by Simon Brett
I had been put in touch with Ashleigh by the local authority. They had found her a one-bedroomed flat but were worried about how she was coping there. As ever, neighbours could be relied on to raise objections to any new tenant, though whether their complaints were justified, or born of resentment at the idea of a single mother getting preferential treatment, it was hard to know. Many times in my work I’d heard grumblings about ‘these girls who just get deliberately pregnant and rely on our taxes to pay for their housing.’
I had visited a couple of times, and on each occasion been struck by how much Ashleigh adored Zak. He was the light of her life, the first thing that she had ever felt genuinely belonged to her. If motherhood consisted only of hugging her baby, Ashleigh would have been wonderful at it.
Sadly, though, in the more practical aspects of the job description, her shortcomings were all too apparent. As is common with girls like her, Ashleigh didn’t want to breastfeed. And when it came to preparing Zak’s formula food, her schedule was fairly random.
She was equally erratic in nappy-changing. Having never experienced any kind of nurturing from her own mother, she had no instinct for it. In the same way, having never eaten much home cooking, she lived on takeaways. And, presumably, when Zak was weaned off the formula, he would be put on the same diet.
Ashleigh also seemed to see no reason why having a baby should stop her from going out drinking with her girlfriends. I hoped that it stopped at drinking. She had certainly used drugs in the past. I prayed that she was through that stage in her life.
The reason I’d been called in was because of the limited resources of the social services. They simply hadn’t got the staff to follow up on a case like Ashleigh’s. So, they reasoned, if they could reclassify her problem as hoarding rather than general inability to cope, they could get in an outside contractor – i.e. SpaceWoman – to deal with it. Employing me every now and then was a lot cheaper than taking on the new permanent staff members they really needed. They were up against it with the funding cuts in the sector.
Their version of events was true, in a way. There was a decluttering problem. Ashleigh had a chronic inability to tidy anything up. Each time I visited, the floor of her flat would be littered with empty packs of formula and spilled powder, dirty nappies, damp sheets and fast-food cartons. It was as if she genuinely didn’t notice the chaos around her. Every time I had to point it out for her to become aware of the mess. Then she would make half-hearted attempts to tidy up, but I would end up doing most of the work. My supply of black bin liners, and indeed clean nappies, would be raided every time.
It took me a long time to understand Ashleigh. She was certainly not uncaring – she adored Zak – but she didn’t seem to understand the basic practicalities of care. And what worried me was that if she didn’t get a grip on her life, if she didn’t stop living in self-generated squalor, the council would have her out of the flat in no time. If – heaven forbid – she started on the drugs again, Zak would definitely be taken into care. In that event, the chances of her ever getting him back were pretty slender. The cycle would be perpetuated.
So, the challenge to me was to convert her undoubted love for her son into the form of caring for him properly.
When I arrived at Ashleigh’s that afternoon, she was playing music too loudly. Some version of rap – perhaps the latest subdivision of the genre that I hadn’t caught up with yet (and probably never would). Though I didn’t mention the noise right away – didn’t want to come across too much as the disapproving mother – I knew it was just the kind of thing to generate more complaints from the neighbours. But I think playing music too loud, just like the squalor in which she lived, was something Ashleigh just didn’t think about.
Zak still looked beautiful, through the encrustations of formula and snot on his face, but he was screaming. The causes were a nappy that hadn’t been changed for too long, and sheer hunger. I pointed them out to Ashleigh.
‘Yeah, I know. I’ve just never been very good with time, knowing when things need to be done, you know.’
The easy route would have been for me to change Zak’s nappy and mix his formula – as I had done on earlier visits – but I saw my task as building Ashleigh’s self-reliance. So, I monitored her through the necessary processes. She was far from incompetent. She changed the nappy efficiently, cleaning his little bottom up with baby wipes (my baby wipes). As she did so, I noticed there was a bit of redness about his tiny anus, the beginnings of a rash.
‘You’d better put some cream on that.’
‘Oh.’ Ashleigh looked at me hopelessly. ‘I haven’t got any cream.’
Another thing to add to the list for my next visit. Sudocrem.
The contents of his nappy had leaked on to his Babygro, to join other noxious substances there. I picked it up gingerly. ‘For the washing machine,’ I said.
‘Washing machine’s buggered,’ said Ashleigh.
‘For how long?’ She shrugged. The pile of filthy clothes in front of it suggested at least a week.
‘Have you rung the Housing Association about it?’ I knew the terms of her rental agreement. The washing machine was their responsibility, not hers.
She shrugged.
‘Why not?’
She shrugged again. I made a mental note to call the Housing Association.
Holding Zak on her hip, Ashleigh riffled though the clothes in front of the washing machine and found a Babygro slightly less soiled than the others. She put it on him.
She brought the same efficiency that she had to the nappy to mixing Zak’s formula. While she did it, I was allowed to cuddle him on my lap. Which I knew was a big concession to me. Ashleigh was very wary of letting anyone else touch her baby – something which had raised another problem with health visitors and got the words ‘difficult and uncooperative’ indelibly imprinted on her notes. She was one of those people who always, often unwittingly, managed to get on the wrong side of officialdom.
While she prepared the mixture, she kept giving little, covert looks in my direction. To check I wasn’t doing Zak any harm. When the bottle was ready, she almost snatched him from my arms. She settled down to feed him, holding him close, almost making me feel I was an intruder in this moment of mother/son bonding.
Zak seemed restless, so I suggested gently that the level of music might be putting him off.
‘Oh, I’d forgotten that was still on.’ She sounded as if she really had. Mercifully, she used a zapper to extinguish the sound.
After its changing, Zak’s dirty nappy had just been dropped on the floor and lay next to a Kentucky Fried Chicken box spilling over with gnawed bones. I looked around the small space. ‘Where’re the nappy disposal bags?’
‘Mm?’ asked Ashleigh, unwilling to have the feeding togetherness interrupted.
‘When I last came, I brought you some nappy disposal bags, to put the dirty ones in.’
‘Oh, I think they’re over there.’ She gestured towards a pile of debris by the sink.
I found them. The packet was unopened. The nappies on the floor must have been all the ones used since my last visit. And if Zak had been changed with the frequency that he should have been, there could have been twice as many of them.
Deliberately, I opened the packet of nappy bags, rolled up the nappy Ashleigh had just changed, put it in the bag and tied the handles. ‘That’s what needs to be done with all of these,’ I said.
‘Oh well, if you don’t mind …’
‘I do mind. You clear them all up when you’ve finished feeding him.’
Ashleigh’s face assumed a very put-upon expression, but she didn’t raise any objection. I knew I was using a very mild form of tough love, but I did somehow have to get her to take responsibility for her own life. And Zak’s. It was the only way they were going to survive together.
Reluctantly, Ashleigh handed him over to me again after she’d finished feeding. With a baby wipe I removed the excess from his face, and he snuggled into my chest, comatose. A
s Zak slowly twitched against me, the inevitable, atavistic memory came back to me of cuddling Juliet (before she became Jools) and Ben in the same way.
I did not have to give Ashleigh any further instructions. She picked up and folded each reeking nappy into a bag and tied it up. She put them in the black bin liner I had provided. Then she picked up all the discarded formula boxes and fast-food containers. They went into the bin bag too. The carpet they revealed was stained and here and there dusted with formula powder.
Finally, she got out a vacuum cleaner and swept over the floor. The room was transformed. The actual cleaning process had taken less than twenty minutes.
That was what was so frustrating about Ashleigh. She knew exactly what she should be doing. It was actually doing it that was the problem.
My next visit was another waste of time. I didn’t recognize the name or address on my Outlook calendar, but that didn’t surprise me. Bookings come at me from all kinds of sources – the SpaceWoman website, phone calls, texts, and sometimes quite a long way ahead. I’m perhaps not as organized as I should be about my diary. I tend to work a week in advance. If there’s a name I don’t recognize, then I can guarantee it’s a first consultation. And quite often those get aborted. People approaching me about their own problem have cold feet. People approaching me about a family member’s problem get worried about the family member’s likely reaction to my appearance. Usually, they contact me to cancel. I never attempt to dissuade them. That’s the decision they’ve made and, fortunately, I don’t have to look for more work.
The one that afternoon was annoying, because they hadn’t been in touch. And the address was way into the Downs beyond Goodwood. The satnav directed me towards a dusty, little-used track. By the entrance from the main road hung from one rusty hook a faded sign reading ‘Walnut Farm’.
When I reached my destination, the old farm building looked as if it had been uninhabited for years, but I have learned in my work not to judge by appearances. Many hoarders are as careless about the exteriors of their homes as they are about the overcrammed interiors.
Pressing the bell push, tapping on windows, banging on front and back doors, none of them had any effect. The place was locked up and felt it had been that way for a long time. So, I put the excursion down to experience. If the clients got back to me, I might ask about the missed appointment. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t bother.
I didn’t hang about. I had to move on.
As arranged, I picked up the key from the Housing Association and, though Hilary’s text had said it didn’t matter what time I arrived, it was, as per schedule, just after five when the Yeti drew up outside the block of flats on Portsmouth’s Hargood Estate.
It had started to rain on the way, which meant there were few people on the streets, and the relentless grey drizzle didn’t add to the charms of the area. Everything was extremely run down. Road pockmarked with potholes, cars whose smashed windscreens suggested they’d been there for a long time. Inevitable plastic bags and McDonald’s wrappers in the gutters. The area around the entrance to the block was graffiti-covered and smelt of uncleared rubbish.
I knew that Portsmouth had undergone considerable urban redevelopment in recent years. Well, the process hadn’t reached the Hargood Estate.
I put on my sharp-proof gloves – you never know what you’re going to encounter in a new site – and walked into block. In the enclosed space of the entrance hall, the rotting smell was intensified and new graffiti had covered the old. The lift, it goes without saying, did not work.
I still saw no one. Perhaps it was the rain, or perhaps the residents were afraid to leave their flats.
The people at the Housing Association had told me my destination was on the second floor, so I climbed up to it. The concrete stairs were wet. There was a sound of dripping. The rain was getting in somewhere.
All of the flat doors were blue, though the paint was stained and flaky. I stopped outside 27. The once-shiny brass numbers were dull and tarnished. There was a bell. I pressed it, but no sound came from inside. I knocked tentatively on the door with my knuckles, then harder a couple of times. Still no response.
I wasn’t expecting a reply, but I had to go through the routine. Maureen Ogden, Hilary had told me, was in hospital. I wondered what for. Serious hoarders do not like leaving their premises, nor do they like to let strangers in. I’ve been doing what I do long enough to know that they are very secretive. They may not see anything strange about their obsessions, but they certainly don’t want the results to be observed by people they don’t know – or, in many cases, by people they do know.
I used the key the Housing Association had given me and, the minute I stepped inside, recognized the smell of the hoarder’s home. Much stronger than the whiff of the stairwell. Dust, paper, wool, damp, with various less appealing undertones.
The pathway through the hall, narrowed down by teetering piles of cardboard boxes, told me the same story. Though I’d brought my torch with me, I switched on the light.
Five doors led off the hall, two either side, one at the end; all were closed. The one straight ahead opened on to the kitchen. Or half opened, I should say. The clutter behind the door saw to that. Access to the stove and sink was just about possible, though the fridge could not have been opened until the stepladder and ironing board propped against it had been moved.
But, rather as with the copies of Tobias Lechlade’s books, there was an oasis of tidiness in the midst of chaos. The kitchen table’s surface was covered in small rectangles of paper and cardboard, neatly held in blocks by rubber bands. A closer look showed me that they were all coupons, the kind of coupons which mostly come in free local magazines – granting free pizzas, discount dog food, ‘50p off your next purchase of granola bars’, ‘25% off a main course on production of this coupon’, ‘A free 175ml glass of house wine, red or white, with any steak ordered’, ‘Kids Eat Free’, and hundreds of other offers that sounded too good to be true (and usually were).
There was a system to the way the coupons had been categorized. Restaurant offers in one pile, food shopping in another, discounts on clothes with their own section and so on.
It was a phenomenon I had frequently noticed with hoarders. There is one area of their life where complete order reigns. By focusing on that particular special interest and seeing that that’s in order, they can genuinely make themselves unaware of the surrounding shambles.
One end of the table seemed to be reserved for scratch cards. Used scratch cards. Maureen Ogden’s hoarding instinct didn’t allow her to throw any away. Next to the scratch cards was a pile of coupons offering large prizes, tens of thousands of pounds in what were described as ‘Giant Cash Draws!’ (each one decorated with an exclamation mark). Maureen Ogden was clearly a woman dedicated to augmenting her pension. Whether any of her attempts to win a fortune had been successful, there was no way of knowing.
I went back into the hall and had a real problem opening the second door. My job involves a lot of heavy lifting, so I’m pretty fit – gym membership at Goodwood would be a waste of money for me – but there was something so heavy propped against the inside of this door that for a moment I didn’t think I’d make it.
I tried one final shoulder-charge, however, and that did the trick. I heard a crashing sound as something I’d dislodged fell away, and was able to push the door wide enough to squeeze my way in.
The space, presumably designed as a sitting room, was not large but it was piled high, floor to ceiling, with furniture. Furniture of all kinds: armchairs, office chairs, tables, cupboards. The item which had fallen over to allow me access to the room was a tall Edwardian coat stand, with a series of pegs round a central mirror. Heaped up higher than me in the centre of this nest of wood was a pile of bed clothes. Not modern, duvet-style bed clothes. Old knitted blankets, discoloured pillows, eiderdowns covered with material that looked like silk but wasn’t.
As I looked down, I noticed one unexpected item sticking out of the wal
l of bedding.
It was a human hand.
THREE
Afterwards, I was asked by the police why I had touched anything at a crime scene. The answer I gave then – and the answer I’d still give now – was that I didn’t know it was a crime scene. My first instinct on seeing someone injured is to try to help them. And I didn’t immediately realize that the hand I saw belonged to someone dead.
I shoved aside the old blankets and eiderdowns on top until the body was revealed. A young woman, difficult to say exactly how old, probably somewhere in her early thirties.
And dead. I’d suspected that from the stiffness with which her hand had poked out from under the bedding, but a touch confirmed it. The emaciated, tattooed body was cold and dry.
In moving the bedding, I had dislodged an empty syringe, which had fallen from a couple of layers above the corpse. Her arms were a battleground of perforations, and there was a wisp of blood from one, probably the most recent needle mark, probably the one that had killed her.
Any hope that she might have been the victim of an accidental overdose, though, that she had for some reason been rooting around in the bedding and dislodged a pile which had fallen and trapped her, was quickly snuffed out. There was the syringe, for a start. Unless she had injected herself, covered herself with bedding and then placed the syringe on the blankets above her, someone else must have done that.
Besides, her face was swollen with bruising, and on her wrists were marks where something thin, and probably plastic, had been used to tie them together.
A tangle of black-dyed hair thickened with dried blood suggested the possibility that the overdose wasn’t the cause of death, that she might have died from a head wound.
