The House-Sitter

When Ines saw the advert on the university noticeboard, it seemed too good to be true. A family in a quiet suburb of Sydney needed someone to look after their house for three weeks while they were in Europe. The house-sitter would live there for free in exchange for feeding the cat, watering the plants and keeping the place clean and tidy. Ines was sharing a tiny flat with four other students at the time, and she had not slept through the night for months. She applied the same afternoon.

The Hendersons turned out to be a friendly, slightly chaotic couple with two small children and a ginger cat called Biscuit. Mrs. Henderson walked Ines round the house, talking very fast. "The plants on the deck need watering every evening, the ones in the kitchen twice a week. Biscuit has one tin in the morning and some dry food at night. The washing machine is a bit temperamental, so don't overload it. And the neighbors are lovely, but they're very curious, so they might pop round." Then they were gone, and Ines had a four-bedroom house with a garden and a view of the bay all to herself.

The first two days were perfect. She vacuumed the carpets, mopped the kitchen floor, dusted the shelves and watered every plant she could find. In the evenings she sat on the deck with a cup of tea and watched the lights come on across the water. Biscuit ignored her completely, which she decided to take as a compliment.

On the third day, she made the mistake of doing her washing. She had been living with four people and one machine for a year, so she had a lot of it. She stuffed the whole lot into the Hendersons' washing machine, switched it on and went to the supermarket. When she came back, there was a thin layer of soapy water across the entire laundry room floor, and it was slowly making its way towards the hall.

Ines spent the evening on her knees with every towel in the house. She found the tap behind the machine and turned off the water, then looked up the model on her phone and learned more than she ever wanted to know about blocked filters. By midnight the floor was dry, the filter was clean and her own clothes were hanging, still slightly soapy, from every chair in the dining room.

The next morning, Biscuit did not come for his breakfast. Ines called him, shook the box of dry food and opened a tin of his favorite tuna, but there was no sign of him. She searched the house from top to bottom: under the beds, inside the wardrobes, behind the sofa and even in the dishwasher. By lunchtime she was walking up and down the street, calling his name and feeling sick with worry.

This was when she met the neighbors. Mr. Papadopoulos from number twelve came out to ask whether she was the new owner. A woman with a small dog asked if the Hendersons had sold the house. Two teenagers wanted to know whether she was having a party, because they had seen all the clothes in the dining room window. Everyone, it seemed, had been watching her with great interest. Nobody had seen the cat.

In the end, it was a very old woman called Mrs. Chen, from the house at the end of the street, who solved the mystery. She listened to Ines's description and then laughed so hard she had to sit down on her front step. "Biscuit? He's in my kitchen," she said. "He comes every Wednesday. I make fish on Wednesdays."

Ines followed her inside, and there he was, asleep on a cushion by the oven, looking extremely pleased with himself. Mrs. Chen explained that Biscuit had been visiting her every week for years, and that the Hendersons knew all about it. "They probably forgot to mention it," she said. "They're lovely, but they're always in a hurry."

The rest of the house-sit was quiet. Ines washed her clothes in small loads, watered the plants, and on Wednesdays she joined Mrs. Chen and Biscuit for lunch. When the Hendersons came home, the house was spotless, and Mrs. Henderson told everyone she was the best house-sitter they had ever had. Ines never told them about the flood. The neighbors, of course, told them everything.