‘He should,’ nodded Wenda. ‘Nobody goes to see that old lad. Only me. He sits staring at the TV all day every day and you can tell he’s not really taking owt in. I opened his fridge to make him a sandwich and everything in it was blue wi’ mould.’
‘Venda vent shopping.’ Astrid clarified to Della.
‘Just a few bits. Can’t you ring his family, Della? It’s wrong.’
‘Ze bastards,’ added Astrid, flicking her long hair extensions behind her powerful shoulders. ‘Zay don’t give a flying chuff.’
‘You’re a cleaner not a bloody social worker,’ said Della. ‘It’s none of our business so no, I won’t ring.’
Wenda grabbed the handles of her bag and jerked them upwards.
‘Sometimes you have to make it your business, Della. Go and see the state of him and tell me you can walk off and not think about him.’
‘Venda and I are taking him a pie oop later,’ added Astrid.
‘Well you shouldn’t get involved,’ sniffed Della.
‘Jesus, Della. I wish I were as cold as you. I might get more sleep at night. Come on, Astrid.’ Wenda flounced across the office towards the door.
‘How can you be so bluddy hard, Della?’ Astrid’s nose was wrinkled up in disgust as she passed by her desk in Wenda’s wake.
How indeed, thought Della, as the door slammed shut behind them. Hard, cold. Yes, she fitted both of those words. And she had done for many years. And at the moment, she felt colder and harder than ever, as if her whole insides had been scooped out and replaced with huge solid blocks of ice which ground together and caused her pain. Jimmy Diamond was the man who had begun to thaw her cold heart after years of abuse by men, and he had turned out to be the biggest dick of them all.
Her father had left on her sixth birthday. She was eating a slice of her birthday cake at the time, when there was an almighty commotion. Her mother was screaming at her father, trying to stop him getting to the door with his suitcase in his hand but he was a powerfully built man and her mother was as thin as a twig. Pleas turned to vitriol. As her father stepped out of the door, her mother picked up Della’s beautiful cake all covered in chocolate buttons and launched it at his back. And when he had gone her mother had sobbed and howled and blamed her little daughter for her stretch marks during a pregnancy that hadn’t been planned or wanted, and had led eventually to the end of her marriage. The smell of chocolate cake had always had the power to drag Della back to that unhappy day when she last saw her father. She hadn’t touched it since. And she had never cried in front of anyone since either. Even at that young age, she had made up her mind never to let anyone see how much they could wound her.
Her first love, Charlie Decker, had only gone out with her for a bet. She had been devastated to discover how many people had been laughing behind her back at the very idea that she – Della Frostick – could ever really pull a dish as gorgeous as Charlie. He humiliated her, crushed her, but she never let Charlie and his gang see that. In fact her peers were impressed by how little she let it affect her. Or so they thought. Inside, her heart was shredded by his cruelty. It took years to piece back together, yet a shadow always remained.
It took Richard Grindle two persistent years to worm his way into her heart and bed when she was twenty-two. Within three months of their marriage, he had run off with the neighbour’s daughter and Della’s savings. She had made up her mind never again to let a man even near the perimeter of her heart. She parked barbed wire and Alsatians around it, but somehow the cheeky, handsome head of a cleaning firm with a hearty line in chatter and a big grin had dodged all her defences: Jimmy Diamond. Despite the fact that Jimmy Diamond’s lips had never strayed beyond her cheek, despite the fact that Jimmy Diamond’s hands had never touched her intimately, despite the fact that Jimmy Diamond had a wife and daughter and promised her nothing, she had fallen in love with him and stayed in love with him for fifteen years. Nothing had ever tipped over into actually happening so the intimacy remained pure, intact and perfect in Della’s head. Jimmy’s kisses would never have satisfied in real life as they did in her imagination, nor would his love-making. That he sometimes looked at Della as if he wanted to rip her knickers off there and then had fuelled her fantasies and coloured her dreams. But it had all been a lie – and it felt like the biggest lie of all. One deception too far. All the past hurts and lies had accumulated and Jimmy Diamond was going to take the blame for them all. Hard and cold – oh yes, Della was frozen solid. Everyone she had ever liked or loved had stabbed her either in the back or the front and she would never allow anyone near her again. She wouldn’t blink an eyelid whilst she destroyed Jimmy Diamond’s business knowing that she would destroy him too. In fact, she was looking forward to it.
Chapter 28
At lunch time when Jimmy was supposedly having a business lunch in Wakefield and Ivanka was supposedly out shopping, Della rang Connie on the secret mobile phone.
‘How are you getting on? Has Hilda phoned you yet?’
‘No,’ replied Connie with a heavy sigh.
‘Give it time,’ said Della. ‘She might want the weekend to think about things.’
‘That’s what I was hoping.’ Although Connie didn’t have a good feeling about it, if she was honest. After telling Hilda that cleaning places were limited at Lady Muck, she would have thought she might have made an initial enquiry at least.
‘I’m going to ring a client of ours now – a Mr Savant – to tell him that we can’t clean for him any more. I had to sack the woman who did him – Ruth Fallis. If by any chance she gets hold of your number and asks for a job, stay well clear. Anyway, the girls say his house is haunted, which is a load of old codswallop. It used to be an undertaker’s place. It’s a big creepy house and no doubt creaks a lot but if you’re like me, you’ll know that ghosts don’t exist.’
‘Well, I’ve never seen one,’ smiled Connie. ‘So…’
‘I’ll text you his number. As soon as I’ve spoken to him I’ll text you so you can get in touch with him right away and offer him your services. I’ll keep trying if I can’t get him straight off, okay?’
‘Thanks, Della.’ Another customer would be good. She’d had a bit of luck that morning as an old lady from Della’s files had rung back and said she would like a cleaner for two hours per week. Then again, Connie didn’t want to take on too many customers before she had the cleaners to work for them. She had started dreaming about chickens and eggs.
Mr Savant wasn’t in when Della rang. She left a message asking if he would please call her then she made herself a coffee and sat back in her chair wondering what else she could do to drive business from Diamond Shine to Lady Muck.
*
The windows were totally steamed up on Jimmy’s BMW as he and Ivanka writhed around snogging on the back seat whilst they were parked up a country lane. Jimmy slipped his hand up Ivanka’s skirt and hooked his fingers around the side of her knickers, and was gobsmacked when she firmly pushed him back and extricated herself from his arms.
‘No, Jimmy, I can’t.’
‘You can’t what?’ said Jimmy, wiping the sweat from his brow with one hand and adjusting the tightness in his trousers with the other.
‘I can’t have sex.’
‘What’s up? Are you on? We can do other things then. Come here.’
She jerked backwards as his arms came out and his eyebrows dipped in confusion.
‘What’s up?’ She was usually gagging for it. There was something about sex in the car that really got her going.
‘It’s Lent,’ she said coolly, inspecting her fingernails for chips.
‘What?’
‘It’s Lent,’ Ivanka repeated. ‘I have given up sex for Lent.’
Jimmy stared at her for a few moments, then his face cracked into a grin. ‘You little tease,’ he said. ‘You had me going there.’
‘No, I mean it, Jimmy.’ Ivanka’s hand came out to stop him coming forwards. ‘ We can kiss but that’s all.’
‘Kiss?’ Jimmy exclaimed, as if she had just said they could roll around in pig manure.
‘Yes. Just kissing. Until Easter.’
‘Easter? That’s . . .’ Jimmy tried to calculate when that was.
‘I think Lent is just a little bit longer than forty days and forty nights. It started on Wednesday.’
‘I know when Lent started,’ Jimmy huffed. ‘Connie said she’d given up chocolate for it.’
Ivanka jerked squarely back in her seat and folded her arms. She hated when Jimmy mentioned his wife, which wasn’t often, to be fair.
‘What’s up now?’ Jimmy said, seeing the sour look on her face.
‘You mention your wife. I don’t like it when you do that.’
‘Oh come on, love.’ Jimmy reached out to tenderly touch her plump cheek and she pulled back from him.
‘I want to be Mrs Diamond,’ she pouted.
‘And you will, my angel.’
Ivanka spun her head towards him sharply. ‘When? You have given me no date. We are engaged but you have no intention of marrying me.’
‘I have,’ Jimmy protested, but not very forcibly. In truth he had pushed the next stage of his relationship out of his mind, hoping it would all go away. So far it had all been pretty plain sailing but what was to come would be very sticky and messy.
‘When? When are you going to tell your wife that you are divorcing?’
‘Soon,’ said Jimmy, raking his fingers back through his thick brown hair.
‘Well soon is not good enough any more, Jimmy.’ Ivanka raised her two perfect tadpoles of eyebrows. ‘I will give up sex for Lent and you will give up trying to be married.’
‘What?’ said Jimmy, his heart starting to increase in pace.
‘You will tell your wife you want divorce at the end of Lent or we are finished. I mean it. I will wait no longer. Now I am going to drive back to the office.’ And she got out of his car and into her own which was parked next to it.
Jimmy knew she was serious and he couldn’t really blame her for being annoyed. He shouldn’t have given her that bloody engagement ring until he was free to do so. Now she had got ideas in her head – hadn’t she made him drive slowly past a bridal shop last week so she should see the frocks in the window? The idea of being married to Ivanka was fabulous but the thought of having to end things with Connie made him feel sick. He’d always seen himself as a Tom Jones sort of bloke: a man who married early but had the audacity to become more attractive to the female eye with age. The temptations were too great to ignore, but his wife was his best girl and one day – when it was all out of his system – he would settle down properly with her. Then he met golden Ivanka and she was one turn-on too far.
He lifted his eyes to the rear-view mirror and saw Ivanka’s Audi screech off. He set off himself then and paused at the T-junction whilst deciding whether to turn left and follow her straight back to the office, or go right and call in the pub for a quiet half-pint away from everyone. One thing was sure, whatever direction he drove the car in, he was inevitably heading for shit creek without a paddle.
*
Della noticed that Ivanka was in a very grumpy mood when she came back from lunch. Fifteen minutes later, Jimmy walked in and also had a face like a slapped backside. It was clear they’d had a row, especially as Jimmy went straight back out again with his briefcase, mumbling about going to see Pookie, and Ivanka didn’t even lift her head to acknowledge his ‘see you later, girls.’
‘Oh dear, someone’s not happy,’ said Della as she looked out of the window and watched his car driving away. ‘Wonder what’s up with him.’
Ivanka lifted her shoulders and dropped them again. ‘Who knows? This is why I don’t get involved with men. They are moody and sulky.’
‘I think sometimes this business gets him down,’ said Della with a gentle sigh. She had decided in her lunch hour to plant some nice fat seeds in Ivanka’s brain that would grow and flourish into killer triffids. ‘Some of the clients think they’re buying his soul when they rent a cleaner; they need taking down a peg or two. I mean, who do some of them think they are? Half the time they’re just lazy people who like to lord it above others. They think they’re living in the Victorian age with servants. And as for the girls? I say “girls”,’ and she laughed lightly, ‘they want their cake and to eat it. They don’t know how lucky they are working for Jimmy. They wouldn’t get treated as well anywhere else and they know that. They might rattle their fists sometimes to get their own way, but Jimmy has always stood firm against the unreasonable demands they occasionally try to make and none of them have left to go to another firm. So what does that tell you, eh?’
‘That they don’t know how good they have it here?’ suggested Ivanka.
‘Precisely,’ nodded Della. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. Shall I bring you a bottle of sparkling water through?’
‘Yes, that would be good.’
She went into the kitchen pod and put on the kettle for herself and pulled out a bottle of water from the fridge for Ivanka, whose manners were atrocious. She had to bite back on her lip and not say ‘a please would be nice occasionally.’ She stood over the kettle waiting for it to boil and heard the phone ring in the office. Della couldn’t have timed her tea-making interlude any more perfectly.
‘Hello, Diamon’ Shined,’ Ivanka said in her usual way as she picked up the phone. ‘Oh hello, Mr Savant . . . so you are returning call . . . okay, could you please wait a moment.’
Ivanka put Mr Savant on hold and called out to Della.
Della popped her head out of the kitchen. ‘It’s about not being able to supply a cleaner to him any more. Just tell him we haven’t got anyone. Don’t mention it’s because the girls think his house is haunted, whatever you do. I don’t know what the legal repercussions would be for Jimmy.’
She congratulated herself with that ridiculous statement and listened from behind the door.
Ivanka’s bad mood, mixed with nuggets from her recent conversation with Della plus a misplaced confidence in her ability to step into Della’s shoes combined to make a fire in her veins. Listen and learn, she mouthed silently at Della through the wall. As the future Mrs Diamond she was going to start asserting her position. She pressed the button that took Mr Savant off hold.
‘Hello Mr Savant, this is Ivanka speaking. I am sorry, but we have bad news, we can no longer supply a cleaner to you.’
‘You can’t supply a cleaner?’ said Mr Savant at the other end of the line with dignified disbelief. ‘Have I just heard right? Are you turning down my business?
‘That is correct.’
‘But what about the girl who came this week?’
‘She does not want to work for you.’
‘And why not?’ Mr Savant’s polite tone was being strangled now by mounting annoyance.
‘Because . . . because . . .’ Warned not to mention the house, Ivanka was forced to think of a reason on her feet, and she wasn’t very good at doing that. ‘. . . Because she doesn’t, okay? We do not have to give you reasons but if you want one, we do not like you here at Diamond Shine.’
Behind the door, Della winced.
‘I beg your pardon, young lady?’
Young lady? thought Ivanka. He wasn’t taking her seriously. Well, he might in a moment.
‘Yes, that is correct. No one wants to work for you from here so you will have to find other cleaner.’
‘Oh don’t you worry, I w—’ but his words were lost as Ivanka cut him off.
‘Creep,’ she yelled at the phone. ‘We do not need weirdy customers like you with your haunted houses. Go to hell.’
In the kitchen, Della slipped the mobile out of her pocket and texted Connie RING SAVANT. Within five minutes, Connie had added another customer to the client list of Lady Muck.
Chapter 29
What Della didn’t know was that once a month on a Friday, as many Diamond Shine girls as possible congregated for afternoon tea at the Sunflower Café at four p.m. and they had been
doing so for a year and a half now. It had been Astrid’s idea. She had been a big man in a welding factory before she became a big woman in a cleaner’s uniform. As the girls didn’t belong to an official guild, it could only help if any of them needed some advice, she said. No one was particularly disgruntled about anything, so, so far, it had been more of an informal get-together over pots of Darjeeling and Patricia’s excellent afternoon teas. A few of the women preferred to keep themselves to themselves and didn’t participate, but plenty did. They enjoyed the secret meetings and finding that they weren’t alone in some of their mini-moans.
Patricia closed the café to the public at three-thirty on these days as a courtesy to her big sister. It was commercially worth it to her because of all the afternoon teas she sold to the women, even at mates’ rates. Three-tiered plates were dotted around the room, holding Patricia’s famous clotted cream scones on top, her sweet and savoury pastries on the middle and finger sandwiches on the bottom. Today the choice was Wensleydale cheese and apple savoury, egg mayonnaise and red onion, chicken and celery crunch, ham and pea-shoots and mustard chutney. Patricia liked to test out new flavours on them knowing that none of the Diamond Shine women were renowned for holding back on their true opinions. Hilda, as the longest serving cleaner, had assumed the role of group leader and officiated from her seat in the corner.
She banged a salt cellar down on the table to start off proceedings.
‘Ladies, let us begin,’ she said. ‘Before I forget, the next meeting is the second Friday of the month because it’s our anniversary on the first Friday and we’re off out for a swanky meal. Everyone all right with that?’
There was a mix of ‘yeses’, nods, ‘oohs’ and thumbs up by way of response. Hilda went on, ‘Right, has anyone got anything they wish to share with the group?’
‘Yes, a bloody big cheer that Norma Know-it-All has gone,’ said Val Turner. A sentiment that was echoed by them all, if the applause that followed was anything to go by.
‘Norma? Who’s she?’ asked Gemma Robinson, sitting at the far table. She was cleaning in her gap year to earn some money, then she was off to university to do Film and Media studies. She spoke with a very plummy accent, but was a friendly, down-to-earth girl. Everyone was very fond of Gemma.
Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café Page 13