Read Online Size Matters by Judy Astley - Free Book Online Page A

non-practical, there would never be a shortage of work. There was a course at the local college grandly entitled The Built Environment, whose students, over the past few years, had constructed a whole new art block and some very fancy walling round the car park.
    Ask most bright kids about their futures and they said they wanted to be ‘lawyers’. Did they really know what that entailed? Did they have a clue how many hours they’d waste trying to find someone to degunge the washing machine just because they’d got no simple hands-on skills of their own? How many lawyers could a country need anyway, she wondered as she made her way over the bridge and down to the Common to sort out why every one of her staff had now refused to do so much as another hour’s work for Mrs Caldwell.
    Jay pulled into the pale gravelled driveway of the double-fronted quasi-Georgian house and parked beside Barbara’s Volvo estate that still had the Cats on Board sticker in the back window from the West London Area Burmese Championship qualifiers, held the weekend before. There was a window-cleaner’s truck as well. His ladders were propped up against the house front and Jay could hear the faint squeaking of chammy on glass. Another essential worker, she thought. After all, how many householders these days were prepared to risk going up ladders with the Windolene Wet Wipes? Greg got dizzy at the top of his own glass staircase and had to drink half a bottle of Rescue Remedy when he was out on an architectural recce and had to shin up some scaffolding.
    This meeting had to be a two-hander, for MrsCaldwell had a wide circle of book-group friends and she could, if she accumulated enough grumbles to report them, be extremely bad for business. The area had several van-and-mop businesses like Dishing the Dirt, and clients went from one to another as recommendations came and went. The casual cleaners did exactly the same of course, which meant that a client, changing companies simply because a girl had missed a dusty skirting board once too often, might well get the same girl back again but wearing a different logo on her apron.
    â€˜Do come in.’ Mrs Caldwell had the door open before Jay was out of the car. Disconcertingly, Jay noticed she was wearing almost identical clothes to her own – black trousers and top with a honey-coloured fine wool cardigan. She’d guess Mrs Caldwell’s was cashmere as opposed to lambswool and that her trousers were Joseph, not M & S. Oh and two sizes smaller than her own. Bloody grapefruit, she thought, giving Mrs Caldwell what she hoped was a smile that combined both a business-like attitude and reassurance. Neither offering was returned with any warmth.
    â€˜Come through to the kitchen. Your business colleague is already here.’ Jay could see Barbara sitting at a long oak table and looking uncomfortable behind a row of folded garments. She caught her eye as she followed the cashmere cardi into a kitchen full of cerise lacquered units polished to a standard of blinding reflectiveness. If Dishing the Dirt’s Monique had done this, it would be impossible to agree she was incompetent. Barbara gave her a weak smile that wasn’t easy to interpret. Jay hoped fervently it didn’t mean ‘total nutter’. She still shuddered at the memory of the woman who’d made a Battenberg-effect birthday cake for her dog out of chopped liver and tripe and then offered her cleaner a slice.
    â€˜We have a problem.’ Mrs Caldwell almost pushed Jay into a chair beside Barbara and stood looking down on them like a headmistress facing a pair of persistent truants. She was straight in, no faffing about being social. Coffee would have been nice, Jay thought, and a biscuit selection that she could virtuously resist.
    â€˜Ironing.’
    â€˜Ironing,’ Barbara repeated, leaning forward and looking attentive.
    â€˜Ironing,’ Mrs Caldwell said again.
    We’re going