Chapter 1
I suppose I've always liked things in order.
As a kid, I spent hours lining up my dolls in height order (sometimes in order of newness or - worst of all - favouritism). I was a fickle child, easily won over by a shiny head of hair or smart new outfit.
As I got older, nail varnish was arranged in wonderfully pompous sections of "pearlescent", "metallic", "pastel", "primary", and savagely binned if dried deposits affected lid removal or labels were seen to peel. Gosh, I even rejected one for being called "iridescent mauve" since I regarded anything mauve akin to varicose veins or old ladies' handkerchiefs.
I was quite a charmer, apparently.
As you might imagine, my bedroom was perpetually, compulsively ordered.
A huge fan of stationery, I had box files lining my lower shelves and chamfered file holders along the top. Pens (and writing implements in general) were coloured coded (separated into fine point, medium felt-tip, highlighter, biro) and vital to my day to day happiness. A Sharpie without a lid was not to be tolerated.
Bed linens were changed weekly (by my insistence, thus my disgruntled, hard-working mother showed me the control panel on the washing machine and wished me well) and carpeted areas were vacuumed every other day. I secretly checked the pantry, the fridge and freezer as well as the kitchen cupboards and wrote my parents long, convoluted and usually ignored shopping lists ("we have bleach, but one more assault from Charlotte's hair dye and Melanie's irritable bowel should put pay to that by Friday") and wrote endless duty rotas for my irretrievably lazy family, who continued to ignore what was expected of them until the day I left to travel then work in the city.
I mean, they said they'd miss me, but I know a sigh of relief when I hear one.
~x~
God, London.
Jobs were so easy to get and so easy to disappoint.
I mean, I was clearly meticulous and with high expectations, but descriptions of duties and subsequent rewards were less so. Soon, after too many failed recruitment attempts, I realised that prospective employers were more interested in the obsequious and servile - those willing to attend to people with poorly organised thoughts, and depressingly they weren't remotely interested in an original idea that might save them hours of wasted time searching through their woefully populated databases. They just wanted underpaid lackeys who said 'yes' a lot.
"Maybe data management isn't for you."
Cheap suit that had never seen the inside of a dry cleaners and a shirt pocket well-versed in leaky biros. Same piece of fluff had been hanging out of his back trouser pocket for three weeks in a row.
Yes I know, shocking.
"Maybe … " Looking at watch (cheap) and the clock not too discreetly over my shoulder.
Obvious he's forgotten to pack a sandwich again and is wondering when he can sneak out to Pret.
"Maybe take a few days to … mmm … have a rethink about office work in general. Maybe something more … um … independent. Where you're in charge of YOU!"
He actually pointed, clearly chuffed with his recall of the last staff training meeting all about boosting the growth mindset of your staff.
"You mean, work for myself? Build my own empire? I've only been in the city for three and a half weeks. Even Alan Sugar had a bit longer to hone his empire building."
An awkward silence followed, only punctuated by a loud and loquacious growl emanating from his neglected belly. He shuffled his file, seeming to end the interview and probably mentally relegating my details to the filing cabinet usually to be found on the floor and emptied nightly by the cleaning staff. I stared at the brown cardboard folder in his hand, like he was holding my chances at success right there, in his ill-qualified and barely cognisant paw.
"Give yourself a few days," he mumbled, gathering up some loose change from the top drawer and subconsciously waving my file towards the door (I clearly was meant to follow) and pushing back his chair.
"Think about your interests, but be honest - "
We stopped and actually made eye contact for the first time that day.
"Be honest with yourself. It's not what you think you should do, but what you were born to do. Find your strengths and the rest will just follow. Trust me," he said.
Then, for the first time in three and a half weeks, I looked into those deep-set, city weary eyes and I smiled.
"OK," I said. "I'll give it a go."
And you know what? Within a week I did, and my life was never, ever the same again.
Thank God.
~x~
She was at least 20 years older than my mum but she had sharp eyes that missed nothing and a strong will and clarity of purpose I'd rarely even come across in people my own age.
"You seem to know your way around a dustpan and brush."
She looked at me with those eyes over the edge of a black, leather clipboard which I suspected she'd never held before in her life. As it wavered during our tour of the house, I noticed a neatly typed, bullet-pointed list which she ticked precisely every now and again as we spoke of my experience and general outlook regarding housekeeping.
"Unusual for a girl your age I might have thought."
She peered and I endeavoured to look as un-nightclubby and as un-youthfully disordered as possible.
"I like order," I said, firmly. "I love knowing where everything is and keeping things spick and span (I like old-fashioned phrases and thought she might too). I just think life is simpler when things are organised; things run more smoothly and life is just … better."
She smiled.
"It's going to be three months at least you know. My sister's been in Queensland for three years and this is my first visit. Her husband isn't himself and she needs me a bit more than she's letting on." She wrinkled her nose, confiding.
"I'm very trustworthy. I've house-sat for lots of people, all over the country."
(Basingstoke and Birmingham to be entirely accurate, when my parents and siblings were reaching critical mass last summer.)
"But this is a little more than house-sitting dear." She leaned forward, conspiratorially lowering her voice even though I knew all three stories of the house were currently empty.
"Sometimes, it can be a bit like baby-sitting." She pointed above her head.
"Your tenants?"
I had been told there were two, although they were seemingly not a couple and both professional men in their thirties. I smiled; I could handle that. They'd soon see my housekeeping rules would be worth adhering to. Certainly, I noticed their rooms looked tidy enough during the thirty second glimpse I'd had over her shoulder; plenty of people included skulls in their home decor without being considered weirdos (except my Goth sister who definitely was). I had also noticed crammed bookcases and some piled up petri dishes and glass vials which all pointed towards a couple of bumbling research types, probably from Brunel or maybe Royal Holloway, leafing through dusty research papers and setting up little projects of an evening. It sounded eccentric and almost sweet and I was sure that scientists would be immaculate and hygienic for the sake of accuracy, if nothing else.
"I'm good with people and routines," I say, breezily. "I'll be virtually invisible; they'll barely notice me."
She looked at me carefully, almost on the verge of words, but then re-calibrating them before saying:
"I've warned them, of course, although it's sometimes difficult to know what's sunk in and what hasn't."
(typical boffins I thought, indulgently)
"They're used to me flitting about, picking up after them, even though it's not really my job, being the owner of the house and all that."
She certainly didn't look like a typical owner of a central London three storeyed town house but I've learnt not to always make assumptions without knowing enough background information.
"But I have to admit, they are sometimes quite … well, persuasive really, and I find I'm taking up tea and ginger biscuits and picking up suits from the dry cleaners without really knowing how it happened."
"Maybe one of them has hypnosis as a hobby!"
I laugh, gaining in confidence as I'm sure she's got more than three quarters of that list ticked and the next three months will have me sorting, organising and cleaning around a couple of sweet academics, grateful for some decent ironing and a plate of gingernuts.
"Mmm," she looks thoughtful, putting down the clipboard and pulling the teapot towards us. "Not for a good while admittedly, but that was an evening I'd prefer to forget, especially since we lost so many roof tiles."
I didn't even raise an eyebrow, but sipped quietly until she said:
"Can you be in by Thursday? My flight's Friday afternoon but it'll give you time to settle in."
"Absolutely. You can count on me."
"Let's hope so dear," she raised her tea cup, eyes searching mine for some kind of deeper reassurances.
"For all our sakes."
~x~