Imperfect Strangers (12 page)

*  *  *

Come dinner break, Colleen approaches my desk armed with two mugs of coffee. Here we go,
ding-ding
, round two.
Colleen shakes her head, meaning, I hope,
don’t worry I haven’t said anything
.

“Coffee?”
Colleen places it in the centre of the desk, as I rummage around in my drawer, as if there were no possibility of me saying no.

“Thanks.” With a huff I look up into
Colleen’s expression of concern. It is so much a mum’s look – a look that so obviously says:
I know you don’t want to hear this but I’m going to say it anyway. It’s for your own good, so listen and take note.

“
Colleen,” I say, before she has the chance to voice anything. “Keith is a friend, that’s all. I feel sorry for the guy. He’s lonely. He lives with a crazy old woman who suffers from incontinence and more than likely dementia too. I trust him with a key to my house, but if he proves to be untrustworthy I’ll get the locks changed. I’m a big girl, Colleen. I can take care of myself.” I even did a full shop last night, Waitrose, and spent much more than I could afford. “I’ll chose who I wish to be friends with, for myself. I’ve had enough of being controlled by others; Steve was always controlling me.”
Get the olives with the jalapenos
;
them sun-blushed tomatoes are a bit expensive aren’t they?
Sal, you know I can’t stand garlic
. “In fact, and I’m not saying this is ever going to happen, but, even if I chose to date Keith, it is none of your, or Kerry’s, or Philippa’s business.”

“Okay then.”
Colleen smirks. “Forward-slash would have done.”

I chuckle at that, but then scowl dramatically when I glance into the open draw
er. “You’ve not seen them photos lying around, have you? Could have sworn I put them in here.”

Philippa and Kerry saunter over and I give
Colleen a look. “I’ll not say a word,” she assures me.

“Looking for these.” Philippa hands me the wallet of photos.

“Did you take them from my drawer?”

I must have sounded angrier than I intended
to, because Philippa colours up as if she’s on fire. “Sorry. I honestly didn’t think you’d mind. Only I was telling Moira about them sleeves on that wedding dress... And... Well, you were away from your desk... I didn’t think...”

“
Okay. Okay, but ask in future.”

“Anyway, how
is
the empty vessel?” Philippa asks, as if my annoyance over the photographs never actually happened, suggestively probing her cheek with her tongue and smirking at Kerry.

“If you mean Keith, he’s turning out to be a very interesting and loyal friend. And, what’s more, I’m going out for a drink with him on Saturday.”

Well, I might
, I finish in my head, delighting in the shocked look on Philippa’s face and the aspect of scorn on Kerry’s.             

CHAPTER
17

Sally always leaves a clean towel by the door for me to wipe Sukie’s feet before I release her onto the cream carpet. I hate it
, this foot wiping. But picking up the mess she deposits in the park is worse; it turns my stomach. Dogs are filthy animals, not in the least like cats: independent creatures who bury their mess and clean their own feet. I keep promising to one day feed the dog some chicken-bones, but I won’t. What’s ten or twenty minutes of torture when the reward is having access to Sally’s home? Not to mention her gratitude and friendship. Hopefully, eventually, there will be more. I remove my shoes, and even though I now wear a clean pair of socks every day, I tiptoe across the carpet to the kitchen.

Sally’s house smells like a home. Part of that smell is the luxurious leather couch of course, but the smell of nearly
new carpet and the perfume of fresh flowers add to the whole. The flowers with the wonderful fragrance sit on the window-ledge in a glass-vase of blue and red marbling. Today it catches the sunlight and casts bands of mingled purple across the room. There are other smells of course, underlying smells. Subtle smells, almost undetectable smells, such as the aroma that lives in the kitchen. It’s like a fragrant cushion of cleanliness, an aroma of soap flakes, and fabric softener, and citrus fruit in a bowl by the back door.

By the sink, Sally has hand-cleanser in a stainless-steel container. The liquid soap not only smells nice, but also softens the skin. After washing my hands, removing all residue of dog, I cup them over my nose and inhale. When I hold the smell I think this is what Sally’s hands smell like. I kiss my palm and imagine the coconut and fruit fragrance has lifted from Sally’s skin.

Certain that Sally won’t mind, I fill the kettle and drop a teabag into a mug from the draining board. The mug gleams with a crystalline-whiteness that partially reflects the bag it now contains. Cleanliness it seems does not necessarily have to be bound in tightness. Cleanliness can be soft and pleasant, welcoming and warm and with delectable aromas. In such a clean mug the hot water infuses with the tea and illuminates with coppery-gleam. When I open the fridge, in search of milk, I meet a new explosion of smells: an invasion that my senses have never before experienced. After finishing the tea preparation, while waiting for it to cool, I begin to explore.

I’ve never seen such a fridge
of wonder.

Yesterday it was empty, but now it’s more than full, every available space crammed with peculiar delights. Queen
olives swimming in virgin-olive-oil?
Infused with basil and garlic
. Inhaling the sweet yet pungent blend, I notice that the container is only half full.
Muck
, mother would have called it –
foreign muck
. On first tasting one of them I’m inclined to agree, but further analysis sets free a tumult of subtle flavours that I decide I could grow to like. The olives have a kind of sour saltiness, and they’re meaty, not slimy as I expected. Further perusal discloses a container labelled sun-blushed tomatoes, also half empty – yet another foodstuff that is infused with basil and slivers of garlic. The wedge is slippery between my finger and thumb; oil dribbles to the wooden floor, and I sniff tremulously when the scent enters my nostrils. Juices of anticipation collect in my mouth as I cautiously place the wedge of tomato on my tongue. I hold it there, wanting to savour the moment of trying something so new, and when I do eventually chew I’m amazed, blown away, that a wedge of tomato could taste so good, so rich, so unexpectedly complex in flavour. Without thinking, hardly realising, I scoff another three pieces. Guiltily putting the tub back, I take a piece of kitchen-roll and mop the evidence from the floor. Screwing the paper into a ball, I put it in my pocket rather than the bin.
Whole cloves of garlic pickled in lemon juice
? Again half the tub has gone. Had I not had the slivers with olives and with tomatoes to die for, the whole cloves might have been too much, but I quickly munch three of them. I discover that I love garlic. Who would have thought?

I am almost certain Sally would not mind, but all the same, I’ve not had permission to eat her food.
You do not take things that do not belong to you Keith. That is theft and thieves must be punished
. The chocolate embrace of the couch soothes away my feelings of guilt as I settle into the cushion and sip the tea. It’s good. Refreshing. Clean tasting with an absence of tannin-rings. I’ll just sit a while and relax before going home. Sukie sits before me wagging her buckled tail as I take the book on interior design from my bag. I take note of the date it needs returning, before counting the pages, dividing the number, and finding the slip that marks where I’ve already read.

“Push off dog.” Sukie ignores my demand, wags h
er tail, and settles at my feet as I sink deeper into the cushion. The bone of her jaw feels uncomfortable on the roof of my foot, and feels like its cutting into the tendons.

“MOVE!” Sukie shoots across the room and settles there, her head on h
er paws, eyeing me suspiciously. “That’s better. You need to learn your place dog. Or I’ll feedyer chick’n bones.”

After reading a passage about the balance of light and dark, I take a look around the room. Two dark wood frames sit on the chalk-white mantel. They house what look to be professional shots of Sally
in a soft focussed black and white. The one I particularly like, has Sally lying on her front, facing the camera, her chin resting on the back of her hand, her lips pouty-plump and her eyes wide and kind of dreamy looking.

Sukie likes you
, Sally would say – if she were here – from the chair opposite, her legs tucked beneath her as she reads a novel. Probably chick-lit: a genre of which I don’t really approve, but she seems to like those books, and they are a part of who she is, so I say nothing. When I close my book she will close hers too and join me on the couch. Our combined movement releases a wafting-blanket of chocolate-leather that coils through our embrace, binding us with an invisible yet irrepressible force. Sally’s breast presses softly against my forearm. Her hair falls in silken strands over my nose, as I nuzzle through to her delicate ears and whisper,
I love you.
She cups my face, holds it close to her face, her breath mingling with mine as she says,
I love you too.

When I wake it is mid-afternoon. A patch of drool on the sofa’s arm has turned the chocolate-brown leather to black. I’m desperate for the toilet, and jumping to my feet, I almost, but thankfully, thank-you-fully, don’t knock over the half empty mug, which at some point, without realising, I must have set down by my feet. I take the stairs, bounding them two at a time. Sukie chases after me, seemingly excited by the unexpected action, her tail rotating like an overeager propeller. Three doors greet me on the landing. I nudge open the door on the right. Spare room, looks like
: half decorated, containing a single bed and various cardboard boxes full of stuff. The second I try, straight ahead, is the bathroom. I rush in, whip down my zip and release a Niagara-like surge of strong smelling urine.

I hear mother’s voice –
that’s what you gitfereatin that foreign muck.
The memory of ropes burn around my wrists.

“Shut up,” I growl over my shoulder.

I forget where I am for the moment, unconcerned that my stream has wandered to the side of the bowl and is presently pooling on the tiles and running along trenches of grout. Sukie begins to lap at the offering, shaking every so often as amber spray catches her face.
Foreign muck, Keith, that’sworitis – foreign muck
.

“SHUT UP!!” I yell, shocking myself back into Sally’s bathroom, as Sukie turns to dart away, her claws slipping on the wet tiles a moment before she finds purchase and trundles along the landing to wait at the top of the stairs.

“No! No, no-ooo.” My mind rings with alarm as I take in the not-so-little accident. “Look what you made me do.”

My first thought is to grab the towel and throw it on the floor. The towel is so pristinely white, though, so plump and soft looking, that I immediately dismiss the idea. How would I have explained the missing towel to Sally?

Toilet roll!

I pr
oceed to gather a bundle from the roll, wrapping it around my hand. I then use the wad to wipe the floor. Heavy with pee and beginning to break apart, I plop the sodden bundle in the toilet before gathering more. The card tube clatters as the last of the paper comes free. Fortunately I’ve managed to mop up most of the puddle. I flush the toilet and think I’m going to faint from holding my breath as the water rises and rises and rises up toward the rim. The promised flood halts mere millimetres from the top, and I draw breath when the plug of paper gives way. The floor is almost dry, but the room smells like the public loo in the park. If I can smell it, Sally certainly will. And I’m certain the grout lines were originally as white as the towel.

I knew I was a stranger to cleaning products, and I’ve already seen the basket of stuff Sally keeps under the sink, but it’s not until I enter the cupboard up here that I realise so many of them exist. Some people collect stamps, some collect coins, beer-mats
even; it seems to me that Sally collects cleaning products. Taking the entire basket from the bathroom cupboard, my eyes flick over the various labels with miscomprehension, literally failing to absorb what they are and what they are for. The only thing I do recognise is a cleaning cloth, which, if discovered earlier, would have been much better suited to cleaning the floor than the half-roll of toilet tissue had been.

Idiot.

I’ve heard of Vim, not surprisingly, there’s none of that. There is however a bottle of bleach, and bleach can clean anything from bathroom floors to dirty boys’ knees. I take the cloth and squirt bleach along the grout lines. The vapour catches the back of my throat and burns in the depth of my lungs. Ignoring the snaking memories it brings, I scrub.

Yah! Yah!
The tormenting voice calls,
as if spurring on a team of horses. Yah! Yah! String him up in yonder tree boys.

I ignore the feel of fish bone in my throat, as I crawl across the floor, scrubbing and rinsing, scrubbing and rinsing. This isn’t Sally’s kind of clean
; this is the type of clean that’s wrapped in painful tightness.

Yah! Yah!

Shush, now. Leave it.

Yah! Yah!

“SHUT UP!”

The grout lines gleam once more. They could be no white
r and my hands could be no redder. It is clean, very clean, but it is not Sally’s kind of clean. This is a harsh cleanliness, a nasty-tasting, pain-filled one. It is clean, but it is not homely-clean. The bathroom has the stench of a swimming pool’s changing area. Putting the bleach bottle back in the basket I scan the other bottles, one at a time, reading the labels. Mirror cleaner; after shower spray; lime-scale remover; coconut infused conditioner. Sally’s hair smells of coconut! That’s part of her smell. That will help. I pour some into my hands, lather it up and urgently waft the scent around the room.

What I must look like, hands covered in suds, waltzing around the bathroom like some manic, red-handed fairy.

Yah! Yah! Boys, look at the fairy.

Some of the smell ingratiates the air, but the undertone of bleach still lingers. No good. Something else. I rinse
my hands, leaving a little of the suds to rub into the towel. I then peruse the bottles again. Should have read a book on cleaning. Window polish; grout cleaner,
damn
; bath salts; tile finisher; bath oil –
tile finisher
! I whip the bottle from the basket and remove the lid. I’m certain it has the smell that the bathroom had before I soiled it with the stench of raw bleach and ammonia. Kind of fruity –
lemons –
but flowery too,
like a Mediterranean orchard basking in sunshine.

I run my forefinger along the label, a red pointer tracing the text.
Pour a little onto a cloth
, it says.

I do so.

Should have done this before. Could have got the cloth, wiped it up quicker, and then used this stuff that smells nice. That’s how Sally would clean. I cleaned aggressively, like Mother would have done. Time is running short, and by panicking, I’m running the risk of Sally getting home before I’ve cleaned it sufficiently well that she won’t notice.

Rub over the surface of the tile with a brisk circular action
, it says

I do so, working my way across the floor, treating each tile individually and not getting any onto the grout lines.

What now?
Leave for thirty minutes, then buff to a soft sheen that will repel dirt and bring the freshness of a summer meadow into your bathroom
.

Thirty minutes!

In a panic I look at my watch.

Three forty five, and Sally finishes at four on Fridays. The tile finisher has removed the stench of bleach, but looks waxy-dull on the surface of the tiles. I try buffing it, but it smears and goes milky and snatches loose fibres from the cleaning cloth. The tiles not only look waxy
, but they now have a felt-like finish. Turning back to the label, reading the last sentence, I learn that it must be buffed with a dry cloth and on no account before it is fully dry. No choice then. Thirty minutes. There’s just about time to get it done and leave before Sally gets home.