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In this telling of the story, Dani Clayton does not die. But we’re not quite there yet.
Dani Clayton takes the job of au pair at Bly Manor (‘it must be haunted, but it’s better than nothing’) and she comes with her typical American enthusiasm and her sunny, reckless smile. Practically perfect Dani Clayton who comes in with a single suitcase that contains more than it technically should. Her cups of tea are saturated in milk and sugar, but otherwise her disposition is well-suited to a place like Bly.
She makes the children weed Jamie’s garden in a firm voice, sauntering around between them and making jokes to lift their spirits. The gardener sits with Hannah and Owen, watching the au pair get through to the Wingrave children in a way Jamie has never seen before. She raises her mug to Dani, as if in salute, and sips from it with the kind of leisure she associates with the upstairs lot.
“I wonder who the man with her is,” says Hannah, almost unconsciously, and Jamie jerks in her seat. She lets her eyes swarm the air, analyzing the space around Dani, but sees no break of shadow in the gentle summer wind. There are just sprawls of Jamie’s plants—the loyal little buggers—and the children frolicking in them. It’s so picturesque that she could’ve mistaken Dani for Mary Poppins herself, what with all the good cheer. There is nothing of ghosts; but that doesn’t mean anything in the daylight.
“Dani’s not like that, Hannah,” says Jamie acerbically, then slouches in her seat. “I mean, she is a bit of a weirdo, but no ghosts. Do you even think that Bly would be able to take more of that sort?” She says this all very quickly, even now rooted in a quiet practicality. Unwilling to hear the answer, Jamie scratches at a stray dirt stain on her inner wrist and gazes off.
“On the contrary, Bly seems almost a magnet for it,” Hannah says, “Viola is just our origin story.” She smiles to herself in a way that borders on a laugh, then casts it aside in favour of refilling her tall drink. In the sky above them, the sun dips to brush the trees with a pale and punishing glow.
“It’s all very spookspicious,” offers Owen, folding his apron into impossibly small sections. The resulting groans from Hannah and Jamie only inspire his smile to stretch wider across his face. “I’ve got to start planning more of these, but it seems your favourite are the ones that come up in casual conversation.”
“My favourite thing is when you avoid making jokes all together,” says Hannah, and Owen chuckles as though they’re in on a conspiracy. Jamie shakes her head at the two of them and returns her attention to Dani. Now she’s dancing with the children, spinning in the field to no music at all, but it’s almost natural.
There are no ghosts close to Dani Clayton, but it might just be a trick of the light.
Jamie doesn’t know what happens in the nights at Bly Manor. It’s not like the plants need supervision, and Hannah and Owen have got their own lives. But, as is slowly becoming apparent, Dani is unusual, less for her ability to make the Wingrave children conduct themselves with some measure of decency (although that must be a herculean effort if there was ever one) and more for the way she makes Jamie feel oddly light in herself.
In her flat above the boring little pub, Jamie feels a pull, an odd coercion. It’s not the undeniable handprint of Viola but a softer pull, one she thinks she could resist if she wanted to. It looks strangely like a young woman with a smile on her lips and a taste for productive games.
“Ridiculous,” Jamie murmurs to herself, but the music giants that adorn her walls mock her with their superior gazes. Her home is a creaky, normal place, one with no magic or seeing housekeepers or even chefs with a penchant for poor puns. The only thing that even verges on reminding her of Bly are the pots of plant that sit on her windowsill, tipped precariously into the outdoors in the hopes of catching bits of sunlight.
Her flat is less of a home and more of a place for her to rest her head before returning to her job the next day. Her job with entertaining coworkers and absolutely nonsensical children. Her job with Dani Clayton and everything the other woman has brought to the dull and haunted house.
“Fuck off,” Jamie says to no one, then rolls over in her bed and pulls her worn blankets up and over her head. In dreams, she wanders the grounds above coal mines and doesn’t think about the present at all. (Dreams are like that, often, fevers that make you realize how wonderful the present can be.)
When she arrives at Bly the next day—earlier than usual, because there was no hot water in her flat—Hannah is already at work scrubbing muddy footprints out of the hardwood floor. Viola flits over her shoulder and carries the water basket alongside them.
“In my day, we never would’ve let proper young women run around the woods as such,” she sniffs. “They would have to work and earn it, thus cultivating society manners as well as a measured sense of rebellion. Society has gone so far from its proper condition.”
“Most of that has been for the better,” objects Hannah, but she is drawn away from this line of thought when she spots Jamie at the door. “We’ve got hot water, I heard it went out in the village last night,” Hannah says, and Jamie sighs in relief. “The rest are in the kitchen, setting up for breakfast.”
“Thank you, Hannah,” says Jamie, which is all she can muster. The pub owner’s wife had gone into a terrible fit, banging on doors in an attempt to discern who had used up the water, which would’ve been unpleasant at any time but was doubly so at six in the morning.
She couldn’t possibly return to sleeping after that, although the reasons for that are manifold. Passing by Viola and Hannah (who quickly become engaged in another conversation on the developments of modern society), Jamie reaches the kitchen and stops with a start at the table.
“Poppins,” she greets, taken aback. “What in God’s name has become of you?”
Dani’s bent over the sink, her hair splattered with batter and her sheepish face dripping with water. “I thought we might give Owen a break and make some pancakes,” she says, resigned, “but I quickly learned that Flora and Miles are not the neatest of bakers.”
“How does that even come to happen?” questions Jamie, then sets it aside. “They’re not the most coordinated of children.” She approaches Dani, who is shaking her hands out and drying them over the counter. There’s a spot of flour on her shoulder, something she hasn’t caught.
“I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” sighs Dani, “I’m coming to think a card might be a better reward.”
“Sure is,” says Jamie, her tongue sticking in her throat. She reaches Dani, draws close to her in a way she’s never done before. There’s nothing telling about a couple suggestive glances, but she feels oddly emboldened by a mix of sleep deprivation and affection.
“I know there’s something on my face,” says Dani, “I usually miss things.” A drop of water slips off the ridge of her nose as if to emphasize this point, but Jamie shakes her head. Her body might as well be on autopilot, moving on her quietest urge.
“Just some flour on your shoulder,” says Jamie, and brushes it off with a casual air. Dani’s face is very close to hers, nearer than the situation warrants, and Jamie has a moment of wonderment at just how lovely the other woman is when Flora and Miles stroll back into the kitchen.
“We’re here to help you clean up the kitchen,” announces Miles, and Dani steps back from Jamie as though she’s been caught in something illicit. For a moment, Jamie wonders whether to feel hurt, but the look Dani shoots her and the way she bites her lip assuage the knot in her stomach.
“Pancakes are a perfectly splendid food,” says Flora, snapping Jamie out of her reverie. “I do think that we should leave the cooking of them to Owen from now on, or perhaps get a few lessons from him before we attempt it on our own again.”
“Well said,” says Dani weakly, reaching up to run her fingers through her hair. When she takes them away to find batter covering the back of her hand, she just chuckles to herself and rinses it off in the sink. “I’d better go get this off of me, but I’m sure Jamie can help you with the kitchen?”
Her voice gives it the lilt of a question, and Jamie nods without quite thinking about it.
“Excellent,” replies Dani, and brushes past Jamie on her way out. Jamie inhales cinnamon, cardamom—what kind of pancake—and almost unconsciously reaches to straighten the sleeve the other woman touched. The children peer at her with innocent, upturned faces.
“I suppose we should get to work?” Flora says, but there’s unease in her words.
“This kind of deference to the help never would have been tolerated in my day,” shouts Viola, and it’s this return to normalcy that makes Jamie crack a smile. She rolls up her sleeves, whistles out a breath, and tries to figure out how to deploy the little monsters in service of the kitchen.
“If you clean up real quick, I’ll prepare some tea so you can stop pretending you like Miss Clayton’s,” says Jamie, her mirth playing at the corners of her mouth. Miles and Flora turn to each other with expressions that can only be described as relief, then race around the kitchen to fix up their mess.
Jamie puts a pot of water to boil and lets her odd sense of belonging settle in her throat. She moves through her morning with a lightness the children scoff at, then retreats to her greenhouse with Dani’s name pounding in her mind.
“When are you going to let Dani know you’re sweet on her?” inquires Viola. Jamie nearly jumps out of her bones; she knows Viola can walk the grounds of Bly when she pleases but it never stops being weird. It’s a funny thing, at Bly, how the simplest fears can get under your skin.
Then she registers what Viola has said, and busies herself by sticking her hands into an overlarge plant pot. She doesn’t blush, rarely has, but can feel a sort of heat working its way up her face.
“You’re an irritable ghost, not Cupid,” she says, and Viola sniffs. “Quit trying to play matchmaker and leave me to my plants.” Jamie still can’t look at the damned ghost. She’s up to her elbows in soil, the relaxing nature of it seeping into her skin and—so she likes to think—making it grow again.
As if Viola can read her thoughts, she says, “I don’t think dirt counts as skin care.”
“You’ve been dead for hundreds of years,” says Jamie, “you don’t have skin to worry about.” This, typically, sets Viola off into a huff. She paces the length of the greenhouse, irritation making the plants shake and hum. But Viola is a benevolent ghost, time and care whittling the edges of her past character into smooth droves.
So nothing is hurt, and nothing is broken. Bly Manor is haunted but it isn’t cursed, and that makes all the difference. Jamie leans against a table of tulips and waits for Viola’s annoyance to cease, which it always did if she waited it out.
“I should file for reparations,” Viola settles, “but I’d rather if you asked out the au pair. All these flowers and none of them can get you a girlfriend.” She brushes a hand along a row of freshly potted seeds, her fingers going through solids with familiarity.
“I’ll think about it,” concedes Jamie, and Viola vanishes with a start. She’s left watching the space the dead woman has gone from, mulling her own hesitancy and the fact that her stupid crush is obvious; she ends up slumping back against the wall and making plans to weed the garden.
The day passes in a work-filled haze, and the number of tasks Jamie has undergone in the garden keep her calm and distracted. There was no time to think about blonde au pairs and interfering ghosts and housekeepers who tell you that the new recruit is haunted. When Jamie puts her hands to work her mind goes along with it, and it drags her into a busy fugue she only emerges from in time for dinner.
“It’s story time,” Owen says. He’s standing on the edge of her garden, hands deep within his pockets. “The children have been looking for you.”
“I’m sure they have,” groans Jamie, “I always get dragged into this.” She drops her shears into the soft ground beneath her and turns to him. Sweat beads on her brow, but his eyes seem to beseech her to come and humour the children, just for a moment.
“I’ve made omelets for dinner,” he responds. “I’m sure you’ll have an eggcellent time.”
“It’s only this morning’s proof that we couldn’t get by without you that keeps me from strangling you,” she tells him. It’s all in good nature, and he seems to take it as such, because he bends over to pick up her shears and deposits them in the toolbox with characteristic care.
“Regardless, I think you should come,” says Owen, “it’s not good to be alone for so long.”
If only he knew.
So Jamie gets roped into listening to another one of Flora’s concoctions. She and Miles prance the length of the living room, reciting a story that is as insane as it is wonderfully complex, and even the trademark Viola jumpscare doesn’t get to her as much.
Dani Clayton is sitting next to her, Dani Clayton with a wry smile enveloping her face. She laughs aloud at some particularly childish jokes and turns to Jamie with her eyes bright. Jamie can’t help but feel swept into her wave of dizzying optimism.
Her head lies on Hannah’s shoulder, Hannah’s fingers are wound with Owen’s, and Dani reaches out to clutch her arm with gasps of horror at the ‘scary’ moments in the story. Jamie feels the blood in her arm like a second heartbeat, pound in, pound out.
“That was superb,” she tells Miles and Flora, “really great work.”
“Thank you,” says Flora, her eyes alight. “We’re going to do a sequel next time, and it’s going to have even more ghosts, and it’s going to be so perfectly splendid that the manor may collapse as a result of it.” Her hands flutter up and down by her sides before resting in excited fists.
“I do hope it won’t collapse the manor,” says Miles, his eyebrows contracting in a worried point. “We have to live here, after all, and I hate to think of where Viola would go if this place just crumbled to the ground.” He bites his lip and looks up at Jamie, but she’s not precisely sure where to start with that.
“No play could make a house crash to the ground,” Dani assures him, “Flora is just exaggerating to explain how amazing your next story is going to be. Despite all that, Viola will certainly be okay in any case. You’re a sweet boy to worry about her.”
Jamie doesn’t know what Dani thinks of Viola, but she notices how the blonde carefully avoids looking at the ghost. Instead, she holds her hand out for Miles to squeeze if he chooses. Viola drifts by and strikes up a conversation with Hannah, choosing to give Dani her space.
“It’s getting late,” says Owen, “I’d better go home and check on my mum.” He winces, face contracting on itself. “Er, Jamie, d’you want a ride? I could take you.” He is already drifting toward the door, the question reverberating across the room.
“I figured I’d kip here tonight,” says Jamie, and she can’t stop herself from looking at Dani. “The pub owner’s wife is quite mad at me, I think she’s convinced I control the hot water. I’m going to hide out here and return tomorrow.” It’s a flimsy excuse, but Dani’s gaze is like fire on her spine.
“Alright,” says Owen, picking up his coat, “suit yourself. I’ll see you all here tomorrow.” He walks off in the direction of the door, and Hannah seems to wrestle with herself for a moment before hurrying to follow him. Jamie quirks an eyebrow that only Viola notices.
“Old love,” she says, “in a way it’s more romantic.”
Flora and Miles exchange identical confused expressions, and Jamie has to resist the urge to laugh. Aware that her choice to remain in the manor comes with certain expectations, she walks over to a nearby vase of flowers to rearrange the petals. The person who put it together did it quite poorly.
“It’s time for you to go off to bed,” Dani tells the children. “Teeth brushed, pajamas on, and the first person to get to bed with everything done gets to choose what we do tomorrow.” Well-incentivized, the children rush off to get bed time at top speed.
“Wait for me,” Dani tells Jamie in a low voice, and then she follows the children up the stairs with energy she shouldn’t have at this hour. The vase has been corrected to the best of the gardener’s means, so she just watches the other woman go with a kind of wonder.
“You should show her your greenhouse,” says Viola, “I don’t think she’s come to see it yet.”
“I hope that isn’t a euphemism for anything,” says Jamie, and Viola downright cackles. Then she dissolves into mist, content to pace the grounds of Bly and leave Jamie to her own devices. It’s a good night, a cool one with the moon hanging high in the sky.
Speaking of which, Jamie thinks she’d better show Dani the moonflowers.
And this, at least, passes much as it did the first time, with a foray into the dark and Jamie’s quiet monologue about her past (‘most people aren’t worth it’ and the implied ‘but I think you are’), with stolen moments watching the white flowers bloom.
They make their way back to the greenhouse, and Dani leans in slowly before Jamie sighs and kisses her. Dani tastes like vanilla, and cheap lip gloss, and Jamie can’t bring herself to think about anything else as she fixes her hand in that long blonde hair.
As quickly as it begun, the kiss ends, Dani breaking away from her with a stifled shriek.
“What?” asks Jamie, hackles raised. She turns to sweep the greenhouse for intruders, finds none, knows the scared look on the au pair’s face must have come from somewhere. “Dani, is everything alright?”
“I…. I….” says Dani, her finger shaking as she points to a space behind Jamie. The task of keeping her arm upright seems to overwhelm her, and she collapses into herself with something like a sob. Jamie flicks her head around and catches a shadow in the air, nothing more.
(“Places aren’t haunted, people are,” says Viola, an ancient memory from Jamie’s first days at Bly. “That’s why I don’t affect you, because I was only ever trying to haunt my sister and her good-for-nothing husband. You lot have done nothing to deserve my ire.”)
(“I wonder who the man with her is,” repeats Hannah, the words out of place in the warmth of the afternoon. Jamie shakes her head in memory and nods it in the present. Of course the ghost of a man wasn’t apparent in the garden. Of course.)
(“Places aren’t haunted, people are.”)
Jamie strokes the au pair’s back. The other woman shakes, but tries to control her tears, and Jamie has to wonder how long Dani has spent trying to control the ghosts. She wonders why this is why Viola scares her, why the mirrors in her room are covered, why she flinches from the sink.
“Dani,” she whispers, “Dani, are you okay? I think he’s gone now.” Dani huddles into her, shaking too hard to speak, and Jamie keeps up with the patterns on her back that she hopes are comforting. She’s never seen Dani like this.
“My fiancé,” explains Dani, and straightens herself back to sitting. She rubs at her puffy eyes, inhales sharply as she brings herself back to the world. “I…. he died in a car accident a while ago, and I still see him, sometimes. In reflections, mostly. This….” she waves a hand as if to push back the situation, “this is almost entirely unexpected. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” says Jamie, “did you love him?”
“Not in the way he wanted me to,” says Dani, which explains the rest of it. She fiddles with the end of her coat restlessly, glancing at Jamie like she needs something confirmed, like the weight of the secret has hurt more once taken off.
“You’re not crazy,” Jamie says, and she’s never been good at people but she feels like it’s what Dani needs to hear. “You’re surprisingly sane, all things considered.”
Dani lets out a dry laugh. “I’m certainly trying to be.”
“You are,” says Jamie, “you’re trying, and that’s enough.” She trips over her own earnest belief, but the words come out despite it all. Dani leans into her and she reaches her arm over her shoulders, squeezing her other arm. Jamie can’t be sure, because of their coats, but she hopes the other woman’s heart is slowing as she comes down.
“Thank you,” whispers Dani, “for not running off.”
“I wouldn’t,” promises Jamie, because Dani is still worth it. She doesn’t know how to put this—a strange and nebulous feeling—into the right words, the practical ones that don’t make it over special and that don’t cheapen it. She holds Dani and she hopes it’s enough.
It is. It will be.