A woman in blue jeans and a pale pink housecoat is hoovering in Callum’s bedroom.
She has her back to me as she slides the machine across the carpet in short, vigorous strokes. She’s small and slight, mousey-brown hair gathered into a short ponytail. As I stand in the doorway, she reaches behind her, without looking, to hit the light switch with a practiced familiarity as if she’s done it dozens, hundreds, of times before. As if she knows this house better than I do.
I have to say hello twice before she hears me over the noise, finally switching off the Dyson and turning to face me.
“So sorry,” she says. “In a world of my own there.”
“Hi, I’m Adam. Sorry… who are you?”
She’s somewhere in her mid- to late forties, with fine features in her prematurely lined face. She holds up a hand encased in a yellow Marigold glove.
“Helena,” she says. “The cleaner.”
I frown. “Right, OK.”
“I talked to your wife? I used to come in for Mr. Hopkins.” There is a very slight cadence to her accent, a heaviness to thevowel sounds. “Such a gentleman. More than ten years I worked for him. Although no one’s been in while the house was empty so there’slotsof work to do.”
“Of course. I’ll let you get on.”
She nods and hits the power button on the Dyson again, filling the small room with noise.
Back outside in the garden, I jerk a thumb toward the house.
“What’s with the cleaner?” I say to Jess. “Where did you find her?”
“They both worked for the last ownerandthey were recommended on the neighborhood WhatsApp group. Thought we could use them for a couple of hours on Mondays and Fridays at least while we were settling in. Everything needs a deep clean.”
“What do you meanthem? There’s two of them?”
“Her and her cousin, Tobias. He’s in the back garden now, making a start on the hedges.”
I cringe inwardly at the extra expense of having help around the house when I had no job, no money coming in. The weekly expense would add up soon enough.
“We’re not a family that has a cleaner,” I say quietly. “Are we? We’ve never had one before. Let alone a gardener too.”
“We’ve never had a house this size before either,” she says. “It’s twice the size of our old place and has twice as many rooms.”
“Could we have talked about it first?”
“We did, remember? When we first offered on the house.”
“Did we? That wasmonthsago.”
“We definitely did,” she says, with certainty in her tone. “Now, are you sure you need to go up that tree?”
“Got the ladder out now,” I say with a shrug. “May as well.”
I bring a selection of screwdrivers from the garage and extend the aluminum ladder as high as it will go, climbing back up soI’m almost level with the bird box. Close up, the angle is awkward but I can see that the small circular opening—just big enough for a nesting sparrow or wren—is partly blocked by a piece of eggshell. If it’s in use, I should probably leave it until later in the year rather than risk disturbing a nest.
I lean closer, shifting my weight on the ladder to lift the top of the box so I can check inside, the cotton of my shirt sticking to my back with sweat. The lid won’t budge. I lean further across, one palm braced against the rough bark of the tree, and try to lever the lid up. With my fingertips, I can feel the smooth metal heads of a couple of screws securing the lid tightly in place. But the angle is too awkward to get any purchase with a screwdriver.
Callum’s high voice reaches me from below. “Are there any eggs or birds, Daddy?”
“Not sure yet, Cal.”
Jess’s voice is louder. “It’s not safe, Adam, leaning across like that.”
“Just can’t quite reach it.”
