9

~ Start at the top of a room and work downwards, so you're cleaning away the dust and not smearing it around. Similarly, when you're cleaning a room, start in the far corner and work towards the door.

C leo texted me later that night, requesting that I drop by her office in the morning, before work. Jim will pick u up from mine 2mrw.

Textspeak was one of Cleo's rare inelegancies, but then she was nearly always doing two or three things at once. B here by 8.30 pls. U can hv breakfast!

It was ages since Cleo and I had had breakfast together – by which I mean a full pancakes and bacon, extra coffee and gossip job. But she was never going to suggest one of those mid-week. I had a sinking feeling that this would be about Adam Doherty's shower. Despite Jim's un-reassuring little speech I hadn't slept, replaying the scene over and over in my head, obsessing over what I could have done differently. And what Cleo might say.

As I approached, Cleo marched out of her front door, carrying a plate of bacon sandwiches and a massive coffee mug, with her mobile wedged under her ear. She nodded towards the stairs to the office. A deep pinch of annoyance was visible between her eyebrows, which were freshly laminated.

‘It's his birthday, Elliot, you need to be there.'

Elliot. Oh dear. I followed at a cautious distance.

I'd expected a tongue-lashing from Cleo, so had prepared my defence on the way over – the shower was already loose, the fitting was faulty, I slipped on the tiles – depending on how mad Cleo was going to be. From her fierce expression, she was warming up by giving Elliot his daily tongue-lashing.

‘Hardly his fault his dad doesn't know how to prioritise, is it?' Pause. ‘Then be there.'

She indicated that I should sit down at the chair at the desk, then she slid into her own leather executive swiveller, pushed the plate towards me, got a notepad out of the top drawer, tore the lid off a pen with her teeth in the manner of a lion biting the head off a mongoose, spat it out, wrote, ‘Doherty: Shower' at the top, underlined it, then rolled her eyes at the idiot on the other end of the phone. Or at least I hoped it was at him.

‘Just be there, Elliot. It's a trampoline park, not base camp at Mount Everest. Yes. I'll see you then.' She dropped her phone in her bag, sighed, and took the bigger of the two sandwiches. ‘God,' she said, through a mouthful of brown bread. ‘It's been a morning. I haven't even had time to go to the loo yet.'

‘Sorry to hear that,' I said.

Despite the furrowed brow, the rest of Cleo was perfect: freshly blow-dried Marilyn bouffant, flicked jet-black eyeliner, gold necklaces with her sons' initials in an artless and expensive tangle. She smelled of gardenias. This was what a morning routine could do for you, I reminded myself. If you could get yourself out of bed on time.

Cleo despatched her sandwich, sanitised her fingers, and turned her attention to the notepad. ‘So, let's get this over with. Adam Doherty's shower. Go.'

I reset my face to ‘serious'. ‘I was cleaning the bathroom using the checklist Jim gave me. I'd worked through the initial section, first sanitising the ceiling fan then—'

‘The shower. Just tell me about the shower,' said Cleo, impatiently.

‘I had sprayed the wet room area with the recommended cleaner and was waiting the allotted time for the cleaning agent to work before proceeding to remove said agent.' I winced. I sounded as if I was giving evidence on Line of Duty .

‘And?'

My pulse had begun to race as it always did when I had to deal with something uncomfortable. Why was Cleo stringing out the bollocking like this? Was she going to make me pay for it? I didn't have enough money for a Hansgrohe shower when I was in a job, let alone now.

‘It wasn't my fault,' I blurted out. ‘I was spraying the shower walls when the wheel thing came off in my hands, I didn't pull it or twist it or anything like that.'

‘Finally!' said Cleo. She abandoned the pen and started typing, her nails clicking against the keys. She typed with a confident clatter. ‘While cleaning the shower, the water-pressure knob broke away from the unit. My colleague located the stopcock and turned off the water, then called a plumber who made good the shower unit in the time available.' She looked back at me. ‘Did I miss something?'

‘It was me who called the plumber,' I said, hoping for a gold star. ‘And he said it was probably defective to begin with. Almost certainly. Defective.'

‘Anything else?'

‘Um …' Should I tell her about the plants? Cleo hadn't mentioned the shelf. Maybe we could just skim over that part?

Cleo made a spinning ‘hurry up' motion with her finger. ‘Sorry, I don't have time for you to re-enact the whole thing. It came off in your hands, that's the gist, right?'

‘Yes.'

‘I need to file an incident report this morning, get the insurance ball rolling,' Cleo explained, still typing.

‘Oh, thank god,' I said with a laugh. ‘I thought you were emailing Adam Doherty!'

‘I'll give him a call later. I want to get this off to the insurer before I have to start dealing with the 101 other crises I've got scheduled for this morning.'

‘What are you going to tell him?' I squirmed. ‘The shower's fixed, isn't it?' I tried a nonchalant shrug.

Cleo didn't look up. ‘I'll tell him what happened – that you were cleaning the shower and it broke.'

‘Me? Are you going to tell him I did it? Me personally? But it was an accident.'

‘No one's saying it wasn't. Breakages happen now and again. As long as we're upfront and make good, that's the deal. It's in the contract.'

‘But …' I squirmed. To be fair, Cleo didn't know the real reason why I didn't want Adam Doherty to know it was me, but surely the point of being a manager was standing in front of your staff like a human shield?

‘Enough, Robyn, you have no idea how much I've got on today.' Cleo was still typing. ‘Plumber's independent assessment was that the unit was faulty and should be replaced as it is likely to—'

She stopped, as if a thought had just occurred to her, and looked up at me. ‘Robyn, if Jim hadn't filed an incident report, would you have told me about this?'

‘Yes!' I said, unconvincingly.

My red face gave me away. Probably not, to be honest.

‘Oh my. Two words.' Cleo pointed an accusing finger at me. ‘Grandma. Viennese truffles.'

‘That is low .' That was really low. And it was three words.

One Christmas – years ago – Mum had bought some chocolates and left them at Grandma Taylor's so she wouldn't be tempted by them before the big day. Grandma hid them, not very well, in the spare room where, I can't remember how or why, I happened across the box. Hands up, I have no willpower when it comes to chocolate and I had even less back then, so it only took me a couple of weekend visits to finish the lot. The sight of the empty box, when I'd swallowed the last sugar-dusted truffle, was a shock but, in a flash of criminal genius, I had the foresight to rip the box slightly to cover my tracks.

What I didn't know, being ten years old, was that Grandma was completely phobic about anything smaller than a guinea pig, and she and Grandpa had to move out for three days while Rentokil conducted a comprehensive extermination.

‘Oh, come on . What's that got to do with the shower?' My face flushed even deeper red.

Cleo wordlessly arched an eyebrow.

She knew it was me, of course. I don't think she ever told Mum. But as it turned out, there was a sizeable family of real rodents hanging out in the loft, so some might argue that it was a good thing I inadvertently triggered the mousepocalypse.

‘Because trust is everything in this business.' Cleo steepled her fingers and leaned forward, as if she were Lord Alan Sugar. ‘Our clients trust us to go into their homes, to see their private lives and handle their most precious, valuable objects. They have to know we'll be honest if we make mistakes.' She paused, for effect. ‘And I have to know my staff will be honest.'

‘I am!' I protested. ‘It's not like I tried to cover it up.'

She fixed me with that annoying big sister look I knew so well. Cleo didn't need to say another word; thirty odd years of cover-ups, excuses, tears and broken things hidden under our bed did the talking for her. Only now she had the opportunity to lecture me as an employer as well as a sister and I could tell she was loving it.

‘Cleo!' I glared at her with real venom, but she just tilted her head as if to say, ‘Tell me I'm wrong'.

This was worse than the shouting I'd been expecting, because this wasn't about me breaking the shower, it was about her judging me as a person. Cleo knew I needed the money, she knew I wasn't any good at cleaning, she knew she'd caught me out. And there was absolutely no point bullshitting her, because of all the above.

‘I need to know I can trust you, Robyn,' she said, patronisingly. ‘It's not just about you, it's about the reputation of my whole business.'

I bridled. First Jim treating me like an idiot, now Cleo.

‘Don't give me a hard time just because you're pissed off with Elliot,' I snapped. ‘I'm doing my best.'

‘I'm not giving you a hard time. You should ask Jim what a hard time looks like. If I'm still sitting down, you're not getting a hard time, believe me.'

I glared at her. She glared at me.

Four more days, I reminded myself. That was all I needed to do. Four more days and then I'd get a job, any job rather than …

Cleo sent her document to print, then asked, unexpectedly, ‘How are you getting on with Jim?'

‘Why? Has he asked to work on his own because of this?'

‘No. Should he have done? What else have you broken?'

‘Nothing.' I couldn't stop myself. ‘All he does is tell me how much I get wrong.'

‘And? He's got high standards.'

‘It's demoralising.' I knew that sounded pathetic, even as I said it. ‘I think he'd be happier on his own.'

Cleo made a dismissive noise, then spun round and retrieved a piece of paper from her printer which she pushed across the desk for me to initial. It was only a few lines, and there was no mention of the spectacular job we'd done getting the place spotless afterwards.

‘For god's sake, Robyn.' Cleo leaned over me as I read it through. ‘Do you have any idea how much I have to do today?'

I signed, handed it back and she found a pen to sign it herself.

My gaze drifted across the desk to her ‘to-do' list, which was, to be fair, an epic stack of tasks. Idly I tried to read upside down, to see if ‘bollock Robyn' featured.

Car insurance.

Alfie report – query grades?

Detergents

Birthday presents

Jim – rehab Tuesday.

I squinted, intrigued. Did that say rehab ? What kind of rehab? I leaned forward, angling my head to check I'd read Cleo's handwriting correctly. Rehab would explain a lot. Was Jim a reformed drinker? Or drugs? Or did he have an obsessive compulsive disorder?

‘Right, that's you done.' Cleo snapped her fingers to get my attention. ‘Dismissed.'

‘Cleo, speaking of Jim, what's …?' I glanced back at the ‘to-do' list and when Cleo followed my gaze, she immediately swiped the notebook away and flipped the page over.

‘Speaking of Jim,' she said, ‘shouldn't you be making a move? You don't want to add lateness to your charge sheet, do you?'

I left without my bacon sandwich, a sacrifice I regretted all the way to the first job.

Apart from one small dig (he allocated me the bathroom at our first job, with the jovial comment, ‘Back on the horse, right?'), Jim made no mention of my shower- wrecking and there was no phone call from Cleo to say Adam Doherty had dispensed with our services. The day passed uneventfully: routine cleaning, a drop-in to Nessie and Rambo, who seemed delighted to see us, then more cleaning. I wasn't enjoying scrubbing kitchens any more than before, but I could now do half the kitchen before I needed to check the list for the next instruction. So, progress.

At half five, Jim dropped me at Molly's Bakehouse and I was walking back to my flat when Mitch called.

‘Hey, Robyn,' he said, and my day improved instantly. In the space of two words, I went from mediocre cleaner to professional woman with property investments, and a deposit on an aspirational apartment in a luxe development. Also, he was calling out of office hours, which I hoped was a precursor to a drink. Ideally somewhere more exciting than Ferrari's.

‘Oh hi, Mitch!' I tried to sound casual, though I didn't feel it. ‘How are you?'

‘Good, thanks! Listen, can't talk for long, I'm on my way into a meeting but I just had a rather interesting conversation and I thought of you. Are you sorted out with a new job yet?'

‘Um, not yet.'

‘Excellent! I had lunch with a guy who runs a property buying agency in Worcester, and he told me, on the quiet, that they're looking for the right person to expand their team. Someone with local knowledge, proven track record, excellent client service, problem-solver, star performer, soul of discretion – you, in other words!'

‘Wow, really?' I hesitated. Property search was a slightly different kettle of fish to what I'd been doing so far; finding homes for clients – and sometimes finding them schools, builders, designers, movers, too – instead of just buying and selling properties. ‘You know I don't have any experience, though?'

Mitch made a dismissive noise. ‘Piece of cake. Client hands you a list of crazy requirements, you find the house. Want me to ping you their contact details?'

‘Yes, please.' My mind was racing ahead. What should I prepare? How would I know what they were looking for? ‘Is the job ad online?'

‘Hmmm, no, it's not that kind of set-up,' he said, and I felt stupid because of course these kinds of opportunities never got advertised. You had to know the right people. Or they had to approach you. I wasn't in those sort of circles which was why, although I'd always fancied doing more bespoke, client-focused work, I'd never found a way in.

But Mitch moved in those circles. And he'd thought of me. I replayed his words with an inner glow. ‘Great client service, problem-solver, star performer …'

‘See?' he said. ‘I told you, you've got to keep moving forwards. Like a shark. If you hadn't had to leave Marsh getting a new job was my priority, and I started my email before I got my coat off. I'd already sent five job applications and each one had taken me at least two days' worth of rewriting, agonising, second- guessing. This time, I didn't let myself overthink it. I copied Mitch's contact, wrote a short, friendly email to someone called Christian at Malvern Property Finders, and fired off my CV before seven o'clock.

This is what you can do when you get organised, I told myself. As usual, that both cheered me and depressed me at the same time.

It didn't take Malvern Property Finders long to get back to me. I was creeping around Michelle Nightingale's stunning kitchen in Swan's Row (she was working from home and pretending we weren't there, we were pretending she wasn't there, plus she'd emptied her own recycling bin before we arrived, read into that what you will) when my phone rang. I grabbed it before Jim heard. We weren't supposed to have our phones on at work, particularly not in Michelle Nightingale's silent Temple of the Blessed MacBook.

‘Hello, this is Olivia from MPF. Is that Robyn?'

‘Yes, it is!' I turned off the vacuum cleaner with a swift heel to the button and flung the hose towards the nearest soft furnishing; I was out of the back door before it even hit the sofa.

‘Is this a good time to talk? Sure? Great! Thanks so much for getting in touch with us.' She had a voice like an animated Barbour jacket. ‘Mitch said you were the best negotiator he's ever dealt with …'

Did he?

‘Thank you,' I murmured modestly.

‘… and that we should talk to you asap, so here I am. Would it be possible for you to come into the office for a chat next week?'

My heart soared.

‘Yes. Of course!' I saw my free hand was shaking. I hadn't realised just how stressed I was until the stress suddenly stopped. Now I felt overwhelming relief in its place. Relief that my old life wasn't over, that this was just a blip. The feeling was so pleasant – like when the dentist finishes drilling, or when your upstairs neighbour completes his Peloton workout – that it was hard to keep focused on what the woman was saying.

What had she said her name was? Lily? Or Caro? I grimaced. I'd come out without a pen. Normally when I was in the office I wrote everything down as I was speaking; I had to, or else I forgot straight away.

‘I've got Wednesday afternoon, late-ish?' Barbour Jacket Woman went on. ‘Um, or I could squeeze you into Monday. We're hectic at the moment.'

‘Wednesday would be great,' I said, to give myself maximum time to prepare.

I could see Jim through the kitchen window. He'd walked into the kitchen to see how I was getting on, spotted the abandoned hoover, followed the sound of my voice out to the yard and was now glaring at me over the sink. Which I hadn't got round to cleaning yet.

I pre-empted his query, pointing at the phone and pantomiming ‘this is a serious phone call about something very serious' with a dramatic, sad face.

He tapped his watch.

I nodded and held up two fingers. Two minutes. It wasn't like I could achieve much in that time with a hoover.

Jim flinched.

Whoops. I reversed my fingers in a less offensive way of conveying two minutes, and he turned and left the kitchen. On his way, he automatically stacked the hose of the hoover back into its slot so it stood to attention, tidied up and waiting for me.

‘That's great, Robyn, shall we say four o'clock?' the woman was saying, and I flushed with embarrassment, knowing I should be making a positive impression by using her name, but I couldn't even remember the names I'd guessed at seconds ago. My head was jumbled with a mess of unhelpful thoughts, like what I needed to wash to wear for the interview and could I get my roots sorted out between now and then.

Milly? Katie?

‘Sounds great.' I had a sudden brainwave and hurried back inside. ‘Can I take your email? Just in case I need to, um, ask any background questions.'

‘Sure, no problem. It's Olivia dot Collins at Malvern Property Finders – one word – dot com.'

I'd managed to find a biro and a Hello Fresh delivery slip, and jotted it down.

‘Look forward to seeing you next week, Olivia!' I said, and put every single detail into my phone before I could forget.

Of course, what I hadn't done when I'd agreed to meet with Olivia at four o'clock on Wednesday was check whether I could meet with her then. I broached the subject on the way home with Jim.

‘Have you got the rota for next week?' I tried to sound casual.

‘You're going to be here next week?'

I ignored the faux surprise. ‘Possibly.'

‘It should be the same as this week,' he said. ‘As far as I know.'

‘Good, good. Um … would it be OK if I finished early on Wednesday?'

‘I'm not the person to be asking. Check with Cleo.'

‘I will. But … do you think it'd be a problem if I left at about three?'

We'd stopped at a traffic light, a long one at the crossroads by the big Tesco. I knew we'd be here a while.

‘Is this something to do with that phone call earlier?'

‘Yes!' Now my life was about to get back on track, any former reticence about what I'd done before evaporated like steam off a heated mirror. I was no longer a sacked estate agent; I was a shortlisted property search specialist. ‘I've got an interview with a property search company. They're like estate agents but more bespoke.'

Jim didn't say anything and I found myself gabbling to fill the silence. I was very bad with silences. I'd done so many acting workshops at university on ‘stillness' and ‘letting my face speak', but I always cracked after about forty seconds. ‘It's what I do, for my real job. I'm an estate agent. I mean, not that this isn't a real job, of course, it's a real job, definitely, ha ha, but it's something I was doing to fill a gap while I …'

I trailed off. Somehow I couldn't think of a way around the word ‘sacked' while Jim was examining my face like that. He was very good with silences.

‘Uh-huh.'

Belatedly, it occurred to me that I could just have said I had a doctor's appointment for something gynaecological. It's what I'd always done at Marsh he carried on before I could point out they weren't black, they were mulberry. ‘The way you took offence at the checklists, your haphazard approach to cleaning, your low standards.'

That was a bit much. ‘My shower screens are almost streakless!'

‘Hmm,' said Jim, which wasn't yes or no. ‘Oh, and the fact that you initially seemed to think you were the marketing manager.'

He'd stopped, but I waited, just in case there was more.

‘And your other theory?' I prompted.

‘That you were some friend of Cleo's in a tight spot. Someone she was helping out.' Finally, the lights changed and we set off again. ‘Reasons, the above, plus I don't think she did a DBS check on you. She still should, even if she knows you. Legally.'

‘I have one. All estate agents have to.'

‘I'm pleased to hear that.'

‘And which of those options were you leaning towards?' I asked.

He straightened his shoulders. ‘Well, if Cleo was thinking of appointing a manager, I suppose I'd like to have heard about it before now.'

Aha! I thought. Jim assumed he was the obvious choice for manager – Cleo's ‘most trusted operative', the one in charge of the office laminator. It would explain some of the grumpiness, if he'd assumed I'd been parachuted in over his head. ‘She would have told you,' I reassured him. ‘She says you're her most trusted operative.'

‘Cleo said that? When?'

‘It's what she told me at my interview,' I corrected myself. ‘That if anyone could teach me how to be a decent cleaner, it was you. And anyway,' I went on, before he could examine that too closely, ‘I have learned a lot of useful stuff doing this. Honestly. I swear I'll never look at tiles in the same way again. And I'll definitely buy a self-cleaning oven.'

We'd reached the blue and white exterior of Milly's Bakehouse. A baker in a blue T-shirt was winding down the striped awnings, signalling the end of the day. Jim checked his mirrors, indicated and pulled in behind their delivery scooter.

He paused for a moment, thinking of the appropriate thing to say, and in a flash I wished I could spin back the clock by a few minutes and be kinder.

Jim was a condescending neat freak, but I hadn't meant to hurt his feelings by implying his job wasn't ‘proper', or sound as if I was relieved to be escaping his hygiene bootcamp. I mean, I was but ....

‘Thank you for your patience,' I said. ‘I know I've not been a much of a help.'

He tilted his head. It was a small gesture yet it conveyed everything: agreement that I'd been useless, acknowledgement of my thanks, kindness that he wasn't going to point it out. I couldn't help but admire its efficiency.

‘You can say it, I'm not cut out for this cleaning lark. Everyone I know thinks I'm the messiest person they've ever met.' Gabble, gabble. Why couldn't I do eloquent silences? ‘For me, cleaning is on a par with a vegetarian doing an internship in a haggis factory. Seriously, that's how hard it's been for me, and that's without working for—'

I was about to say, ‘without working for my big sister' but I stopped.

‘Without?'

Oh, why not tell him now? ‘Without working for my big sister.'

Jim raised his eyebrow – again, enviably minimal.

‘What? You knew?'

His mouth twitched. ‘I knew the first time I saw you two together.'

‘You didn't! What, because we look so alike? It's the eyebrows, isn't it? The nose?'

‘More the way you—' He stopped, then shrugged. ‘The way you're both so bad at pretending you don't know each other.'

I laughed. That was probably true.

Jim turned to me, and I abruptly stopped laughing and felt a cautious smile break out. He still gave off management vibes, but he didn't look quite as … intense. This was as personal a conversation as we'd had in all the hours we'd spent together.

‘I'll have a look at the rota,' he said. ‘I'm sure I can cope on my own for an hour or two on Wednesday.'

‘Would you? I'd really appreciate it.'

‘Is it to start straight away? This job?'

‘I don't know. I think so.' I realised I didn't know anything about it at all. My stomach flipped. How could I prepare? I hated feeling underprepared for any new situations.

‘But I won't leave you in the lurch!' I said.

‘That's very thoughtful of you.'

I wasn't sure if Jim was taking the mickey. I had been rude. Implying his career choice was a last resort for me.

But then was it his career choice? He hadn't exactly reciprocated with an explanation of how long he'd been working for Cleo – and why. Maybe he'd been in rehab for prescription drugs, I thought. You could get an addiction to those, couldn't you?

I was racking my brains for a subtle lead into the question, but my phone rang and I grabbed it in case it was Mitch. It wasn't – it was Mum – but by the time I'd fumbled the phone and dropped the call, the moment had gone.

‘So do you live over the bakery then?' he asked, as I gathered my things from the footwell.

‘God no, that would be a nightmare, wouldn't it? Living over a bakery? I'd be the size of a house in no time.'

‘So … which one? Isn't it worse to live over the off-licence?'

I glanced over to the row of shops, and realised that there weren't that many other houses along this stretch of road. I couldn't tell him where I really lived. Not just because it wasn't exactly aspirational, but because I'd have to come up with a reason for lying about it in the first place.

‘Um, I live over the, er …' I scanned the shopfronts. Not all of them had flats above. ‘The tattoo parlour,' I said, my gaze landing on Inkcredible: The House of Tatts.

Jim raised an eyebrow.

‘You should see me from the neck down,' I said, deadpan. Then got out of the car, and cringed all the way home.