Page 5 of A Clean Sweep
'Of course! Wonderful! Just let me know when you’ve got it. Any time. I’m always around.' Great, now she sounded like a right saddo. Sitting around all day crocheting blankets and watching theJeremy Kyle Show.
At the front door, Joe shook her hand again. She managed to let go this time. Gorgeous, punctual and polite too. 'I’ll be in touch. Should only be a few days. Nice to meet you, Mrs Hardwick.'
'It’s Emily. Please, call me Emily.' He smiled that heart-melting smile. She felt her insides flutter like a just-landed trout. 'Right you are, Emily. See you very soon.' And off he went, clambering into his van with ‘Up Yours’ emblazonedon the side in jaunty black and gold lettering. She closed the door and leant against it. Feeling ridiculously light-hearted and giddy with a flood of emotions she didn’t really want to analyse too deeply.
Seated in his van,Joe swiped through his iPad agenda, figuring out where his next appointment was. He looked at the details but his mind was a million miles away. No, scrub that, his mind was a matter of steps away, behind a glossy black front door where he’d just carried out a routine job. No different to any other except … for some reason, his newest customer had had a most unexpected effect on him.Emily. He said her name out loud, relishing the way it sounded, then gave himself a whack on the head with his iPad. OK, so she’d greeted with the most bewitching smile. Most of his customers smiled at him, apart from the miserable ones who resented having to part with a penny for his services. But none had ever affected him inthisway. He realised how much he was looking forward to seeing her again. There was justsomethingabout her. Not just how she looked, although she was undoubtedly attractive. Tousled blonde hair, a pretty heart-shaped face with piercing blue eyes and a very nice figure. This time Joe bounced his head off the steering wheel. Ouch! Since when did he describe women as having ‘heart-shaped faces’? He was a chimney sweep, not a friggingMills and Boonauthor. And she was clearly quite a bit older than him. Maybe fifteen years or so? He’d always been rubbish at guessing people’s ages. ‘Go on, how old do you think I am?’ some female he got chatting to in a bar would ask, giggling coquettishly. Joe usually erred on the side of caution, pitching his estimate much lower than the evidence beforehim suggested, for fear of having his pint poured over him if he went too far in the other direction.
This wasn’t how his day was supposed to pan out. He quickly typed a note to remind him to order the part, checked the address for his next call, and started the engine. With only a fleeting glance behind him he put the van in gear and sped off.
Chapter 4
Susan drifted the mile or so back home in a complete daze. Her basket was heavy, her heart even more so. It had started to sleet, but she barely noticed. Didn’t pause to tug her hood over her head. Just kept trudging along, one foot in front of the other, oblivious to everyone and everything.
‘Watch out, missus!’ hollered a teenage lad on a skateboard, weaving his way in and out of the pedestrians. She’d almost walked into him. Muttering an apology, she stepped up her pace. Another five minutes and she’d be there.
In the warmth and dry of her little cottage Susan dumped her groceries on the table. She shrugged off her coat and draped it over a chair. Slumped down and rubbed her hand across her still-damp cheeks. She should have been expecting it. Should have been more mentally prepared. But still the news had sliced through her like a razor-sharp knife. Or a scalpel.
‘I’m so sorry, Susan. The biopsy has revealed you have breast cancer. But the good news is we’ve caught it early. So, it’s eminently treatable.’ Dr Adlington gazed at her computerscreen, pearly-pink manicured fingers tip-tapping away at the keyboard. ‘First things first, we’re going to book you in for a small operation. As quickly as possible, although I’m afraid with the NHS things don’t always move as fast as one would like.’ She tapped away again, her pretty little nose scrunched up in deep thought. ‘OK. I’ll get a letter out to you as soon as I can with the date and time of the surgery.’ She looked up and smiled at Susan. Who tried but failed to reciprocate. Her lips felt as if they were made of firmly set concrete.
‘Will I need a … a … mastectomy?” She could barely speak, her mouth as arid as the desert.
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Susan. One thing at a time, eh? You’ll need a pretty intense course of radiotherapy to follow up. Please try not to stress too much. I know that’s very difficult but it’s important to keep positive at times like these.’ She stood up, signalling the end of their session. Susan picked up her basket and left, the doctor already preoccupied with the arrival of her next patient.
She’d discovered the lump a month ago. Had never really bothered too much with all the ‘examine your breasts regularly’ advice. To be honest, Susan wasn’t really comfortable with scrutinising her body in great detail. She knew she was overweight. She always had been. A chubby child, a plump teenager, painfully aware of her size alongside her slim and svelte classmates. Never able to dress in the latest fashions. Hiding her flab beneath loose-fitting tops and elasticated-waist trousers. Into adulthood she’d sought refuge in her job and – behind closed doors – the comfort of food. Enormous slabs of cake devoured in one sitting. Mouth-watering pies and mounds of chips demolished as she flicked through the channels on the TV, tray on lap. Sometimes, in her darkest moments, she wished she was an alcoholic instead. A functioning one, who guzzled glass after glass both socially andprivately but who could at least present an acceptable face to a harshly judgemental society.
Susan knew that people sniggered at her behind her back. She could feel their eyes appraising her as she forked food into her mouth.
‘Doesn’t she know when to stop? Doesn’t she have any sense of self-esteem?’ No, in fact, she didn’t. She loathed herself, envied her friends with their trim figures and ability to decline dessert at the end of a meal. She’d tried diets, many different ones, over the years but always the siren’s call of food lured her off the path of redemption.
It was her fiftieth birthday in just a few weeks. She hadn’t planned a big party, maybe just a few friends round for cake and champagne. Not that she had very many close friends. She could probably count them on the fingers of one hand. Maybe – no, probably – because she came across as a gossipmonger, always at the front of the line when it came to scandal and salacious chitchat. What they didn’t realise was that this was her feeble way of feeling connected in a world that seemed callous and indifferent to her inner demons. By being the first to impart knowledge she felt some small sense of power. Ridiculous, she knew, but it instilled in her a feeling of being at the centre of something. When she so often felt side-lined and alone.
Would she have lost all her hair in six weeks time? No, that was with chemotherapy, wasn’t it? She really should read up on what lay ahead. Then again, did she really want to know? Maybe she should just forget about celebrating that so-called milestone birthday. Susan was quite sure most people didn’t even know her age. Anyway, fat and fifty? Why rejoice in that double-whammy of despair?
She’d often wondered if her life would have been different if she’d met someone. A nice man, who’d treated her with kindness and respect and made her feel loved. She’dhad a few boyfriends in her late twenties and early thirties but she always sensed their repulsion at her size. Or did she simply project her own self-hatred on them? Force the decision before they even had a chance to get close that she simply wasn’t worth it? There had been one man – Jonathan – who’d almost broken down her barriers. She could picture him still although it was almost twenty years since she had last laid eyes on him.
She’d bumped into him in the local bookstore. Quite literally. Susan had a pile of books stacked in her arms and was conscious that her handbag strap had slipped off her shoulder. As she juggled her weighty cargo and attempted to manoeuvre the strap back into position she collided with someone. Her intended purchases tumbled to the ground, a heavy hardback landing painfully on her big toe.
‘Sorry! I’m so sorry. It was totally my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going. Are you all right?’
Aware that her cheeks were burning and her toe was throbbing, Susan looked at the stranger she’d crashed into. Her brain did a quick character assessment. Medium height, cropped brown hair, average build but with a friendly face. Nice eyes, hazel in colour, that were now observing her with concern.
‘I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about. Did you hurt yourself?’
Susan realised she was hopping from foot to foot whilst simultaneously trying to gather up the books that lay strewn before her. He beat her to it, arranging them in a neat pile on a nearby shelf. He took her arm and gently steered her towards a chair, indicating she should sit down.
‘It’s nothing. My toe took a bit of a wallop but I’ll survive. I’m sorry again. I really shouldn’t be let out on my own!’
This was Susan’s attempt to defuse an awkward situation with humour but also a reference to her mother’s attitudetowards her. She had always managed to make Susan feel like a failure, endlessly comparing her to friends’ daughters with their perfect size ten jeans and adoring boyfriends/husbands. Susan had worked hard at university to obtain her accountancy degree but largely dodged the social scene. She’d stayed at home, cloistered away in her bedroom poring over textbooks and sneaking chocolates from her secret stash in her sock drawer. Her mother attempted to feed her healthy meals but her good intentions were undermined by the snide comments that accompanied virtually every mouthful.
‘If you’d just chew your food a little longer instead of wolfing it down. There’s no need to finish every scrap, you know. Margaret Connolly’s daughter lost two stone recently. She looks absolutely amazing. You have quite a pretty face, Susan, shame you can’t really see it under all the fat.’
Her mother had died three years ago. A sudden stroke which left her hospitalised for almost two months until she finally slipped away in her sleep. Barely able to speak in her last days, she still managed to convey her disappointment in Susan through pale eyes that always judged and always found wanting. Her father had passed away when Susan was only fifteen. Her memories of him were faded and worn around the edges but he had been warm and supportive, never commenting on Susan’s size.
‘Need a hand with your homework, love?’ he’d inquire after a day at the office. They’d sit together at the kitchen table, cups of tea and rounds of hot buttered toast before them as her mother rinsed salad leaves and chopped cucumber, disapproval evident in the set of her rigid shoulders and tightening of her thin lips.
‘You shouldn’t be encouraging her to eat garbage,’ she’d remonstrate later, as Susan sat at the top of the stairs, knees hugged to her chin. She knew her father would come to tuckher in, kiss her on the tip of her nose and tell her she was beautiful.
‘Your mum means well, my love, but you mustn’t fret. It’s just puppy fat. One day soon you’re going to emerge like a butterfly and then I’ll be beating off the boys with a big stick!’
