The Business of Pleasure by Elyot Justine

Author:Elyot, Justine [Elyot, Justine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9781907016424
Publisher: Xcite Books
Published: 2010-09-19T06:00:00+00:00

Lady Muck

I RARELY SEE THE women whose houses I clean; for the most part, they leave early, come home late, and leave me a wad of banknotes on the granite, or Corian, or quartz kitchen counter at the end of the week. I do, of course, know what they look like, from our initial hiring meeting, and from the large glossy portraits of them, in wedding dresses, or graduation robes, or accepting awards at some industry dinner or other, all over the walls and mantelpieces. Their personalities sometimes come through in the messages they leave me.

Mrs Redvers, a sleek brunette corporate lawyer, often complains that the refrigerator shelves are left in a mess, and I have explained over and over again that this is because young Jonquil and Reuben run rings around the nanny and are constantly raiding for illicit snacks. Her notes are terse; she is time-poor, as they say, and the subsequent need for economy seems to be carried over into her manners.

Ms Livesay is a television producer, a slightly manic-looking blonde. Although she is nearly thirty, she still lives like a student, and of all my houses, hers is the most labour-intensive. Bottles and cigarette butts in the sink, clothes flung everywhere, a leaning tower of magazines and CDs piled high on the coffee table. She is thoughtless, but usually quite effusive in her notes. ‘Thanks, darling, you are a lifesaver,’ she will sometimes scribble, with an extra fiver on top of the wage if the toilet was pebble-dashed with vomit or there was a particularly heinous stain on the sofa.

My final lady is a Lady. Lady Markham’s London pied-à-terre is only occupied when the House of Lords is sitting. I must admit I used to have a crush on her, when I started cleaning for her. She is a stunning woman in her forties, with a look of Honor Blackman in her 1960s heyday, and the accent to match. She is, I suppose, quite patronising, but she patronises me so graciously and with such charm that I fall for it every time. She is habitually tidy, which makes the job easy, and she has beautiful, elegant taste, so that spending time among her knick-knacks is a pleasure. I do wonder about the little room – a walk-in closet really, I think – tucked to the side of her bedroom that is always locked and strictly off-limits, but it pleases me to think of Lady Markham having her secrets, just like I do.

I clean these houses in St Johns Wood every day, then I go home to my own tiny flat on a rough estate – just a stone’s throw from their mansions – and clean up all my mother’s clutter before cooking her supper. It isn’t the life I dreamed of when we came here, but it is a life, of sorts.

Well, it was, until that awful Thursday at Mrs Redvers’s house. It was a school holiday, so Jonquil and Reuben were underfoot all day, pretending to blast me with their space guns while I vacuumed.

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