Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café

by Milly Johnson

  Cheryl shook her head in disbelief. ‘Why did he pretend that she wasn’t dead when she was, then?’

  ‘He said that he didn’t want you at the funeral. He said that his aunt was going to end your employment and he thought you might make trouble for—’

  ‘That is so a lie,’ shouted Cheryl, tears rushing to her eyes. ‘Edith loved me. And I loved Edith. It was Lance that she didn’t want around.’

  ‘Please calm down,’ said DC Oakwell, pressing down his hands as if there was a huge volume button underneath them.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m telling you the truth. Why would he give me her ashes if that was the case? He was mocking her. The neighbours all saw him.’

  ‘Look, Mrs Gardiner’s injuries were consistent with a fall down the stairs whilst she was carrying a ladder. I’ve checked,’ said DC Oakwell, his voice as deep and calm as hers was high and agitated. ‘You told me yourself, she was always moving her pictures around.’

  ‘But she wouldn’t have gone upstairs to do that.’ Aware that she was shouting, Cheryl throttled back on her sound level. ‘And I suppose he denied knowing about the new will?’

  ‘There is no evidence of a new will.’

  Cheryl threw her hands up in the air. ‘So you can’t do anything? He’s got away with murder, literally, and you can’t do anything. I thought you’d come round to tell me you were arresting him.’

  DC Oakwell cleared his throat. ‘No, I’m here to tell you that if you go around there again, he will make a formal complaint and I’ll have to come back and arrest you. I managed to calm him down but he was really angry; so please take my advice and back off, or you’ll find yourself in big trouble and he will be able to prove your guilt.’

  Cheryl opened her mouth to say more, then shut it again. The detective was right. ‘Thank you,’ said Cheryl. She felt drained.

  ‘Mr Nettleton went to great pains to stress that he made the gesture of giving you some paintings. His aunt was going to give you them when she terminated your employment as a gesture of thanks, he said.’

  That flared up Cheryl’s temper again. ‘That’s bollocks. Edith would never have given those paintings away whilst she was still alive. She thought they were original masterpieces . . .’ Cheryl knew then that she had put the final nail in the coffin of her argument. As DC Oakwell looked over her shoulder at the crap Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in their new Bargainbuy frame on her wall, Cheryl knew he was imagining a dotty old lady with delusional tendencies who sounded very much like the sort of person who might go upstairs with a ladder and fall down the stairs. It was over. Even if he hadn’t given her the answer to why Lance would give her Edith’s ashes, it was over. Lance had won the jackpot of a beautiful old cottage and a stay-out-of-jail card.

  As if DC Oakwell allowed himself a personal moment of sympathy, he put his hand on her shoulder, looked into her furious green eyes and said, ‘You’re not in any trouble, so let’s keep it like that, shall we? Don’t go near Mr Nettleton again.’

  Cheryl nodded, but she didn’t promise in actual words that she wouldn’t.

  Chapter 54

  Connie liked Astrid Kirschbaum from the first moment she met her and that was not at all what she had intended. Connie did not want to develop friendships with the women she secretly employed in case this whole exercise ended in disaster. Her primary intention had to be revenge, not setting up a charitable home for cleaners. But it was impossible not to warm to Astrid, unfortunately.

  The house they had been booked to clean that Monday morning had been inhabited by students but it looked more as if an army of tramps had lived there.

  ‘How can anyone live like zis?’ said Astrid, clicking her tongue against her teeth in disgust. ‘They are animals.’

  ‘I don’t know any animals who would leave pizza under a sofa to grow mould like that,’ Connie grimaced as she snapped on her Marigolds and held up a Frisbee of rock-hard blue crust.

  ‘That is a pizza? O mein Gott,’ said Astrid and stuck out her tongue as if she was about to be sick. ‘Are we supposed to clean the furniture too?’ She gave the stained armchair a glare of horror.

  ‘Nope, the owner is throwing it all out. He asked if we could push as much of it to one side of the room as possible.’

  ‘He’s lucky I am so strong,’ sniffed Astrid. ‘He is getting mixed up with house cleaners and house clearers I think.’

  ‘He said there wasn’t that much and none of it was heavy,’ said Connie in his defence. The biggest item was the sofa and it was only a skinny-framed two seater.

  ‘Okay then, let’s go,’ said Astrid. ‘Which side of the room do you want? Left or right?’

  Connie picked right and wondered how long it would take for the questions about Lady Muck to start. She was glad when they came because she knew that any information she could feed to Astrid would be passed on to her cleaning friends at Diamond Shine.

  ‘So what’s this Lady Muck like, then?’ asked Astrid, as she scrubbed at the furry skirting boards.

  ‘She’s nice, really nice,’ said Connie. ‘Fair, decent. But she doesn’t take any crap.’

  ‘Zat is good to know,’ said Astrid. ‘Some clients think you are pieces of meat to be manhandled. I vas sacked from my last job for retraining one of them.’ Her large blue German eyes glittered with amusement.

  ‘Oh? Do tell,’ Connie invited.

  ‘My friend there, Cheryl, vas having some problems with a touchy-feely man. So I went instead of her to his house and gave his Nüsse a gentle death-grip. Ze sound he made nearly shattered the windows. Alas, it cost me my job but it’s okay. I would have done the same thing over again if I had to. And I know that she would have done it for me too if she had been big and strong.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Connie. ‘Lady Muck would refuse to send girls to houses like that. She does her best to make sure that it’s a good place to work. She knows there are a lot of girls out there who join an agency then leave to set up their own taking all their clients with them, so she makes it attractive to stay with her. She knows that cutting corners is false economy.’

  ‘So she really is a woman then who exists?’

  ‘Oh yes, a real woman.’

  ‘What does she look like?’ Astrid stopped rubbing at the dirt on the paint for a moment. ‘I imagine someone very regal, beautifully dressed with hair like Marilyn Monroe.’

  Astrid might as well have described her darling aunt. She’d paid for private elocution lessons and spoke like a Royal and had perfect blonde hair and a fantastic figure which she liked to show off.

  ‘You’re exactly right,’ smiled Connie. ‘That’s just what she is like.’

  ‘I’m very good judge of character,’ said Astrid proudly. ‘I always have been. For instance, I could see through the woman at my last job in der office. Cold, nasty piece of work.’ And she made a spitting action.

  ‘De . . . did you?’ Connie puffed out her cheeks. She’d almost dropped herself in it there by saying Della’s name. Although she wasn’t sure if Astrid was referring to her or Ivanka.

  ‘Yes. She sits very quietly and sweetly in the office but I think she is like the still waters and runs very deep. I would not be surprised if . . .’ She stopped herself , aware that she was gossiping with someone whom she didn’t know very well.

  ‘If what?’

  ‘Oh nothing. Just my thoughts.’

  Connie left it for a few minutes before asking casually, ‘Were there many women in the office? Lady Muck runs her business by herself.’ She wanted to push Astrid to talk about the cold nasty piece of work woman, who she presumed now was more likely to be Ivanka.

  ‘Two,’ said Astrid. ‘One was older. She was very stiff. She was no nonsense. I liked her but I also felt sorry for her.’

  ‘Sorry for her? How come?’ Della didn’t seem the sort of person to her that people felt sorry for.

  ‘I think she was in love with the owner of Diamond Shine,’ said Astrid, stage whispering across the room as if they mig
ht be overheard. ‘He was very charming.’

  ‘Was he?’ asked Connie, curious to know more of what his cleaners thought of her husband.

  ‘Oh, very,’ said Astrid. ‘He was one of those men who get better looking with age, like George Clooney. Not that I’m saying he looked like him but he was a handsome man. Though he knew it,’ she sniffed derisively. ‘Funny, gift of the gab, charismatic . . . One of those men who say all the things you want to hear, I call him Herr Silberzunge – Mr Silver Tongue.’ She laughed. ‘You couldn’t not like Jimmy Diamond. When he flirted with you he made you feel like a million dollars, and he flirted with everyone. Zat is why I knew there was something going on with the other woman in the office.’ And she made a pah sound. So it was Ivanka she didn’t like then, not Della.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He didn’t flirt with her. They don’t look at each other. It’s as if they are trying too hard to look apart. Now why would they do that? But everyone thinks I’m nuts in ze head for thinking that.’

  ‘Really?’ Connie’s throat felt dry. It still hurt to know that she was one of the last to have heard about what had been going on under her nose.

  ‘I tell you, he must have a really ugly wife if he thinks that a spotty, moody girl is an improvement,’ laughed Astrid.

  Connie gulped. ‘Maybe she just trusts him.’

  ‘I was once a man,’ said Astrid. ‘I would never trust one of the bastards.’

  Chapter 55

  Della put down the phone and said aloud a very disappointed, ‘Oh dear. That’s not good.’

  Ivanka’s interest was sparked. ‘What is it, Della? Someone else is leaving?’

  ‘Mmm, yes, though she doesn’t know it yet. I’ve just had a complaint about Cheryl from Mrs Gardiner’s nephew. Apparently the old lady died but Cheryl has been up to the house accusing him of murder. All the neighbours heard and he’s had to report her to the police.’

  ‘My God,’ said Ivanka, drawing in a dramatic breath. ‘We can’t have people like that working here.’

  Nope, you cannot have decent, kind, hard-working girls on your books, agreed Della in her head, but said instead, ‘You’re right, we can’t. It’s sad but she will have to go.’

  ‘I don’t think it is sad at all,’ Ivanka protested. ‘She is a disgrace.’

  Della didn’t feel good about joining in a character assassination of Cheryl. The lass had worked for Mrs Gardiner for years and would be in a state as it was without learning she was going to be fired as well, even if Lady Muck was about to be her fairy godmother. She also knew that Cheryl would feel disgraced to be sacked for such a reason. She dialled Cheryl’s number, but there was no answer and she found she was glad she didn’t have to speak to her. This whole business with Connie had softened her and she wasn’t quite sure what she felt about that. Life was much more straightforward when she could do her job without worrying about upsetting anyone.

  She fought against getting involved with people when she didn’t have to and could never understand why the girls formed attachments to clients, especially the old ones who were going to die soon and punch a hole in their hearts. But some people just sneaked up on your affections, like Ivanka did. And like Connie was doing, too. Finally admitting to herself how much of a knob Jimmy Diamond was had brought with it a concern for his wife, for his daughter, for the workforce who bankrolled his extra-marital dinners and his trips abroad and the flash secret lifestyle that she had helped to facilitate – and she felt ashamed of her part in it all.

  ‘I’ll keep ringing her for you,’ volunteered Ivanka with relish. ‘I’m quite happy to put these women in their place.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Della, feeling both relieved and uncomfortable at the same time. She hoped all this upset was going to be worth it.

  *

  Cheryl wasn’t in a good place that Monday morning. She had just left her client who was under the impression that cleaners were non-persons. She didn’t like him and she didn’t enjoy working for him and the events of yesterday with the police were playing in her head on a continuous loop. As she was waiting for the bus, she heard her phone vibrate in her bag. It was Diamond Shine, and she saw that she had missed three calls from them as well. She picked up to hear Ivanka’s prickly voice.

  ‘Is that Cheryl?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘It’s Ivanka. We’ve had a complaint about you. From a Mr Nettleton,’ she said, sounding as if she was really enjoying relaying this information. ‘It’s a very serious one—’

  But today Cheryl was in no mood for Ivanka or Lance Nettleton and cut her off. She knew what was coming so she might as well run to meet it and get it over and done with.

  ‘Are you ringing to sack me?’

  That took the wind right out of Ivanka’s sails. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Cheryl, her voice weak but her resolve strong. ‘I resign and I won’t be working my notice either, so take your shit job and stick it right up your spotty arse.’ Then she hit end call.

  Boy, that felt good. Just for a few minutes she wouldn’t think about the fact that she was now unemployed but let herself enjoy the feeling that she had taken a little power back from the bastard in the sky.

  *

  Just as Astrid was packing away her cleaning equipment bag her mobile went off.

  Connie eavesdropped on her half of the conversation. ‘They did what? . . . I hate them for you . . . Yes, I can text you the number . . . Yes, very nice . . . so far so good.

  ‘A friend of mine,’ explained Astrid as she put the phone back in her bag. ‘She worked for Diamond Shine also and has just told zem to stick their job up their bum. She wanted the number for Lady Muck. I hope she has some vacancies.’

  Oh, Connie hoped it was Hilda. ‘I think she has. Who’s your friend?’

  ‘Cheryl. I love her,’ said Astrid. ‘She could do with some luck.’

  Couldn’t we all, thought Connie.

  Chapter 56

  Cheryl found a discarded Daily Trumpet on the bus and read it to take her mind off things. The front page featured a fresh call out for help in the cases of local missing people: sadly, too many teenagers, a pensioner who had wandered out of an old people’s home a month ago, a very round-faced lady in her twenties missing for almost two years – and a strange case of a woman found washed up on the beach of Robin Hood’s Bay over a year ago with no memory of who she was. She wished she were looking at a front page that read, LANCE FRIGGING NETTLETON EXPOSED AS OLD LADY’S MURDERER. COTTAGE HANDED TO LOCAL CLEANER. But even for the Trumpet, that was one headline too unbelievable.

  As soon as she reached home, she rang Lady Muck and was delighted to be given a job on the spot. She sounded ever so lovely, thought Cheryl. She had a beautiful voice, polite but also warm; not at all like that cow Ivanka who was on a mission to shove Della out of the door, so Astrid said. She rang Miss Molloy then to explain why she wouldn’t be coming to clean that afternoon, and also her other two favourite clients, Mr Fairbanks and Miss Potter, and was touched to find that they didn’t want anyone else but her. They all said that they would transfer their business to the Lady Muck agency if it meant they could keep her. She really did have no intention of working out her notice with Diamond Shine, even if that meant they kept her week-in-hand payment. She’d survive. No, she’d more than survive. She’d seen Ruth Fallis off and now Ivanka. And Ann and Gary Gladstone could sod off as well. And Della and Jimmy and that arsehole Lance Nettleton and the bastard in the sky. She wasn’t going to let any of them grind her down any more.

  She decided she needed to christen this new improved version of Cheryl, and caught the bus to Pogley Top where she had a slap-up afternoon tea for one at the Sunflower Café.

  Chapter 57

  In Mr Savant’s immaculately clean house, that Wednesday, Connie found she had enough spare time to give one of the bedrooms a total bottoming. It was a relief to spend an hour upstairs as the music he was playing was loud and discordant,
but at least there was some singing instead of that awful Pygmalion and its spoken voices. She presumed this must have been his late wife’s room from the soft pink wallpaper and the accoutrements on the dressing table: a large old-fashioned hairbrush and hand mirror, an empty puff-ball perfume bottle, photographs in silver frames.

  She couldn’t think why Mr Savant needed her at all to work for him, because he must have dusted and cleaned the house himself in between her visits. Maybe he was lonely and liked the company of another presence in the house, even if it was only for a couple of hours per week. She’d had a few old clients like that in the early days of Diamond Shine.

  There was a wedding picture in an art deco silver frame, the young couple in a vintage man-standing-behind-seated-bride pose. Mr Savant was instantly recognisable by his long, dour face, although he was skeletally thin back then, with razor sharp cheekbones; but it was Mrs Savant who held Connie’s interest. She was absolutely enormous and the voluminous white wedding frock didn’t do her any favours at all. There was another picture of an older Mrs Savant in another frame, bloated and even more obese: Mr Savant had his arm as far around her as was possible and they were both smiling. They appeared to be a happy couple despite the huge size difference. Mrs Savant had a fat forehead that seemed to be in danger of falling over her eyes and no neck; her head seemed to be directly connected to her shoulders. No wonder she had died in her early forties, thought Connie. She thought she was carrying a few extra stone, but Mrs Savant was something else. It flashed past Connie’s mind that Mrs Savant must have eaten a lot of cream buns in her time. Maybe that was why Mr Savant continued to keep them in his fridge, so he could feel as if life had carried on the same after her passing? She dismissed that theory as codswallop as soon as she had thought of it, because that would have indicated the actions of an insane man, surely, to keep buying buns twenty-plus years after his wife had died? Mr Savant was nothing if not compos mentis. Connie put it out of her mind and carried on cleaning. My, though, the Savants were an odd-looking couple. But, it was entirely possible for two people who didn’t look at all well-matched to fall in love. Hadn’t she and Jimmy proved that all those years ago when he was drop dead gorgeous and she was the plainest girl in the sixth form?