6

~ Microwave your kitchen sponges and cloths to blast bacteria. Remember to leave them for a minute, though, as they'll be scalding hot.

I woke up the following morning to the sound of rhythmic grunting from upstairs. A female voice was cutting in between the grunts, and I realised Tomasz had company.

I should have guessed, I told myself, trying to make my ears seal over as motes of dust drifted down from the ceiling, dislodged by the impact of something slamming against the wall over my head. This would be why the flat was so cheap, and so readily available. How could I call myself an estate agent when I hadn't even bothered to check the neighbours?

Sad fact: it's impossible to check for the real neighbourly habits which will drive you insane. You can see a giant seven-dog kennel or a yard full of rusting Morris Minors. You can't see a fixation about recycling bins. Or a trombone.

Above my head, the woman started counting backwards from ten, which somehow made me feel even more horribly involved in whatever was going on up there, until she suddenly yelled, ‘Let's go, Peloton!', Tomasz let out a roar and I swung my legs out of bed and headed for the cup of coffee that would hopefully drive those images out of my head.

I drank a lot of coffee. Partly on account of my erratic sleeping patterns, which I knew was not a coincidence.

The phone rang while I was scrolling through the photographs I'd taken of Lark Manor and trying to decide if a walk-in shower or a slipper bath would look better in my apartment. Or both?

‘Robyn.'

‘Cleo,' I replied, matching my sister's clipped office tones.

It was our traditional greeting. Well, our modern version. Cleo used to say, ‘Hey, stinker,' when she rang me (and I'd say, ‘Yo, hairy'), but since she'd started Taylor Maid, Cleo had adopted this formal work persona that had gradually spread into the rest of her life.

‘How are you this morning?' she asked.

‘Bit sore.' I rubbed my neck where I'd cricked it, trying to get at the detritus beneath Margaret Jennings' cupboards.

‘Good,' she said. ‘Hard work never hurt anyone.'

I waited optimistically for a crumb of praise.

‘Did Mrs Jennings give good feedback?' I prompted, when none was forthcoming.

‘What? Oh, yes, Jim said her daughter was thrilled, and she's booked a regular weekly clean to keep on top of it.'

I noticed, as the kettle chugged towards boiling point, a furry layer of dust on the edge of the splashback behind the hob. I ripped off a square of kitchen roll and removed it with a swipe. That only revealed how unpleasantly discoloured the grout was. I'd never noticed the colour of grout before. The kettle wasn't quite boiling, but I poured hot water on the coffee and turned away before I could think any more about grout.

‘And …?' I prompted her again.

‘And what?'

I rolled my eyes. Was Cleo really going to make me say it? I hated myself for asking, but I couldn't stop the neediness. It controlled me.

‘Did I meet your high professional expectations?'

‘Jim says you got stuck in and were quite helpful,' she conceded. ‘Well done.'

Quite helpful? Thanks, Jim.

‘Good. The thing is, Cleo,' I said, before she could give me a breakdown of what I could have done better, ‘I'll be honest, I'm glad I could help out but cleaning isn't my strong suit. If you're still short-staffed, why don't I organise some recruitment for you?'

I reckoned I could do that. I needed the money, and one day's cleaning wasn't going to cover my rent.

‘That's kind of you to offer, but it's not why I was calling,' said Cleo. ‘Jim says you've got the spare keys to the van.'

‘I don't think I have.'

‘He said he gave them to you so you could get your phone, and you didn't give them back to him.'

I felt around in my jacket pocket. Oh yeah. There they were.

‘Anyway, he's doing a job in Hildreth Street at ten o'clock, so why don't you pop down there and hand them over?' She paused. ‘And if you wanted another day's work, I'm sure he could use a hand?'

‘In the office?'

‘No.' Cleo sighed. ‘Not in the office.'

I was going to say thanks but I wasn't going to put myself through that again, when the post fell through the letter box, and I could see one of the letters had an EON logo and the word REMINDER on it.

So I went.

Terry Gilchrist was eighty-seven and he was the youngest of thirteen, two of whom were twins (Leslie and Leonard) and one of whom had been in prison in France (Kathleen). He was a retired postman, cider factory worker, former semi-professional darts player and he still had all his own teeth. He could also play the spoons.

This much I learned in the first ten minutes of cleaning Terry's kitchen. I also learned, all by myself, that he had an unhealthy relationship with Mr Kipling and didn't clean his cups properly.

When I pitched up outside Hildreth Street, which was just round the corner from my flat, Jim greeted me with polite enthusiasm. The sort of polite enthusiasm we used to show towards the students who'd appear in the office to do lukewarm work experience before their GCSEs. I didn't know what the cleaning equivalent of filling envelopes with fliers was, but I suspected that was the level Jim had put me at.

‘New girl, is it?' Terry enquired, when he let us in. ‘Thought you preferred to fly solo, eh, Jimbo?'

‘I do,' said Jim, ‘but two cleaners is the policy so here we are. Terry, this is Robyn.'

‘With a Y,' I added, automatically.

‘And this is Terry.' He extended a polite hand towards the elderly man in the wheelchair.

‘With a T,' said Terry.

I frowned. ‘A t?'

‘Thanks, love, I will, if you're making one.' He roared with laughter at his own joke, and gestured towards the kitchen. ‘Cups on the side, bags in the packet by the window.'

‘Fair enough,' I said.

‘Let me explain the hot-water system,' said Jim, and steered me into the utility room off the kitchenette.

‘He's a one, isn't he?' I said, indulgently.

Jim made sure Terry couldn't hear us, then muttered, ‘Terry is a talker ,' under his breath. ‘He will distract you with endless stories which is fine, he's the client, but do not let him stop you getting on with what you're here to do.'

‘Which is?'

‘Sixty minutes' general cleaning. You focus on the kitchen, I'll start on the bathroom and make my way across the flat.'

‘The kitchen. Again?'

‘You can put into practice what you learned yesterday.'

‘So that's …?' I looked helpless until Jim cracked and counted off on his fingers: ‘Clean the surfaces, bin anything that looks binnable, spray and clean the sink, clean the hob, wipe down any touch points, empty the bins, recycling goes in the green bin outside the front door, and then hoover and mop the floor.'

‘OK,' I said, trying to remember all that. ‘Then what?'

‘That'll take you the best part of forty-five minutes. Don't underestimate how long it takes to clean a hob thoroughly.' He spoke at a brisk clip, as if he couldn't wait to get started on his own tasks. What a weirdo. ‘You need to soak the metal frame in the sink, double clean the base, scrub the frame. Glass spray to remove any smears on the stainless steel.'

‘Obviously.' I made a mental note of the order I was supposed to do that in. I'd never actually cleaned my own hob. I waited until the build-up solidified into chunks I could flick off with a fish slice.

‘If you've done that with time to spare, move onto the sitting room – I'll start with the bathroom and meet you in the middle.'

‘And what if it takes longer than sixty minutes?'

Jim fixed me with a firm gaze. ‘It can't. We leave at eleven, no later, so we can get to Moffat Street at half past.'

‘There's another job after this?'

His face said, Of course there is, but in his calmest tone he said, ‘Didn't Cleo give you a time sheet?'

‘No, she just told me to meet you here with the van keys. She didn't tell me I'd be working all day .' It came out more truculent than I'd intended but Jim didn't react.

‘Well, my schedule for today is Moffat Street next for two hours, then a break for lunch. Then the Armstrongs on Coleridge Terrace. Then a check on a couple of dogs in Portland Place for half an hour, then that's it for the day.'

‘Do we clean the dogs?' I asked, trying desperately to leaven Jim's intensity with a joke.

It fell on deaf ears. ‘We walk them round the block,' he said. ‘Their owner is on shifts.'

‘So if I'm here working with you, we should finish early,' I suggested. ‘Two people, half the time, right?'

He held my gaze. ‘Probably not, if I have to keep explaining everything to you.'

Jim really was hard work. I had no idea why someone with such undeniable middle-management vibes was working as a cleaner but clearly it wasn't because a glittering career in comedy had fallen through.

We regarded each other with politely concealed but mutual impatience.

‘So,' I asked, ‘should I make a cup of tea for Terry or not?'

‘Make it,' said Jim. ‘But only make one for yourself if you're confident you can clean and drink at the same time.'

‘You'd be amazed at what I can do simultaneously,' I quipped, but Jim was already heading out of the room.

I made Terry's tea – ‘milk, three sugars' – in a well-worn World's Best Grandad mug and, at his insistence, one for myself in an equally faded Happy 70th Dad mug. I noticed he had quite a collection of mugs in his cupboard, but these two were the favourites.

He stationed himself in his wheelchair in the corner of the kitchen and started firing off anecdotes, while I chiselled coagulated jam off the counter tops.

‘I like toast,' he explained, when I'd made him some to go with the tea. ‘Not supposed to have it with jam, but you've got to have a few pleasures in life at my age.'

‘Absolutely.' I sprayed and wiped, trying not to notice Jim tapping his watch at me every ten minutes from the hallway.

‘Now my wife, my Gillian, bless her soul, she'd ruin a snack, always going on about the bleeding calories. You couldn't have a biscuit with your tea without Gill telling you it was ninety calories for a digestive but only seventy-two in a Rich Tea.'

‘Is that right?'

‘Thin as a pin she was. Dropped dead of a heart attack at fifty-nine. My mum was ninety-eight and built like a brick privy – she always used to say, "Ain't no belts in shrouds, darling!"'

I flattened three empty French Fancies packets for the recycling. I wasn't sure that was exactly the saying but Terry was already onto tales of his Aunt Shirley, who'd been an exotic dancer before she'd ‘moved sideways' into wrestling.

He chatted away as I worked and didn't seem to mind that my replies were largely of the ‘Hmm?' and ‘Really?' variety. Apart from anything, keeping track of Terry's complex relatives took some doing; there were his three children (Jayne, Barry and Brian), seven grandchildren (Daisy, Rosie, Lily, Rowan … I think), their various partners … I tried my best to focus on the task in hand, but slowly Terry reeled me in. I'd always been fascinated by big messy families, since my own family tree was more of a family twig. I'd have loved a grandad who told outrageous stories like Terry. Instead I had Grandpa, Dad's dad, a retired electrician who pretended to be deafer than he was (according to Mum) so he could spend his time restoring radios in his shed, and Grandad, Mum's dad, who I hadn't seen since I was small – and of course, any further discussion of that side of the family was strictly verboten .

I had literally only stopped for one second to hazard a proper guess as to who the mystery soap star who'd had an affair with Terry's darts pal might be, when Jim appeared in the kitchen.

Oops. I glanced at the kitchen clock. Somehow it was two minutes to eleven.

He peeled off his Marigolds and said, ‘You didn't make it through to the hall, Robyn?'

‘No,' I said, ‘but look at that hob!'

We looked at the hob. It was so clean we could see our faces in it. Jim's reflection didn't seem as impressed as mine.

‘Well, that's us, Terry,' said Jim. ‘See you next week!'

I held up a hand. ‘Terry was just going to tell me how—'

‘Next time!' said Jim briskly and ushered me out.

When I turned back at the door to wave to Terry, I couldn't help noticing that his expression wasn't as cheery as his goodbye.

And now I would never know who the soap star was.

We cleaned an already spotless house in Moffat Street (why, I don't know) and then Jim told me to grab some lunch in town before the next job. He disappeared, leaving only a warning to be back in half an hour exactly.

I bought the cheapest sandwich in the deli furthest away from anyone I might bump into, and ate it on a wall, out of sight. I'd put my jacket on over the Taylor Maid overalls, but there was still no reason for me to be wearing trousers this red of my own accord. No one would, apart from maybe Johnny from the office, or a children's entertainer.

I rang Mitch, and he sounded pleased to hear from me.

‘My favourite negotiator!' Just the sound of his voice was a boost. ‘What are you up to?'

‘Temping for my sister. Helping her out.'

‘Good for you. How's the job hunting?'

I told him about the jobs I'd applied for. ‘It's still OK to give you as a reference?'

‘Of course! I've put out some feelers – I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything.'

I started to ask about Lark Manor, then I got a reminder text from Jim that lunch was up. Great.

I walked back to where Jim had left me, and we drove across town to a most desirable area known to the local agents as The Poet Streets.

The Armstrongs' house on Coleridge Terrace was gorgeous: a three-storey, Georgian, stucco-fronted family home with a red front door big enough for an extra-large Christmas wreath. I'd marketed a neighbouring property a few months ago, and when the brochure for 33 Coleridge Terrace came back from the printers, the whole sales team stood around it, mentally calculating which body parts we could sell on the dark web for a chance of living there.

‘Is two hours going to be enough?' I asked, as we carted the cleaning equipment up the steps.

‘Yes,' said Jim.

‘Really? These are big houses.' I knew for a fact that there were at least four bedrooms and three bathrooms in these properties. And most people had either extended into the attic or the cellar, or both.

Jim unlocked the door and jabbed at the burglar alarm. ‘We're here twice a week. We focus on different areas on different days.'

‘And what is it today?'

He ushered me inside. ‘Today is kitchens and bathrooms.'

Of course it was. It was always bloody kitchens.

The first thing I noticed when we stepped into the tiled hall was that No. 7 didn't smell the way I'd expected. No. 33 had smelled of Jo Malone candles, wood polish and fresh coffee, even when they weren't expecting viewings. Whereas this house smelled of damp linen, blackening bananas and that faint, tart smell of boys. I noticed it when Alfie, Wes and Orson stayed over at Mum's for the weekend, detectable even above the smell of cleaning products. Not a smell -smell, just a tang of trainers and wet hair and farts and something under the sofa that hadn't been there before.

Jim was straight down to business, unloading cleaning buckets onto the stairs, scooping three stray socks and a gym bag up to make room, and dumping them straight into a washing basket.

‘We need to get cracking,' he said, raking discarded clothes off the floor, ‘because there's a lot to do, and Mrs Armstrong's back at three thirty with the boys. We need to be out by then.'

‘The unseen staff, eh?' I said, feeling unexpectedly bolshy. ‘Doesn't she like to see the servants at work? Frightened that the boys might be startled by the sight of a mop?'

Jim handed me the bucket. ‘Quite the reverse. I don't want to be here when they come back. You make a start in the kitchen, and I'll take upstairs and work down.'

‘Fine,' I said, and stepped into what should have been a showstopping double kitchen extension but was instead a heart-stopping mess.

A sensory overload of chaos greeted me. It was a jangling roar of colour and disorder: red and green Lego fragments scattered in irregular clumps on the rug, jaunty Emma Bridgewater bowls caked in dry cereal stacked on the side, a jammy knife sticking out of the crumb-speckled butter, ironing board still up by the window, shoes everywhere.

I took an involuntary step backwards. Straight into Jim, who was following me with the laundry basket he'd already collected from the first bedroom.

‘Clean the sink and work out,' he said, with a nod towards the Belfast sink in the central archipelago of the kitchen.

‘Can you give me a … list?' It sounds ridiculous, but my heart was bumping too fast and I fought down the strange urge to spin on my heels and walk out. Everything was out of place and I didn't know where to put it. And we only had two hours!

Jim filled the washing machine, slammed the door and said, ‘Come on, it's surely no worse than you've seen at home on a bad day.'

It was … and it wasn't. That was my mess and I knew where everything went, and how it had got there – the straighteners were on the floor because I didn't have time to put them away because I was running late, the conditioner was upside down so I could get the last bit out of the bottle, and last month's gym kit was in a pile by the bathroom door because I didn't want to put it in with a whites wash. Etcetera. Etcetera.

But this was different. It set me on edge.

I turned to see Jim watching me. I'd noticed him doing that before: watching, saying nothing, thinking . ‘Are you OK?'

I nodded, forcing myself to do my breathing: long breath in, hold it, long breath out. I'd learned techniques to deal with panic, and now did them almost instinctively, but new situations still threw me.

‘It's always a bit challenging, this place – just life with kids, I guess.' He shrugged. ‘Won't take long once you start.'

I nodded again, this time harder, but I couldn't move. A spark of impatience broke through Jim's carefully neutral expression, narrowing his eyes.

‘What is it that you don't feel able to do?'

A mental image of Jim reporting back to Cleo flashed across my mind – ‘… and I had to show her how to clean the sink …' – and I found my voice.

‘I'm just ...' I shook myself. ‘I'm deciding where to start.'

‘Clear up the Lego first,' Jim advised. ‘There's a dustpan and brush under the sink. Dump it in that box by the television.' He mimed despatching the Lego with a few brisk sweeps, and left me to it.

Come on, Robyn, I thought, visualising Cleo's expression if she heard I'd been broken by Lego. She'd love to be proved right about my inability to do this.

I squared my shoulders and went for the dustpan and brush.

Our last job of the day was a quick once-round-the-block for two dogs, Rambo and Nessie.

It was already twenty to five when we got there, ten minutes behind schedule; something Jim was quick to point out as part of his never-ending TED talk on the importance of time management. Now he'd started talking to me, he wouldn't shut up. I was a captive audience for his incessant lecturing.

‘It's vital that we leave punctually at the end of each job,' he reminded me. ‘Or else we risk the buffer zone.'

I couldn't take much more of Jim's managerial approach: wipe in this direction, don't smear that, hurry hurry hurry. It was irritating, especially since the one major detail he seemed to miss was that I had zero intention of becoming the Cleaner's Apprentice.

‘And incremental lateness,' he went on, ‘leads to a butterfly effect which is …'

‘Tasting with your feet?' I said, to wind him up. ‘Or accidentally causing a nuclear war?'

He turned, giving me full Teacher Face. ‘No, in this instance the butterfly effect is when …'

‘I know what the butterfly effect is,' I snapped. ‘I'm not stupid.'

He frowned, as if he couldn't work out whether I was joking or not.

We were saved from ourselves by the hysterical sound of two bored dogs trying to bark their way through the front door of 18 Macklin Avenue.

‘I'll take Nessie, you take Rambo,' Jim instructed. ‘The leads are by the stairs, grab them and clip them up. Deirdre should have harnessed the dogs before she left.'

‘Why am I getting Rambo?' I demanded as I followed him in.

A Jack Russell shot out between Jim's legs like a cannonball and I grabbed its collar automatically. The momentum nearly carried me backwards down the steps.

‘Rambo, stop!' Jim appeared with what looked like a small donkey. ‘This is Nessie. Scottish deerhound.'

Rambo stopped long enough for me to attach a lead to his harness. He sized me up and I felt distinctly lacking. Dogs and babies could sniff out a lack of authority in a second.

‘Right then,' said Jim, locking the door. ‘Follow me, I've got a route.'

Of course he had.

After five minutes it became clear that getting the smaller dog wasn't necessarily the easier option. Rambo was freakishly strong, with Cleo-like levels of determination and a fixation with lamp posts.

‘How long do we have to do this?' I panted as Rambo towed me down the street.

‘Thirty minutes,' said Jim.

‘What if we walked them faster and did it in twenty?'

‘No,' said Jim.

‘But that would be the same distance.'

‘It's not the point. She's paying for thirty minutes.'

‘We can't be flexible?'

‘No.'

I came to an abrupt halt as Rambo made another stop, giving me the most outrageous side eye as he cocked his leg on his tenth lamp post, daring me to complain. By now, nothing was coming out, but it was clearly the principle that mattered.

Meanwhile, in stark contrast, Nessie was loping obediently by Jim's side, without need of any hauling or muttering. Every so often she glanced up at him, then returned her gaze to the pavement ahead, satisfied that everything was right with the world.

‘Can you hurry him up?' Jim enquired.

‘No,' I said, stubbornly. ‘Marking and smelling is as important to the dog's sensory experience as walking.'

‘You have a dog?'

‘Not yet. But I've done a lot of research.'

I didn't want to tell Jim that it was more for any dog's sake than mine that I'd put off ownership: that I could wipe out a begonia in three days, two, if it was summer. However, I had a variety of hounds in my imaginary kennel and thanks to YouTube, I was a technical expert in everything from grooming to clicker training.

‘Each lamp post is like an art gallery of smells,' I added, seeing Nessie raise her long nose to the air. ‘It wears out their brains too, so we should let them stop.'

He grunted but couldn't argue with confidently presented facts.

‘Do you have a dog?' I could see Jim with a dog; a self-poo-bagging black Labrador that told the time.

‘No,' he said.

‘Too messy for you? Too much smearing?'

He shook his head. ‘I used to, but I … I haven't been in the right place for one recently.'

Wow. There was a lot going on between the lines there.

Jim must have realised he'd shared more than he meant to, because he said, ‘Shall we move on?' and clicked his tongue at Nessie, who trotted forward.

Rambo seemed less interested in lamp posts now he'd been allowed a good sniff, and the rest of the walk was easier. Jim even allowed Nessie to stop a few times to investigate a flowerbed, which she seemed to enjoy. We managed some self-conscious chat through the dogs (‘I see you don't care for cats, Rambo?' and ‘Wow, did you bring a shovel, Jim?') and he seemed impressed when I shared the cleaning tip that tomato ketchup was an effective and natural way of neutralising fox poo.

Then we took the dogs back home – bang on time – said our goodbyes and, with some relief, I drew a line under my housekeeping career. The mystery of Jim's dog-unfriendly life would have to go on the list with Terry's soap star, to dance across my brain on one of my many sleepless early mornings.