Bright Girls. Clare Chambers

sleep over my failings and, in any case, lacked a parent’s proper anxiety The conversation ended with her promising to take me along on her next day trip to acquire new stock. These jaunts around the south east – which apparently involved regular stops for refreshment at pubs and coffee shops – had been impossible lately as the car was still at the panel beaters, following her collision outside Asda, but as soon as it was repaired she was keen to get back out on the road.

      Rachel would have to miss out as for the last week she had been gainfully employed by the tattoo and piercings parlour. The receptionist who had taken her number during that dispiriting day of job-hunting had been the only person to ring back with an offer of work. Rachel’s gratitude was short-lived when she realised it entailed walking around the precincts all day foisting ten per cent off vouchers on to reluctant shoppers. Commission only, so she couldn’t even cheat and dump a pile in the bin, but had to make a conscious effort to approach, smiling, those people most likely to indulge in self-mutilation. “It’s only one step up from begging,” she moaned at the end of her first day “I might as well be selling The Big Issue.”

      “You didn’t think you’d be doing the actual tattoos, did you?” Auntie Jackie asked.

      “Well, no. But I thought I’d be indoors at least.” Since Rachel’s notions of the world of work were, like mine, taken mostly from Ugly Betty, reality was bound to be a little disappointing. I was surprised she’d stuck it for five whole days, but then Frankie’s unmissable party was looming and she needed money for her fare to Oxford. To cheer her up I offered to come and meet her for lunch – my treat – but she grew evasive and finally admitted that she was in the habit of having lunch with Adam during his break from work at the leisure centre. “But you can come too if you want,” she said, without much enthusiasm.

      “No, it’s all right,” I said, deflated. “I just thought if you were on your own and bored.”

      “Meet me for coffee in the morning instead,” she suggested, now that I was the one who needed cheering up. “I usually have a cappuccino and a muffin about half ten.”

      “I thought you didn’t like Adam much anyway.”

      “I don’t like him much. He’s OK to talk to as long as he doesn’t get started on computers. Plus, who else is there at the moment?”

      Despite their unfortunate start, I knew Adam was keen on her because he often dropped in to Auntie Jackie’s on some minor errand for his granny, and ended up staying all evening, sitting at the kitchen table watching TV with the rest of us, or dropping hints about a return tennis match, which Rachel would deliberately fail to pick up. The thing is, I actually quite like tennis and I much prefer playing against someone better, even if it means losing, but he never asked me.

      Adam wasn’t the only dropper-in at number 29. One morning, when Rachel was at work, I shuffled sleepily into the kitchen in my Mad Cow pyjamas to get a glass of water and nearly tripped over the protruding legs of a man who appeared to be trying to crawl into the cupboard under the sink. Before I could react, he had backed out, and I realised that it was the policeman who had brought Auntie Jackie home on the day we had first arrived. He was holding a shovel on the end of which was a very stiff rat.

      “Here we are,” he said, slightly red-faced from his exertions in the cupboard, and then started when he saw me. “Oh. Hello.”

      “Hello,” I said, thinking, Wow! Is there nothing the police round here won’t do?

      Auntie Jackie appeared at the back door, carrying a garden refuse sack. “Oh, well done, you’ve got him,” she said, averting her face as she held the bag open to receive the dead rat – its mouth frozen open in a pinched snarl to reveal tiny curved teeth, its front claws held up as if in shock.

      “You’ve got a gap around the waste pipe,” the policeman said, as the corpse was unceremoniously bagged and dumped in the wheelie bin outside the back door. “That’s where he got in. I’ll come back and fill that in for you some time.”

      “Oh, would you?” said Auntie Jackie rapturously “You are wonderful.”

      She turned to me, blushing faintly “This is Dave, by the way He’s my special friend and handyman and general saviour.”

      “Ah,” I said. That explained a lot. I can be very dim sometimes.

      “This is my niece, Robyn,” she said to Dave. And then, in an unforgivable attempt to pass the burden of embarrassment on to someone else, added, “Isn’t she gorgeous?”