by Jenny Colgan
‘I do like shoes,’ I said, as Esperanza opened a large cupboard I’d never been into before. There were rows of cleaning materials lined up neatly - bleaches and sprays and powders, each with corresponding cloths and buckets.
We went through everything. It took hours, but it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. How to clean mirrors without streaking them. How to remove limescale (when I thought of the flat on the Old Kent Road, my heart sank. The only way to remove their limescale would be a medium-range nuclear missile). How to empty the Hoover. By the end of it I was grubby and exhausted. We collapsed down to share a pot of builder’s tea. Esperanza fussed over me and chatted and was so completely unlike herself I couldn’t believe who I was talking to. She told me about her daughter in Guatemala - who was about my age, which, I realised, meant that all these years Esperanza was looking after our family, she hadn’t been looking after her own. I couldn’t believe I’d never really thought about that.
‘She’s teacher now,’ said Esperanza proudly. ‘I send home all my money from here and she goes to school and now she’s teacher.’
I was genuinely impressed. Maybe if I’d gone and done something useful like be a teacher I wouldn’t be here right now . . . Oh, who was I kidding? I didn’t have anything like the patience and dedication. Plus, I thought ruefully, I’d spent my life dealing with kids anyway, everyone I knew had a mental age of about eight and a half.
I had to go. I’d packed my suitcases. I’d learned a couple of useful things. I wandered up one last time to look at my dad’s room. There was no trace now, nothing left at all. I wondered how long it would be before Gail redecorated, and every last bit of him would be gone. I wondered what she was doing with all his Jermyn Street suits - he liked going to get tailored, used to take me with him. The tailors would give me lollipops and warn me sternly against playing with pins. I played with the pins anyway and my dad laughed, ruffled my hair and told me I had a taste for danger.
I hadn’t. But it felt like I no longer had a choice.
‘I think I’ll see you soon,’ I said to Esperanza. ‘And . . . I know I’ve never . . .’ Suddenly I found it hard to get the words out. ‘I know I’ve never said it. Not properly,’ I said. My bottom lip was wobbling a bit. ‘But . . . thank you.’
Esperanza clasped me to her large bosom and gave me a huge hug.
‘There you are,’ she said. ‘That’s all you ever had to say.’
If I thought the Old Kent Road looked bad in morning light, it wasn’t in the least bit improved by a dank, heavy overcast day.
I wondered if any of the boys were going to come out and help me up with my luggage. I gave them a good couple of minutes at the bottom of the path, but no dice. Maybe they weren’t going to do anything until the cheque cleared. Or they’d been brought up in barns. That was certainly true of Wolverine, at least. So I lugged both the cases up myself, hurling them over the mattress, and heaved them to the end of the little dark corridor.
The room hadn’t magically expanded, Tardis-like, since I’d been away. Neither was it filled with fresh welcoming flowers and a bottle of champagne.
I reckon flat sharing definitely needs an image overhaul. They should call it boutique living, something like that. Like a Manhattan hotel room - yes, this is a tiny cupboard with a view of a brick wall. But, hey, let us distract you by putting eleven pillows on the bed! Something like that. The broken, crappy wardrobe would take about three minidresses and no more. I pushed an entire suitcase under the bed immediately; it could support the broken springs.
The house was silent. Then I sat down on the bed and wondered what to do next. My nose prickled with the dust as I noticed a piece of paper on the floor that had obviously been pushed underneath the door.
Please, it said hopefully at the top,
clean toilet
and bathroom
and kitchen
and window’s
I tutted to myself about the spare apostrophe
and floor’s.
Thank you.
It didn’t say how often they required these things done. Once a week? Daily? And did floors include the floors of their bedrooms? I decided immediately that it didn’t. I had no intention of entering any of these trolls’ rooms.
Esperanza had sent me away with a care package of her favourite cleaning products. Like a goodie bag, I supposed, only much, much shitter.
In lieu of a single thing to do or, I gulped, a single person in the world even knowing where I was - I supposed my mobile phone still worked, I didn’t bother checking it any more. Everyone had stopped phoning. Actually, I wondered about that - Daddy had always just taken care of the bill. Maybe that would stop too. I checked the phone. Sure enough, it said, ‘This number is not in service’. Shit. I’d never even got my own phone before. It had always come in through Daddy’s office. I sat down on the bed. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t cry.
I pulled on a pair of Juicy sweatpants that I normally would never wear if I wasn’t on my way to Pilates (little did I know then how much I was about to start living in them) and a C&C T-shirt. I would just have to treat it as my workout, that was all. Put some loud music on and pretend it was the hot new thing, like when everyone tried to pretend that pole dancing was a workout.
Kitchen first. I don’t think I’d ever seen a more depressing room in my life. It was just so miserably dark and grim, with the cheapest, nastiest work surfaces, specially designed to trap germs and grot. Orange, brown and green tiles fought for space on the wall. The fridge looked like one of those fridges that could appear in newspapers with odd-looking women saying, ‘I bought this fridge in 1952 and it’s still working!’ Or, it could have if it had been looked after or - I sniffed suspiciously - was actually working.
I found an egg-spattered radio - maybe Capital would have something perky to cheer me up.
‘Welcome back to Indie Boys Radio,’ intoned a voice. ‘And now our Smiths’ marathon continues with “Never Had No One Ever”.’
I tried to find something else, but only came up against static, or hollering pirate stations broadcast from the tops of nearby tower blocks. It was a very old radio. But that was not going to matter! It was all about keeping a positive attitude. I just had to get through this, and the next couple of months, then I could go home - with my new, rock-hard biceps - come into my inheritance, and show everyone how amazingly well I was doing. I was thinking about setting up some kind of memorial charity for my father. For heart disease maybe - oh no, they already had quite a few of those. Well, I’d find something. Something in his name and I could hold a big fundraising party every year and all the mags would cover it and Daddy would have been so proud of me. It felt like an admirable aim to have. In fact, I thought, tying back my hair, I could almost see it now - me saying, ‘I can understand the struggle people have to cure and heal; to work their way through every day. I’ve scrubbed floors. I’ve been down on my hands and knees . . .’ Oh, no that didn’t sound so good. How about, ‘I’ve known the blood, sweat and tears . . .’
I was running my hand under the tap trying to fill a bucket, but it didn’t seem to be getting any warmer. This wasn’t the best of starts. All round the sink were piled bowls of cement-hard cereal. Why do people eat stuff that dries up like that? They must have insides like quarries.
I was just deciding who was going to draw the raffle - I liked Stephen Fry personally, but maybe Neil Morrissey at a push - when Cal pushed his way through into the kitchen, yawning wildly. He was wearing an unbuttoned striped pyjama top which should have made him look stupid but actually only enhanced the leanness of his torso - no hair - and a flat, narrow stomach. Most of the boys I knew were wide and barrelchested; big, farmer’s boys with years of rugby behind them. This scrawny, indie look, of a boy brought up on jam sandwiches and glue sniffing, was new. I couldn’t help but find it a bit sexy, especially with his black hair sticking up all over his head.
He looked surprised, then brief
ly pleased, to see me in his kitchen.
‘Hello!’ he said. ‘I forgot all about you, Cinders.’
‘I’m not Cinders,’ I said, crossly.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not till you realise that you have to turn on the water heater for hot water. You’ll be waiting to fill that bucket a long time.’
I said, ‘Oh,’ as if I’d known that all along, and turned on a strange-looking white machine which shuddered and juddered loudly and spouted out a thin line of scorching hot water that made me shriek slightly in a daft posh girl kind of a way. I tried to turn it into a cough.
‘It’s two o’clock,’ I said. ‘Were you in bed?’
Cal smiled broadly. ‘No. This is what I wear to my top office job in the city. Any chance of a cup of tea?’
‘The kettle isn’t there any more.’
‘Oh yeah, we were using it for tie-dye. Hang on.’
He stretched his long arms over me. He smelled sleepy - not bad, just warm and rumpled and a bit sexy. It was a good smell.
‘Here we go,’ he said, taking it down from a cupboard. He peered in it as he nudged me away from the sink. ‘Could probably do with a clean itself.’
The interior of the kettle was completely white, silted up with chalk, with red stripes in it.
‘You think?’
‘Maybe they’re friendly bacteria?’ said Cal doubtfully.
I set to it with the boiling water. Maybe we could just fill the teapot straight from that.
‘It’s great you’re here,’ said Cal and I felt myself soften up a bit. ‘We really need someone to look after us. Like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘That’s not what it’s like. It’s just helping pay my way till I get my old job back.’
He looked at me lazily. ‘You have a job?’
‘Have you?’
‘I’m a sculptor.’ He shrugged. ‘Michelangelo thought it was quite a cool calling actually.’
‘Oh, really? Are you as good as Michelangelo?’
He smiled. ‘No. No, Sophie, I’m not as good as Michelangelo. Can I still have a cup of tea?’
I smiled back at him and poured water in the kettle. Cal stretched sleepily like a big cat.
‘Up all night?’ I asked, saucily. To my amazement, I suddenly found I was tempted to run my fingernails down his chest. I looked at my nails. I hadn’t had a manicure in goodness knows how long. Maybe he wouldn’t mind.
‘Hey, is there one for me?’
I interrupted my Cal’s chest/my nails interface fantasy at the sound of a young voice with a heavy accent, possibly Spanish. There was a tiny, dark-haired girl with huge bosoms and a large bottom. In my circle we’d have considered her fat, but actually it was clear she was really very sexy. She had long messy black hair strewn over her face, and glossy olive skin, and black circles under her eyes which should have looked bad and which I’d have got sorted out at the dermatologist straight away but actually made her look sexy. She bit one of her huge pillowy lips.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello,’ I said, a little stiffly. All my nail-based fantasies dropped into the sink with an ‘uh-urr’ type noise.
‘This is Sophie, the cleaner,’ said Cal. The girl raised her eyebrows slightly.
‘I’m not “the cleaner”,’ I said. ‘I live here. I’ve moved in. I’m helping out with the cleaning for a bit.’
‘The bathroom is deesgusting,’ said the girl. ‘Deesgusting. The whole flat is deesgusting.’
‘Well, I haven’t started in there yet,’ I said, feeling annoyed. It wasn’t my fault that the place was a pig heap. The girl had immediately lost interest in me and wandered off, which was incredibly annoying, seeing as if she’d turned up at any of the parties I used to go to, nobody would have spoken to her.
‘Here’s the tea,’ I said. Cal peered in the pot suspiciously. ‘Do you normally only put one teabag in a pot of tea?’ he said. ‘Is that what you do where you come from?’
‘No,’ I said, reddening. OK, OK, OK. I hadn’t wanted to admit it. But it was true. Between Esperanza, my preference for Starbucks and/or champagne, and the fact that we went out all the time . . . OK. I’d never made tea before. I’d only seen it done on EastEnders. I never wanted to admit this to another living soul.
‘You do it then,’ I said. ‘I’ve got bathrooms to clean apparently. ’
The girl turned round. ‘Ooh, your cleaner’s quite stroppy.’ ‘I’m not the cleaner!’ I said.
‘Sorry,’ she said, not looking sorry at all but wandering over to Cal. She snuggled under his shirt and - grrr - ran her nails down his chest.
‘Can we go back to bed?’
‘In the absence of tea,’ said Cal. ‘I say, yes, why not?’
He opened the wobbly fridge, pulled out a bottle of wine and the two of them disappeared, leaving me standing there with a teapot full of tepid brown water I didn’t want to drink.
Four hours later I felt empty - like all the core of Sophie had been hollowed out and replaced with scouring powder and greyness. I’d given up on my nails long ago; they were gone, maybe for ever.
But the kitchen was clean, goddam it! Bucket after bucket of filthy water, crumbs, hairs, unidentifiable grungy bits, some pockets of smells that I couldn’t believe were even legal, and it was getting there. The cabinets weren’t brown, actually, they were beige, once I’d removed the patina of tomato soup. Still hideous, but not actually a contact hazard in themselves.
The floor turned out to be black and white diamond patterned lino, which reminded me of our black and white marble entrance hall in Chelsea, but I wasn’t going to think about that. The main thing was that, though the oven wasn’t exactly silver, it was no longer exactly black either, and had a lot fewer crispy black cheese boogers hanging off the side of it. I’d polished the tiles, scraped the drawer handles, washed and dried all crockery and cutlery (after first washing and drying all the tea towels, which looked like a tramp’s underwear collection).
It was disgusting. It was revolting. I’d hated every second of it, without having to pretend I was even dimly aware (although thankfully they were reasonably quiet - I heard a couple of yelps, but was really doing my very best not to listen) that two flimsy walls away there was some skinny pale-bodied indie-boy sex going on, and I was incredibly curious, despite myself, to know what that was like. Rufus had been great fun, but, apart from the spanking, actually a bit of a wimp in bed.
But a cigarette-smoking sculptor . . . well, it gave me something to think about whilst I did the scrubbing.
When I stood back to look at my work, however, something changed. As I looked round I couldn’t help it. I felt pleased. And a bit proud. It smelt nice and looked, if not good, at least borderline habitable. I’d taken something horrible and made it good. It wasn’t like me at all. It wasn’t bad.
Not that I was going to make a habit of it. And if the boys all poured in and threw beans all over the place, I certainly wasn’t going to start over tomorrow. Not that I could anyway, I had to get a job so I could stop this cleaning nonsense as quickly as possible.
Just after six, Eck came bounding through the door, throwing his keys onto the side.
‘Oh wow,’ he said, stopping short. ‘Look at this.’
I felt a bit of a grin rise up towards my face which I tried to dampen down again. What an absurd reaction to some soapy water.
‘Wow,’ he said again, running his fingers along the cabinets. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen . . .’ He smiled at me. ‘Well done, Sophie, it’s brill.’
I smiled back. I couldn’t help it, his enthusiasm was infectious.
‘Welcome!’ he said. ‘Wow. If you keep making it nicer, they’ll probably put the rent up.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, wishing I wasn’t covered in utter filth. ‘Had a hard day at the spider coalface?’
He grimaced. ‘Don’t ask. It’s my last year, so I’m about to find out if the last three weren’t a complete waste of time.’
‘People love spiders though.’
He winced again. ‘Oh God, stop, it’s not funny. I should never have left accountancy.’
‘An artist/accountant,’ I said. ‘It’s very romantic.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Eck. ‘Till I got my first student loan through. Being good at sums doesn’t really help.’
‘I thought Bohemians didn’t do sums.’
‘Bohemians don’t eat either. But I am starving.’
‘I don’t cook,’ I said.
Eck laughed.
‘What?’
‘Just your face when you thought I might be asking you to cook.’
‘Well, I don’t.’