by Liz Fielding
‘Cleaning?’ she suggested, with just a touch of irony.
Janet Graham, the dour Scots woman who ran the place sighed. ‘Cleaning. Of course. And have you any experience, Miss Devlin?’
Melanie considered that an odd question. Didn’t everyone? Her mother had certainly made a point of ensuring she knew one end of a vacuum cleaner from another and the proper way to clean a sink. She suspected it had been her way of keeping her daughter’s feet firmly on the ground. ‘Of course I’ve experience, I’m a woman,’ she replied, as if that was sufficient.
The look she received for her pains was searching. Flippancy, it said, was not appreciated. ‘I meant professional experience. You don’t look like a cleaner.’
‘Don’t I?’ She didn’t know that cleaners had a special look. She should have studied for the part. ‘I’ll put some rollers in my hair and tie it up with a scarf if that will help,’ Mel offered, deciding that since she was obviously not going to get a job she might as well have some fun developing her character.
‘That won’t be necessary. If we take you on we supply a uniform. With a cap,’ she added, giving Mel’s hair a glance of disapproval. She’d decided to cut the wig into a slightly spiky style.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Devlin. Melanie Devlin.’ Well, it was the name she had been born with. The name still on her passport. The name that would cause her the least amount of trouble.
‘And have you any references?’
‘Not for cleaning.’
‘Somehow, Miss Devlin, that doesn’t surprise me.’ But she picked up a card from the desk in front of her and tapped it thoughtfully against her thumb. ‘Could you do a job straight away?’
‘Now?’ Suddenly it wasn’t quite so funny. Either flippancy was the stock-in-trade of cleaners, or Janet Graham was desperate. Pushed to decide, Mel would have come down on the side of desperate.
‘It’s an emergency post-party clean-up that’s just come in,’ she said, immediately confirming Melanie’s judgment of the situation. ‘If you do a good job, I’ll think about taking you on.’
A post-party clean-up? Melanie’s stomach quelled at the thought of what might be expected. She could be lying in the sun right now. And yet she felt something close to excitement too.
Until now her life had been oddly sheltered for an actress and this felt, if not exactly dangerous, certainly different enough to make her stomach flutter with something very like stage fright. And it would show Richard Latham.
‘No problem,’ she said, taking the card with the job details. She could buy a pair of rubber gloves on the way.
The address to which Melanie had been directed was on the top floor of a converted warehouse overlooking the Thames not far from Tower Bridge.
Expensive, large and the furnishings suggested an austerity of taste that she might have approved of, but since most of them were buried beneath the detritus of what must have been a long-sustained and well attended party, it was difficult to tell.
‘Yes? What is it?’ Melanie considered the young man who had opened the door, his eyes blood-shot, his demeanour suggesting the kind of hangover that required a long period of undisturbed silence in a darkened room.
‘Mr Wolfe?’ she enquired, politely, although there was no doubt that she had come to the right address. Wolfe? She’d heard that name somewhere recently.
‘Yes. Look, if you’ve come to complain about the noise...’ - he put his hand to his head - ‘...the party’s over.’
‘I can see that and I haven’t come to complain. I am Miss Devlin.’ She introduced herself, crisply. Then she took a deep breath. ‘I’m a Busy Bee.’ Somewhere, deep down inside, she considered what she had just said. And she couldn’t believe it. If Richard could see her now, he’d probably die laughing.
‘A what?’ Then, ‘Good grief, are you the cleaner? I thought you’d be older -’ Pained by the sound of his own voice, the young man evidently decided he didn’t care how old she was. Instead he put his hand to his head.
‘Does it matter? You sent for help and you certainly look as if you need it.’
‘Yes, well, you’d better come in and make a start,’ he said, returning to an agonized whisper. ‘Jack will be home in a couple of hours.’
‘Jack?’
‘My brother. This is his place. He insisted I stay here while he was away but he’ll kill me if he finds it in this state.’
‘From the look of you he’d be doing you a favour.’ She looked around at the mess. ‘What happened?’
‘A few college friends dropped round.’ He winced, waved him arm vaguely at the disarray. ‘Look, just do your best will you. I’m going back to bed.’
‘Bed?’ Losing sight of the fact that she was supposed to be a humble cleaner, Mel turned on the hapless young man. ‘You’re not going to bed. You made this mess and if you want it cleaned up in a couple of hours, you’re going to have to send for reinforcements, or give me a hand. Frankly I don’t think even the Seventh Cavalry could arrive in time to save you.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. Come along Mr -’ She paused, unable to seriously envisage calling this young fool Mr all afternoon. ‘What’s your first name?’ she asked.
He leaned towards her confidentially. ‘I’ll tell you mine, if you tell me yours.’ And then he giggled.
‘Oh, God,’ she sighed.
‘No, not god. Tom. Your turn.’
‘Melanie,’ she said.
‘Menalie ... Milenie ...’ He gathered himself and launched himself into the word. ‘Melanie. Nice name.’
‘I’m glad you like it. And now we’ve got that out of the way, you’d better come with me.’
‘Have a heart, Melanie -’ But she had taken him firmly by the wrist and was already wading through the bottles littering the floor in her quest for the ingredients to make a swift, if brutal hangover cure that was famous at the television studios where the soap opera she had once starred in was recorded.
Since she had always been stone cold sober she had become a dab hand at making it for everyone else. It was scarcely any wonder that Richard thought she was boringly sweet and virginal. She was beginning to think he was right.
First she propped her unhappy employer against the central island in the kitchen.
‘Stay there,’ she commanded, using much the same tone she would use on a badly behaved puppy, then she began to assemble the gruesome concoction in a glass. With one last twist of the pepper mill she turned back to the suffering young man. ‘Drink this,’ she commanded.
‘You’re joking?’ One look at her face warned him that she wasn’t doing any such thing and he shifted his blood shot eyes to the mixture she was offering him. ‘What is it?’ he asked, taking the glass and sniffing at it suspiciously.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ she lied without shame. ‘Just take a deep breath and swallow it down in one go.’
The effect was immediate and a few seconds later he shuddered, turned pale and ran.
Mel, meantime, began flinging bottles, half eaten pizzas and take-away curry cartons into a plastic sack without the least consideration for her employer’s aching head. Her sympathy was entirely with his brother.
By the time Tom had returned from the bathroom still pale, but shocked out of his stupor, she was beginning to cut a swathe through the debris.
‘Go and dump these while I start on the glasses,’ she ordered, indicating the full sacks, then, as she spotted another pile of take-away cartons she stopped him. ‘Wait. Pass me those, will you?’ she said.
He groaned, nevertheless he turned to obey, but his hands, still unsteady, fumbled and the cartons wobbled and slipped. ‘Oh, heck.’
Mel’s carefully chosen outfit may not have been the height of fashion, but it had been clean. Splattered from neck to hem in curry sauce, “heck” was not the first word that sprang to her mind as the smell rose to overwhelm her. And she didn’t feel in the least bit sweet.
‘Find me something to
wear,’ she said, and without stopping to consider the effect of her actions on an impressionable young man, she stripped off the t-shirt and skirt before it soaked through to her underwear, then bent to unlace her boots so that she could divest herself of the black tights which had taken the worst of the spill.
Tom hadn’t moved. Her outer garments might have been hideous, her underwear, lace edged oyster satin, was anything but. ‘A t-shirt, an old pair of jeans?’ she suggested, quickly, realizing rather too late that she might have been a little precipitate in shedding her clothes.
‘Right.’ He swallowed. ‘Er - can I say that you’re a great improvement on any Mrs Mop I’ve met before.’ He was definitely on the mend.
Melanie hid her satisfaction at this indication of recovery, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at him.
‘And you’re an authority on the subject, I suppose.’ He blushed painfully and she realized, with a sudden rush of sympathy, that he was younger than she first thought. Nineteen or twenty, perhaps. No more. ‘Maybe I’m not everyone’s idea of Mrs Mop,’ she allowed, a little more kindly, ‘but I’m not working in my underwear.’
‘Gosh, no,’ he repeated. Definitely younger than he looked. ‘A t-shirt. I’ll find one.’
‘And some jeans.’
‘Jeans.’ He backed out of the kitchen, presumably in order to keep her satin clad figure in sight for as long as possible and she finally favoured him with an encouraging smile that displayed her dimple to its best effect. ‘Oh, my God,’ he mumbled.
Realizing that the dimple might have been a mistake, Melanie made a strategic withdrawal to luxurious cloakroom near the front door and accepted his offering of clothing, with belated modesty, through the door.
The jeans, soft from much use, were a mile too long and she had to roll them up over her ankles. The t-shirt had seen better days too and came down to her knees. Scarcely flattering.
Melanie gave her wig a tug to make sure it was still firmly in place and then regarded her reflection with disfavour, wondering what Trudy would make of her transformation from soap queen to Cinderella. Personally, Melanie had always considered that Cinderella was a bit of a wimp.
Stopping at home to do the cleaning while everyone else had the fun was not, in her opinion, a proper role model for the modern girl. Still, if she was ever induced to play Cinderella, she’d be able to give real authority to the part. And giving the jeans one final hitch up, she returned to the fray.
She looked around her and took a deep breath.
She’d transformed her own appearance comprehensively, and it was to be hoped she could do an equally dramatic job of transforming the flat or young Tom was going to be in trouble when his brother came home.
She’d never had a big brother, but Luke had come close and it didn’t require much in the way of imagination to work out what his reaction would have been if she’d got his place into this kind of mess. With that thought to inspire her, she set to work.
Tom, still dazzled by the vision of Melanie in her underwear seemed to have forgotten his hangover and he made a start on rubbish disposal while she began gathering up the glasses and after that things seemed to go remarkably well.
She was beginning to feel a real sense of satisfaction in restoring order out of the chaos, completing forgetting her subservient role as she bossed Tom around without a thought for her role.
Another hour of hard work and Melanie began to congratulate herself that not even the most discerning eye would be able to tell there had ever been a party.
‘Er, there’s upstairs,’ Tom said, when Melanie suggested they might treat themselves to a cup of coffee.
‘Upstairs?’
‘The workmen left a bit of a mess.’
‘Workmen?’ Then she shook her head. ‘No, don’t tell me. I’ll go and have a look.’ She climbed the spiral staircase to the upper floor, a simple cantilevered space over the living room, all clean lines in navy, white and chrome.
‘They replaced the windows.’
And hadn’t bothered to clean up after themselves. They probably decided that with all the mess downstairs no one would notice. ‘Go and make some coffee, Tom, I’ll deal with this.’
A damp cloth dealt with the dust, but the bed needed changing and after a couple of attempts to get a sheet on the huge king sized bed she gave up and called for help.
Tom, with the recovery power of youth to aid him, sprinted up the spiral stair. ‘I’m not much of a hand at hospital corners,’ he said, eyeing the bed doubtfully.
‘Neither am I,’ Melanie admitted, bending to lift the corner of the mattress. ‘But I’ll give it a try if you’ll help.’
‘You’re not a real cleaner are you, Mel?’ He stood watching her. ‘Are you an out-of-work actress or something?’
Oops. ‘Or something,’ she agreed, without looking up as she struggled with the corners. She struggled alone and straightened to discover that Tom was still beside her. He was looking much better and was wearing the stupid grin she recognized as the prelude to a lunge. ‘You’re supposed to be helping,’ she reminded him, sharply. ‘On the other side of the bed.’
He shrugged philosophically and two minutes later the job was done. Tom flopped back onto the freshly made bed.
‘Hey, don’t go undoing all my hard work,’ Melanie complained, bending over to smooth the crumpled cover. Tom simply grinned, grabbed her around the waist and toppled her down on top of him.
‘I’m shattered. Why don’t we lie here and have a little cuddle -’
He had a point, but she’d rather wait until she got home to lie down. By herself. ‘Tom, don’t be silly your brother will be back soon,’ she warned him, pushing him away and sitting up.
‘I’ve never kissed a Mrs Mop.’ It was just a silly game, Melanie knew that and laughed as he tightened his grip and put on a ridiculous leer. He was simply feeling better, relieved to be out of a scrape, but she wasn’t about to humour him.
‘And you aren’t about to,’ she said, with mock severity. ‘You’re in enough trouble already -’
‘More than enough.’
Melanie was looking down at Tom but his lips hadn’t moved. ‘How did you do that?’ she demanded.
‘Do what?’ he asked.
‘Speak without moving your lips.’
‘He didn’t. We’re a double act.’
Melanie suddenly realized that Tom had stopped leering at her and was staring instead at something over her shoulder. She turned to see what it could be. And for the second time in a week a shiver of apprehension raised the gooseflesh on her arms.
CHAPTER THREE
‘JACK,’ Tom said, flatly. ‘You’re back.’
‘And with my usual immaculate timing not a moment too soon.’
Jack, Mel thought blankly. Jack Wolfe. The cold-eyed man from the travel agency. She swallowed, hard. It was a bit late to remember where she had heard the name.
Actually now they were together the family resemblance was unmistakable, but unlike the boisterous Tom, his brother was the kind of man who would live in the restrained and understated luxury of this kind of apartment. Everything about him murmured money, but in a very discrete whisper.
And it didn’t take a genius to tell what Jack Wolfe was thinking as his eyes swept her in a comprehensive glance that apparently told him everything he wanted to know.
‘Do introduce me to your friend, Tom.’
Except her name. Relief flooded through her. At least he hadn’t recognized her. Then she realized it didn’t matter. He hadn’t recognized her at the travel agent’s either. Not a soap fan, then? Not a chance.
‘Oh, Mel’s not a friend,’ Tom said, sliding quickly from the bed. ‘She’s just cleaning up after the party...’ He stopped, swallowed hard. Despite his rapid recovery, his brain was still working considerably slower than his mouth.
‘Indeed?’ Jack Wolfe’s steel grey eyes flickered about the apartment and came back to rest upon Melanie as she wriggled out of Tom’s grasp and
got to her feet. She fielded the look, held it, refusing to be intimidated, but the man was not a bit like his brother.
Tom was young, still soft, with an eager puppy-like charm that ensured quick forgiveness of his doubtless many sins. She knew the type and kept firmly on a training lead he would be amusing company.
Jack Wolfe was darker, leaner, harder. A Doberman to Tom’s Labrador.
Not amusing at all.
Melanie, used to controlling over-eager young men, discovered that before the insolent assurance of Jack Wolfe her confidence ebbed rapidly and she suddenly found it easier to look anywhere but at him. Apparently satisfied that he had made his point, Jack Wolfe returned his attention to his young brother.
‘Cleaning up after the party? Is that why your friend has discarded her own clothes and helped herself to mine?’
‘Yours?’ The word was jerked from her by the sheer unlikelihood of such a man being seen dead in a pair of threadbare jeans, or a t-shirt from which the sleeves had been hacked to allow ease of movement.
Indeed from Jack Wolfe’s appearance - the severest navy pin-stripped suit, the snowy perfection of his shirt, thick dark hair trimmed to a millimetre - she found it difficult to believe that he had ever worn jeans in his life.
‘Mine,’ he confirmed abruptly, as if reading her thoughts even as she formed them.
And quite unexpectedly Melanie, who hadn’t blushed unless she had wanted to since she was thirteen years old, blushed beneath the pale pancake make-up. They were his clothes and she was suddenly intensely aware of the way the cloth felt against her skin. Soft, caressing, as if he was in some way touching her.
She remembered the electric touch of his fingers as he had steadied her, held her in the travel office. Couldn’t he feel it? How could he possibly miss the charged atmosphere?
‘I ... I didn’t know,’ she found herself stammering idiotically, quite suddenly desperate to get out of them, get out of his flat before he did realize who she was. Heaven alone knew what he would make of the transformation. ‘Tom lent them to me to work in-’ she began, but he cut her off.
‘And since you had finished working, you invited him to help you out of them again?’