Part One
Nice chap but nobody likes him
Chapter One
Saturday 14th June
From the Instagram feed of Chelsey Barlow:
Today will be all about cleaning
Chelsey would always remember the weather that morning, that terrible Saturday morning, as being gloriously lovely – the real start of that summer’s heatwave people would say afterwards. As she’d driven down the leafy lanes to Hollinby Quernhow, the sky had been completely cloudless; the trees, drowning in green, stood out in sharp enamelled contrast.
Not that any of this had been uppermost in Chelsey’s mind as she’d approached the village in her mum’s rattly old motor. Her mind had been dominated by a different image entirely: herself the night before at Yo-yo’s, in her new pink top, clutching a WKD Blue cocktail and looking not unlike Kim Kardashian. She didn’t care what anyone said, that lip enhancement had been worth every last penny! Not that anyonehadsaid anything – that was the problem. Onlyfivelikes on Instagram: her mum, her sister and three mates.Nothingfrom Charl or Nat, for all their selfies and exuberant declarations of friendship. And nothing from Josh. Okay, he and Nat were A Thing but she knew for afactit wasmore off than on, and he’d been talking to her for nearly half an hour whilst Nat was off dancing with that lad from Harrogate.
Driving into the village she became aware of the usual sinking, trapped feelings. She’d have nothing worth posting for the next six hours, unless bin bags and spray cleaner were suddenly on trend. Which, unless one was Mrs Hinch, they were not.
Whereas most people would have admired the cottages of honeyed stone or whitewashed stucco, for Chelsey they represented only one thing: cleaning. There were four holiday lets in the village on her boss’s books – four to clean top to bottom in the seven hours between the 10 a.m. check-out and 4 p.m. when the new guests could take up residence. And it was a tough shout, no two ways about it. The fact they were all in the same village meant that it wasjustabout doable but it was always a close-run thing. On more than one occasion Chelsey had found herself frantically finishing off the last house as the new holidaymakers waited outside in varying degrees of impatience at being deprived of the first few minutes of their stay.
What made the whole day so unpredictable was the state the previous tenants left the property in. The overwhelming majority were okay: waste bagged up, towels in the bath, bedding bundled on the beds as requested. But sometimes,sometimes…
Chelsey knew she wasn’t the tidiest of people, ask her mum; but honest to God the state some people would leave the place in – bottles and glasses all over the shop, smeary finger marks on every surface. And the toilets – even her brother used the loo brush, for God’s sake! Then there were the more serious occurrences – that time when there’d been an inch of muddy silt at the bottom of the washing machine – or those acrylic paints all over the bedding. And that basque! Hanging like a bat from one of the light fittings! That shehadposted on Instagram until her boss Jax had told her to take it off smartish. And it only took one such incident – one mess, stain or spillage – in any of the four properties to throw the whole day out, into a nightmare of hurry, rush and stress.
That awful day when no less than three of the houses were in such a state, her mum and her brother had to be dragged in to help.
Today she was going to start, as she always did, with the Snuggery: a square, stone outhouse conversion at the very western edge of the village, owned by Mr and Mrs Hilton. The Hiltons lived in the adjacent barn conversion (named appropriately enough ‘The Old Barn’) and let out the Snuggery for a weekly sum that left Chelsey feeling winded. She always started her cleaning there, because at just four rooms it was by far the smallest of the properties she cleaned and consequently never had children or large parties staying.
She turned into the gravelled driveway, which lay between the two buildings, one short and squat, one long – like a cow and its calf she always thought. All at once she found herself sharply braking, making the tub of sprays and polishes slide off the back seat. One of the main house’s wheelie bins had been left, a lone sentinel,rightin the way of her designated parking place in front of the Snuggery.
Chelsey sighed in impatience.What was that doing there?
For a second – only a second – she was tempted to park by the main house, but, as always, memories came back of the time when that bitch Mrs Hilton, with her hard, expressionless face and tight jodhpurs, had given her a right doing for blocking access to her four-by-four. And even though the black four-by-four was absent, she wasn’t willing to take the chance.
For all that, she thought as she parked up, she actually preferred Mrs Hilton. Mr Hilton, his toothy smug grin in that plump face, was always ready to point out some misdemeanour with her car or her cleaning or even her grammar. Not that she normally saw either of them in the fifty or so minutes it usually took to clean the place.
She got out of the car and moved the bin back to its spot, faintly puzzled. Why had the bin not been put back? One thing about Mr Hilton, he was a right stickler for putting back all thevarious waste and recycling bins from the two properties in theirexactspot – more than once she’d been the unwilling recipient of a lengthy lecture on the subject.
Bin replaced, sprays, bin bags and gloves collected from the car, Chelsey found herself pausing. It really was a lovely day. The grey wall of the Snuggery was swamped in thick white blossoms, which made her think of weddings or picnics in the fields – not several hours of cleaning other people’s crap. By the front door she could see a couple of charity bags, no doubt full of Mrs Hilton’s designer cast-offs. She felt a sudden bleak little stab. Twenty-three and working three jobs, none of them amounting to much. When Mum and Dad were twenty-three, they’d been married two years and living in the house in Carlton Miniot. The prospect of actually owning her own home seemed as remote to Chelsey as winning the lottery. She thought again about the cost of renting out the Snuggery and shook her head at the unfairness of the world.
Come on, Chelse, no point in moping.That’s what Mum would say. If she got done smartish here she could maybe grab a selfie by those white flowers. See ifthatgot a response from Josh.
The first thing that hit her on opening the door of the Snuggery was the smell of cleaning spray – sharp, fresh, floral. This boded well. Unless there’d been some major catastrophe somewhere, and the scent represented some token attempt to put it right …
She went into the kitchen, always the place with the greatest potential for domestic devastation. Today it was spotless, the draining board bare, the floor swept, the hob sparkling in the morning sun, which was streaming in through the mullioned windows. Chelsey’s first thought was there’d been some mistake – had the Snuggery even had any tenants during that past week? But no, the hospitality tray (Yorkshire teabags, Hambleton gooseberry jam, two garden centre café scones) was empty, and there was a light on, on the dishwasher. It seemed whoever had been there had followed Mr Hilton’s entire irritating litany of laminated instructions –please leave cutlery IN the dishwasher; please empty therubbish into the CORRECT coloured wheelie bin.With a lightening heart, she headed for the living room. At this rate all she’d need to do was change the bedding – she could be out in twenty minutes.
This is what was going through her mind as she opened the living room door and her life changed forever.
The lines of the hoover on the dove-grey carpet were one detail amidst the immaculate cleanliness that would haunt her nightmares for years to come.
Mr Hilton was seated on the slate grey velveteen sofa. He was wearing a smartish grey jacket over a checked shirt and orange tie. And he was dead.
Chelsey knew it instantly. There was something unmistakable about the utter stillness of his body, and there was everything about the way his head was thrown back, flung back, as if howling with laughter. Or just howling. And hisface. Thatlookon his face, milky eyes wide, toothy mouth agape.
Chelsey had seen one dead person before in her life: her Nanna Renee in the hospice. She’d looked exactly as if she was sleeping, wrinkled hands folded neatly on the snowy coverlet. There had been such a beautiful feeling of peace. That lovely Jamaican nurse had opened the window ‘to let the soul out’; afterwards she had gently placed a flower on the pillow next to Nanna Renee’s head. But here, in the living room of the Snuggery there was no feeling of peace whatsoever. Here there was … anger …outrage– fear even. Any released soul would, Chelsey instinctively knew, be battering at the closed window with the force and fury of an angry wasp.
All at once adrenalin exploded through her body. With a great gasp Chelsey ran out of the Snuggery and into the lane outside on legs that didn’t seem to want to work properly. If it had been Acacia Gardens, where she lived in Thirsk, there would have beensomeonearound, cutting the grass, unloading shopping, chatting over the fence – but here the idyllic village street was desertedand drowsy in the morning sun. Her fingers, usually so adept with a phone, felt fat and clumsy as she attempted again and again to dial 999. As she waited for the operator she felt a further pang of panic – what should she ask for? Police or ambulance? She was pretty sure Mr Hiltonwasdead – but what if he wasn’t? Would she be in trouble for getting it wrong?
In the event she didn’t need to ask for either, by the time she’d finished gasping out her story the operator had decided for her and told her to wait outside – for police or ambulance she wasn’t entirely sure. Standing in the deserted lane, Chelsey shivered. Despite the heat she felt icy cold but knew she didn’t dare go back to the car for her jacket.
