Size Matters (28 page)

Ellie seemed to be suspicious, which was a bit worrying. At home, she kept looking at him sideways and half-starting to say something. Whatever it was he wished she'd just come out with it, so he could get his lying over with and convince her there was absolutely nothing going on, nothing at all. Tasha was also hanging around a lot, which was a problem. It was like she could sniff out that there was something going down
and she was working on getting it out of him. Not a chance, he thought, wondering if he ought to wear garlic round his neck to fend her off like you do with vampires.

It was lunchtime. Rory sauntered out of the last class of the morning (Chemistry) at his usual don't-care pace. It wouldn't do to rush, even though he risked finding himself short of time. He didn't want anyone following him. As he ambled casually towards the school gate he realized he was enjoying himself hugely, feeling quite excited and playing the part of a spy-type person inside his head, a man with a secret mission and everything to lose.

At the gate he had a quick look round to see if there was anyone around that he knew. Nobody. Now he could run. He sprinted fast up the road, round the corner and across the main road into the High Street. Still no-one, not unless you counted a few of the sixth-form girls pointing at skirts in Topshop's window. They wouldn't notice him, or anything else; they were on a completely different kind of mission.

Carefully (and needlessly, even he would acknowledge it now) he looked around again before he dodged into the doorway of Bowden's Hardware and slid in through the door. There was a resinous tang of paints and wood shavings and he breathed it in, savouring the atmosphere for a moment.

It didn't take long. Luckily there were no customers ahead of him at the key-cutting counter. You could be there all day if you were stuck behind someone getting five door keys and a spare for the car.

As the cutting machine ground away, Rory got absorbed in a wall full of paint charts. Idly he picked out a few shades of purple, ranging from a deep lavender through to sumptuous aubergine, and imagined having these colours on his own room walls. Would they make
a good background for the arty black-and-white photo stuff he was planning? Possibly not. A request from the key cutter for £6.50 brought him back to earth.

‘Oh, er, right. Thanks,' he mumbled, sorting money from his pocket.

‘I'll take those, for you, shall I?' A harsh and familiar girly voice cut across his thoughts and long pale fingers, decorated with fright-pink nail varnish, reached forward and took the keys out of the hands of the technician before Rory could get them. ‘Tasha! What are you doing in here?' He didn't really need to ask – the sly sod had obviously followed him.

‘Why shouldn't I be? Free country innit?' she said pertly, grinning a challenge at him. ‘And what are you looking so guilty about, Rory Callendar?' Teasing, she dangled the keys at him then snatched them back as he lunged to grab them.

‘What we got here then? Two sets of keys. Hmm. One with a tiny little label. “The Swannery”! Oooh I know where that is. Big new block by the river with a posh bit on the top. You shouldn't leave keys around with labels on, you know, Rory, people could take them and break in, couldn't they?' She backed towards the shop door, still holding out the keys, just out of range. At this rate he was going to have to rugby-tackle her and pin her to the ground outside in the precinct. Not a good move.

It was undeniable that he'd been stupid about the label. He'd just quickly tagged the keys the night before in case somehow in the night they got mixed up with all the others his mum had in her key cupboard. He didn't know what he'd have done if she'd found it – just tried to convince her she was losing it in the granny-brain department, he assumed.

‘So what are you doing with these?' Tasha said, linking her arm through his and almost dragging him
out of the shop and back in the direction of school. He surrendered, hopelessly.

‘I'm getting some spares cut for my mum,' he told her. ‘She's too busy to do it herself so I said I would.' Not bad, he thought. Surely that would do?

‘So why's
she
want them?'

‘She's cleaning the penthouse.' Shit. He hadn't meant to say that. Just any old flat would have done. Now he'd given something away.

‘
Cleaning
? Your mum doesn't do cleaning.' Tasha laughed. ‘I'm not a complete muppet, Rory.'

‘She does! You've seen her, driving a Dishing the Dirt van!'

‘Yeah but . . . OK,' she said suddenly, letting go of him and handing over the keys. ‘OK you can have them back. I believe you,' she said. Quickly, so fast he barely knew it had happened, she kissed him briefly on his mouth and skittered away into the school grounds, giving him the faint taste of minty gum and lipstick and a feeling that she wasn't going to leave things at that.

One of the Henrys had gone missing, along with a floor mop, a bag of dusters and J-cloths and the standard box of cleaning products that went on every job. Monique, it turned out, had been in overnight charge of a van and had been due to meet Barbara that morning to clean Charles Morgan's apartment.

‘Bloody Monique,' Barbara said down the phone to Jay. ‘She went out with her boyfriend in the van last night and decided it would be a good idea to drop off all the stuff ready for today. Probably wanted it all cleared out so they'd have space for some back-seat action, though she says they were moving a carpet. So what does she do? She can't get into the flat so she parks all the kit in a dustbin ready to pick up in the morning. And guess what – the bin men have been.
We're going to be late starting at the Swannery now and it'll run into Mrs Prentice's time for her Regular. Have you got any spare stuff at your place? Selina and Mandy are out with my other van.'

‘I have. Now Mrs Caldwell's off the list one of the vans is here, all loaded up and ready to go. I'll bring it round to the flat now.'

Oh this was a great start, Jay thought, thanking her stars that Charles was out of the country. What a terrific example of non-efficiency this would have presented. She could just see Delphine cackling about it, telling her how typically disorganized she'd been, employing someone who managed to lose the entire tools of the trade. What was Monique thinking about? Was her brain completely ruled by her hormones? She'd have done better to leave the lot in the Swannery's doorway. Someone would probably have taken it all inside, if only to keep it out of the way of the rain. It was hardly a place where people were going to pounce on it gleefully and have it down the next car boot sale before you could say ‘nicked'.

Charles actually being on the premises was quite a shock. Jay wasn't surprised to see the Porsche in the car park – she assumed he'd left it safely parked and gone off to work in a taxi. To arrive at the open door and find him standing there waving her in was not what she'd intended. Bugger, she thought, while at the same time beaming a jolly hello at him as he stood there, obviously on his way out with one of those pilot's bag-on-wheels.

‘Jay! Lovely to see you again. Change of plan! Being sent to Singapore to bring a bus home. Regular chap was taken ill over there and I'm down as a spare,' he explained. ‘Didn't mean to be in your way, just come on in and feel free. Your hard-working colleagues are already here.'

‘Shame you won't be here tomorrow when Delphine gets here,' she said. ‘You two are going to cross in the sky.'

‘I know. Can't be helped but duty calls. I'll be back in a week though, just in time for the big day. Still,' he laughed, ‘it'll give you two girls chance to catch up and for Delphine to haul you round the shops.' He looked at her in a mildly calculating way for a moment, then said in a lowered voice, ‘Er . . . do you know a little shop called ‘Agent Provocateur'?'

‘Er . . . yes . . . underwear.' Good grief, need she know about this?

‘Absolutely. Delphine might like to pick up a few little somethings there.'

‘Um . . . Charles, I hope you don't mind me asking . . .' Too bad if he did, she was going to anyway – when would she get another chance?

‘This club that you . . .'

He laughed, a bit of a surprised one, in her opinion. ‘Oh that! Just a little investment to supplement the pension.' He made for the door, looking back at her with a rakish grin. ‘Purely investment, nothing “hands-on” as it were. Ciao, see you at the do!' And he was off, his bag clattering along behind him like a toddler's dog on wheels.

‘Girls' indeed, she thought, as appalled at being so described as she was amazed to be pointed in the direction of saucy knickers. ‘Girls' was even worse than ‘Ladies'.

After Charles had gone, Jay cornered Barbara in the main bathroom where she was clearing a smart selection of male cosmetics out of the mirror-fronted cupboard.

‘Nice stuff here. Expect he gets it duty free,' she said.

‘Why didn't you tell me he was actually
here
?' Jay asked, still feeling flustered.

‘Why? What's the difference? I'd still have needed you to bring the stuff. And anyway, he was on his way out. Another five minutes and you'd have missed him.'

‘I don't know.' Jay sat down on the edge of the bath. ‘It's just this thing that I don't want to be seen as Delphine's cleaner.'

‘Your problem, sweetie, it's between you and your inner therapist. There's nothing wrong with it, even if he does see you as that. If it makes you feel better, just walk away, right now, straight out of the door. You aren't down for this job.'

Out in the hallway, Monique was singing to herself as she unhooked an armful of coats out of the cupboard.

‘OK, I'll see you later,' Jay said. She'd got the Dachshund Man to talk to about all the jars of marmalade he'd rescued from the bin last time they'd cleaned out his larder. Some of them were over three years out of date. There was also a tin of syrup he wanted to keep that had swollen to dangerous proportions.

‘Whatever she got up to last night,' and Jay indicated Monique, ‘it's put her in a lively mood!'

‘Oh she's been singing and smiling away since the early hours. It's driving me mad,' Barbara said with a grin. ‘Plus, she seems to have been offered another job. She told your Charles person that she's not really a full-time cleaner, she's a dancer, and he's given her a card and told her to go and see someone he knows at some club. I don't know what it's got to do with him, or what he's up to, but it looks like one way or another we could easily be down one member of staff again.'

Well he didn't waste any time or opportunity, this Charles. He'd got in quick with Monique. Jay imagined him in a club in the pre-opening hours, giving the assembled lap dancers a warm-up talk like a football manager before an important Premiership match. She
shuddered, imagining him demanding for the paying punters something along the lines of ‘More thrust', ‘More writhing'. Unavoidably, and before she could stop herself, she had a vision of Delphine, doing a slinky tango in baby-pink satin underwear, a swirl of satin ribbons and rippling marabou, with Charles partnering her, dressed to fly in his pilot outfit, all gold brocade cuffs and a sharply angled cap.

There was the usual disorientating chaos in Terminal Three at Heathrow. Jay had arrived too early. She spent twenty minutes browsing in the bookstalls, nervously opening and shutting books without making sense of any words. Unable to concentrate enough to focus properly, she tripped over passengers' bulky hand baggage that had been parked in the middle of the floor as their owners flicked through magazines. Any real concept of time quickly vanished in the flaky dry air conditioning and harsh strip light. People here felt compelled to shop to relieve the tension, she thought as she tried to decide if there was anything she might need from Accessorize. What with that, and endless grazing in the coffee shops and bars, no wonder so many found it next to impossible to make it to their departure gates on time. They were too busy distracting themselves from the atmosphere of anxious anticipation and mild panic that air travel induced in even the calmest, most seasoned voyager.

She wouldn't have minded, she thought as she heard the swoosh of an espresso machine, a cup of something hot and strong and a big, gooey, comforting Danish pastry. And of course she couldn't be fancying anything
more off limits – that was the downside of diets. Whichever one she picked for the day, low-carb, low calorie, whatever, she couldn't hope to get away with a concoction of sugar, processed fruit and far too much butter.

Up on the Arrivals floor stressed and crumpled passengers, newly hatched from the snug, stale shells of aircraft, emerged through the airside doors and were scooped up by those who'd been pacing impatiently, waiting and craning for the first view of friends, colleagues and relatives. Jay stood close to the chrome rail that divided travellers from greeters, between two drivers, each carrying a placard with the name of their quarry scrawled in felt tip. One of them smelled strongly of a recent cigarette, and he fiddled with something inside his trouser pocket that Jay politely assumed was a lighter.

Delphine, looking as spruce in her cream trouser suit as if she'd merely made the forty-minute hop from Manchester, strode into view pushing a trolley laden with a pair of matching blue leather suitcases bound with pink straps. Of course they were matching, Jay thought as she moved forward to greet her. Did she really imagine that this perfect cousin would arrive with the kind of assortment of mismatched baggage, duty-free carrier bags and lumpy packages that Jay herself always ended up travelling with?

‘Delphine! Over here!' Delphine, perfectly made up and with short sun-streaky blonde hair, turned towards her and smiled.

‘Hi, Delph! Great to see you!' Jay hugged her cousin. ‘And ooh, you smell gorgeous!' she told her. ‘You'd never think you'd spent twenty hours travelling.'