by Heide Goody
“Lori? Where are you?”
I looked round. “Um, we’re in some sort of shed which –”
“But Theo’s okay? He’s safe?”
“Yes, he’s here with me and we’re fine,” I said, slightly taken aback at James’ panicked tone. “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter?! Are you kidding me? I’ve been frantic!”
I checked the time. It had been about two hours since I’d seen James. Okay, it was a bit of a long time to go without seeing his son, but he knew Theo was with me.
“We’ve been absolutely fine,” I said.
“Are you serious, Lori? You’re all over the news and the internet!”
“What?”
“There’s a video of a woman, donkey and child running riot in IKEA. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve sent it to me saying it looks like Theo.”
“To be fair, we weren’t running riot. We were just trying to find the way out,” I said.
“God damn it, Lori! There’s CCTV of the two of you joyriding in a scissor lift.”
“We weren’t joyri–”
“Did you not realise how dangerous that was?”
“But we wore hard hats,” I said in a small voice. James sounded properly angry.
“Wearing a hard hat does not excuse doing something so irresponsible!” he yelled down the line.
I was about to say that it was Theo’s idea, but that was not the answer that an adult would have given so I kept my mouth shut.
“Where are you now?” he asked.
“Well,” I said, looking round for clues. “We’re in some allotments, not far from a big IKEA shop. I don’t know which one.”
“I do! I’ve seen the bloody videos. I’m on my way to get Theo. Don’t go anywhere else,” said James and hung up.
I put the tablet down by my bag and we waited like naughty kids outside the head teacher’s office until James arrived. I was filled with guilt and shame but I was also angry, with James and myself. James didn’t realise that this situation was not my fault. But Theo was right: things always went wrong when I was around.
“Here he comes,” said Theo peering out the window.
I stood and opened the door, my heart heavy, like I was stepping up to the gallows. James barely looked at me, almost pushed past me to get to Theo. He grabbed his son and held him tight.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get hurt?”
“No.”
“Did anything… bad happen?”
Theo looked at me and then at the sticky pages of the colour supplement from which I had magicked some pie.
“No?”
“Did it?” demanded James.
“No.”
“And you’re all right?”
“Yes, Dad. Stop worrying. Lori’s looked after me. She really has.”
James threw me a look. He might as well have punched me. It was a look that said “This woman? Look after you?” I was lower than an idiot. James’ look wasn’t a look of hatred but it contained such deep, dark and compounded disappointment that there wasn’t much difference.
“We need to go, Theo,” he said.
“Is Lori coming as well?” asked Theo.
“I think that Lori can make her own way back,” said James. “Don’t you?”
I didn’t know what to say to that but Theo leapt to my defence, bless him.
“No, Dad. We need to give her a lift. Lori’s looked after me really well. She even made me some pie with her magic pendant. It brings things to life!”
Oh no. Of all the conversations that I really didn’t want to get into just now... but James just rolled his eyes and looked even more scornful that before, if that was possible.
“Lori’s mental health is questionable at the best of times, so don’t go believing everything that she tells you Theo.”
James steered Theo towards the door.
“James,” I said.
“What is it, Lori?” he said in a dead tone.
I didn’t know what I could say. I held up the magazine article from the table.
“You were right about the journalist.”
“Oh?”
“Everything I said and did looks ridiculous in this article.”
James raised an eyebrow and looked as if he was about to say something, but he just shook his head instead, as if nothing was a surprise to him.
He and Theo left the shed and I just sat there for a little while longer, wondering how I could have messed up so badly when I was only trying to help.
Chapter 37
I got back to the museum in time to work my shift. It was a close-run thing. It occurred to me that I could hitch a ride in the back of a lorry again, but it turns out that not all drivers are as oblivious as the one that took Theo and the donkey, so I had a couple of awkward conversations. The second driver (the one who found me hiding behind a fridge in his van) wanted to know why I hadn’t just asked him for a lift. I shrugged, as I didn’t actually have a good answer for that. He let me get into the cab with him. The fridge was going to the city centre, so after twenty-five minutes of conversation about football transfers, where my contribution was mostly ‘oh yes?’ and ‘how much?’ he dropped me off near the museum.
I really wanted to catch up with Cookie and talk through some of the things that had happened in the last day or so, but Rex came in as I was getting my trolley ready.
“A word, Miss Belkin,” he said. “My office.”
I followed him into his office. I still wasn’t sure if this was the place where the oldest office furniture in the world came to die, or whether he deliberately selected these things. Actually, I thought that maybe he’d bought them when they were new, and they were all automatically antiques like him.
He sat at his desk and indicated that I should sit opposite. The electrical cabinet on the wall crackled in greeting as I sat.
“This is just like my interview, isn’t it?” I said. “Doesn’t it take you back?”
He didn’t smile. He pulled something towards him across the desk and with dismay I saw that it was Chorley Danglespear’s article.
“We would very much like you to explain this,” he said, “specifically, this extract. ‘I had no money to buy food when I started work as a cleaner, so I came up with the idea of stealing food in the cafe. I’d wait until someone was eating something that I liked the look of and then I’d try to take it off them before they’d finished or I’d try to persuade them that they didn’t really want it.’”
He looked up at me. It was not a happy look on his beardy face.
“That journalist tricked me,” I said. “I didn’t even say some of those things. Not in that way, anyway.”
“Are you denying that you took food from our customers, Miss Belkin?”
I couldn’t deny it. I hesitated briefly, wondering if there was anything I might say that would persuade Rex that what I’d done wasn’t as bad as the article made it sound, but I knew that it was beyond my powers. Rex had a naturally unhappy face, but his mouth and jowls drooped so much that he looked like a bloodhound with a mouthful of billiard balls.
“You leave me no choice, Miss Belkin,” he said. “We must protect the reputation of the museum, and the welfare of our customers. You will be aware that you’re still in your probationary period, so we can dismiss you without notice.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Am I getting the sack?”
“Yes, you are,” said Rex.
“But, wait! Surely, we can talk about this? What if I say sorry? I mean, I am sorry.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not. Even if I were inclined to overlook such a thing, and I am not, this article has caught the attention of many people. I even received a phone call from the vice-chancellor demanding to know what I was doing to rectify the situation.”
Vice-chancellor! Bernadette Bloody Brampton. This was her doing!
I stopped myself. No. Bernadette
might have spoken to Rex but this wasn’t her fault. I was being sacked because I made the museum look bad and I made Rex look bad. There was nothing I could do.
“Can I keep my cleaning trolley?” I asked.
“No, of course you can’t,” said Rex, his brow creasing in confusion.
“Can I just keep one of the cloths then? A microfibre one maybe?”
“No! You are dismissed and you are to leave the premises now, Miss Belkin. You will not be taking anything with you.”
“Can I go and see Cookie?” I asked.
“Cookie?”
“Melissa. She works here too.”
“And at least she does work,” said Rex, “which is clearly more than you ever did. No, she’s working. You can cry on her shoulder when her shift’s ended. Now, leave. Or do I have to call security?”
The electrical cupboard sparked and rattled as though it too was warning me. Rex opened the door and walked me to the main entrance, making sure I went. I felt like a criminal, which is probably what he intended. It was quite a relief when I left the building and walked away. I’m fairly sure that he stood there for a minute, to make sure I didn’t make a last-minute dash back inside for my microfibre cloth. I didn’t look back, I walked away, trying to remind myself that I never really wanted his stupid job in the first place.
When I got back to Adam’s flat, it was eerily quiet. Ashbert had gone. I had told him to leave and he had done it.
It should have been a relief and, I suppose, it was. But it left me feeling weirdly alone. I had no job, no boyfriend and everyone who’d read that horrible article written by Chorley Danglespear thought that I was a useless snowflake.
“Am I a useless snowflake?” I asked the trilobites as I fed them some worms created by the pendant.
“Using natural language processing to analyse previous speech patterns against the criteria of ‘useless’ and ‘snowflake’,” said Lexi.
Oh. I really wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this.
“No, Lexi. I wasn’t talking to you.”
Lexi fell silent. I watched the trilobites eating and tried to find some comfort in their simple pleasure. It was no good.
“Lexi?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Am I a useless snowflake?”
“Useless. Having no ability or skill in a specified area,” announced Lexi. “Analysis of your previous speech patterns suggests an eighty percent likelihood that you are useless.”
“Cheers Lexi,” I started.
“Snowflake. The colloquial term for a young generation with a lack of resilience,” she said. “Analysis of your previous speech patterns suggests a seventy per cent chance that you are a snowflake. Conclusion: there is a fifty-six percent chance that you are both useless and a snowflake.”
“Great.”
Chapter 38
How I envied the trilobites their simple lifestyle. In their custom-made environment, with a constant supply of worms, they had a worry-free existence. I wondered what my own version of their ring-fenced idyll might look like. A place where I had everything I needed. Food would appear when I needed it and I’d have a comfy room to relax in. I realised with a jolt that I was picturing my old room in my parents’ house. I stopped myself, knowing that I couldn’t go back to that, even though it was tempting to daydream.
“What would you do, guys? You know, if you were in my shoes?”
Dougie scuttled away from the others and hid underneath a stone. I could see his legs, so it was a pretty rubbish attempt at hiding, but I knew exactly where he was coming from.
“You have a good point Dougie. If you hide from the world, will it leave you alone? I’m not sure. It’s got to be worth a try though. The trouble is, I seem to leave a trail of destruction, so everyone knows where I’ve been.”
The trilobite enclosure was in Adam’s spare room which had been spared the more extensive damage, if you overlooked the enormous walk-in bath filled with soil. I walked through into the lounge where sooty stains and scorched soft furnishings were in plentiful supply. Could I fix some of the damage I’d done? It’s what an adult would do.
I made a list.
Clean Adam’s flat as much as I possibly can
Find Jed the taxi driver and pay him the money that I owe him
Check that Beyoncé is all right
I managed to find some tweets relating to Beyoncé’s continued adventures. She was in the care of a sanctuary, and there was even a picture of her munching on some hay. I smiled to see that she still wore the hat.
I called Jed, using Bernadette’s name. When he turned up fifteen minutes later, I went out, wearing the pea green hoody. I pulled it over my face and affected a low gravelly voice.
“This money is from Lori Belkin. She owes you the fare from the day that she came back from her holiday.”
Jed took the money, and I could feel him staring, so I made the rookie error of peeking.
“Your voice has gone all weird,” he said. “Did you eat that dodgy sausage or something?”
So much for my undercover skills.
Back in Adam’s flat, it was time to tackle the mess.
“Lexi, I need some help with household cleaning and maintenance. Let’s start with the cushions. Can I wash them?”
“You can wash most cushions at a low temperature. Air dry and re-shape by hand. Put the cushion filler into an old pillowcase when you wash it, to prevent a messy leak.”
“Oh.” That sounded doable. I would make a start on erasing evidence of my stupidity. I gathered up the cushions, releasing new wafts of that appalling kipper-stink and went to find some pillow cases.
An hour later, after making myself a bit seasick watching the cushions going round in the washing machine, I got Adam’s cleaning supplies and applied everything I’d learned in my short time as a professional cleaner to making his flat more habitable. Cookie and I had once spent an entire break arguing about whether it was better to sweep then dust or dust then sweep. Cookie said that the universe gave us the gift of gravity and that we should always work with it. Start with the dusting and everything would end up on the floor, ready for sweeping. It’s hard to fault Cookie’s logic, but I find myself troubled by the cloud of dust that appears when you sweep vigorously. It dirties the surfaces you’ve just dusted. It remains an unknowable mystery and a subject for future debate.
Adam’s flat was so heavily soiled with soot, ash and lumps of unidentifiable grunge, that I decided to compromise with a dust-sweep-dust approach. It would take longer, but the research would be valuable. Cookie was sure to be interested. First, I had to move all of the clutter, so I picked up the shoes, cups and mysterious objects. The concept of the mysterious object belongs to my mom. Whenever she had to clean the house, she would always amass a pile of mysterious objects. We had to go through them as a family and either claim them or figure out what they were.
“Is it the thing that holds the bread bag closed?”
“I think it’s the thing for getting the sim card out of your phone.”
“It’s come off the kitchen cupboard. It’s the thing to stop the door slamming.”
I moved my bag, so that it wouldn’t get in the way when I was dusting, and saw with dismay that Theo’s tablet was sticking out of the back pocket. How was I going to get it back to him? I couldn’t face going round to see James. I pulled it out and looked at it. He must be distraught to have lost it, so I needed to do something. What about the next open day at the university? There were several, so I was sure that I could catch Theo and, with a bit of luck, avoid James. It seemed like a good plan.
I did the first lot of dusting and took the time to appreciate gravity in action as quite a lot of the gritty stuff fell onto the floor. However, there were flakes of ash that were immune to the lure of gravity, and I watched them float lazily around, waiting until my back was turned before settling back onto the surfaces. I eventually developed a hybrid technique where I pulled the vacuum cleaner around with me. As I dusted a sur
face, I’d direct the mess into the waiting nozzle of the vacuum. It worked perfectly. I was riding high on a feeling of competence, so I got Adam’s brightly coloured feather duster. I guess feather dusters must have been made from feathers in the olden days but this was something like bright pink toy stuffing on a stick. A few cobwebs later it was a nasty grey colour and I was reminded of something from Horrible Histories where they said that the Romans used sticks with a sponge on the end to wipe their bottoms. How on earth did you clean a feather duster? I went back to the vacuum cleaner with a smile. Of course! I switched it on and ran the nozzle over the matted pink and grey mess. Moments later the feather duster was definitely cleaner, but was also very much skinnier. The pink stuff had all disappeared up the nozzle of the vacuum. I put it at the back of the cleaning cupboard with a sigh.
By the time Cookie came round after her shift at work, I had compiled a list of things that I had learned from carrying out a deep clean on Adam’s flat. I knew Cookie would be interested, but I used them to illustrate a brand-new Florrie blog as well.
1. A full dustpan can spread mess over an entire room if you drop it.
2. Reshaping a cushion sounds easy but it’s something like solving a squishy Rubik’s cube inside a sealed bag.
3. It’s almost impossible to flush fifteen out-of-date sausages down the toilet. Almost.
Cookie was impressed with what I’d done.
“This place is looking good. You are the Belkinator,” she nodded.
I grinned proudly. The multi-coloured chimney breast actually looked stunning against the backdrop of a clean and tidy room.
Cookie indicated that she had food, but I insisted that she took it into the kitchen. There’s nothing like a hard day’s cleaning to make you house-proud.
“Brought you your favourite thing!” she said.
“Oh, what’s that?” I asked, hoping against hope that she didn’t mean sausages.
“Leftovers from the cafe at work,” she said. “Thought you might be missing them so I did a raid at the end of the day.”
