Page 7 of The Way We Are Now

‘Right, come on,’ Fliss said, clicking her fingers at Henry Hoover as though he were a dog. ‘Let’s work together. Toilet or kitchen first?’

‘Definitely kitchen. Break ourselves in gently.’

‘Jesus, mother of God, pray for our souls!’ Fliss crossed herself, her full-on convent education obviously having her back recalling the liturgical terms she’d renounced on coming to Leeds and taking on board more than her fair share of both alcohol and sex.

I moved in front of Fliss, who appeared rooted to the spot, and stared. How could educated, and therefore presumably responsible, human beings live like this?

‘I’m not doing this,’ I said. ‘Sorry, Fliss. I’m not clearing up after blokes who think it’s someone else’s job to clean up after them.’

‘How do you know it’s blokes?’

‘No woman would put up with this,’ I said. ‘Our house can be bad enough at times,’ I went on, picturing the kitchen in the red terraced Victorian house Fliss and I shared with two other girls, ‘but we’d never ever leave it like this.’

‘Come on, let’s crack on.’ Fliss grinned weakly in my direction. ‘Just two days of this. That’s all we’ve signed up for. And we’ll have enough money to party at the weekend.’

I wrinkled my nose. There was a distinct smell of putrefaction coming from the open black bin bags no one had thought to take down to the bin area outside, a pinkish rivulet of bin juice seeping from one, spreading across the sticky cream floor covering. The sink was overflowing with dirty dishes, welded together with dried cereal and tomato sauce, presumably from tinned spaghetti or baked beans. Someone obviously had a thing for Pot Noodles because there were at least six pots, each containing varying amounts of the stuff. Stacked up, almost artistically (maybe the students in this flat were on the Art and Design degree and this was a modern art installation?) was a veritable Leaning Tower of Pisa of pizza boxes.

‘Don’t,’ I almost shrieked as Fliss moved over to the fridge which was rumbling itself to a climax like a sexually overexcited walrus.

Too late. Fliss shut the fridge as quickly as she’d opened it. ‘You don’t want to go there,’ she said calmly. ‘Just don’t. Right,’ she went on, taking control. ‘Black bin bags. Let’s get that lot into these new bags and clear them out of the kitchen. Let the dog see the rabbit.’

‘Rats, I’d have thought. Or at least cockroaches.’

Well, I wasn’t my mum, Maggy’s, daughter for nothing and, always up for a challenge, I took my scarf from around my neck, tying it around my nose and mouth. Fliss did the same with hers and, looking like a pair of bandits, we set to. There is something cathartic about cleaning, particularly disgusting sites like this one. My mum’s sister, my Aunty Sandra, would actually have relished getting stuck into this little lot. She’d been cleaning half of Rothersley for years but once told me she was fed up of turning up for work at ‘posh folk’s houses’ in the beautiful and picturesque villages of Woolley and Cawthorne where, Sandra knew, the ladies that lunch had spent the last hour cleaning up in readiness for her arrival.

We spent the next hour clearing away the detritus left by our fellow students and imagining conversations I’d have with said students if I ever should come across one of these odious creatures. They’d obviously come from homes where everything was done for them: either spoilt princesses or Mummy’s boys who’d never lifted a finger to make their own bed or empty the dishwasher.

‘You always called me a spoilt princess,’ Fliss said, lifting her scarf to respond as I aired my views about the inhabitants of this flat.

‘S’pose I did,’ I said. ‘I mean, you have come from a privileged background, Fliss. Boarding school, a pony, skiing in the Alps.’

‘Doesn’t mean to say I’m spoilt,’ Fliss interrupted stoutly. ‘And you’ve got a real family. That’s a privilege if ever I saw one.’

I looked across at her in surprise. ‘What do you mean? A real family?’

‘With a mum and dad still together; brothers and sisters.’

‘I’ve two brothers. No sisters. You know that. And you’ve got three brothers yourself.’

‘Half-brothers,’ Fliss corrected. ‘To two different mothers. And away at school or with their other families. Hardly ever see them,’ she added sadly. ‘You’ve a proper mum and dad,’ Fliss went on, ‘and you know where they are. I’ve absolutely no idea where either my mum or my dad is at the moment. I was shunted off to boarding school – with those bloody nuns – when I was nine. Nine for heaven’s sake. Matron was more of a mum to me than Tabitha.’

‘Tabitha?’

‘My mum. She’s always told me to call her that. She likes to think we’re more like sisters; doesn’t want people to think she’s old enough to have a daughter at university.’

‘You’ve never said.’

‘No, well, you don’t, do you?’

Fliss looked crestfallen for a moment and then, replacing her scarf firmly around her mouth, moved to the sink and started washing the pile of dishes with enthusiasm.

‘Think I might start a cleaning firm.’ She laughed, stopping to bundle her beautiful auburn hair into a knot on her head, secured with a pencil she’d found under the pizza boxes. ‘Something I’m jolly good at.’

‘You’re good at lots of things,’ I said, getting down on my knees to clean the skirting boards of myriad splashes of congealed fat, curry and other indefinable horrors.

‘Good at sex,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Started when I was fifteen, and now I know what goes where and what makes a man come…’

‘Sorry!’