Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Café Read online

  When she looked back later, she couldn’t remember in detail what words had been said that day. She told him it was over and he knew somehow that she meant it this time. He asked her if he should leave and she said yes. He packed a few things in a suitcase and wiped his eyes, telling her that he was sorry and he loved her and he’d put the money back whatever happened. He promised. She hadn’t believed him. She hadn’t attached any faith to his words, she’d seen them for the bullshit they were. Then he had walked out with his head bent low to the same battered car they’d had for the past eight years. And it hadn’t been new when they’d bought it.

  Cheryl listened to the car starting, heard the engine chugging: the hole in the exhaust was getting worse. Her ear followed the rattle until it was no longer discernible and she hiccupped a single sob, as she felt whatever it was that had held them together finally stretch to its limit and then snap.

  Don’t you dare, she said to herself. Don’t you dare cry one more tear over that man. Haven’t you shed enough?

  Enough to fill five mop buckets over the years. And she had enough tears inside her now to fill another. She daren’t let a single one drop out because it would be quickly joined by thousands more. Something inside her groaned, probably her stomach, but it sounded as if her heart had cracked. And she felt as if it had, too.

  She threw the building society statement down on the work surface and picked up her bag full of cleaning stuff. She was doing her monthly blitz on Mr Ackworth’s house this morning, which she hated because he barked orders at her as if she were a dog, then a four-hander at her favourite client’s with lazy Ruth Fallis, then a one-off clean in an office. It was going to be a long, hard day.

  She needed to get to work, keep busy and not think about anything but the jobs in hand. If only life could be spruced up and made perfect with a J-cloth and a spray of Mr Sheen, she thought as she realised that if today wasn’t bad enough already, she’d have to get the bus to work from now on.

  Chapter 3

  ‘. . . And I don’t touch bleach; brings me out in blisters, even through gloves. I don’t climb ladders to do windows and I don’t scrub floors by hand. It’s mop, Hoover or nowt. And I can’t bend to do skirting boards because I’ve got a problem with a disc. And I’ve got a bad knee so I don’t do kneeling either.’ Lesley Clamp dictated the last of her non-negotiable working terms and sat back in the chair.

  Della clung on to her patience as well as a strained rictus smile after hearing the long list of ‘won’t dos’. This was all she needed today. How Lesley Clamp had managed to clock up twenty years as a self-professed highly praised cleaner when she was either allergic to or refused to touch most of the contents of a house was beyond her. The good news was that Lesley could work quite happily with lemon juice, vinegar, salt and newspaper. Della was tempted to tell her that she’d be better off getting a job in a chip shop, then. Della had a thick rejection file in her drawer of people that she wouldn’t employ in a million years. Lesley Clamp’s name would be joining it shortly.

  ‘If we take you on, we will supply you with your cleaning equipment,’ began Della. Not that Lesley Clamp would need to know that, because Diamond Shine would not be taking her on. The woman smelt of trouble. She was the type who’d complain about everyone and everything and Jimmy wouldn’t fork out for fripperies like non-latex specialist gloves and branded goods like Cillit Bang. Although Des’s Discount Warehouse did an import version called ‘Fillit Bong,’ which once burst into flame and burnt off Ruth Fallis’s eyebrow when she squirted it on a work surface whilst smoking a fag.

  ‘We pay the minimum wage per hour . . .’

  ‘Is that all?’ humphed Lesley. ‘You must be creaming the profits, then?’

  Della so wanted this miserable sow out of her office. She should be planning a jolly trip to Whitby, not staring at the hairy mole on Lesley Clamp’s sneering top lip.

  ‘We supply a guaranteed wage, insurance, cleaning supplies and back-up service when clients are difficult. Those are the things you get in return for paying administration costs, Mrs Clamp.’

  Lesley huffed again. ‘I had a pound an hour above minimum wage at Dreamclean.’

  And Dreamclean were unorganised and chucked money away and went down the pan, which is why you’re here asking me for a job, thought Della to herself. And no way did they offer a pound above minimum wage either, but nice try, Lesley. No, she decided. Desperate as they were for more cleaners, there was no way she could employ this awful woman.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s the standard rate for everyone. I’m so sorry that we aren’t suitable for your requireme—’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ replied Lesley with an impatient snap in her voice. ‘It’s just less than I’m used to.’

  Della had had enough for this afternoon. She’d ordered chocolates for Jimmy’s fat wife and had interviewed three badly needed potential cleaners so far today and not one was up to the standard she expected. Her reject file was as full as her potential file was empty. She stood up to indicate this meeting was at a close.

  ‘I’ll be contacting the successful applicants by the end of next week,’ she said. ‘I have your number, Mrs Clamp, and I’ll be in touch.’ God help Mr Clamp.

  Lesley Clamp rose to her fat little feet. She looked so much older than the forty-five years she purported to be in her Miss Marple shoes and her thick tweed coat straining across her swollen bosom and stomach.

  ‘Oh and I can’t do Wednesdays or after three on Fridays,’ she said at the door, turning to deliver a parting shot.

  Della dropped onto the chair and blew out two relieved cheekfuls of air. She should have known that the chances were anyone with ‘Clamp’ as a surname would be a no-go, but she didn’t think it fair to tar everyone with the same brush, since Josie Clamp had been one of their star workers until her death two years ago. The Clamps were one of the town’s most notorious families, along with the Crookes, the Bellfields and the O’Gowans; but the Clamps were by far the biggest. For decades past, there hadn’t been a month when the Clamp name wasn’t mentioned in either the Barnsley Chronicle or the Daily Trumpet for some misdemeanour or other, from the days of that notorious old confidence trickster ‘Velvet’ Vernon Clamp, right down to the present generation. Only last week, one of the younger lot – the inaptly named ‘Chiffon’ Clamp, had been given two hundred hours community service for shoplifting booze from Morrisons. And the papers had reported – God forbid – her cousin Mandy’s marriage to one of the Crooke boys. They’d already started to push out a brood of hybrid villains into the world with twins Sinitta-Paris and Brooklyn-Jaiden.

  Della wished that Ivanka had been there to put the kettle on for her because she could murder a rest and a cup of tea. She thought back to how pale the poor girl had been that morning. Della had grown quite fond of Ivanka in the time they’d worked together and hoped she’d be all right, as she lived alone.

  Admittedly Della hadn’t been best pleased six months ago when Jimmy had suggested they employ an office junior. She wasn’t comfortable with having another female around, even if she really did need some help with her workload. Jimmy had insisted, though.

  ‘Get one of those East European girls,’ he had told her. ‘They work for peanuts.’

  Typical Jimmy. Not one to splash the cash and when he did, it was more than likely because he was up to something, as Della knew too well. So Ivanka joined them. Nineteen years old, tall, curvy and leggy, with tumbles of bottle-blonde hair which by rights should have sealed Della’s disapproval, because Jimmy Diamond had a sweet tooth for eye candy and there was no way that Della would have employed a rival for her idol’s affections. But whilst Della had noticed Jimmy’s eyes sweep over the legs of the brunette and over the bum of the redhead who came to be interviewed for the post, they barely acknowledged the existence of Miss Ivanka Szczepanska. In fact the only two comments he made after seeing her were, one: She’s got a lot of spots, hasn’t she? And two: Her name must sweep up the points on a Scrabbl
e board.

  Ivanka fitted in surprisingly well. She was quiet, with a terrible phone manner, but she seemed to want to learn everything that running an office entailed, albeit at a very relaxed pace. Still, it was a relief for Della to be able to hand over a chunk of her workload, even if Ivanka didn’t seem very keen on doing the more mundane office junior jobs such as filing and making the tea. Ivanka would take an age to boil a kettle and strung out her trips to the post office, but Della found that she liked having another presence in the office and Ivanka’s surly ways amused her more than they annoyed her. Della got the impression, from the snippets that Ivanka supplied, that her home life in Poland hadn’t been up to much. She didn’t seem very close to her parents, which Della could relate to, and Della had to admire such a young girl moving over to a strange country in the hope of making something of herself. Though her parents remained in Krakow, Ivanka did have a few relatives who had moved to the area and she saw them quite often, which Della thought must be nice for her. In short, Della was grateful for Ivanka’s company and extra pair of hands, especially as those hands seemed to be as invisible to Jimmy as the rest of her was.

  Della went into the small office kitchen and made herself a cup of strong tea. She even allowed herself a consoling Oreo from the tin today, even though she didn’t usually partake of biscuits or chocolate, unlike Jimmy’s wife who most certainly did. Connie Diamond, according to how Della pictured her, must be a chocolate-filled, pampered whale with a blood group of gat-O positive by now. Even Jimmy had said before that Cadbury’s would be out of business if it wasn’t for his wife. Della had never been one for snacking, except on the odd banana, which is why she still tipped the scales at no more than eight stone – the same weight she had been thirty years ago when she was twenty-one.

  ‘Hello, only me,’ said a voice from the front office, just as Della had finished off the last of her biscuit. ‘Anyone in?’

  Della stepped back through to find the enormous square bulk of Pookie Barnes. He always looked as if he had shoplifted a forty-two inch TV and was smuggling it inside his clothes.

  ‘Thought I’d walked onto the Marie Celeste for a moment there.’ Pookie’s lips wore their usual broad smile, but it was one that should never be trusted – a crocodile-fake arc of teeth. Della always imagined that he would have the same expression whether he won the lottery or was waterboarding a business rival.

  ‘Thought I’d drag him out for an hour. You can spare him, can’t you? Where is he?’ wheezed Pookie, still breathless from climbing the stairs.

  ‘He’s on a golf course in Hampshire with you,’ said Della, her calm collected exterior masking the grip of the horrible confusion which had suddenly seized her whole body.

  ‘Oh shit.’ Pookie’s ever-present grin momentarily dropped from his face as he realised his faux pas, but he was as slippery as a greased eel and would wriggle hard to get himself out of any situation. He raised his finger to indicate a recall of memory. ‘Ah, I forgot he was going on ahead. I had a bit of unexpected business to do. Cropped up last minute.’ That plastic smile was back sitting comfortably once again on his lips. ‘I might as well set off down to Evertrees in Hampshire sooner rather than later then if he’s waiting for me.’

  He’s emphasising the destination so that I know where he was supposed to be going, thought Della. He must think I’m daft.

  Pookie’s fleshy neck was growing more purple-crimson around his collar. He might have been able to hang on to his composure, but he didn’t have much control over his blood pressure, or the vein in his forehead that looked as if it might pop at any minute.

  ‘No need to mention I dropped by,’ he said, tapping the side of his bulbous nose. ‘Don’t want old Jim thinking I was dragging my feet going down there. I said I’d meet him in the nineteeth hole at four. I better ring him and tell him that I’m stuck in traffic.’

  ‘Have a good time,’ Della said with as much sweetness as she could muster. ‘And don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.’ She tapped her considerably slimmer nose twice and smiled.

  Pookie turned on his heel and was out of the door as fast as his stubby little legs could carry him. Della locked the door behind him and sank onto the nearest chair before she fell, because she felt as if someone had taken all the bones out of her legs and replaced them with jelly. She wasn’t fooled by Pookie’s attempted patching of the situation. He was no more meeting with Jimmy that afternoon than she could audition to be a Playboy bunny.

  Jimmy had lied to her.

  Why, why would he start to lie to her after all these years of trusting her with all his dodgiest secrets?

  In the fifteen years she had worked for Jimmy Diamond, she had never known him to keep things from her before – and Della thought she could smell a fib from three hundred paces. But he had today – and why, because he had no reason to. She knew about his tax fiddles and his double-dealings and his many short-lived dalliances. She’d even lied for him to his wife when Jimmy was cosying up to some fancy piece and Connie rang up asking to speak to him. She even booked the hotels for Jimmy to do his cosying up in. She didn’t feel a jot of guilt about doing it either; in fact – were she to admit it – she felt a hit of glee that he disrespected his wife so much. It convinced her that there was no connection between them, that their marriage was hanging on by a thread and one day that thread would finally break and he would come to her, his soul-mate, the woman who knew everything about him and accepted him and adored him.

  She never felt threatened by Jimmy’s flings. He didn’t go into detail about them, but from the little hints he dropped, Della knew that they were ‘a scratch to an itch’ because he wasn’t ‘getting it’ at home, which Della was glad about because she was wildly jealous of Connie Diamond’s position as the woman who had his name.

  So why hadn’t Jimmy told Della where he was really going? All she knew was that whatever the reason, it had to be something significant.

  Della flew to her desk and ripped off the key which was stuck to the back of the drawer with brown sticky tape. Jimmy didn’t know she had access to the locked bottom drawer in his own desk. She couldn’t remember when she had last snooped but it was certainly over a year and a half ago and she’d never found anything in it that she didn’t know about already.

  This time was different.

  This time she found a large brown envelope and it was stuffed full of receipts. A receipt for a silver heart-shaped locket from Tiffany. Receipts for overnight stays and dinner for two in five-star hotels in the centre of London and theatre tickets. Receipts for flowers, a teddy bear, a bracelet, earrings, clothes. A CAR – Della gasped, an Audi TT and brand new at that. Thank goodness Jimmy was so tight he had hung on to them all. He might not have been able to put these through the office books, but he was holding them in case he could find some other way of getting some tax relief.

  Ivanka wore a heart-shaped silver locket. And she drove an Audi TT. She had saved up years for it, she’d told Della four months ago when she proudly first drove it into their car park. Her cousin, a garage mechanic, had got her a terrific deal on it.

  And, if the next receipt which Della picked up was anything to go by, Jimmy Diamond wasn’t waiting for Pookie Barnes in a golf club bar in Hampshire, he was on a last-minute-booked, long weekend break in a very swanky hotel in the Costa Blanca with a certain Miss Ivanka Szczepanska.

  Chapter 4

  When Cheryl got to Mr Ackworth’s house, she found a note on the kitchen table to say that he was out. Normally that would have cheered her but her heart felt too physically weighed down with sadness and she cried as she vacuumed and mopped and dusted, periodically having to stop and clear her eyes of the tears obscuring her vision.

  She wished there’d been someone she could have rung up and poured everything out to, a close friend who would be there on her doorstep after work with cake and a bottle of wine, but there was no one. She had a sister, but she was a wrong ’un and they didn’t talk and her mother had always
put bingo, blokes and booze before her daughters. The friends she had had at school and college had all moved upwards and onwards to good jobs and other friendship groups. She and Gary occasionally went out in couples with his mates and their partners, but the girls were already in a clique which she didn’t belong to and wouldn’t have wanted to, either. Her only friends were her fellow cleaners with whom she met up once a month for a joint moan over tea, sandwiches and scones at the Sunflower Café. She was fond of them, but she had her pride and wouldn’t have wanted them to know how much – and how many times – she’d been duped by the same man. There was no one whose shoulder she could cry on. She was alone.

  She wished she didn’t have to work at Edith’s with Ruth Fallis today. She usually loved her afternoons at Brambles Cottage but Ruth Fallis was a horrible woman and why Della had chosen her of all people to share the shift with was anyone’s guess. Ruth Fallis was the laziest cow walking so it was no surprise to Cheryl that Ruth hadn’t arrived by the time she got to Edith Gardiner’s house, and she was fifteen minutes late herself because of roadworks holding up the bus.

  Cheryl walked up the path to Brambles and, as always, a wistful sigh escaped her as she came to the bright green front door. It was such a pretty place, biscuit-tin beautiful with lots of little windows and white stone walls. It was the sort of house that the other Cheryl Parker, in a parallel universe, lived in. That Cheryl Parker wasn’t pushing down on her heartbreak in order to get through the day. That Cheryl was solvent and happily single and tended to the garden of Brambles with all the zeal that Edith did.