Stella quelled an inclination to rush out to her van. She took a sip. It was exactly how she liked it, a dollop of milk and one sugar. She sank into the cushions.
So it was that Stella Darnell – aged forty-five and indeed single – director of Clean Slate Cleaning Services (For a Fresh Start), came to be sitting in a dead woman’s riser-recliner, taking tea on a Monday evening in Hammersmith when she had planned to be clearing out her dead father’s house and compiling a quote for a car dealership in Chiswick.
David Barlow chatted peaceably from the corner of an austere sofa with little padding, his legs crossed, one foot twitching in emphasis of certain words. ‘…it was a Friday, too late to ring the doctor or undertaker.’
‘Medics work through the night.’ Stella drained her cup and placed it on the little table. A furtive finger test confirmed the job would be unrewarding: no dust. Apart from random black lines on the walls, the room – spanning the length of the house, including a conservatory extension – was clean.
‘My wife had passed away, no one could help her and on a weekend they are run off their feet.’ Mr Barlow cleared his throat: ‘And to be honest, after so many years, I wanted her a little longer, you understand.’ He smoothed his tie. Jack said the gesture was a sign of dishonesty. What did he know? He never wore a tie. ‘You are too young to have known death.’ Barlow smiled, looking over the top of his rimless spectacles. Perhaps referring to the article he added, ‘Although that isn’t true.’
Stella was trying to conjure her escape so did not correct him about her age or elaborate on her experience of death. Jack had worn a tie to her dad’s funeral, she remembered.
David Barlow’s thick brown hair had no grey and his symmetrical good looks showed only a few lines. He was younger than Bowie, anywhere between forty-five and fifty-five. In over twenty years of running Clean Slate, Stella’s stringent appraisal of her clients had begun to include their dress sense. This, coupled with her assessment of their attitude to the cleaning, had contributed to a shrewd business acumen that brought Clean Slate considerable commercial success. Barlow had trodden silently over his spotless carpet in understated soft brown leather loafers. He had not smartened up for their appointment; he took this trouble for himself.
Aside from David Bowie, he put her in mind of her dad. It was not his appearance, she decided; Terry was an off-the-peg man, in a hurry, his clothes lacking Barlow’s attention to detail. But Terry was a charmer; he always broke the ice and could elicit information and confessions from suspects or indeed anyone. Barlow’s mild manner had to be an act because, like Terry, no wool would surely ever be pulled over those gimlet eyes. He had already got her to have tea. Time to go.
‘Clean Slate would not suit you, you need—’
‘Of course.’ He laid his cup and saucer on the tray. ‘Your firm is too successful.’ He got up, apparently accepting Stella’s refusal before it was clear in her mind. ‘We were burgled a while back and Jennifer felt the place was violated. I should have had the house cleaned while she was alive.’
He shot her a brief smile. His eyes were a greenish blue. Absurdly, because there were more important things that she forgot, she recalled that Bowie had different coloured eyes. Stella struggled to her feet, snatched up her rucksack and glanced behind, half expecting Mrs Barlow to be there.
‘I chose Clean Slate because you list “deep cleaning” among your services.’
Stella stopped, her hand on the door jamb. ‘It’s for industrial environments, hospitals, hospices…’ she managed.
‘Deep cleaning is what I want.’ Barlow addressed the recliner. ‘Your website lists the eradication of kitchen grease, offensive odour control, duct cleaning. This would be a sanitizing…’ He folded his arms. ‘I want cleaning that is as deep as can be. I want everything cleansed, all traces eradicated. To make this a home again.’
He looked around the room as if surveying the devastation that the burglary must have caused. Stella brightened. David Barlow appreciated order and cleanliness. Her heart began to race and she strode back into the room.
‘I want the walls washed, all furniture pulled out and cleaned, vent panels, everything removed, taken apart. Retribution.’ He turned to her.
Stella now saw that the marks on the wall were not random as she had assumed but were shapes outlined with dirt where objects had once hung. There were the outlines of three crucifixes between the oblongs and squares of pictures. Not a believer in God, Stella did not rule his existence out. She supposed that the theft of a crucifix – three – might incite retribution. Yet she wasn’t convinced that deep cleaning would do it. How would the thieves know?
It was not her policy to dwell on her clients’ motives. However, inspired by David Barlow’s determination to get his house back, she found herself hoping it would help.
‘I’ll do it.’ She swung her rucksack down and ferreted in it for her estimates pad. ‘When were you thinking?’
‘Clean Slate must be too busy to bother with me.’
He crossed to the recliner and depressed a foot pedal. The chair tilted slowly forward like a person getting to their feet. Stella found the sight unsettling. Was he not serious after all? She knew that type.
‘I used to run a sales team for an internet company. I wasn’t meant to fuss with customers only making small purchases like dial-ups or modems. Time is money.’ He let the chair down. ‘You have to be pragmatic.’
Barlow would have been a soft touch: too nice. Her dad would have made a crack salesperson; he got what he needed from any situation. Now that Barlow was prevaricating, Stella was determined to close the sale. She flipped to a fresh page in her pad and, clicking on her Clean Slate branded pen, jotted down what she could see. Thankfully the wife had not been one for ornaments – unless the burglars had taken them. ‘I’ll send you a quotation.’ She was particularly formal to hide a rising excitement; it was a year since she had deep cleaned.
‘Invoice me after each visit. I will pay by return.’
He didn’t ask for a cash deal; exacting a discount was another trait of one species of widower. The less they paid for their new wife the better. Barlow was what he seemed: a decent bloke wanting a job done.
‘It will be expensive,’ she warned, rat-a-tatting the page with her ballpoint. Were Jackie here she would suggest Stella talk up the benefits of Clean Slate so when she priced the work the client was primed to think it worth every penny. She had killed the job.
Barlow nodded. ‘I want it sorted.’ He repeated, more to himself, ‘I will pay.’
Reprieve. Stella flipped open her Filofax. They decided on two sessions a week. She scratched out a recruitment meeting with Jackie that clashed with one day.
Standing in a shaft of sunlight from the conservatory, Barlow enquired: ‘Who will be coming?’
Stella looked out at a green lawn so neat it looked synthetic.
‘Me.’
Halfway up Aldensley Road, braking to avoid boys kicking a football across the kerbs, Stella reappraised David Barlow. He wasn’t sizing her up as a bride. He wanted his house cleansed of bad memories so he could move on. Maybe this was why she hadn’t sold Terry’s house, she would tell Jack next time he asked. David Barlow was her kind of person. He valued order, free of dust or grime. Just as she did, and she had been quoted on it in the article. The piece had appeared in the paper before his wife died; Barlow had not rung earlier because she was too ill. Stella exhaled with relief as she turned on to King Street and headed for Young’s Corner. Deep cleaning. Perfect start to her week. The last domestic client to commission cleaning at a forensic level had died; she missed the work.
David Barlow was exactly whom she needed.
Tuesday, 19 April 1966
The noise made her ears hurt. She clapped her hands over them but it got louder. Around her sandals dots of light sparkled, white and blue and pink.
‘I told you not to touch them!’ her mum cried. ‘That’s all our crockery!’
Mary Thornton stayed perfectly still in the hallway while her mother scrabbled about on the parquet floor, shuffling broken china and bits of glass on to newspaper which she wrapped up into a parcel.
‘Don’t stand there. Get the dustpan and brush!’
‘Where from?’
‘Where it usually is, under the sink.’ She shook her head at Mary.
‘Will it be there already?’ They had only moved to the house that day.
‘No it won’t.’ Her mother sighed. ‘Look in the box labelled “Under Sink”. Don’t try to carry the whole thing this time. Lord knows what we’ll drink out of.’
Mary pushed open the door to the new kitchen and found her brother Michael sitting at the table. He was eating yoghurt out of a glass jar. She walked over to him and saw that somehow amongst all the boxes, wooden cases and newspapers he had got his special spoon. He eyed her, the spoon suspended; then, evidently considering it safe to do so, he resumed eating.
‘Who said you could have that?’
‘Mummy did. Are you in trouble again?’
‘No,’ she asserted, although Michael, three years her junior and never in trouble, must have heard her drop the box and listened to everything that happened afterwards.
‘Give me some,’ she demanded, even though she wasn’t hungry.
‘You hate yoghurt.’ The small boy snatched away the jar and cupped it on his lap when his sister lunged for it. He opened his mouth to shout and she halted her hand in the air.
‘If you say anything I’ll get you later,’ she hissed. ‘Give. It. Here.’
Mary pulled Michael’s wrist. Her brother wriggled free and, kneeling up on his chair, crouched over the table shielding the jar. Both children were engaged in the struggle for its own sake. After tugging and shoving, Mary detached herself and wandered over to a box by the back door. She had written the words ‘Under Sink’ on its side herself. She knelt on the lino and, lifting the flaps, rummaged inside.
‘You’re bad,’ Michael uttered, apparently arbitrarily, now that he had a clear route to the door.
‘I’m not.’ She was bad. This had not occurred properly to her before. Dimly she pondered that ever since the buried children had been dug up on the Moor she had been bad. That was why she had a new name.
Despite her labelling, the box was full of pans, the rolling pin, her nan’s cheese grater and the metal measuring jug for making Michael’s favourite cakes. Mary could not see the dustpan and brush. She wrapped her arms around the cardboard and, disobeying her mum, hauled it up and staggered to the sink. She dumped it on to the draining board with a terrible clang and whipped around. Michael was smearing out the last of the yoghurt from the jar with his finger. Her mum did not appear.
‘Will our milkman come here?’ he asked conversationally.
‘How do I know?’ Mary barked at him. ‘No, of course not, we’ve moved miles and miles away. Go and wash your hands.’ With private triumph she fished out the dustpan and brush from another box also called ‘Under Sink’. She examined the galvanized dustpan, mildly perplexed that it looked the same in the new house where otherwise so much was different.
‘Where shall I wash them?’
‘Don’t be an idiot. In the bathroom.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Stop asking me things. Go and see.’ Mary brandished the brush at her brother; he scampered out of the room. ‘Stop!’ Michael’s head bobbed back.
‘Wash them in the sink here.’ Mary did not want to be alone in the new kitchen.
Michael pattered to the tap and by going on tiptoe he could just reach it. Mary vaguely registered that in their proper house he stood on a chair. He must have grown. Wistfully she pictured that kitchen with the sunbeam that on some school mornings warmed her cheeks while she ate her Cornflakes and made her feel special. She did not feel special any more and the idea of the new school made her tummy ache.
Mary Thornton clasped the dustpan and brush and trotted back to the hall. Her mum had gone. She crouched down and played at housework. She took today’s paper from her father’s coat pocket and spread it out on the floor.
The little girl was momentarily unnerved by the photograph of a woman looking right at her. She read the headline above the image: ‘MOORS MURDER TRIAL OPENS’. She dabbed a thumb over the lady’s name, blotting it out.
She snatched up the brush, scooted the remaining tiny fragments into the dustpan and tipped them out on to the paper until the face of the glary lady had nearly disappeared and the floor was clean. She bundled the paper up the way her mother had and carried it like baby Jesus into the kitchen.
Michael had gone. The empty jar was on the table. Mary rinsed it in the sink and plonked it upside down on the draining board. There were round circles from cups on the silver top, which was strange because they had not had a drink in the new house. Michael had whispered there were ghosts. Stupid. She rubbed at one of the rings until it was gone. Daddy had been cross that her mum had packed the tea leaves in the wrong box and so there had been no tea. She looked in both ‘Under Sink’ boxes for a dishcloth but it must also be in the wrong box. It was not her fault, she said to herself. None of it was.
When Mrs Thornton breezed in twenty minutes later, straining with the weight of a bulging string bag, her daughter had filled the cupboard under the sink so that it looked the same as in their last house.
‘That’s nice, love.’ She pushed aside two empty boxes and laid down her shopping. ‘Fish fingers, lamb chops, baked beans, tea, bread and cornflakes. And some veg. Please start the tea for you and little Mikey. Daddy’s driving back for the last load and I’m doing the beds.’
‘Can I go in the van with Daddy?’
‘What did I just say?’
‘Is Michael going?’
‘No, My— Mary! For goodness’ sake, do I have to ask a thing twice?’ Mrs Thornton clapped her hands to shoo Mary along and whisked out of the room. From the hall, she called: ‘Use the fish fingers and beans, they’re your baby brother’s favourite and he must have a treat to get used to the house.’
‘I’m off.’ Her dad was in the doorway.
Mary grasped the chance. ‘Can I come?’ she pleaded.