‘I’m busy too,’ Grace uttered, but wasn’t heard as the line went dead. Seems Bernie had gone back to being too busy to be bothered by troublesome phone calls from their bedbound mother.

Grace turned and left Mrs Donato’s glorious unit 28 behind for another day. Monday to be exact, seeing as today was Friday! The disappointment of having to wait three days to go through the contents was crushing, but at least she had something nice to look forward to now … or maybe I could come into work tomorrow? Just to take a peek inside one of those suitcases? Or I could take the one on the top of the pile home to make a start? But Grace knew this could never happen as there was no way Larry would allow her to remove one of Mrs Donato’s suitcases from the storage company’s premises – he was very fastidious about things like that and rightly took pride in looking after his customer’s belongings as if they were his own. Plus Grace knew that her mother would never agree to her leaving her home alone over the weekend. And Bernie was right … she couldn’t leave Cora lying in a wet bed, so there was nothing for it, Grace would have to go home now. And strip and then remake her mother’s bed, for a second time today.

So after closing the door behind her and securing the padlock back in place, Grace put the clipboard on to the trolley and braced herself to face Larry and Betty to explain that, not only had she turned up late this morning … but that she was now going to have to let them down again and go home early.

Chapter 3

‘Babe, why do you even bother working at that storage place?’ Phil moaned, pushing his bushy beard towards Grace’s left cheek. They were sitting side by side on the Dralon sofa in the lounge below Cora’s bedroom having a film night. Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Grace had seen it a million times before but when Phil had said it was her turn to choose, she hadn’t hesitated, keen to rekindle some of the glamorous Hollywood magic she had felt on entering unit 28 on Friday.

It was Sunday evening and she had thought about Mrs Constance di Donato and her beautiful vintage belongings all weekend. Even her name sounded sophisticated and glamorous, and Grace couldn’t wait to get to work tomorrow to find out more about the woman she imagined lived the kind of life that she had only seen in films and read about in those lifestyle magazines. It was exciting and intriguing.