Max and Selina were in the secret, of course. I overheard my mother talking to Max about it on the phone.

“She doesn’t have to know, does she?” I said, meaning Selina.

“Of course she does. She’s his wife.”

They told a lot of people. Those friends and neighbors who came to the party, I expect. I’m sure they told Beryl. They told her during the Christmas holidays, I think, because the next time I saw her on my return she was tender with me, very considerate and thoughtful. I needed cheering up, she said, as she polished old Mrs. Fisherton’s furniture and dusted the photograph frames, a young girl like me shouldn’t be depressed.

To cheer me up she chatted away. She told me about the neighbors, the people next door and those next door to them, all the ones she worked for. That a cleaner with a key to her employers’ homes might have a duty of discretion never seemed to occur to her. She took it for granted that in allowing her the freedom of their houses they also gave her permission to broadcast what she saw, learned, picked up, and read while there.

The Ahmeds she disliked, largely, I think, because they failed to give her a “Christmas box.” They were mean, cheese-paring. On the days she was there they locked up the drinks cupboard and took away the key. It was her belief they emptied the place of food too because the last time she was in their flat there was nothing in the fridge but half a lemon and a bottle of Highland Spring. The minimalists at 13 she never saw, had never seen. Mrs. Clark, the doctor’s wife at 17, had recommended her and they had taken her on without interviewing her or even speaking to her on the phone. The key was given to her by Mrs. Clark. Her money was always there waiting for her in “a nice clean envelope with nothing written on it,” which meant she could use it again. The interior of 13B fascinated her. Although the floors were covered in bright blue carpet, the furniture was sparse and in “weird shapes.” She couldn’t imagine sitting in those chairs. A picture that took up half a wall of a nude woman lying on a table among pieces of fruit put her off her lunch. The owners of the flat were called Michael Harding and Susan Potter and they were not married, a fact worthy of Beryl’s comment, though not particularly of her disapproval.

“You know as much as I do now, love. I’ve told you everything I know.”