Size Matters (25 page)

After Greg had gone down the garden to his office, Jay went back up the stairs to give the spare-room shower a final scrub-up. It was all looking pretty good up there now that the boxes of toys had gone. Anya had shampooed the carpet and the sky-blue linen curtains had come back from the dry-cleaners. There was a new silky throw on the bed, not unlike the one at Delphine's fiancé's flat, and Jay had replaced the tatty old bedside lamp with a simple chrome Anglepoise. The drawers were lined with geranium-scented paper and
the wardrobe was equipped with every kind of hanger, from padded satin (memories of Delphine's childhood bedroom) to trouser rails. The shower room was stocked with a Clarins selection of cosmetic goodies and fat white towels. Jay reckoned she'd done everything short of folding the loo-roll end into a V.

Surely, she thought, standing at the doorway to inspect her handiwork, even domestic supremo Delphine couldn't find fault with all this? And if she did, well it wasn't for long. Jay would bite her tongue, smile and let any stinging remarks wash straight over her. It would all go towards making her a Better Person. A few weeks on and Delphine would be mistress of that sleek top floor of the Swannery, all married off (again) and with a whole new domain to make her mark on.

Barbara was due round at any minute to go over the bookings and work out a new rota that would include a regular slot for Mrs Howard and her ‘kept rooms'. Jay went downstairs, kicking Rory's football boots to the inside of his room as she went and hoping he could manage not to overspill too much into the rest of the house and risk tripping Delphine headlong down the glass staircase. She was going to hate that as it was, and would be sure, Jay could almost bet on it, to give them all a lecture on proper staircase safety and the benefits of good old-fashioned stair-runners fastened by brass rods.

Barbara gave the doorbell her usual three long rings and Jay went to let her in. She was holding a cat-carrier from which an insistent Burmese miaow could be heard and Daffodil ran up to have a curious sniff at it, following the two women into the kitchen.

‘We've got trouble with Mrs Caldwell again!' Barbara said, sounding remarkably cheerful about it.

‘Oh God, what's happened now?' Jay said. ‘Is Monique still folding the knickers the wrong way?'

‘No. Worse than that.' Barbara stifled a giggle. ‘You know Mrs C. likes shirts all folded to look just like when she'd first bought them? Well . . . you won't believe this . . . Monique's gone and folded them all perfectly and then stuck pins in them!'

‘
Pins
? But why? Or do you mean like some kind of voodoo doll-type-thing?'

‘No, no, pins like you get in men's shirts when you've just bought them, you know, holding the sleeve to the body, part of the packaging, all that?'

‘Yeah I know, and there's always at least three still there after you think you've got them all out. So whatever did Monique do it for?' Pointless question, really. Monique had simply run out of patience. It happened, and in most cases she could hardly blame the perpetrator. It shouldn't be part of any cleaner's remit to tidy away used condoms (however carefully knotted) from beneath a bed, or to hose down a patio on which a Labrador with a stomach upset has spent many productive hours.

Mrs Caldwell's problem was that she was a ‘follower' – a woman who couldn't simply trust her cleaner to get on with it, couldn't just take the opportunity to disappear to the shops or go to work or trot off out to the local beauty salon to have her nails buffed or her fanny waxed. Oh no. She had to stay on the premises and trail round after the cleaner, refolding towels, moving a vase an inch to the left, tweaking a rug. They'd lost one of these clients only a year before, when she'd picked up a folded J-cloth from the cold tap by the sink and rehung it over the hot one. Sandrine, a fiery girl from southern Spain, had grabbed the cloth, soaked it in scalding water and shoved it down the front of the woman's cashmere sweater, then slammed out leaving her screaming and with Dishing the Dirt's Henry the vacuum cleaner still
grinning stupidly at her from the middle of the kitchen floor.

‘Monique did it out of pure logic, really,' Barbara continued, ‘I went to pick her up after Mrs Caldwell phoned in a fury. Monique was completely unapologetic and said that if Mrs C. had wanted her husband's shirts to be just as if they had come from the shop, then she was only doing what she'd asked.'

‘Well, you can see her point. That's what Mrs Caldwell said to us, too.'

They'd lose this one, for sure, Jay thought, even as she gave in to a growing urge to laugh. At this very moment Mrs Caldwell was probably running her finger down the options in Yellow Pages and then dialling On All Floors for an emergency quote. Quite possibly, Jay fancied, she'd end up with Spanish Sandrine – in which case, heaven help her. She also imagined Mr Caldwell fresh from the shower (unwelcome thoughts of droopy pale naked flesh here), dressing in the morning, pulling a shirt from the shelf in the wardrobe and scattering his bony bare feet with pins. The pins would vanish into the three-inch eau de Nil shagpile. For weeks after, the Caldwells would be spearing their tender soles with the lethal spikes.

‘Well you can't please everyone, I suppose,' Jay said. ‘What about giving Monique a go at Charles Morgan's flash pad next Monday? You'll be there to keep an eye on her, and she is very good.'

‘I thought that too. At least on a first visit he won't have done anything to upset her . . .'

The kitten Barbara had brought with her was the last of the current litter, on its way to the vet for the second of two vaccinations. ‘Couldn't do it before – she was sneezing a bit but she's fine now and raring to go,' Barbara said, opening the kitten's basket and pulling out the wide-eyed grey-blue creature. She handed it
over to Jay. It sat on her lap gazing round the kitchen and blinking its big amber eyes.

Jay stroked its wedge-shaped head and it rubbed its face eagerly against her hand.

‘Please tell me you've got a home waiting for it, Barbara.' She sensed there was a sneaky reason why Barbara hadn't just left it in the car, and was overcome by appalling temptation. Daffodil was getting very dependent. She leapt into the cars every time anyone left the house; she followed them up the road and yowled for them to come back to her and at night she tried to get into bed between Jay and Greg, purring and dribbling and kneading her claws into the duvet cover. The cat was overseeing the visit of the newcomer, sitting on the floor, staring up at it with something that could well be longing.

‘Look, Daffy, what do you think?' Jay carefully put the kitten on the floor – it had been struggling to get off her lap and get at the bigger cat. The two animals stalked around each other under the table, checking out relative size and threat level, then Daffodil patted gently at the kitten with her paw and rolled it over, batting the animal's soft little body, then washing its plump tummy.

‘It
did
have a home but I was let down,' Barbara admitted. ‘The deposit was paid and everything, but the woman was moving to Ireland, and at the last minute decided she didn't need the hassle and expense of transporting a cat. So if you're interested . . .' She gave Jay a sly look. ‘Bargain price? Just the vet fees so far? You'd be doing me a huge favour.'

‘Barbara, I couldn't!' Jay protested, trying to voice a bit of common sense. ‘We've got the rat, the cat, a baby coming, Delphine arriving any minute . . .'

‘Delphine!' Barbara snorted. ‘What's she got to do with it? She's only visiting for a teeny while! You don't have
to put a saucer of cream down for her! Go on, you know you want to, and look – there's no hostility at all between the two cats. They've already taken to each other.'

This was true – well so far anyway. Daffodil was calmly standing by while the kitten investigated her food supply and took a greedy nibble from the bowl, turning her little grey head sideways as she crunched loudly on the biscuits.

‘But Daffodil's past the litter-tray stage – we'd have to start all that again . . .' Kittens were a lot of work – they needed training up and large doses of utterly spoiling affection so they'd trust their humans and be a joy to live with, rather than bad-tempered and spitty.

There was a thumping on the outside staircase, then Imogen and Tristan ambled into the kitchen. ‘Close the door, quick, Moggie,' Jay said. ‘We've got a kitten in here.'

‘Oooh! What a sweet blue furry baby!' Imogen scooped up the kitten and cuddled it to her. ‘Is it a friend for Daffodil? She could do with one. She's very bored. She ripped up my
Cosmopolitan
yesterday, all over the floor.'

‘She's called Cicely,' Barbara told them, firmly shutting the cat basket. It seemed to be a done deal. That basket wasn't going home with an occupant.

‘She could be
our
cat Tris, couldn't she?'

Tristan looked concerned. ‘I don't know – what about toxoplas-whatsit and pregnant women? You can't go messing about with cat litter, not right now. And cats get jealous of babies.'

Imogen's eyes filled with easy tears. ‘Oh but . . .'

‘Tris is right, Moggie. And make sure you wash your hands when you put it down.' Jay told her. ‘But . . . well we could keep it up here, train it and settle it and then when the baby's a bit bigger you can take it downstairs to live with you.'

It seemed simple enough. What was one more pet? It wasn't as if it was a fierce great Rottweiler. No, that would be next week, when the scariest creature in the house arrived by Qantas.

It had been Freddie who'd been saying about how girls love to be impressed, so it was him who'd put the idea into his head. Rory decided this was so in order that he'd have someone to blame, even though he knew he was the one who'd really cop it if anything went wrong. There was no reason why it should; he'd make sure they cleared up everything. He'd go back the next day and double-make-sure that everything was all sorted, right down to polishing the forks. He'd see that the floors were clean and the rubbish taken away, every single bit. He'd run the waste disposal till whatever was in there had disappeared so far down the pipes that not even forensic bloody murder-expert geniuses could trace anything back to him other than plain cold tap water. He wasn't planning to involve the bed, not this time (though to get real, of course if she was completely insistent he couldn't actually see himself saying, ‘Oh no, absolutely not, Samantha, a shag was the last thing on my mind.'). He'd save that for another time and another place. And there would
be
another if he could get her to turn up for the first one – what girl wouldn't be impressed?

All he had to do (all? He felt sick at the thought) was ask Samantha Newton, get her to say yes. He'd have to invite a couple of others as well, but they couldn't be his usual crew. Alex and Mart would be hopeless – they'd get overexcited and bounce on the bed and start mooning off the balcony and chucking down paper aeroplanes or something. And they'd whine for a pizza and beer rather than what he'd got in mind. It had to be someone with a bit more sophistication than that.

Tragically he was going to have to invite that spoon Hal Clegg, which was tricky because it meant he'd have to find a girl for him. Hal was so not likely to be able to find one for himself, being as how he was the type who spent his Saturday nights revising his French verbs. He'd have to ask Samantha about that, maybe her friend Shelley would come, which would provide something else good to look at but have the not so perfect downside of producing a bit of a girl-on-girl double act. They'd sit together and giggle and whisper like they did in class and sort of . . . pair off, not like
that
but so you couldn't get one away from the other. Big risk, just like using the premises, but it had to be now or no chance ever again.

Food was the easy bit. He'd just decant some Marks and Spencers stuff into the Charles bloke's dishes and bung them in his microwave. Considerate, that, because he wouldn't mess up the oven. And Samantha and Shelley wouldn't have any idea he hadn't cooked it all – he'd tell them he'd made everything at home and brought it along. They'd need wine. There was loads in the little room at the back of his dad's office, he'd just have to raid that and pray he hadn't nicked something that would taste like cat's pee if you drank it before the year 3000. It was all going to cost a bit, but as the ad went, Samantha was sooooo worth it.

Katinka sniffed in the van all the way from the station. Jay, parking outside Mrs Howard's, handed her the box of tissues from the glove compartment but Katinka refused. They'd all get streaming colds at this rate, Jay thought, pulling out a wad of the tissues and stuffing them into Katinka's hand. This was like taking small children around. Any minute now she'd have to resort to cramming a tissue over the girl's nose and shouting ‘Blow!' at her. Mrs Howard wasn't going to be
impressed by a constant sniffer and they could really do with this gig, now that Mrs Caldwell and her folding fetish had buggered off to another company.

Mrs Howard at least looked delighted to see them. She was, Jay could tell, the wonderful sort of woman who tidied up the place before cleaners arrived. You'd never have to sort through a week's strewn-about newspapers and a sea of socks in this house. They should be through in a couple of hours, no problem.

‘A nice cup of tea before you start, ladies?' Mrs Howard asked. Katinka immediately plonked the Henry down on the hall floor and brightened up. Jay wanted to get them well under way before they slowed down for a break, but Katinka was always happier and speedier after coffee and a biscuit. Two of Mrs Howard's lodgers were making their way down the stairs. They were tall girls, very leggy and pretty. They said hello and then carried on talking to each other in a mid-European language. Jay followed Mrs Howard through to the kitchen but Katinka and Anya lingered, chatting cheerily to the two girls as they collected coats from the hooks on the hall wall.