Millicent took a deep breath as she stepped through the front door of number fifty three.

Barely six hours had passed since she’d left the place and here she was starting work again. As if having to cook, clean and look after two extremely lively toddlers six days a week wasn’t tiring enough in itself, the obscene hours kept by her employer were going to be the death of her.

As she donned a clean apron she recalled the scene she’d witnessed when she’d entered the Peacock Room at approximately two thirty a.m. that very same morning! How those folk hadn’t all died of liver failure before now was a mystery to her.

Five hours sleep she’d had! And she wouldn’t even have had that if she hadn’t have bent the rules a little and turned up late this morning, safe in the knowledge that no-one would be stirring very early in that house.

The scene that greeted her this morning did nothing to improve her mood. “That’s it,” she thought, “enough is enough!”

It was after lunch and after noticing that even Guy (the best of the bunch as Millicent had always thought of him) had carelessly kicked over the beautiful Clarice Cliff coffee pot, that Millicent, unable to hold her tongue any longer, confronted her yawning employer.

She had been rehearsing her speech all morning and it was brief: “I’ve had enough, Miss Lavell! Either I get help or I go!” she said firmly as she righted the coffee pot. As cross as she felt, a slight tremor in Millicent’s voice betrayed the depth of her emotion – and indeed her lack of sleep.

That woke Persephone up! “Oh Mills!” she exclaimed, sitting sharply upright and knocking her sunglasses askew as she reached to soothe her throbbing temples. “Why my darling girl, you can’t, simply can’t leave us! What on earth would we do without you? Of course you must have help, you should have said!”

Guy regarded the scene with a wry smile. He’d seen this coming and had tried to warn his sister on numerous occasions but she’d been adamant that Mills positively relished being their “domestic rock”. Well now she knew different.

“You should have said,” mimicked Millicent in a somewhat unflattering voice as she reached for the telephone. Well if it wasn’t just like Miss Lavelle not to have noticed a thing, she thought with great irritation.

“Film stars!” she muttered as she dialled her sister’s number, “Thinks she’s the bloomin’ Queen of Sheba that one!”

By the end of the week, Millicent’s sister Connie was sitting in the kitchen of number fifty three listening to her tales of woe. It was enough to make her want to go and chuck everything back into the suitcase she’d only just unpacked.

However, as she watched her beautiful, intelligent younger sister (always known as the brains in the family) washing dishes and doing her best not to fall asleep on her feet, she knew that she’d stay and help.

And anyway, she was fairly sure Millie was exaggerating; why how in the world could anyone manage to get sozzled and stay up until three o’clock every morning……?

The End

© 2018, Zoe. All rights reserved.