A Clear Conscience by Frances Fyfield

job; and, for that reason, she hated to ask anyone to do it, even though as a Crown Prosecutor, not rich like her City and commercial cousins, there was enough for a good standard of living. Including someone to clean the house, if only she could suppress the guilt which came with asking.
    â€˜And this is the living room. And this is the bathroom,’ she heard herself saying, sounding to her own ears like a condescending estate agent to an idiot client. Cath nodded. Of course she would see what they were, she wasn’t blind, Helen told herself furiously, her own embarrassment made worse by Cath’s passivity. She was a strong-looking young woman, but she walked with a slight stoop, as if she carried something heavy round her waist, and instead of speaking, she inclined her head. But she showed no sign of recoiling from the scattered clothes in the bedroom, or the gritty feel to the kitchen floor.
    â€˜I’m sorry about the mess,’ Helen was saying, ‘only I don’t have much time …’
    â€˜I wouldn’t call this mess,’ Cath said neutrally. ‘It isn’t even really dirty. You’ve got a nice place.’
    Helen was instantly charmed.
    â€˜And of course,’ Cath continued, ‘I could help you with the garden.’ That made Helen defensive again. The garden was hers.
    â€˜Ilike doing the garden,’ she said. ‘It’s the housework I can’t stand.’
    â€˜That’s all right then,’ said the woman mildly, in a quiet, almost whispering voice. ‘I was only suggesting it because Mrs Eliot said I should.’ She was suddenly disconcertingly chatty, as if she now knew the worst and could cope with anything else. ‘Now, when it comes to dirt, you should see what Mrs Eliot’s lot can do. Amazing. Bathroom and kitchen look like bomb sites most mornings. And what those kids take to bed is anyone’s guess.’ She spoke of them with a kind of urgent fondness and reverence, shaking her head. Helen felt a guilty treachery to find herself so avidly curious about the true state of Emily’s house. It was like looking in windows: she could not suppress it.
    â€˜Tell me more,’ she demanded.
    Mark sometimes went to bed in his wellington boots, could she believe that? Yes, she could. Jane had learned to make pastry recently, then thrown a lump of it at the old-fashioned extractor fan in Emily’s kitchen, there were still clods of it stuck to the ceiling and probably getting mouldy in corners. Along with the fragments of boiled egg which Mrs Eliot had left on the stove while she got embroiled in one of her incessant phone conversations. Boiled eggs go off like bombs, Cath remarked. And then there was the grill pan with fat in the bottom, set alight when Mr Eliot had forgotten his bacon; the marks of that joined all the others. Helen was secretly delighted. It was a relief to know that Emily’s fine house also carried scars.
    â€˜Well, do you want me to come or not?’ Cath asked.
    Helen did, very much.
    â€˜I can do Tuesdays and Thursdays, say two hours in the afternoon. You’re a long way from Mrs Eliot, but it’s halfway home for me, same bus route. Number fifty-nine.’
    Her voice was peculiarly flat when she stopped talking about the Eliots. She seemed in no hurry to leave, but stood looking round the walls of Helen’s living room with slow pleasure. ‘I do like it here,’ she said.
    O nher way to Bailey’s, driving with careless abandon, Helen felt as if she had passed some kind of test. And, as far as the Eliots were concerned, achieved some kind of equality. The Eliots were a couple of very few friends she and Bailey could call mutual to them both. Usually, it was difficult to share friends with Bailey. He was not a sociable animal, despite his great and diffident charm, and there were hazards in taking him out and about among friends who thought policemen were dangerous freaks. He