Same Time Next Week

Chapter 4

Underneath their shining veneer of smiling, suburban respectability, Valerie and Dennis Hutchinson were the worst kind of tuppence-ha’penny snobs. A couple who would have described themselves as philanthropic, because they gave ten pounds every Christmas to the Marie Curie charity; Christian, because they went to church every now and then and were on first name terms with the vicar; worldly – and cosmopolitan – because they had a German cleaner who had undergone gender reassignment. They were virtue signallers of the highest order.

They didn’t really need a cleaner, but it was prestigious to brag they had one. Their ‘town villa’ (terraced house with high ceilings) never collected much dust because the Hutchinsons were too tight to part with any skin cells. They paid Astrid for three hours one afternoon every week and she vacuumed carpets, cleaned the windows inside and polished the wood; though she had to search hard for anything to do because, in between the Wednesday stints, Valerie was on top of any mote that dared to be seen on her radar. Astrid was allowed to stop halfway through her shift for a coffee, a bargain brand the Hutchinsons had bought to give to tradespeople and which Valerie kept in a different cupboard from her Waitrose Gold Roast; but she rarely bothered because it was scheu?lich – awful.

Occasionally Dennis would interrupt her duties with a thoughtful tap on his lip and say, ‘Can I just ask you…’ and question her about her old life. Astrid never tried to pretend that her previous self hadn’t existed because it made her appreciate this one all the more: the contented butterfly that had grown from the unhappy caterpillar who had once upon a time played rugby for Frankfurt. She appreciated that Dennis might be nosey, because people were and, as such, she always answered questions politely, even his increasingly intrusive ones. But tolerant as she was, she found that her patience levels were wearing thin. Not just with him, but with everything. Something was changing within her, she could feel it happening and she didn’t know to what it was attributable.

She had come to terms with being a widow, so it wasn’t that. Her marriage to antiques dealer ‘Cutthroat Kev’ had been sweet and way too short but she’d felt blessed to have had him for any length of time. Kev had been a huge man in personality and stature and he had made her feel both protected and cherished, the way she had always tried to make other people feel. It had been wonderful to be on the receiving end of it and she would be forever grateful for that. It was more that she felt as if life were a big orange and she hadn’t squeezed enough juice out of it, and the clock was ticking. Some of the oldies she’d cleaned for over the years had had such little lives and she wanted more from hers, although she hadn’t a clue what form that fulfilment could take.

After a year and a half of working for the Hutchinsons, she knew that if Dennis Hutchinson asked her one more gratuitously invasive question dressed up as innocent curiosity she was likely to swing for him and she didn’t want to feel like that because Astrid was a gentle person. Battling on a rugby pitch had once been her way of battling everything that felt wrong with her life: her frustrations and fear, her sense of futility and desperation at being incompatible with her own body, and she didn’t have that outlet any more.

Kev had left her more than well provided for. She had a beautiful house; she didn’t need to clean for anyone, but she chose to because she liked to do it. Or at least she had until recently. The Hutchinson house was her easiest, but the one she was always most glad to have finished. Valerie and Dennis presumed because Astrid was a cleaner that she was broke and she was lucky to have them pay her for her services. After all, they would have said, who would choose such a ‘lowly profession’ if they didn’t have to.

Luckily Astrid had always been revered by her other clients, to whom she brought joy – and cake, because she loved baking. Her ‘oldies’ had looked forward to her weekly visits when she’d make their houses sparkle, change their beds, wash their laundry and more importantly put the kettle on and sit with them after her shift, but sadly there was just one of them left now. She also cleaned at Bon Repair twice a week, after closing time. She did a lot of thinking when she was mopping and dusting around in there and recently she’d had too much thinking time. Plus two days a week she worked for The Crackers Yard where she would sit around a table enjoying the craic, and constructing Christmas crackers with an ensemble crew. She could fill up her days but it was at night when she felt Kev’s loss most of all. She missed having someone to cook for – and with, because together they replicated everything the Hairy Bikers had ever made. She missed discovering a new box set with him and sharing a bottle of wine and holing up in front of a log fire and having cheese on toast suppers. Kev was the best of people, someone whom the Hutchinsons wouldn’t have entertained even as a virtue-signalling exercise, because they would have considered him uncouth. He made no apologies for preferring darts to lawn tennis and couldn’t tell a Chateauneuf-du-Pape from a cherry Coke. And they wouldn’t have considered him a businessman because he’d earned his money trading barbers’ shops memorabilia at antiques shops and fairs and didn’t wear a shirt and tie and sit at a desk. Kev was worth a whole parkful of Hutchinsons and more. And today, she missed him more than ever because he’d have been up through the night making a cake so he could serve it up as breakfast in bed for her with a rose in a vase and a glass of champagne.

As Astrid was packing up to go, Dennis handed her the envelope with her wage in it, but he snatched it back at the last second and she knew another of his questions was coming because this manoeuvre was his modus operandi.

‘Astrid, can I just ask…’ She was right then. ‘… What was your name before you changed?’

Astrid put on her best smile and answered him sweetly.

‘Verpiss Dich.’ She made ‘piss off’ in her native language sound like a hyphened name, such as Michael-Paul or Andrew-Mark,

‘Verpiss Dich,’ Dennis repeated thoughtfully. That’s quite a mouthful. You krauty people do like your long, complicated names though, don’t you.’

‘Ja, we do, dun’t we?’ she replied in her hybrid Brandenburg/broad Barnsley accent.

She held out her hand for her wage and, now satisfied, he let her have it. As she was putting it in her handbag, Valerie Hutchinson appeared at the door. Invariably she always checked around after Astrid to make sure she had completed her tasks and always found something to criticise. Today was no exception.

‘I don’t think you did the skirting boards in our bedroom, Astrid, but it doesn’t matter, you can do them next week.’

‘There was no time, as you vanted me to refold up all the towels in the airing cupboard,’ Astrid answered. Had this been any of her other clients’ houses, Astrid would have squeezed the job in gladly, but the Hutchinsons didn’t give an inch with her and so she didn’t give an inch with them.

‘Have you told her, Dennis?’ urged Valerie, giving her husband a nudge.

‘Er, no.’ He coughed then, as if making a major announcement. ‘Well, as it’s your birthday this week, we’ve rounded up your money to the nearest ten.’

Oh wow, a whole two pounds.

‘Danke,’ said Astrid, trying not to get it wrong and say wanker.

‘And we’ve bought you a present.’ Valerie grinned and from behind her back she produced a plain, white carrier bag. Well, this was a first, thought Astrid. She hadn’t ever had a gift before – for birthday or Christmas – just the usual rounding up of her wage so she could go mad and blow the bonus on a newspaper.

‘You can open it now,’ said Valerie, anticipation of a big reveal lighting up her expression.

Astrid parted the handles and pulled out the contents: a BOGOF pair of replacement mop heads.

‘We thought you were due.’ Valerie was beaming. It wasn’t a joke. She and Dennis really did think this was a viable present.

‘Well, I don’t know what to say.’ That was true, Astrid really didn’t. ‘Maybe I’ll leave them here.’

‘Oh yes, of course, that was the whole idea,’ said Valerie, as if it could be in dispute.

‘We wouldn’t want you using them for someone else,’ said Dennis with a chortle and a cautionary wag of his finger.

Astrid put on her own version of a chortle before saying, ‘In Germany we have a custom. When someone gi’s us a gift, we give ’em one back.’

‘Oh,’ said Valerie, her pencilled-on teak-brown eyebrows rising in surprise.

Astrid reached into her pinny pocket. ‘I have it in here somewhere.’ She pulled out her hand, the middle finger raised.

‘Here you go,’ she said. Then she picked up her cleaning box, marched a path through the Hutchinsons like Moses through the Red Sea and resisted the urge to slam the door behind her enough to shake it off its hinges. She really was getting too old to hang on to her patience in the face of such scheisse.