glanced at Maryanne apologetically. “Sorry, did you say something?”
Her co-worker stood at her elbow, dark brows drawn together. “You’re somewhere else today, mija. You eat breakfast this morning?” Her rheumatoid fingers lovingly clutched Daisy’s arm with a tenderness that made a knot tighten behind her ribs.
She hadn’t eaten this morning. Only half a tin of beans at nine o’clock the previous night. But she was used to working on nothing but tap water.
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
“Tired is not fine.” Maryanne made a gesture that somehow encompassed Daisy’s overall exhaustion, malnutrition, and the general grind of injustice that accompanied her total existence. “You come to dinner Sunday. I make ropa vieja.”
“You don’t have to—”
“No arguing. You need meat on your bones.” She lowered her voice. “So you can find a man, mija. A good one.”
“I don’t want a man.”
Daisy’s life didn’t allow time to think about such things. Love required time she couldn’t dedicate when survival stole every moment of the day. And love always came with risks, risks that could so easily end in loss.
She’d lost enough.
“Don’t you want someone to make you feel good? Hmm?”
“I’m exhausted as it is, Maryanne.”
“That’s inexperience talking. Passion is the spice of life. It wakes you up naturally. There’s a reason I have six children.”
Daisy laughed, the sound rusty from disuse. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“You’ll take my ropa vieja. Sunday. Six o’clock.”
Maryanne bustled off before Daisy could refuse, and the warmth of the interaction faded quickly, leaving behind the steam and clank and the endless white river of sheets that didn’t care whether she lived or died.
The walk home took just under an hour. Her shoes—held together with hope and a prayer—slapped against the wet pavement like a soundtrack to her life. She didn’t think about the blister forming on her heel or the ache in her lower back. And she didn’t stop until she reached St. Crispin graveyard.
Her gaze went to the tree in the far corner. Branches still bare from winter, but soon they would explode into pink blossoms. She didn’t know who St. Crispin was or why he had a cemetery named after him, but she knew that tree. A perfect tree, the kind from fairytales, gnarled at the trunk with twisting branches.
She liked to imagine her mother resting beneath those soon-to-come blossoms. At peace, instead of in a generic cardboard box under the water-stained ceiling on Daisy’s mantle. No urn. No headstone. Just her mother’s name and dates on a peeling sticker.
Her hand went to the tarnished gold locket hanging from her neck. Someday, Daisy planned to lay her mother to rest there.
Turning away from the dream for now, she crossed the street to her flat.
As soon as Daisy reached the second floor, she spotted the yellow notice taped to her door. The cruel, crisp warning popped against the peeling paint, and her stomach dropped.
* * *
NOTICE OF RENT ADJUSTMENT...no longer subject to rent control provisions... ...increase of £340 per month effective immediately... Failure to comply will result in eviction.
* * *
Three hundred forty more? That meant sixty-eight hours at minimum wage. Hours she didn’t have.
She ate beans from tins. She hadn’t bought new shoes in two years. Her landlord might as well have asked for the moon.
Throat tight, she ripped the notice from the door and crumpled it in her hand. She shivered the moment she stepped inside, not surprised to find the radiator not working again. Snatching the metal frying pan from the stove, she banged the radiator until it whistled to life.
Uncrumpling the notice, she flattened it on the counter, smoothing out the creases and folding it neatly. She tucked it inside her tattered copy of The Great Gatsby, where she hid her money. Her bookshelf, stuffed with paperbacks rescued from curbside boxes, held her only means of escape. Fairytales and love stories full of beautiful lies. But in books, the heroines always found a way out.