Letting out the Worms: Guilty or not? If not then the alternative is terrifying (Kitty Thomas Book 1) by Sue Nicholls

Author:Sue Nicholls [Nicholls, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-18T22:00:00+00:00

37 ANWEN

In Maurice’s house, the windows were wide open to the spring sunshine, and the jubilant calls of nesting birds filtered inside to Anwen as she scrubbed mildew from the discoloured frames. As she worked, she calculated her earnings. By Monday, she would have toiled on this dusty place for fifteen hours. That worked out at one hundred and fifty pounds, and her imagined ownership of a smart phone would soon be a reality.

In the back garden, Maurice was stooping over a flower border, dragging festoons of foliage into a tattered, blue Ikea bag. During the morning, Anwen had kept him supplied with whatever he needed. A drink of tea at eleven a.m. with a small plate of biscuits, which he gobbled down; a glass of water an hour later followed by a visit to the sweet-smelling loo. Now that he was back on task among the weeds, she estimated she had at least a half hour before he appeared to disturb her.

With a grubby cloth in her hand, she crept to the kitchen and took a moment to admire her work and give herself top marks for the room’s pristine state and significantly fresher aroma. She had scrubbed the crusted work tops and taken a stiff brush to the vinyl flooring so that now, the only marks on it were the ochre coloured rectangles and triangles of its faded pattern. One peep in the oven had been enough to tell that it would be half a day’s work on its own, so she had wiped the outside and the top and decided that was enough for the moment.

Now, Anwen the cleaner rotated her duster over the work surface again, while Anwen the investigative journalist pulled open cupboards and poked in drawers. When she pulled at the handle of a drawer under the side window, something inside snagged on the top, preventing it from opening. She pressed down the jumble of papers inside. Bingo! With a furtive look at Maurice’s stooped figure she collected up a handful of notebooks and calendars. Her heart was in overdrive, and in her clumsy haste to tame the unwieldy pile she let it slip from her grip and onto the floor with a flap and a flutter. Pads and scraps of paper glided across the vinyl and some disappeared under the cooker. In horror, she clawed everything together and stood up, panting, to check on Maurice. He was not at his post. In panic, she scanned the garden and craned her neck to check in the corners, but he had vanished. With fumbling fingers, she dropped the bundle back and slammed the drawer shut, just as his beaming face loomed in the glass of the back door and it opened.

‘How are you getting on?’

His fingers left their grimy imprint on the door and Anwen hid her frustration, saying, ‘Fine. Do you have any polish?’

‘Polish, no. I didn’t think of that.’ His face brightened, and he pointed to the drawer against which, Anwen was now pressed.

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