8

~ Coffee filter papers make great screen cleaners as they have no lint and leave a streak-free shine. Also good for mirrors and windows!

T he next day was Tuesday and, as Jim reminded me when I got in the van, we kicked off with an hour at Terry's.

‘I see you've made it through the audition, Robyn!' he observed when we arrived.

‘Doesn't everyone?' I asked.

‘No, he's got high standards!' Terry followed me and Jim down the hall. He was looking dapper, in a shirt and tie. ‘They don't call him the captain for nothing.'

‘They don't call me the captain,' said Jim.

Terry winked at me. He had a very retro wink, the sort you only saw in 1970s sitcom reruns. I resisted the temptation to wink back, but it was hard. I was grateful, though, for his attempts to lighten the mood.

Jim handed me another of his wipe-clean cards. ‘Kitchen, if you don't mind, Robyn. I'll do the bedroom and bathroom, and we'll finish in the sitting room.'

‘Yes, sir!' said Terry, with a mock salute. ‘I'll supervise in the kitchen. You can start by making me a cup of tea,' he added under his breath.

Terry had saved up several days' worth of conversation which he directed at me like a verbal water cannon while I scrubbed baked beans off his hob. His oldest grandson had just had another baby, and that segued naturally onto him telling me about his seven grandchildren, and their complex family arrangements. Two of his sons had children with seven different mothers – it was like one of those riddles about getting foxes and chickens over the river in a rowing boat, but with wedding cake – and one of his daughters had married one of her brother's ex's ex. (‘The black sheep, bless 'er.')

I did my best to keep up, but in the end Terry offered to draw me a diagram on the back of a French Fancies box, for which I was grateful. It was an impressive sight, and went across onto the front.

‘How about you?' he asked, taking a welcome breather to finish his tea. ‘You got a black sheep in your family?'

‘Me,' I said.

‘Nah! Can't believe that!'

‘To be honest, there aren't enough of us to have one. Dad's family are totally normal and Mum only has her dad left on her side. They're not in contact.' I checked Jim wasn't looking, and took the Hobnob Terry was offering while I racked my brains for some – any – gossip. ‘My sister's got a tattoo our mum doesn't know about. Does that count?'

‘Nah, there's always some scandal if you look hard enough.' He winked. ‘You need to dig around the family tree a bit. Ask your mum after she's had a sherry at Christmas!'

‘I'd have a job, she's strictly tea and coffee only.'

‘Ah! Now my Gill was the same – never touched a drop after that big night at the Ally Pally.' Terry nodded meaningfully. ‘Maybe that's your story there!'

I think he was implying that Mum's abstinence was a result of a Pimms too many at a staff summer party, but Terry had unwittingly touched on something I'd been thinking about lately.

I'd recently had a routine check-up at the doctor's, and he'd asked me about any inherited medical issues – I had no idea. Dad had trained me and Cleo out of asking questions about Mum's family, but we were getting to an age where we might actually need to know stuff. I mean, was there a reason she didn't drink? Had anyone had cancer? Or cataracts? Or depression? Or a million other conditions that might suddenly rear their ugly genetic heads?

We were very familiar with the varicose veins and short-sightedness that were Dad's gift to the family. That was something to look forward to.

I heard a loud cough from the sitting room, and Terry wagged his finger.

‘Get polishing, private!' he said.

And I did, but now my mind was half elsewhere, wondering what was worse, upsetting Mum or missing out on some crucial information about my own biology. And whether Cleo had ever managed to find a way to ask.

Jim didn't acknowledge the sparkling kitchen, not even when I finished it with time over to hoover the hallway. I reckoned I'd done a much better job than last time, but he said nothing, and I sat and stewed.

Jim's driving ground on my nerves. He checked his mirrors as if there was an examiner in the back seat, and he slowed down as we approached green traffic lights. At one point, we were being tailgated by a tractor.

Eventually, I snapped. ‘I know you think I was talking too much at Terry's but I was cleaning at the same time.'

Jim shook his head, as if he'd been miles away. ‘What? No, I wasn't thinking that.'

‘I ticked everything off.' I brandished the card at him. A full line of ticks. ‘See?'

‘Well done. Great.'

‘Are you being sarky? I can't tell.'

‘No. Sarcasm's counterproductive, I find.'

I stared out of the window at a new development was going up where the old scout hut had been on Duck Pond Green. I wondered if Mitch was involved.

Discreetly I removed my phone from my overalls to check if he'd texted while we'd been at Terry's. He hadn't. I put my phone back in my pocket. Jim didn't say anything but I knew he'd noticed.

‘Anyway, I think Terry benefits from the chat as much as the cleaning.' I pictured how Terry's wrinkled face lit up while he was rattling on about his youth, his adventures in the town. Did he have other visitors? Did he get out much? ‘Must make a change when you live alone, having someone to tell your stories to. Someone to listen.'

‘Tell that to your predecessor. She begged to be taken off his rota before she said something she regretted.'

‘Well, I enjoy his stories,' I said, stoutly. ‘He's led a very interesting life.'

‘Good. Did he ever tell you who the soap star was?'

‘Were you listening to our conversation?'

‘Hard not to. Well?'

‘No,' I said. ‘He's making me guess. Two guesses per visit.'

Jim glanced across at me. Our eyes met and, although he didn't say anything, I knew what he was thinking: that it was a ruse to keep me chatting.

I didn't want to acknowledge that, so I said, ‘Where are we going next?'

‘St Anselm's.' Jim tapped his nose. ‘Celebrity client! No clues but … Ready, Steady, Clean!'

My heart sank. I knew exactly where we were going, and whose house it was.

My secret fear when I started cleaning for Cleo was about to come true.

It was inevitable, given the number of houses I'd sold and the amount of work I'd put Cleo's way, that eventually I'd end up scrubbing a sink belonging to an erstwhile client.

Not that they'd necessarily recognise me in my new persona, of course. I'd decided quickly that there was no point wasting contact lenses on mucking out messy houses (or on Jim), so I wore my glasses to work, and my glasses were thick . I'd abandoned my half-hour morning blow-dry in favour of maximum horizontal recovery time, and consequently, in just eight short days, I already looked like the ‘before' photo in a very dramatic makeover.

It hadn't mattered what I looked like when I was degreasing the Armstrongs' kitchen or making a third cup of tea for Terry, but when Jim turned the van down a familiar tree-lined drive, towards a familiar stately property, now divided into eight luxury apartments, I suddenly felt concious of every unwashed hair on my head.

This was St Anselm's. And this was where Adam Doherty, the closest thing Longhampton had to a celebrity, lived, in the stunning garden apartment I'd sold him only six months previously. Casually, I checked today's laminated lists and yup, it was the garden apartment we were cleaning, for Mr A.C. Doherty (‘Eco products, water plants, focus on the kitchen').

‘Nice place, isn't it?' said Jim as we approached the house, and I nodded dumbly.

Adam Doherty was a farmer's son turned local fastfood entrepreneur who had spent much of lockdown posting on social media about his organic burgers, which he filmed himself cooking then delivering on a tractor. Somehow (well, not somehow : he did it in very short shorts and he was ripped) BBQAdam had exploded, netting him various sponsorship deals which he'd splashed on this flat and a new, bigger restaurant which he was currently away opening in Bristol.

Adam had invested his cash wisely, I thought, as we drew up outside. Its pointed Gothic windows gleamed in the morning sunlight, while varicoloured ivy crept along the sandstone, around the arched entrance and all the way up to the clock tower with the cockerel weathervane. Mitch and his team had done a stunning job on the conversion. Every apartment had sold for over the asking price, and I'd even had people asking to be put on a waiting list if a sale fell through.

And soon this will be me, I reminded myself. Lark Manor would be even smarter and more desirable than this. It gave me a warm Christmas Eve feeling inside.

‘I know what you're thinking,' said Jim, cutting through my giddy imaginings.

‘Do you?'

‘You're wondering how much these apartments go for.'

I squinted at him. ‘Why do you say that?'

‘Because you always make some comment about this being a popular street, or that being a very trendy colour.'

‘On trend. Not trendy .'

Jim ignored me. He counted off on his fingers. ‘Or that house needing renovating or how much more saleable this place would be with a wet room.'

I didn't appreciate the expression he was pulling. Jim made it sound mercenary, though, not the professional insight that it actually was.

‘I wasn't thinking that.' I lifted my chin. ‘I was thinking … What an amazing place this must have been to go to school. Like Hogwarts.'

‘It wasn't a school, it was a hotel.'

‘No, it was a school first. Then a hospital during the Second World War. There was a bomb shelter in the gardens.'

Jim's pretend surprise turned to genuine surprise, and I realised normal people probably didn't know a building's CV in the sort of detail the agent who'd marketed it would.

‘You didn't know that?' I shook my head, feigning the sort of ‘surprise' Jim cast my way when I failed to recognise limescale. ‘Wow. How long have you lived round here?'

‘Two years,' said Jim. ‘But I wasn't aware you had to take some kind of citizenship test.'

‘Most big houses were requisitioned as hospitals during one war or another,' I said. ‘Didn't you watch Downton Abbey ?'

‘Absolutely not. Anyway, just so you know, the client we're cleaning for today is a celebrity chef,' he went on. ‘I don't think Mr Doherty's here, but just in case he is, no gawping, OK? And no taking photos of his flat to send to your mates.'

‘Why would I gawp?' I followed him round to the back of the van to haul the green bucket of eco-friendly cleaning products out of the back. ‘He's been on Saturday Kitchen

once . He's hardly Gordon Ramsay.'

What Jim didn't know was that I'd met Mr Doherty on three separate occasions – to show him round the apartment, to discuss his offer and then to hand over the keys with the usual bottle of moderately priced champagne. He'd also patted my bum on occasion two. Just the once, though. Annoyingly I couldn't tell Jim that, on account of wanting to look discreet, but then I doubted he'd appreciate decent gossip anyway.

‘I'm just saying,' said Jim. ‘It's been a problem in the past.'

‘Gawping?' I followed him up the stone stairs, banging the corrugated hose of the vacuum cleaner deliberately because I knew it annoyed him.

‘Discretion. It's the main reason we have to let people go. You have to see everything and nothing in this business.'

We ? Wasn't Cleo the one who did the hiring and firing? If he was a manager, maybe Cleo was making him work six months on the shop floor to learn the ropes. Ah. That would make a lot of sense.

‘I have no interest in Adam Doherty,' I said confidently. ‘Just his filthy cupboards.' But I checked my reflection in the age-spotted, salvage-sourced mirror over the fireplace in the entrance hall nonetheless.

There was no sign of BBQAdam when Jim let us in through the modern glass door to his apartment, and I was disappointed to see that his furniture choices hadn't lived up to the potential of the space.

Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, mezzanine study, and the star of the show: an open-plan kitchen-diner-sitting-room space with original herringbone parquet, double row of brass lampshades suspended from the vaulted ceiling and full-height windows giving a view out to the lawn, rolling down to the topiary shapes at the far end. Perfect for someone who loved cooking and entertaining, and filming themselves while doing so.

Adam hadn't exactly overwhelmed the space with furniture, and what furniture there was seemed to have been ordered in a job lot from World of Leather. There were two huge leather sofas, two full-size cowhide rugs and a couple of leather recliners, facing a television so big it might have come from a sports bar. I suppose it might have been a stylistic tribute to his farming heritage.

‘Change of plan today.' Jim handed me the bathroom bucket. ‘I'm going to do the kitchen, you can do the bathrooms.'

‘Wow, is this a promotion?'

‘No, the client's a chef. The kitchen's got to be spotless.'

How rude. ‘And you think I can't get it spotless?'

Jim didn't dignify that with a response. He nodded at the bucket. ‘I've put the bathroom checklist in there. Do everything in that exact order, top to bottom. Do you want me to show you how to use the K?rcher?'

‘The shower hoover? I think I can work it out,' I said.

‘Well, be careful with it, the tiles in the bathroom were extremely expensive.' Jim stared at the floor-to-ceiling units and vast expanse of marble and chrome and rolled his shoulders, like a man facing the foothills of Mount Everest. I'd say he was excited at the challenge of cleaning the kitchen of a professional. How totally tragic. ‘We've got two hours. Let's go.'

I remembered Adam's bathroom from the viewings. They were the same throughout the development: French navy wet rooms with brass hardware, shower heads the size of a Le Creuset casserole, vast glass screens with flipper doors for easy access. Plants, plants, plants as far as the eye could see.

The interior designer had included wall brackets for trailing ivies and pothos to achieve that Instagram jungle look; Adam had kept the plants but most of them were on their last legs, so – after a quick peek in Adam's bathroom cabinet (Creed, very nice, but also Lynx Africa) – I put what I could fit in the sink to soak while I tackled the shower.

Jim's checklist was predictably forensic. I rarely cleaned my own bathroom, so I was grateful to have something to work down: for a start, it wouldn't have occurred to me to dust the extractor fan. It took me a while to identify it. But I got cracking: dusting, then wiping, then rinsing, then spraying everything in sight with the special eco-cleaning stuff.

From the kitchen, I could hear Jim's giant toothbrush going at the big range cooker – which looked unused to me, but what did I know? – then something caught my ear. Was he singing ? I paused. Yes, he was. He was singing to himself, quietly, then whistling the guitar parts. Maybe he thought I had AirPods in and couldn't hear him.

Jim had a nice voice, bit wobbly in places, but he knew all the words. He was singing … I strained my ears. Guide me, O Thou Great Redeemer? Really?

I turned to the shower, feeling like an eavesdropper. Although I'd extolled the virtues of the showers on viewings, I hadn't demonstrated them, and it was only when I went to rinse the tiles with the hand attachment that I realised I hadn't the first idea how they worked. There were three different levers, two different brass taps, every one blank – it was more like the workings of a steam train than a shower.

I turned to shout for Jim's assistance, then immediately thought better of it. No. I'd said I could do bathrooms. I'd do the bathroom.

So I started at the top and turned a tiny brass ship's wheel – nothing happened.

OK. I tried the next ship's wheel down, first one way, then the other. Nothing.

Recklessly I threw a lever to the left and a bucketload of freezing cold water was dumped straight onto my head.

I yelled out in shock – it was freezing – and flung the lever the other way, which stopped the water raining down on me for a second, only to divert the flow from the overhead to the handheld shower – which was pointing at my legs. A powerful jet of ice-cold water drenched my lower half and I shrieked again, while the force of the water pressure (‘Really excellent, as good as you'd get in a five star hotel') sent the shower head skidding and spinning around the enclosure like a fire hose, efficiently saturating the rest of my overalls and misting up my glasses.

I grappled with the bucking shower head as best I could but whatever I'd done had set the shower to full force and I couldn't get a grip on it. Water was bouncing off the toilet and sink now, slicking down the walls, and in an effort to stop the bathroom flooding I reached out and grabbed for the biggest shower control, twisting it as hard as I could.

It came off in my hands. Literally. In one piece.

I stared at it in horror for one nanosecond as a horizontal jet of cold water shot out from the middle of the brass pipes with the force of a donkey kick straight into my chest. (That would be the enhanced water-pressure pump.) I stumbled backwards, slipped on my own cleaning sponge, and, reaching out for something to stop me falling, dragged the huge designer shower rack off the wall.

The sound of the clattering metal crashing against the tiles was only just louder than my own embarrassing screech of shock. My coccyx slammed against the shower tray so hard that my teeth felt loose in my head.

I think I might have concussed myself for a moment. Everything seemed to be underwater, thick and slow. And cold. Really cold.

‘Robyn? Robyn? Did you break something?'

I heard Jim long before I saw him, since my glasses were now lost in the flood and my wet hair was plastered over my eyes.

He was going to go mad, I thought, and for a second I considered trying to act my way out of it, but with what excuse? And anyway, it was too late. Jim burst in with a startled, ‘Oh my god!'

‘I didn't do anything!' I wailed. Water was blasting out of the broken shower, hitting the tiles above my head and soaking me to the skin. I struggled to my knees just in time to see the shelf of plants behind Jim's head, now twice as heavy with a full load of cold water in the pots, start to pull away from the wall.

‘Jim!' I yelled, as the shelf tilted and the plant pots slid.

He frowned – fair enough, I hadn't been very specific – and I gestured wildly over his shoulder. ‘The shelf!'

It lurched to one side and I thought it was going to crash right onto his shoulder, but somehow, Jim spun and at the same time shoved the whole thing back against the wall with one hand, even managing to catch the mini cactus on the end as it slid off with his spare hand.

It was an impressive split-second reaction.

I fumbled around for my glasses, which thankfully I hadn't sat on, and the carnage around me came back into focus.

I vaguely registered the broken shower basket and the cracked bottles leaking expensive gels across the marble tiles, but it was hard not to stare at Jim, who was holding up the plant shelf as if it weighed nothing; I knew it must weigh a ton, because his sleeves were rolled up to the elbow for oven-cleaning purposes and I could see his bicep flexing under the strain. He didn't seem to notice, though.

‘Are you OK?' He twisted round, trying to balance the shelf while assessing me for head injuries from a distance of five metres. ‘Can you wiggle your toes and fingers?'

I dragged my attention back to my own predicament. ‘Um, yes. I think so.'

‘Nothing broken?' He seemed more concerned about any damage to me than the bathroom.

‘Only the shower.'

‘The shower?' he said, deadpan. ‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes!' I squawked, then realised he was joking. What a time for him to reveal a sense of humour.

‘Good. In that case, can you give me a hand with this?'

I struggled to my feet and squelched over to the door. He handed me the cactus and said, ‘This might as well come off,' calmly pulling the other side of the shelf off the wall and setting it down by the door. Then he grabbed a hand towel, wrapped it round the gushing shower pipe and thankfully, finally, the water stopped.

We both breathed out and stared around the bathroom. But not for long. The towel was darkening as it soaked up the water.

‘Where do you even start?' I wondered, half to myself. Could we just leave? Could we pretend it had been burgled before we got here?

‘We need to turn off the water at the stopcock.' Jim gave the towel tourniquet a last squeeze. ‘I'm guessing it'll be in the kitchen. You hold that towel, I'll go and find it.'

I had a flash of memory, from a viewing with an exceptionally fussy client who wanted to see everything, up to and including the electricity meter, stopcock, water meter and fuse box. ‘The stopcock's in the hall.'

‘No, it'll be in the kitchen.'

I was too worried about the state of the bathroom to remember what I wasn't supposed to know. The towel was soaked and the pipe was shaking, as if it might come off the wall in another minute. ‘I'm telling you, it's in the tall cupboard in the hall!'

Jim gave me a funny look but left and, within a minute, the pressure abruptly lessened, then went to a dribble, then stopped.

I breathed out. So there had been a silver lining to that seemingly wasted afternoon showing the Farrells around the designated bin areas.

Warily, I unpeeled the towel from the pipe and attempted to fit the valve back on. I tried every angle, including a basic jam-it-on-and-hope, but to no avail. It had sheered clean off.

Jim reappeared, drying his hair with a tea towel. ‘Stopcock was in the hall. What a stupid place to put it. How did you know that?'

‘Um, a friend lives in a similar conversion.' I proffered the valve. ‘Are you any good at fixing showers?'

‘No,' said Jim. ‘You?'

‘No.'

We surveyed the damage to the bathroom. It was definitely a wet room now: water had saturated every crevice. The plant shelf had left ugly gashes in the plaster where the Rawlplugs had pulled away; there was standing water on every surface; and the vanity mirror reflected our shocked faces back at us, infinitely and with brutal lighting.

I braced myself for Jim to start firing off questions about how I'd managed to destroy a luxury bathroom. I had no idea how much this would cost to repair. Would I have to pay for this to be fixed? How could I pay for it? Would Cleo strangle me if Adam Doherty sacked the agency because I'd wrecked his house? No, that wasn't a question. Cleo would strangle me.

Jim peered at me. ‘Are you all right? You look … dazed.'

‘I'm fine.' My head ached, but I had more pressing things to worry about, like how I could fix this before Cleo found out and removed my head altogether.

He held up a finger in front of my eyes. ‘Can you follow my finger if I …'

I swatted his finger out of the way. This wasn't the time for health and safety. ‘I'm fine, Jim. We need to clean up this mess.'

For a second he seemed impressed at my motivation, but then he said something that tipped me over the edge.

‘I need to give Cleo a ring before we start,' he said, and reached for his phone.

‘No!'

We both looked down and acknowledged that I'd grabbed his wrist to stop him dialling. Self-consciously, I released it. Jim wasn't the sort of person you touched casually. I wasn't sure it didn't constitute a minor assault. ‘Do we have to?'

Jim gestured at the carnage. ‘It's damage to a client's property. And you've had a workplace injury. Cleo needs to call us a plumber.'

‘She's so busy!' I gabbled. ‘We need to prioritise the client! Look, I know lots of plumbers, I bet I can get one round here quicker than Cleo can.' I whipped out my own phone and scrolled through the list of trades.

For obvious professional reasons I took everyone's details: plumbers and electricians were about as reliable at answering phones as I was, so you needed lots of numbers. I started with Gary Allison and, miraculously, he picked up on the third ring.

‘Robyn?' said Gary warily. ‘This isn't about that septic tank in Much Martley, is it? Because it was definitely a sheep in there, not—'

‘Nooo!' I said, in my most charming voice. ‘I don't suppose you could do me a massive favour, could you?'

Jim raised his eyebrow, but disappeared to find a mop and bucket.

I'd never worked harder in my life, whipped on as I was by the knowledge that we only had forty minutes to hide the evidence of my carelessness, and by the time we left, the bathroom was almost back to normal. Gary the plumber managed to patch up the shower but there was no disguising the broken shelf, and as we drove away a feeling of acid dread settled in my stomach.

Cleo was going to kill me.

I'd destroyed a client's confidence in Taylor Maid, as well as a luxury wet room. It would cost a fortune to repair, Adam Doherty would find out who'd done it – the woman who sold him the flat in the first place, ha ha! – and then that would probably appear on the town Facebook page too. Which would help my property job applications no end.

But mainly, Cleo was going to kill me.

I was too stressed to speak, and Jim's silence didn't help; I guessed he was mentally compiling the report.

I shifted in my seat. The spare overalls in the van were too small, and the sensation of my thighs straining against the polycotton added to my humiliation. All I wanted to do was to go home and hide under my duvet, pretending none of this had happened. But I couldn't. I was trapped in a Renault Kangoo with my jobsworth line manager and his laminated checklists.

Was there any way I could persuade Jim not to tell Cleo what I'd done? My imagination shuffled the possibilities like a deck of cards. Was there a builder I could bribe to go round and fix the shelf before Adam got back? I'd need to steal a key. Could I do that?

Jim stopped the car (safely, in a lay-by, hazard lights on) and turned to face me. He started doing the ‘watch my finger' thing in front of my eyes again.

‘What?' I demanded. ‘Why have you stopped?'

‘Are you absolutely sure you don't have concussion?' He frowned. ‘We can drive to A&E, it's not a problem.'

‘What? No!'

Jim retracted his finger but maintained his concerned expression. ‘You haven't spoken for ten minutes. We haven't been working together long, but even I know that's not normal.'

‘I'm worried about Adam Doherty's bathroom,' I said, huffily. ‘Do you think we did a decent job of cleaning it up?'

He seemed mollified. ‘I'd say so. Well done on getting that plumber out so quickly. Shame he couldn't fix it but at least it's not going to leak.'

‘Do you think … he'll notice?' It was a stupid question.

‘Who? Adam?' Jim looked at me as if I'd just asked if Santa was real. ‘Yes, I think even Adam might notice there's a space on the wall where his plants were. Although it might take him a while to work out what's different.'

‘Is there any way …?' My voice trailed off.

‘What?'

I couldn't believe I was even saying this. ‘Are you going to tell Cleo it was me who broke the shower?'

Jim stared at me, as if he couldn't quite work out how to respond to the question. I could feel the judgement radiating off him and I shrivelled inside.

‘Why wouldn't I?' he asked.

I bit my lip. There were several very good reasons why not, but unfortunately, I didn't want to reveal any of them to Jim because they made me look pathetic.

The truth was, I had been trying to pretend this entire unfortunate period in my life wasn't happening. I wanted to slither through it without leaving a mark, invisible in other people's houses, before emerging again as a re-employed estate agent. This disaster made it real. It would mean a showdown with Cleo, more evidence that I couldn't do something as simple as cleaning without screwing up, not to mention me damaging her business just before the big awards do.

Shame was knotting my innards. Everywhere I turned, I felt like a failure, with a bollocking waiting for me on all sides.

Jim was waiting for an answer. He reminded me of those teachers at primary school who were happy to sit ‘for as long as it took' to get an apology. Maybe he was a head teacher. A disgraced head teacher, forced out of the profession for being too head teacherly?

I decided to go for the least embarrassing truth.

‘I'm worried that Cleo will make me pay for the damage,' I said. ‘I don't have …' How could I phrase it so he wouldn't think less of me? (Why did I even care if Jim thought less of me?) ‘I'm between jobs right now.'

‘Hence the cleaning?' He said it as if it only confirmed what he'd already guessed.

I nodded, reluctantly.

I sensed Jim's satisfaction that he'd dragged an honest response from me. ‘Well, I can set your mind at rest right there,' he said. ‘It was accidental breakage. It'll be covered by insurance.'

Unfortunately, there was no insurance against your big sister.

‘And in any case, didn't the plumber say the unit was faulty?' he went on. ‘I don't think you deliberately meant to rip the shower off the wall …'

‘I didn't rip it off the wall,' I interrupted, ‘the valve broke!'

‘… even if you're maybe not the most, um, careful cleaner?' He smiled a little, to show he was joking – but also, not joking.

It was the way he said it. Ngggh . ‘What do you mean, not the most careful cleaner ?'

‘Well, you're not, are you?'

I stared at Jim, furious even though it was true. Was that going to go in the report?

‘Cleo will understand. These things happen. Although,' he added, thoughtfully, ‘it's probably going to be the most expensive claim we've had to make, so be prepared for some grumbling. She can be a bit …' Jim searched for an appropriate word, ‘ tricky at times, but she's not a monster, I promise. She's just got high standards, which is no bad thing.'

This wasn't the first time Jim had been mildly critical of Cleo. Another reason it was probably at least a week too late to reveal my secret identity. Although if he continued with the snarky comments …

‘Is that it?' I enquired.

Either my sarcasm was lost on Jim or he chose to ignore it, which was equally irritating. ‘That's it! In my experience, it's best to be upfront when problems arise.' He concluded his lecture, with the infuriating smugness of someone who'd probably never done anything more stupid than putting the wrong fuel in his car, once. ‘There's absolutely no point trying to do anything else. Be honest, and then you never have to worry about what lie you've told.'

‘Are you calling me a liar now?'

‘No, I'm just explaining why I think it's important to own your mistakes.'

I slumped back into my seat. Was it too late to ask to be taken to A&E? I could sit there for a few hours with a coffee. I quite fancied that.

‘Right then!' Jim rubbed his hands together as if he'd just solved world peace. ‘Now we've got that out of the way, let's go and clean some houses.'