The Library of Lost and Found(59)

As she opened her bathroom cabinet and took out a box of paracetamols, Martha caught sight of the back of her hand. She wondered why the words Full Moon and Giant’s Waistcoat Button were scrawled across it, in her own handwriting.



* * *



After a few hours of sleep, Martha still wasn’t quite in fully functioning mode, but at least her head had stopped clanging. She no longer felt sick and she forced herself to make a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea. Feeling semirevived after eating, she made her way back upstairs, where she stood with her hands on her hips and surveyed the master bedroom.

Martha slept in the smaller of the two bedrooms, the one she and Lilian used to share. Their parents used the one at the back of the house. It was double the size and overlooked the bay. It still contained their bed, which was like an island in a sea of Martha’s favors.

There was a worn Victorian chaise longue that she’d offered to reupholster for a neighbor. It hadn’t gone well, the teal velvet puckering and studs protruding. While she had been working on it, the neighbor bought a new one instead.

There was a mass of red velvet curtains that she’d shortened for Vivian Slater (now deceased) and a bag stuffed full of Hawaiian garlands that she’d offered to store for Branda’s annual Hawaiian evening at the Lobster Pot.

She’d bought a few boxes full of fancy dress clothes from a flea market, sure they’d come in handy for plays at the local school. When she told the headmistress, she had patted Martha on the back of the hand and said, “That’s a great idea, but we don’t have a lot of storage space here. Perhaps you can keep hold of them for us…” That was three years ago.

Bin bags and other boxes lined the floor in here, too, all neatly labeled. All contained her parents’ things, or stuff that didn’t have a home, or jobs she’d taken on and hadn’t given back.

Feeling daunted by the size of the task facing her, Martha wrapped her arms across her chest. She wondered if Gina had glanced inside the room when she used the bathroom. Her cheeks flushed as she imagined what her nana’s carer might describe her as. A hoarder? A bit strange? Can’t let go of the past?

Could any of those be true?

Martha wondered how she could have let things get so bad. The house was a mess and it had to change.

She had to change.

As she tried to swallow away a chunk of paracetamol that had lodged itself in her throat, she realized she had less than three days to sort things out.

Before Zelda, Will and Rose came to stay.



* * *



Thank goodness for Betty’s enormous collection of local business cards. Martha found one for a Man with a Van, Leslie Ross. He claimed to move anything and everything quickly. Without any work on for the rest of that week, Leslie offered to be with her within an hour.

Martha warned him to watch out, because the street was narrow. “Look out for the house with the shopping trolley parked outside,” she said.

After dressing in her usual clothes, she took a further, preventive, paracetamol, and drank four glasses of water. She pulled on her yellow rubber gloves and, with her chest out and chin jutted, she launched into Operation Clear Out.

With a handful of fluorescent yellow cardboard stars (also from Betty’s collection), she stuck one to everything she wanted to keep. Anything that had to go got a green star. Pink stars were reserved for the items that she wanted to return to their rightful owner.

If there was anything that Martha didn’t need, no longer wanted or didn’t remember, she tugged it out of the master bedroom and onto the landing. Finding no point in battling to carry items downstairs, she gave the smaller ones a firm shove off the top stair. She grinned as she watched them tumble, slide and crash to the bottom.

A small broken chest of drawers sledged down, and she threw a painting of a bowl of fruit like a Frisbee. She pretended to be a footballer as she gave a small plastic box full of Betty’s old crochet patterns a firm kick. Then she trod downstairs and took great delight in slapping the pile with a bunch of green stars.

Leslie turned up and nodded all the time Martha explained what she wanted to achieve. He was a wiry man with rusty hair and he wore oversized navy dungarees. His movements were small and fidgety, like a bird on the lookout for bread crumbs. He didn’t remove his white earphones as he talked.

“So, Mrs. Storm,” he repeated after her, his words as twitchy as his actions, “anything with a green star is going—the yellow-and pink-starred stuff is staying? I like to ask because some people tell me to move stuff and then they want it back, and sometimes I’ve finished my job and then people decide there’s other stuff they want moving. Right?” He readjusted his left earplug.

“Yes.” Martha nodded, in case he couldn’t hear her.

“Good. Got it.” He jerked his thumb at the pile at the bottom of the stairs. “You been having a good old clear out? A spring clean some people call it, even if it’s not technically spring. Well, I’m not exactly sure if February is classed as spring or winter, it’s one of those in-between months, isn’t it? Some people might say it’s one, and others, the other.”

She nodded again.

“Good. People in this country just buy loads of stuff, don’t we? You go on holiday and you only take a few things with you in your suitcase, and it does you just fine for a week or more. All good, you don’t need anything else, don’t even miss it. Then, when you get home, you buy clothes, you buy furniture, you buy ornaments, you buy food, you buy paintings, you buy this and you buy that, and you end up with a house full of stuff. Is that what happened to you?”