Sweet Read Free Page B

bedroom door and opened my gat-trap to give them a right bosting.
    ‘SHUT THE SWINE UP, YOU EVIL LITTLE—’
    I found the big brown eyes of little Raj, bless, looking up at me. ‘Sorry, Ria. Did I wake you up?’
    I pulled my Topshop negligee tight around me.‘It’s not you, sweetheart. It’s those effing brat sisters of mine. Singing a song like that – and making you sing it too!’ I looked around. ‘Where are they?’
    ‘They’re at a Brownie boot sale for the elderly. Your mum said it was OK if I came round here and practised cos my dad don’t know I’m in Swearers Three. MY song, innit!’ she smirked.
    Frankly, I was scandalized. ‘Oh really, mademoiselle! Your parents – I don’t know ’em, but I know the type, because I bullied their younger brothers and sisters at school, regretfully – are gonna be SO PLEASED that you’re boasting about being a swearer. And a Paki – and the word is Pakistani, by the way!’
    She had the grace to look ashamed. ‘Actually we’re Punjabi. But if I said “Punji shop”, no one would know what I mean.’
    ‘Well, whatever. I need to get my beauty sleep, so keep it down.’ Then something occurred to me. ‘Here. Your parents don’t want any help at the Paki – sorry, Punji – shop, do they?’
    ‘Not from round here,’ she said straight back, the cheeky little mare. ‘My mum says, “Raver behind the till, your profits get ill.” Good, innit! She’s going to write a song for Swearers Three too, but without the swearing.’
    ‘I’ll be listening out for it on the radio,’ I said sarkily. ‘Well, good luck, but practise somewhere else, OK? I’ve had a pig of a week and I need a good zizz.’
    ‘Right, Ria,’ she whispered, putting her finger to her lips and tiptoeing off. I couldn’t help smiling – she was a lovely little thing. Shame she couldn’t have been my sister instead of the ginger mingers; if Susie REALLY wanted to have another baby, I wondered if I could get her to do it with a Punjabi guy.
    I staggered back to bed, groaning. When I’d settled on to the Baggy-Aggy chaise longue that first day, spliff in hand, I never dreamed how hard my working week was going to turn out to be. I only watched Trisha and had a little nap, and when I woke up it was the afternoon and there was a message on the phone from Baggy saying they’d be back at three – I darted round that place with a broom up my arse, literally, before finding a second message saying that they’d be back at eight instead! And by the smile in Baggy’s voice, I knew he’d planned it that way.
    And then I came in at nine sharp the next morning, and the house which I’d left looking like something gone over by Kim and Aggie now looked like something done over by the inmates of Battersea Dogs Home. And it had been that way ever since; leave it immaculate three nights a week, find it a tip next time. By the second Friday night, I felt like I had housemaid’s knee, athlete’s foot and, for all I knew, water on the brain. I felt like zero. And I was just £110.60 the richer a week. Before tax.
    I lay there in bed, thinking about my alleged ‘job’. What a tragic farce! My mum used to have a friend, Natalia, who was a cleaner for this woman in Hove – you wouldn’t believe the perks! Ten quid an hour basic, two weeks in the Canaries every year and a few little extras that weren’t exactly legal. This broad was always creeping up on Nat and unplugging the vacuum cleaner and making her go out on the piss with her because she was ‘blocked’, whatever that is, and ‘seeking inspiration’ – she was a writer or something. Natalia told my mum they were like sisters, but in the end they fell out over a packet of wine gums, of all the weird things.
    As I lay there in my bed of pain, my scullery-maid’s elbow give me gyp, I reflected sourly that I’d be lucky to get even a lick of an empty wine gum wrapper from B&A. I’d taken a Jammie Dodger from their ‘retro-trash’