Debbie

Debbie knew envy in all its guises; she was a very paragon of the emotion, and she lived with it like a silent spectre. At first it had haunted her, driven her to do things she may once have considered terrible, and now those things were just a series of links in the chain of surviving a life that hadn't given her what she deserved.

Maybe they were still terrible, in an abstract way, but she kept the reality of that at a distance she could manage while simultaneously acknowledging the likelihood of her burning for all eternity was highly likely.

The longer she stayed here, though, the more the envy seemed to be gnawing at her bones.

And it was a different envy to anything she had known prior to this.

One day, early on, as she leafed listlessly through a chunky ledger she'd come across in the bottom of Gomez's desk in the study – having quite astutely established that there was no way she was ever going to entice him – it occurred to her that the pursuit of wealth was starting to feel…well…toothless.

And she suspected, suddenly, that her search had been confused for a very long time. That money, and belonging, and happiness, had gotten tangled up all in one, and she had been so busy cleaning blood and plotting violent deaths that she hadn't noticed.

They were out for the afternoon – the family – and Lurch was ensconced in his room in the belfry, and Debbie had a goal that was not necessarily tied to her original plan in marrying Fester, but one that felt necessary, nonetheless. There had been a subtle shift in the lady of the house that Debbie had noticed gradually; over the long, languorous dinners they all spent round the table and her low, rhapsodical voice would captivate her husband and soothe her children; in the cool evenings when she would glide silently through the house, sweeping calm behind her; in the mornings when she would scoop up the baby and hold him as she floated round her conservatory, naming each plant – one more monstrous than the other -; and in the way one look at her husband could tell him something that made Debbie's skin crawl with want.

It was as if Mrs Addams was re-emerging from something, as if she had been absent and, in her absence, her family had been rudderless, and somehow, they were grateful of the rhythm she was re-establishing. And Debbie, though she'd never experienced it herself, suspected the change had been thanks to the initial horror of motherhood, and that all of the other people in the house had been waiting on her to come back; impatient for her return, silent but desperate in the face of the shifting dynamic a new baby brought about.

It made Debbie uneasy, because she knew women like Morticia Addams and she was starting to wonder if she'd bitten off more than she could chew.

Then again, she enjoyed the cut and thrust of a spar with a worthy opponent.

So she found herself standing on the threshold of the master bedroom, her white Maryjanes hesitating before she stepped into the silent room.

She squinted in the half-dark, and her fingers crawled along the wall to find the brass dimmer. She kept the lights on their lowest setting for fear of disturbing a sanctity she didn't quite understand, any more than she already had.

In the weeks she had stayed in this house – this house which creaked and moaned and shifted and seemed to be as alive as any of the rest of them – she had never once ventured into this wing, never mind strolled to the end of the long corridor and found herself in this room.

It had been made implicitly clear that she was not to go there, so naturally her curiosity was piqued to a degree where she couldn't resist the temptation.

The cavernous bed – a dark, four poster of gigantic proportions, mahogany ornate with carvings that, when examined closely, took a lot of stomach to analyse – dominated the room.

And Debbie expected nothing less.

She dragged her fingers over the inky silk of the sheets, over the twisting columns of wood holding up the dark red velvet curtains.

Envy welled up inside her as her hands trailed over the smooth material, and she stared a moment at her own pale hand against the blood-red material before turning to the bedside table and pulling the drawer open.

It was unsurprisingly sparse and tidy, save for an old book, a chequebook and a riding crop that had seen better days. Debbie thought better of it before examining that, but she did lift the book and examine it. It was a copy of Wuthering Heights, and Debbie remembered vaguely that she should have studied it in high school but that she was too busy pursuing most of the football team to remember what it was about.

The first page bore an inscription in looping, dramatic handwriting; "I would be your slave."

She didn't need to read who had written it.

She snapped the book shut abruptly, as if it had bitten her, and set it back in the drawer with a slam.

She turned then, suddenly conscious of the silence, and walked to a door at the far end of the chamber and, upon pushing it open, promptly realised it was Mrs. Addams' dressing room. it was surprisingly decadent, and it revealed something that Debbie had already guessed at; that this was a woman who kept her secrets very close to her heart.

The dressing table, though neat, revealed more than even Debbie had suspected it would. It told her the woman who was very quickly threatening Debbie's scheming conducted the vast majority of her private life from here; a private phone line, an address book, stockings hung carelessly over the mirror, a fountain pen left lying open across a letter to an old friend, signed 'Yours, Tish.'

Debbie paused for a moment, fingers fluttering over the glass vials and bottles and tubes of lipstick, over a ruby necklace that had to be worth more than a year's grifting, over an obscene note scrawled on a napkin from Harry's bar about exactly what Mr Addams planned to do, before catching a glimpse of herself in the glass.

She was disappointed to see longing on her own face, disappointed to find herself wanting, when she thought she had it quite neatly figured out. She stared for a moment longer and wondered what it would be like to just stop, to find something that resembled contentment. Before reminding herself that it didn't exist.

She turned to examine the rest of the room, eyes flittering enviously over numerous red-soled stilettoes, over the mink fur coat left out for airing, over thin silk slips and even thinner silk nightgowns.

Her fingers were tempted to test the towering series of drawers set against the wall, but the rattling of their locks unsettled her, and she didn't pursue it any further.

Glancing around once more, she caught a glimpse of her full-self in the armoire mirror and stood motionless – the only white in a sea of black velvets. Irony bit at her for a moment before she dismissed it.

It occurred to her she was wildly outnumbered here, in the territory where a woman who was – while still in the process of finding her feet – much cleverer than any adversary Debbie had ever encountered.

She began to feel, suddenly, as if she was being watched. Terror filled her almost instantly and slamming the door of the dressing room behind her she began to run, making sure to close all the doors and go as swiftly back the way she came.

That night, while she retired to the drawing room to read after dinner – an activity she pretended to enjoy because it seemed to appeal to Fester – Fester joined her after a few minutes; snivelling, anxious to please.

"Can I make you a drink?" He asked, already fussing at the cocktail tray on the sideboard.

"A Sidecar," she lifted her eyes away from Wuthering Heights, an acquisition from the house's imposing library because it had been scratching at her like an itch that just wouldn't die, and smiled softly.

He grinned and set about making the cocktail, and she had to admit that he wasn't terrible at cocktail mixing.

He seemed to have an affinity for chemistry.

"How was your day?" He asked softly as he brought her drink to her, and she dutifully put the book to the side and smiled gratefully as she took the drink he offered.

"Boring," she lied, because 'unsettling' wouldn't be an appropriate answer, "How was yours?"

"Busy."

The silence was not comfortable, but it wasn't awkward either and she was surprised to discover this as they sat companionably, side by side, on the couch.

She sipped on her drink, then couldn't resist;

"How long has Mrs Addams been your sister-in-law?"

He seemed surprised by the question, as if she should – by dint of living in the house – know the answer, but then his face grew clouded.

"I wasn't here for their wedding. It was a rather quiet affair, by all accounts."

"Oh?"

"Mmmm," he nods. "I was…missing in action. They've been married fifteen years I think. They make a point of taking a trip for their anniversary every year. Berlin last year, Moscow before that…"

Unmistakeable wistfulness flittered across his face, and she suddenly feels a kinship with him that she is absolutely opposed to feeling. She recognises it as the same emotion she caught in Morticia's mirror that morning; longing.

"You get envious?"

He shakes his head instantly, and she knows the denial to be genuine.

"Envy isn't the right thing to explain it," he shrugged and then laughed it off from behind his own drink.

"She's in charge," she said softly, watching the fire crackle in the hearth.

It became blindingly apparent, as she vocalised it, why it tormented her so much.

She might be married, she might even have three brattish children who seemed to consume so much of her time, but Mrs Addams was still very much the architect of her own destiny. That much had been apparent through the skin-tight dresses, the quietly given directions, the breathless French and the prickling thorns…and the way she carried herself like the world should throw itself at her feet.

Debbie had just been blind to it.

He merely laughed and leaned in, and for the first time she saw a glint of something that might be considered attractive: perverted delight.

"All good Addams women are."