When he reached the car, Charlie found his emergency packet of cigarettes, lit one with a shaking hand, and sat with his eyes closed.
Three
SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2019
Fourteen days earlier
Dee
Where the hell is my tea?” Pauline is shouting when I open the door to the caravan today. And I think she means me. I’m not your bloody servant, I think. And then realize I am.
“Morning, Pauline,” I call. “It’s me. Charlie’s just popped out to the garage. I passed him on the driveway.”
“He’s never where I need him,” Pauline snaps. “He’s always out doing his good deeds, chatting up the old ladies or sneaking off to see bloody Birdie.”
Birdie is not Pauline’s—“The product of an earlier, disastrous relationship,” she tells people. “I never wanted children.” Poor Charlie. Everyone says he’s a saint, putting up with Pauline and driving up and down the A3 to see his disabled daughter.
He doesn’t talk about her in front of me. Pauline cuts him off if he mentions her and there are no photos. The only pictures in the caravan are of Pauline pouting for the camera a hundred years ago.
She used to try to go out when I cleaned. There isn’t room for us all in here and she hates to be reminded. She used to get all arsy with poor old Charlie, made him take her to the big shopping center in Southfold—“I can get artisan bread and that special wine I like”—but she doesn’t do her main shop there. She may use posh carrier bags but she goes to the cheapest supermarket like the rest of us.
But I never say anything to anyone.
The mums at the school gates would love to bitch about her but I never go in for the whole “You ought to see Pauline’s fridge” thing. It’s a disgrace, actually. It smelled like something had died in there the other day, but when I said I’d give it a deep clean, she made a face, said she hadn’t noticed a problem, said it must be a steak she’d bought for Charlie and forgotten. I don’t know how I managed not to laugh. Pauline can hardly make toast, let alone a steak dinner. But people go along with her fantasy about being a domestic goddess. To her face, anyway.
There are other cleaners in Ebbing but I think people choose me because I don’t gossip. I’ve always found it’s a two-way street, gossip. I mean, you’ve got to be ready for people to talk about you if you’re dishing it out. And I prefer to keep my stuff private. People know my husband’s a plumber and we have a seven-year-old son. And that I’m not a local.
It’s important here. In a big city, people wash in and out, but here, people stay for generations. And the “cradle Ebbers,” born and bred—or inbred, as my Liam says—run things. They make the unspoken rules that mark you out as a newcomer. Like who can run the cake stall at the Christmas Fayre or have a child as an attendant in the Spring Princess Parade. We’re allowed to buy and watch. But luckily there is a common enemy we can bond over: weekenders.
The Ebbers hate them for invading their town and buying all the best houses for a handful of days a year. The newcomers hate them because the Ebbers do and it gives them something to talk about. Actually, weekenders are some of my favorite clients but I keep it quiet—I would lose work if people knew.
It’s changed so much since I was here as a kid in the mid-nineties—no one had a holiday home in Ebbing then. If you could afford one, you bought farther down the coast where there was sand and no social housing or industrial units. But the prices in those towns went crazy and so they’ve come here, snuffling for bargains. Ebbing is on its way up, apparently. Anyway, it’s good news for me. Weekenders are usually gone by the time I put my key in the door—and they pay London rates. If I’m having a bad day, I can rearrange the cute wooden fish swimming on wires and Scent of the Sea diffusers before I get on with cleaning grit out of the showers. I could try on clothes but I don’t—well, apart from shoes, obviously. Everyone does, don’t they? And the occasional dress but only over my own things. They’d never know. They probably don’t even know what’s in the wardrobe.
Liam doesn’t like me working for them—he says they’re like fat leeches sucking the blood out of the town. I tell him to save it for his mates down at the Neptune. I’m sick of all his “Come the revolution, comrade” stuff.
I haven’t yet worked out how you change it up. I mean, how long do you have to live here to be a local? Is there a secret waiting list? Do you have to wait for someone to actually die to take their place? I’ve lived here five years but I’m still totally on the sidelines. I don’t mind—I don’t want the attention—but it really bothers some people.