11

~ Dust first, then hoover, then mop.

I 'd slithered home from Worcester on Thursday morning, convinced that I'd be spotted by Jim, Cleo or one of my parents. Hangovers always made me paranoid. Even more paranoid. As it happened, I saw no one, but after texting Cleo to tell her I had food poisoning, I spent the afternoon cleaning my own flat, very, very slowly. Partly in case Mitch called round to check on me; partly as an act of self-flagellation. I managed to get the sitting room respectable, before I remembered that the whole thing was a complete waste of time because Mitch didn't know where I lived.

Neither Mitch nor Liv called, but Jim did, as promised, at five o'clock. He enquired after my queasiness and recommended plain toast.

I don't know if he believed the overnight bug excuse. Obviously I couldn't see his face over the phone, but by now I knew the exact expression that would be on it: measured neutrality. I made myself stick to absolute facts to minimise the squirming of my conscience.

But to be fair to Jim, the toast trick worked, and I made a special effort to be on time the next morning, including a detour to the bakery for an apology croissant.

‘Is this for me?'

Jim looked at the striped bag I'd dropped in his lap.

‘Yes.' I slid into the car, carefully because I was carrying two cappuccinos in blue Molly's Bakehouse cups and the lids never fitted properly. ‘Just a little Friday thank you.'

‘What for?'

‘For covering for me this week. I know I haven't been a great partner. What with, um, one thing and another.'

He peered into the bag. ‘Wow. Is this an almond croissant?'

‘It certainly is.' Now my financial crisis was all but over, it had felt good to splash the cash (one additional pound) to upgrade to almond. ‘It's a big thank you.'

‘That's very kind of you,' he said, ‘but not necessary.'

‘I've washed my hands,' I reassured him. ‘I'm pretty sure it was just an upset stomach, not dysentery or anything.'

He turned to me and smiled, which came as something of a surprise. Jim had one of those smiles that completely changed a face, transforming his stern resting expression; it was crooked and a bit cautious, as if he wasn't completely sure it suited him. Not like Mitch and his gorgeous smile, which lit up his whole face and made you beam back automatically like a flower bending towards the light.

I pushed the thought of Mitch from my mind. I couldn't think about Mitch while I was wearing a pair of red overalls.

‘That's most kind, if unnecessary,' said Jim. ‘I will have it for my lunch.'

‘You don't mind if I eat mine now?' I picked up my coffee and took a sip. Ah. Coffee. Glorious, extravagant coffee. How I'd missed it.

‘Not at all. Just, you know … be careful, please.' Jim gestured at the immaculately hoovered footwell.

I adjusted the bag and the cup to minimise flaking and we set off. I couldn't say I was looking forward to another's day's cleaning, but now that I was re-caffeinated, with the end in sight, I found myself in something approaching a good mood.

‘Can I put the radio on?' I asked, and Jim didn't object. So presumably he was in quite a good mood too.

Our first job of the day was at the Armstrongs' and, as we approached the front door, I could hear thudding, interspersed by the occasional muffled shout.

I glanced at Jim. ‘Are they at home?'

‘Sounds like it.' He rang the doorbell – something we'd never done before.

We waited, as the thudding continued.

‘School holiday?' Having been out of the school system for nearly twenty years, I only had a vague idea of when holidays were, and only then because recently they'd signalled an upturn in Cleo's complaints about Elliot and his idea of what constituted childcare.

‘Not for another month,' said Jim. Which made me wonder if he had kids? He was the type who'd make a point of learning term dates anyway. Like he probably knew bus times and where to park in town for free. ‘Maybe one of the children is ill. It won't make a difference, just do what you can around them.'

I won't lie, while I was intrigued to discover what was causing the unstoppable trail of destruction in the house, I also felt self-conscious about cleaning in front of an audience.

A blonde woman about my age opened the door; she was dressed in a navy office dress accessorised with a gold chain and pearl studs. On her feet, though, she was wearing a stained pair of Ugg boots. When she saw me and Jim she looked blank, then said, ‘Oh god, you're the cleaners. Come in, come in.'

The cleaners. Really? A bit dehumanising, considering we probably knew more about her intimate life than her best friend, thanks to my regular scrutiny of her bathroom cabinets.

We followed Mrs Armstrong into the kitchen, which was looking even more catastrophic than normal. A laptop balanced on four Ottolenghi cookbooks was open to a Zoom meeting, carefully angled towards the Shaker cupboards so no participants would see the Lego explosion, discarded trainers or half-finished cereal bowls spattered around the room. I assumed it was on mute because a small blonde boy was bouncing a basketball against the wall, perilously close to the massive television, in a regular ‘thunk … kerthunk' pattern. Over and over.

There was a dark smudge on the wall. It was slowly growing into a bigger smudge with every bounce.

That's going to be a right pain to get off, I thought, irritated, then remembered that I didn't need to have those thoughts anymore. Soon the cleaning of the Armstrongs' walls would be someone else's problem.

Well, Jim's problem. And he probably had a solution for it.

‘So sorry, we're going to be in your way, aren't we?' Mrs Armstrong returned to her laptop and typed a rapid message, standing up. ‘I've just got to send this … Charlie, can you stop doing that?'

He carried on bouncing. ‘I need to get to 150, then I can stop.'

‘Where are you now?' she asked.

‘Ninety-three.' Thunk … kerthunk. Thunk … kerthunk.

Jim and I glanced at each other.

Thunk … kerthunk. Thunk … kerthunk.

Mrs Armstrong chewed a hangnail on her thumb, watching her son intently but not attempting to stop him.

Thunk … kerthunk.

‘Do two more in here, Charlie, and the next fifty outside,' Jim instructed, and contrary to everyone's expectations, Charlie did two more bounces, picked up the ball and ran into the garden. Pigeons scattered into the air as the ball thudded off the garage wall.

We took a moment to enjoy the silence that ensued, and Mrs Armstrong abruptly seemed to snap back to life.

‘Gosh, that's better, ha ha! Um, I'm Sally, I don't think we've met. I don't think I've ever met the cleaners.' She pushed her glasses up onto her head, holding back her fine blonde fringe. She had an anxious energy that I recognised, and lilac-grey shadows under her eyes; from the way she kept rubbing her forehead, I guessed she probably had a crippling headache. ‘We do appreciate your hard work, though. It's like magic elves come into the house twice a week.'

I smiled brightly. ‘It's nice to put a face to the—'

‘House,' said Jim firmly, before I could say ‘recycling bin'. I had made a few comments to him about how interesting it was to guess family habits from the contents of their recycling. The Armstrongs got through a lot of Chablis. And I mean, a lot . ‘It's good to put a face to the house . I'm Jim, and this is Robyn.'

‘Hello!' Sally stretched out her hand. I spotted a faint pinkening of her cheeks.

I don't think he was expecting a handshake, but even in a boilersuit Jim gave off ‘handshake' vibes. I can't explain it. The intelligent eyes? The square shoulders? Whatever it was, Sally was shaking Jim's hand a tiny bit too long, and laughing nervously. And pushing her hair behind her ear.

What? I tried not to react but made a note to mention it to him later.

Jim, obviously, did not react at all.

‘I'll make a start on the bathrooms,' he said, using an upward gesture to extract his hand from Sally's enthusiastic shaking. ‘Robyn, if Mrs Armstrong needs the kitchen, maybe do upstairs today and we can blitz the kitchen on Monday instead?'

‘No, no, I'll just … Please carry on around me!' Sally picked up her laptop and swept a football, Sunday's newspapers and two jam-sticky plates off the sofa. ‘Sorry, we're in a bit of a flap, I don't usually work from home but Charlie has a hospital appointment this morning.'

I adopted the ‘listening and cleaning' expression I'd perfected for Terry's monologues, and opened the dishwasher, stacking the dirty crockery that had been abandoned around the sink area. Jim had gone through the ‘correct' process for stacking a dishwasher – yes, there was one – and now I did it on autopilot. I even did my own dishwasher the same way now.

‘This was the only appointment with Mr Shah we could get this side of Christmas, and I've heard of people waiting years to see him so I don't know whether to be worried or not that we've been fast-tracked, I suppose I should be relieved but …'

Sally Armstrong was still talking, but in a gabbling rush that I recognised as one of my own habits – for me, it was a sure sign that anxiety was at the controls and running riot. I was half-listening but also conscious that if I stopped for even five seconds I would get behind; the Armstrongs' house required every possible moment of our allocated hours.

Someone had been making tomato sauce again, I noted, seeing fresh splodges welded to the hob I'd only got clean the previous visit. Always tomato sauce. Did they ever cook anything else? I sprayed it with the special hob blitzer and turned my attention to the grease-spotted toaster.

‘… funny thing was, though – when I was going through the questionnaire with Charlie's teacher, I could have answered yes to so many of the questions myself. And I've read that it can be a hereditary condition, which made me think is it my fault, is it something I've …' Sally's voice had been getting higher, and now the sudden catch, almost a sob, made me stop.

I turned and gave her my full attention. She seemed so distressed, it was the least I could do.

‘I'm sure that's not the case,' I said, even though I had no idea if it was or wasn't.

She shook her head. ‘Not necessarily. It's often missed in girls. You can spot ADHD more easily in boys – it's such a cliché, the uncontrolled energy, hyperactivity, loudness. Hard to miss. But in girls it's the other way around – it's all hidden.'

Sally had started to tidy up as she spoke, robotically scooping socks and toys off the sofa, plumping up cushions. ‘The heartbreaking thing is that girls are too good at blending in. We copy our friends, we hide behind lists, we work three times as hard to keep up and still get distracted.' She laughed, but she obviously didn't find any of this funny. ‘I mean, that's me right there. I've done a Ph.D.'s worth of googling this week alone when I should have been preparing a case study for work. Did you know casein is a problem for some kids with ADHD? So obviously we're screwed – the amount of dairy we get through as a family, you'd think we bathe in the stuff. Well, you know that, you've seen our recycling bin.'

Outside, I could hear Charlie's ball bouncing in the same repetitive pattern. Thunk … kerthunk.

Sally stopped, as if mentioning the recycling had suddenly reminded her that I was a cleaner, not her friend. ‘Sorry. Sorry. It's just been a lot to take in, and it explains … so much.' She frowned, reached behind a cushion and removed an Action Man which she held for a moment, unsure what to do with it, until I stepped forward and took it from her.

‘Thanks.' Her voice was wobbling again. ‘Marcus is right, this place is embarrassing.'

I dropped the Action Man in the basket of toys, a jumble of plastic arms and legs, dinosaurs and tractors.

‘I try to keep on top of it, but I don't get home till six and he works so late, and then the weekends are crazy, and I do try to make lists but I just …' Sally trailed off in despair and looked up at me. ‘Be honest, do cleaners judge people for letting their houses get like this?'

‘No,' I white-lied.

‘I wish I could wave a magic wand,' she sighed, without specifying what she'd magic away. Everything, I suspected.

Sally's shoulders sagged and I wanted to tell her that everything she'd just said resonated with me – and that I too often felt as if I was suffocating in the same scary paralysis, when the world seemed deafening and demanding, driving me into a corner to hide. I couldn't even keep a small flat and a moderate amount of paperwork under control, let alone a house this size, three kids and a full-time job.

Outside, Charlie's thunk … kerthunk continued with metronomic regularity.

Jim appeared at the door. ‘Robyn, if you're done in here, could you give me a hand moving the sofa in the sitting room? I think there's … ah, something underneath it.'

He always moved sofas to hoover underneath them. And rolled up carpets to mop floors.

His appearance broke the tension. Sally pulled herself together and managed a bright smile. ‘I apologise now for whatever that might be.'

‘Don't worry,' he said, reassuringly. ‘We're here to clean it up, whatever it is.'

‘As long as it's not a dead body,' I added. ‘Apparently we have to report those.'

I don't know who looked more shocked, Jim or Sally, but at least it changed the subject.

‘Did you hear what Sally Armstrong was saying?' I asked Jim.

‘No, I was too busy scrubbing the bath. I don't know what bath oil they're using but it manages to catch all the grime and then somehow welds it to the enamel.' He overtook a cyclist, very carefully. ‘It's probably got an industrial use, if they could patent it.'

‘Charlie's been diagnosed with ADHD. That's why she was at home, to take him to a specialist.'

‘Hmm.'

‘What? Is that a "that makes sense" hmm, or a "that's a load of nonsense" hmm?'

‘It's a "this is none of our business" hmm.'

I bridled. ‘She told me. I had to listen, I was being polite. I was in her house!'

‘I'm sure I've said this before, but we're there to clean, not chat.'

This was typical Jim, I thought. In an ideal world, he'd probably remove the people from the houses altogether. Stupid, messy people, undoing his good work.

‘It was interesting, what she was telling me about girls and boys having the same issues but presenting completely differently,' I went on. ‘Boys with ADHD symptoms are all outward energy, whereas girls turn everything inwards. Girls focus on control, because they feel out of control, and because organisation's seen as a good thing, no one asks why they're so obsessed with it.'

I could relate to that. As a teenager, I spent every Sunday night making detailed timetables of what I needed to do that week – not just homework, but what clothes I needed and which night to wash my hair. I didn't trust myself to remember everything, in the right order. If I lost the list, or if Cleo used up the hot water on Tuesday night, I went to pieces.

Like the time I left my diary on the bus.

I hadn't thought about it in years but as soon as I pictured the little red book with its three yellow elastic bands wrapped around it my chest hollowed out. Mum had assumed I was in hysterics because it was a diary diary, dangerously crammed with gossip about who I fancied and/or hated that week, but it was me that I'd lost: my life inside my planner, with five-colour highlighter and Post-its. Without it, I literally wouldn't have known what time to get up. And yet everyone used to tell me how much they envied my natural efficiency. They had no idea it was all utterly artificial.

‘And?' said Jim, into the silence that had developed.

I couldn't shake the hollowness. ‘And what?'

‘It felt like there was going to be a punchline.'

I shrugged. The punchline wasn't funny. I'd nearly been sick, convinced that my diary was in someone else's hands, that some sixth-form mean girls had it and were pissing themselves laughing at my pathetic reminders to put my shirts in the laundry basket and shave my legs before PE. I'd begged Mum to drive me to the bus depot to get it. Begged . And she had – but only after she'd collected Cleo from Elliot's house, where Cleo shouldn't even have been on account of being grounded. Cleo always came first with Mum. We got there just after it closed and I had to plead with them, in tears, to unlock the door.

‘Not everything has to have a label slapped on it,' Jim was saying, in his irritating Voice of Reason voice. ‘Everyone's different. Like that whole left-brain, right-brain business. Would that perhaps explain why you go in big circles, not straight lines whenever you're called upon to clean a glass surface?'

‘I don't think psychiatrists use window-cleaning as a diagnostic tool,' I said stiffly.

Jim glanced over. I knew I sounded grumpy; I wasn't really grumpy with him, it was delayed grumpiness at Mum and Cleo.

Hadn't anyone noticed how stressed I was as a teenager? Could my life have been different if someone had ?

I slumped back in my seat. Up to that point I hadn't realised I'd been leaning forward.

Wisely, Jim switched tack. ‘I've been meaning to ask you – how did it go?'

‘How did what go?'

‘Your interview on Wednesday. Now we're out of hours you can tell me, can't you?'

I looked at the van's clock: one minute past five. Jim had waited until the end of the working day to ask about my interview with another employer. Cleo would be proud.

‘It went well. I'm meeting with the directors at the start of next week. But to be honest …' Was this tempting fate? I didn't care. ‘She more or less said she'd give me the job then and there if it was up to her.'

‘Congratulations. When would you start?'

‘It's a maternity cover so … soon? They sound run off their feet, that's probably why it's been sorted so quickly.'

‘Or maybe you're the ideal candidate.'

Cheesy, but kind. ‘Maybe.'

I wasn't sure what to say next. Would I carry on working next week, if Liv offered me the job on Monday? I could do with the money.

It suddenly occurred to me that Jim wasn't even my boss; I should probably have told Cleo I'd applied for a job before I told Jim I'd got it. Which I actually hadn't, yet.

I kicked myself, imagining Cleo's reaction. Every time I resolved to be less impulsive and more discreet I did something like this. Not a big thing, but if Jim told Cleo before I did she'd go nuclear.

‘Jim, do you mind keeping it to yourself for now?'

‘You haven't told Cleo, have you?'

‘No. No, I haven't.'

‘You need to do that asap.' Jim signalled and pulled into a bus stop. ‘Do you mind if I drop you off here tonight? I need to be somewhere at half five.'

Really? Where, I wondered? Jim hadn't given me a single clue about where he went at the end of the day, or where he came from in the morning. Who he went back to, or what he did when he went there. His entire personality began and ended in the Taylor Maid van.

‘Anywhere interesting?' I asked.

There was a pause. ‘Rugby practice.'

Rugby? I didn't know a lot about rugby other than what I'd seen on television but I had a sudden memory of the plant shelf falling down in Adam Doherty's bathroom, and the smooth way Jim had spun round, stopped it sliding and held it there as if it weighed nothing. The flex of his muscle, the speed of his movement had suggested someone with quick reactions, someone unafraid of physical contact. That was rugby, wasn't it?

I tried to imagine Jim streaked with mud, sweaty and shouting, but that was a step too far.

‘Playing?' I probed.

‘No, coaching. But have a good weekend. Thanks again for the croissant,' he went on, before I could even ask where or with whom , ‘and watch for the bicycles up the cycle lane!'

He was definitely cutting the conversation short. How rude, I thought; I was only being friendly.

‘No worries.' I grabbed my bag, checked for cyclists and got out. By chance, Jim had dropped me a few streets away from my real flat, and I was familiar enough now with the short cuts to sneak home without needing to change. If I walked quickly, I could be back by …

‘Robyn? Robyn!'

I spun round.

Jim was leaning across the seat, looking up at me from the van. From that angle, I noticed his right hand resting on the wheel; it was strong, big enough to hold a rugby ball in one hand while he ran. I thought of the way he'd caught the falling plant as it slipped off the shelf; the satisfying trajectory of it, falling and landing safely into his hand.

Cricket. I could see Jim playing cricket.

‘What?' I asked.

‘Just wanted to know if this was a goodbye,' he said, simply.

I didn't know what to say to that. Was it? I hadn't thought about it in those terms; I was happy to draw a line under my cleaning career but in a funny way I would miss Jim, in the same way I missed books that I'd started but not finished. Not because I'd lost interest, but because disorganisation had let them drift into a pile of papers and unread magazines, with the characters only half-met and the situations still unresolved.

There was obviously a lot more about Jim than I knew. The fact that he didn't share anything was, in itself, quite intriguing.

‘I might do some more shifts next week,' I said.

Did he smile? I think he smiled, quickly and wryly.

‘Good,' he said, his face serious again. ‘See you on Monday.'