Cassie sighed. ‘Who was it this time?’
‘Sylvia Gasby. All her jewellery, and the money she keeps for emergencies in her underwear drawer, was stolen.’
Sylvia was an energetic septuagenarian, a pillar of the community centre where she volunteered most days, and another of Cassie’s regular clients. So far, all four victims of the spate of burglaries were clients of hers.
‘The police said she must have left a door unlocked or a window open as there was no sign of a break-in,’ her grandfather added.
‘Poor Sylvia… I’ll call round tomorrow morning and take her cakes from Salomé’s to cheer her up. She must be very scared and very upset.’
Cassie switched the oven on. ‘By the way, I met Darren in Keswick this afternoon. He was buying a new lock for the back door.’
‘That’s right. I gave him twenty pounds for it.’
‘You found your wallet, then?’
He sighed. ‘It was in my coat all along, but in another pocket. I’ll go to the cash machine tomorrow to pay you back. I gave Darren my last note for the lock.’
‘Don’t be daft, Granddad. I’m glad you found it. Why do you say you have no money left? Didn’t you get your pension from the post office yesterday?’
He smoothed his hair back with trembling fingers, and his eyes took on the vague and slightly lost gaze he adopted more and more often these days. ‘I must have dropped it on my way home yesterday. All I had left was twenty pounds and a few coins.’
He looked so puzzled she didn’t have the heart to scold him for his carelessness.
‘He’s a nice lad, is Darren,’ her granddad carried on, ‘and he likes to chat – about you, mostly. He’s interested in everything you do and everywhere you go. I think you may have an admirer there.’
‘Hmm… I’m not sure. There’s something about him…’
But her granddad wasn’t listening. ‘It’s time for my game show. Call me when tea’s ready.’ And he tottered back into the living room.
Whilst the fish fillets and chips were under the grill, Cassie hunted around the kitchen for her magazine. It was the only link to the wild and crazy dream she had once cherished of becoming an interior designer. A dream that started when fresh out of school she started working for her mother, and rearranged people’s interiors in her head as she cleaned. A dream that had blossomed when she had met Nathan.
Nathan… The memory of the handsome and talented interior designer whose offices she had cleaned for several years was as usual enough to make her pause and catch her breath. How many times had she gaped admiringly at him as he sat at his drawing board, looking sexy and inspired, with his shirt sleeves rolled over his tanned forearms and his hair dark and ruffled under the bright light of his architect’s lamp? He’d had no idea how instrumental he had been in her decision to enrol at college to study for an A-Level in art then spend all her wages on a long-distance course in interior design.
To him, she was the timid cleaner he occasionally chatted to about the weather or the new veggie café in town. But to her Nathan was everything. Her first proper crush and the man she wanted to impress more than anyone else in the world.
She was far too shy to talk to him about her course. She didn’t even tell him when she passed with flying colours. But when he entered a competition to refurbish a boutique hotel in London, she secretly worked on her own proposal. At last, she thought, he would realise that she was more than a cleaner. She was even naïve enough to dream that he might offer her an internship, or even see her as a woman, not just the cleaner wearing dungarees and rubber gloves.
It was almost too painful to remember the stunned expression on his face the day she had mustered the courage to show him her portfolio. Silent, his dark eyebrows knitted in concentration, he had flicked through her proposal, his surprise quickly followed by a pitying smile as he pushed the drawings back into the folder. He had asked if she had shown them to anyone, and when she had said he was the first, he had promised to take another look at them and give her detailed feedback.
In the meantime, he’d said, she should focus on giving the office a thorough clean. He was thinking of relocating to London and an estate agent was coming to value the premises the following day.
She had no idea how she managed to finish cleaning his offices that evening, her heart breaking from the news he was moving away, and from the lukewarm reaction to the designs she had poured so much of herself into.
She had waited a couple of days before asking for more feedback, and then wished she hadn’t. He had been kind, but brutally honest. Her work showed promise, but the colour schemes, the shapes and concepts were amateurish and lacked originality. If she was serious about working as a designer, she should do a ‘proper’ degree at university. For her own sake, and because he didn’t want her to be laughed at, he asked her not to show the drawings to anyone else. In fact, she should leave them with him.
She had burst into tears. He had handed her a Kleenex, put his arm around her shoulders and let her sob all over his tailored blue shirt, and given her the evening off. A few days later the ‘For Sale’ sign had gone up, Nathan had moved to London shortly afterwards, and she had never heard from him again.
Cassie’s grandfather laughing in the living room brought her back sharply to the present. Perhaps it was no bad thing the magazine was nowhere to be found. It did no good to reminisce about the past and dream about what could have been. She may still sketch designs and ideas, but the only interior design she did these days was for her close friends, and much of it only involved choosing new colour schemes and making cushions.
She took two plates and put them on the table, and was reaching into the cutlery drawer for knives and forks when her phone rang.
‘Cassie, thank goodness you’re home!’ Nadine Hartley sounded even more panicked and breathless than usual. ‘The waitress the caterer hired for the party tonight has cancelled. I don’t have anybody to help and my guests are about to arrive. It’s a disaster. You must come over right now.’
‘But I know nothing about waitressing!’
‘There’s nothing to it. All you’ll have to do is serve the champagne and the canapés. I’ll make it worth your while,’ Nadine insisted. ‘I’ll pay twice the cleaning rate, and it’ll be over by ten o’clock, I promise.’
Cassie sighed. She could do with the extra money, and she needed to keep Nadine Hartley happy. ‘I suppose I could help out.’
‘And you’ll tidy up afterwards? You’re so good at tidying up. It will take you no time at all.’
‘Well…’
‘That’s settled, then. You need to come straight away, and do wear something nice for a change, not those awful dungarees.’ Nadine ended the call, and Cassie put the phone down, cursing her lack of backbone.
‘Granddad, I have to go out.’
He frowned. ‘Now?’
‘Nadine Hartley is having a party, her waitress let her down and she is in a complete panic. I have to go.’
‘That woman is always in a panic.’ He glanced at the window. ‘It’s still snowing, Trifle. You’ll have to be careful.’
‘I will. Don’t worry. The fish and chips are ready. You can eat while I get changed.’