The continuing drip-feed of stories about governments and friendly-seeming internet giants sifting through our data has left some citizens feeling outraged and a bit duped. I have no doubt that they would sympathise with poor deceived Ellen North in Dorothy Whipple’s brilliant 1950s novel Someone at a Distance.
‘Ellen was that unfashionable creature, a happy housewife’, who works herself to the bone to make a cheerful home for her children and indolent, self-satisfied husband, Avery. When Avery’s mother employs a young French companion — the vain and poisonous Louise Lanier — we sense that Ellen may not be a happy housewife for long.
Louise wants to get away from her boring provincial town, and so advertises her services for French conversation and ‘light domestic duties’. Once ensconced with the Norths, however, she doesn’t lift a finger to help and wastes no time in getting the measure of her hosts. She swiftly gets her hands on the family jewels and a substantial amount of money, and it’s not hard to guess what, or who, she will endeavour to get next.
When Avery and Ellen are visiting their daughter at boarding school, Louise delights in having all day to poke around their home. Like Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, ‘The house was defenceless. The lives, the very beings of the Norths were exposed to the stranger’s inspection.’ When they return, Louise ‘was as full of information as a cat of stolen cream and showed as little trace of it’.
Ellen realises Louise is up to no good, and yet simply cannot get rid of her. When she asks her outright to leave, Louise dodges and then digs her claws in deeper. Having discovered the house’s weakness, she pounces, swiftly destroying it with her expert seduction of Avery.
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