I've managed another #FridayFlash short story this week... but don't start taking them for granted. I won't be able to do one every week!
Me and Lisa, we both worked hard. Long hours, late nights – we were earning decent money, but never had any free time to enjoy it. The last thing we wanted was to spend our weekends scrubbing the bath or mopping the kitchen floor. So at risk of being mocked as middle class by all our right-on friends, we hired a cleaner. From a card in the newsagents window. Eight pounds an hour, three hours a week. Twenty-four quid wasn’t bad if it bought us back our Saturdays.
Joanne called round one night after work and Lisa told her exactly what we wanted. We’re not perfectionists or clean freaks or anything like that - a bit of light dusting and hoovering, a once-over in the kitchen and bathroom, that’ll be fine. As long as we’re not choking on dustballs or getting out of the bath dirtier than we got in, we’re happy.
“Oh, I think we can do a little better than that,” said Joanne. She was a slight woman in her early 30s with a bleached perm and a bright silver stud in her left nostril. Normally when I see those things they make me think I’m talking to someone with a huge zit on the side of her nose, but Joanne’s was so shiny no one could mistake it for acne.
“She seems nice enough,” said Lisa once Joanne had gone for the bus. We’d been concerned about giving someone we’d never met a key to our front door, but there seemed little to worry about. Joanne would work Friday mornings, 10 till 1, so it’d all be sorted by the time we finished work for the weekend. No problems.
Week One.
The first thing I noticed was the oven. I didn’t even get inside – I could see it shining at me as I passed the kitchen window. I thought for a moment Lisa must have bought a new one and not told me. Then I remembered the cleaner.
“It’s amazing,” said Lisa, when she got home, “it must have taken her hours.”
“It did,” I said, handing her the note.
Sorry I didn’t have time to do the whole house this week, kinda got caught up cleaning the oven – what a state! Don’t worry, now that I’ve blitzed that it’ll be a lot easier in future. Get to the rest next time – Jo.
“So we have a nice sparkly oven, but we’re still going to have to clean the rest of the house ourselves?” Lisa asked.
“Just this week. Like she says, now she’s blitzed that…”
“Was the oven really that bad?”
“I guess it must have been.”
Week Two.
This time, the first thing I noticed was the coffee ring on the kitchen table. How could Joanne miss that, I wondered, as I carried my bags through to the living room where the cat hairs on the carpet made the same patterns they had when I left for work.
“So she spent three hours on the bathroom floor?” said Lisa, reading the second note a third time.
“It must have been filthy.”
“Yeah – but we’re still going to have to do everything else ourselves.”
“Next week – she promises next week she’ll have time to do the full clean.”
“She better – or you’re having words.”
“Me? Why me?”
Week Three.
The perfume bottles on Lisa’s dressing table were arranged in order of descending height. The cut glass bottle with the elegant stopper and the crystal pendant round its neck was cleaner than when Lisa’s grandmother bought it 60 years earlier. The rest of the house was untouched.
“Right – that’s it,” said Lisa, “I’m having words.”
“I thought you wanted me to—“
“You? What would you say? You’re bloody hopeless. I’m working from home next Friday anyway so I’ll tell her straight. We don’t want her spending all her time on just one thing if it means nothing else is getting done. I’ll talk to her. It’ll be fine.”
Week Four.
I phoned home during my lunch hour. “So? How did it go?”
“She’s doing my nut in!”
“She took it the wrong way?”
“No, it was fine. I told her soon as she got here how we wanted things doing and she said no problem. She told me she was a little bit OCD, but at the end of the day she’d do it however we wanted. Then she went up to clean the bathroom… I’ve not seen her since. I knocked on the door about half an hour ago and she just said the toilet – she really needed to spend more time on the toilet. I’m dying for a pee – but she won’t let me in till she’s done!”
“We’re going to have to let her go – get someone else…”
“Too right we are! As soon as she comes out of that bloody bathroom – she’s gone!”
Week Five.
I’ve been tied to the bed now since Monday. Sometimes I can hear Lisa crying from the bathroom, but I don’t know what’s happening in there. Every few hours I see Joanne walk past the bedroom door. Sometimes she’s pushing the hoover, sometimes she’d dusting, other times she’s just looking for dirt she might have missed earlier. She’s got a huge magnifying glass, some kind of strange beeping device that measures air quality, and all the time in the world.
She brings me food twice a day. Unties my hands just enough so I can eat. Tells me not to make a mess. I know better than to get crumbs on the bedclothes. I’ve got sores on my back and my legs and I’m worried what’ll happen when they burst. Will she try and bleach the whole bed again, with me in it? She never stays to chat, there’s too much to be done.
“This house is filthy…”
