‘So when did you get back?’

She looked at Jess blankly. ‘You saw me! Just now!’

It took a couple of seconds to hit. And it was a good job that she was already headed outside into the sun because Jess felt the colour actually drain from her face.

That was the problem with cleaning. It was a good job on the one hand – if you didn’t mind other people’s stains and pulling lumps of hair out of other people’s plugholes (she didn’t, funnily enough). Jess didn’t even mind that most of those who rented holiday homes seemed to feel obliged to live like pigs for a week, leaving mess they wouldn’t sit in at home because they knew there was a cleaner coming. You could work for yourself, organise your own hours, pick and choose your clients when times were good.

The downside, weirdly, was not the crappy clients (and there always was at least one crappy client), or the dirt, or that scrubbing someone else’s toilet somehow left you feeling like you were one step lower on a ladder than you had planned to be. It wasn’t even the constant threat from other companies, the leaflets through your clients’ doors and the promises of cheaper by the hour. It was that you ended up finding out much more about other people’s lives than you really wanted to.

Jess could have told you about Mrs Eldridge’s secret shopping habit: the designer-shoe receipts she stuffed into the bathroom bin, and the bags of unworn clothes in her wardrobe, the tags still firmly attached. She could tell you that Lena Thompson had been trying for a baby for four years, and used two pregnancy tests a month (rumour had it she left her tights on). She could tell you that Mr Mitchell in the big house behind the church earned a six-figure salary (he left his payslips on the hall table; Nathalie swore he did it deliberately) and that his daughter smoked secretly in the bathroom and lined up all her cigarette butts in neat rows on the window ledge.

If she was that way inclined, she could have pointed out the women who went out looking immaculate, hair faultless, nails polished, lightly spritzed with expensive scent, who thought nothing of leaving soiled knickers in full view on the floor, or the teenage boys whose stiff towels she didn’t want to pick up without a pair of tongs. There were the couples who spent every night in separate beds, the wives insisting brightly when they asked her to change the spare-room sheets that they’d had an ‘awful lot of guests lately’, the lavatories that required a gas mask and a HAZCHEM warning.

And then every now and then you got a nice client like Lisa Ritter and popped over to vacuum her floors and came home with a whole load of knowledge you could really have done without.

Jess watched Nathalie walking outside, the cleaning crate under her arm, and saw with a terrible clarity what was going to happen next. She saw the bed upstairs, immaculately made with clean linen, the polished surfaces of Mrs Ritter’s dressing-table, the cushions neatly plumped on the little sofa in the bay window. She saw that diamond, sitting where she had left it with her scrawled note on the dresser, a tiny glittering hand grenade.

‘Actually,’ Jess said, hauling the suitcase past Nathalie, ‘can I have a quick word, Nat?’ She tried to catch her eye, but Nathalie was busy gazing at Mrs Ritter’s shoes.

‘I love your pumps,’ she said breathlessly.

‘Do you, Nathalie? I got them while I was away. They were an absolute bargain.’

‘Mrs Ritter’s been to Spain, Nat,’ Jess said pointedly, stopping beside her. ‘A mini-break.’

Nathalie glanced up and smiled. Nothing.

‘She got back this morning.’

‘Lovely,’ said Nathalie, beaming.

Jess felt panic rising inside her, like an unstoppable tide. ‘I tell you what, I’ll carry this upstairs for you,’ she said, pushing past Mrs Ritter.

‘You don’t have to do that!’

‘It’s no bother.’ She wondered if Lisa Ritter had registered the strange set to her face. She could make it upstairs, she thought. She could run into the bedroom, fetch the earring, stuff it into her pocket and shove Nathalie into the car before she could say anything, and Mrs Ritter would never know. They would decide what to do about it later.

But even as she hurled herself through the back door some part of her already knew what would happen.

‘So did Jess tell you?’

She was halfway up the stairs. Nathalie’s voice carried, as clear as a bell, through the open window.

‘We found one of your earrings. We thought you might have the other one put by.’

‘Earrings?’ said Mrs Ritter.

‘Diamond. I think it’s a platinum setting. Fell out of the bed linen. You’re lucky we didn’t vacuum it up.’

There was a short silence.

Jess closed her eyes, stood very still on the stairs and waited as the inevitable words floated up to her.

‘How was I supposed to know Mrs Ritter doesn’t have pierced ears?’

They sat in the cleaning van, slumped in their seats. Nathalie was smoking. She had given up six weeks ago. For the fourth time.

‘I don’t look at people’s ears. Do you look at people’s ears?’

‘I think you must have been mistaken,’ Lisa Ritter had said, her voice quivering slightly with the effort, as she held it in her hand. ‘It’s probably my daughter’s, from when she came home last time. She’s got a pair just like it.’

‘Of course,’ Jess said. ‘It probably got kicked in here. Or carried in on someone’s shoe. We knew it would be something like that.’ And she knew right then, when Mrs Ritter turned away from her, that that would be it. Nobody thanked you for bringing bad news to their door.

Nobody wanted a cleaner knowing their bad business.

‘Eighty pounds a week, guaranteed. And holiday pay.’ Nathalie let out a sudden scream. ‘Bloody hell. I actually want to find the tart who owns that bloody earring and thump her for losing us our best job.’

‘Maybe she didn’t know he was married.’

‘Oh, she knew.’ Before she’d met Dean, Nathalie had spent two years with a man who turned out to have not one but two families on the other side of Southampton. ‘No single man keeps colour-coordinated scatter cushions on his bed.’

‘Neil Brewster does,’ Jess said.

‘Neil Brewster’s music collection is sixty-seven per cent Judy Garland, thirty-three per cent Pet Shop Boys.’

At the end of the road a padded toddler toppled gently onto the ground like a felled tree and, after a brief silence, let out a thin wail. Its mother, her two armloads of shopping bags perfectly balanced, stood and stared in mute dismay.

‘Look, you heard what she said the other week – she’d get rid of her hairdresser before she’d get rid of us.’

‘Before she got rid of “the cleaners”. That’s different. She won’t care whether it’s us or Speedicleanz or Maids With Mops.’ Nathalie shook her head. ‘Nope. To her, from now on, we’ll always be the cleaners who know the truth about her husband. It matters to women like her. They’re all about appearances, aren’t they?’

The mother put down her bags and stooped to pick up the toddler. A few houses away, Terry Blackstone emerged from under the bonnet of his Ford Focus, a car that had not run in eighteen months, and peered out to see what was making all the noise.

Jess put her bare feet up on the dashboard and let her face fall into her hands. ‘Bugger it. How are we going to make up the money, Nat? That was our best job.’

‘The house was immaculate. It was basically a twice a week polishing job.’ Nathalie stared out of the window.

‘And she always paid on time.’

‘And she used to give us stuff.’

Jess kept seeing that diamond earring. Why hadn’t they just ignored it? It would have been better if one of them had stolen it. ‘Okay, so she’s going to cancel us. Let’s change the subject, Nat. I can’t afford to cry before my pub shift.’

‘So, did Marty ring this week?’

‘I didn’t mean change the subject to that.’

‘Well, did he?’

Jess sighed. ‘Yup.’

‘Did he say why he didn’t ring the week before?’ Nathalie shoved Jess’s feet off the dashboard.

‘Nope.’ Jess could feel her staring. ‘And no, he didn’t send any money.’

‘Oh, come on. You’ve got to get the Child Support Agency onto him. You can’t carry on like this. He should send money for his own kids.’

It was an old argument. ‘He’s … he’s still not right,’ Jess said. ‘I can’t put more pressure on him. He hasn’t got a job yet.’

‘Well, you’re going to need that money now. Until we get another job like Lisa Ritter’s. How’s Nicky?’

‘Oh, I went round to Jason Fisher’s house to talk to his mum.’

‘You’re joking. She scares the pants off me. Did she say she’d get him to leave Nicky alone?’

‘Something like that.’

Nathalie kept her eyes on Jess and dropped her chin two inches.

‘She told me if I set foot on her doorstep once more she’d batter me halfway to next Wednesday. Me and my … what was it? … me and my “freakazoid kids”.’ Jess pulled down the passenger mirror and checked her hair, pulling it back into a ponytail. ‘Oh, and then she told me her Jason wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘Typical.’

‘It’s fine. I had Norman with me. And, bless him, he took an enormous dump next to their Toyota and somehow I forgot I had a plastic bag in my pocket.’

Jess put her feet back up.

Nathalie pushed them down again and mopped the dashboard with a wet wipe. ‘Seriously, though, Jess. How long has Marty been gone? Two years? You’ve got to get back on the horse. You’re young. You can’t wait around for him to sort himself out,’ she said, with a grimace.

‘Get back on the horse. Nice.’