The only people likely to offer Jess money were the sharks who circled the estate with their hidden four-figure interest rates. She had seen neighbours who had borrowed from friendly reps who turned gimlet-eyed, hanging over them like financial vultures. And again and again she came back to Marty’s words. Was McArthur’s comp really so bad? Some children did well there. There was no reason why Tanzie shouldn’t be one of them, if she kept out of the way of the troublemakers.
The hard truth of it was there like a brick wall. Jess was going to have to tell her daughter that she couldn’t make it add up. Jess Thomas, the woman who always found a way through, who spent her life telling the two of them that it would All Work Out, couldn’t make it work out.
She finished the dining room in which no dining had ever taken place, and observed with some distant part of her that the loud talking had stopped. Mr Nicholls must finally be off the phone. She hauled the vacuum cleaner down the hallway, wincing as it bumped against her shin, and knocked on the door to see if he wanted his office cleaned. There was silence, and as she knocked again he yelled suddenly, ‘Yes, I’m well aware of that, Sidney. You’ve said so fifteen times, but it doesn’t mean –’
It was too late: she had pushed the door half open. Jess began to apologize, but with barely a glance the man held up a palm, like she was some kind of a dog – stay – then leaned forwards and slammed the door in her face. The sound reverberated around the house.
Jess stood there, shocked into immobility, her skin prickling with embarrassment.
‘I told you,’ Nathalie said, as she scrubbed furiously at the guest bathroom a few minutes later. ‘Those private schools don’t teach them any manners.’
Forty minutes later they were finished. Jess gathered Mr Nicholls’s immaculate white towels and sheets into her holdall, stuffing them in with more force than was strictly necessary. She walked downstairs and placed the bag next to the cleaning crate in the hall. Nathalie was polishing the doorknobs. It was one of her things. She couldn’t bear fingerprints on taps or doorknobs. Sometimes it took them ten minutes to leave an address.
‘Mr Nicholls, we’re going now.’
He was standing in the kitchen, just staring out through the window at the sea, one hand on the top of his head like he’d forgotten it was there. He had dark hair and was wearing those glasses that are supposed to be trendy but just make you look like you’ve dressed up as Woody Allen. He wore a suit like a twelve-year-old forced to go to a christening.
‘Mr Nicholls.’
He shook his head slightly, then sighed and walked down the hallway. ‘Right,’ he said distractedly. He kept glancing down at the screen of his mobile phone. ‘Thanks.’
They waited.
‘Um, we’d like our money, please.’
Nathalie finished polishing, and folded her cloth, unfolding it and folding it again. She hated money conversations.
‘I thought the management company paid you.’
‘They haven’t paid us in three weeks. And there’s never anyone in the office. If you want us to continue we need to be up to date.’
He scrabbled around in his pockets, pulled out a wallet. ‘Right. What do I owe you?’
‘Thirty times three weeks. And three weeks of laundry.’
He looked up, one eyebrow raised.
‘We left a message on your phone, last week.’
He shook his head, as if he couldn’t be expected to remember such things. ‘How much is that?’
‘One hundred and thirty-five all together.’
He flicked through the notes. ‘I don’t have that much cash. Look, I’ll give you sixty and get them to send you a cheque for the rest. Okay?’
On another occasion Jess would have said yes. On another occasion she would have let it go. It wasn’t as if he was going to rip them off, after all. But she was suddenly sick of wealthy people who never paid on time, who assumed that because seventy-five pounds was nothing to them it must be nothing to her too. She was sick of clients who thought she meant so little that they could slam a door in her face without so much as an apology.
‘No,’ she said, and her voice was oddly clear. ‘I need the money now, please.’
He met her eye for the first time. Behind her Nathalie rubbed manically at a doorknob. ‘I have bills that need paying. And the people who send them won’t let me put off paying week after week.’
She couldn’t get it out of her head: the flat dismissal of his palm, the way he had just slammed the door in her face.
He frowned at her, as if she was being particularly difficult. It made her dislike him even more. She wondered, for a moment, whether to tell him to stick his stupid job. But there were some principles you couldn’t afford.
‘I’ll have to look upstairs,’ he said, disappearing. They stood in uncomfortable silence as they heard drawers being shut emphatically, the clash of hangers in a wardrobe. Finally he came back with a handful of notes.
He peeled some off without looking at Jess and handed them over. She was about to say something – something about how he didn’t have to behave like an utter dickhead, about how life went that little bit more smoothly when people treated each other like human beings, something that would no doubt make Nathalie rub half the door handle away with anxiety. She didn’t care. Even the way he handed out the money suggested he was giving her something she wasn’t quite entitled to. But just as she opened her mouth to speak his phone rang. Without a word Mr Nicholls spun away from her and was striding down the hallway to answer it.
‘What’s that in Norman’s basket?’
‘Nothing.’
Jess was unpacking the groceries, hauling items out of the bags with one eye on the clock. She had a three-hour shift at the Feathers and just over an hour to make tea and get changed. She shoved two cans to the back of the shelves, hiding them behind the cereal packets. She was sick of the supermarket’s cheery ‘value’ label. It was as if every time she opened the cupboard someone was yelling at her, ‘HEY! YOU’RE POOR!’
Nicky stooped, and tugged at the piece of fabric, so that the dog reluctantly got to his feet. ‘It’s a white towel. Jess, it’s an expensive one. Norman’s got hair all over it. And dribble.’ He held it up between two fingers.
‘I’m going to wash it later.’ She didn’t look at him.
‘Is it Dad’s?’
‘No, it is not your dad’s.’