ONE
I declutter. That’s my job. And decluttering takes me into all kinds of areas of human existence. Including crime. Crime like the corpse I found one day.
Most of my work, it has to be said, is more mundane. I tend to deal with a lot of different clients at the same time. I always call them ‘clients’. Some people refer to them as my ‘cases’. I don’t like that. The word has too many medical connotations. Criminal connotations, too. I think using the word ‘client’ gives them dignity as people. And, to my mind, even the most pitiful of them do have dignity.
My name is Ellen Curtis. I’m old enough to have two grown-up children, and not young enough to have any more. Which in many ways is a blessing. But not in every way. The process of a woman’s aging is different from a man’s. Perhaps we have more signposts on the road. Perhaps, too, that’s why men are so crap at asking for directions.
But getting older doesn’t make me melancholy. I am by nature a very positive person. I have had to be.
That particular day started normally for me. My home is a three-bedroomed semi on the northern edge of Chichester, a cathedral city on the south coast. My daughter Jools no longer lives there. She’s in London, doing well at the things she wants to do well at. My son Ben spends most of his term times at Nottingham Trent University but, it being April, Easter vacation, he’s currently living with me. If he’s up when I come downstairs – he quite often is, he doesn’t sleep well – I’ll offer to make him breakfast. That morning there was no sign of him, so I let him sleep. I didn’t even call out a goodbye as I left the house. But I did have to resist the urge to open his bedroom door and check that he was all right. Old habits of motherhood die hard. I remember, when they were tiny, listening at the bedroom door, on the edge of panic, until I heard the reassuring sound of their breathing.
As I passed through the hall, I checked my make-up in the mirror. I don’t wear a lot, but if you’re dealing with people all day, you’ve got to look presentable. And if you’re likely to be dealing with mess all day, your make-up has to be durable.
The car is always parked directly outside. We don’t have a garage where we moved when I downsized, in what I still think of as the ‘new’ house. Which is daft, because we’ve been there getting on for eight years.
Before I drove off, I checked the contents of the boot. My car’s a Skoda Yeti. It’s Pacific Blue and has got my grey SpaceWoman logo below the back window. I wasn’t sure about the company name when it was first suggested. Yes, decluttering does involve creating space and, yes, I am a woman. But I thought the name sounded a bit twee. And was it clear what I actually did? Was I raising expectations of astronautical skills, which would be quickly disappointed? Still, it was Ben’s suggestion; he was so pleased to have come up with the name that I went along. And it’s worked. To change the branding now would lose me a lot of return business.
Underneath the logo on the Yeti, it says, ‘Decluttering and Interior Restyling’, so that spells things out for the people who might be confused by ‘SpaceWoman’. Then there’s the website address and my mobile number. I get quite a bit of work from people just seeing the parked Yeti and thinking that maybe they could get something done about their own private glory holes. Some have even contacted me from seeing the car parked outside my front door. So not having a garage in the ‘new’ house may be a positive advantage. And I prefer it.
I’ve got the logo and the SpaceWoman name embroidered on the Pacific Blue polo shirts I wear for work. There’s something about having a uniform that makes me look more official. I think it may help the clients too. Makes them think their problems are being taken seriously. I do, incidentally, have a great many polo shirts and matching Pacific Blue leggings in my wardrobe. The nature of my work means that at times I get extremely dirty. And, though I’m strongly in favour of recycling, because of the muck I deal with my uniforms sometimes have to be incinerated after only one wearing.
My leggings do have pockets, but I’m too vain about the outline of my hips to put much in them. One is the occasional resting place for my mobile. In the other I keep a tape measure, because it is amazing how often I need to check available storage space. It goes without saying that the tape measure is not solid and encased in plastic. A folding fabric one in the pocket is much more flattering to my contours. Such vanity.
The kit I keep permanently in the boot of the Yeti consists of heavy-duty black bin bags, a boiler suit, surgical face masks, polythene protective shoe covers and sharp-proof gloves. I buy all such supplies in bulk, but check every morning that the boot’s well stocked. I always wear gloves when I first enter a property, though sometimes – to save the occupant from embarrassment – I say it’s because I’ve got a skin condition. Better the guilt should be on me than them. There are plenty of other wrong feet to start off on.
I have a toolbox too. The Stanley knife gets used most. Then screwdrivers, spanners and pliers. It’s rarely that the bolt-cutters come out, but hoarders can be – by definition perhaps – extremely protective of their possessions, so I have to be prepared.
I also keep an emergency supply of nappies and incontinence pads, which some of my clients need. And baby wipes. Don’t approve of what they do to the environment, but they’re so handy.
Then there’s a large torch. I rarely work in the evenings, but winter afternoons can get murky. And recesses like understairs cupboards often need illumination.
The remaining boot space is piled high with collapsed cardboard boxes. There’s also a plastic container of packs of tape and tape-dispenser guns. I get through those at a rate of knots. They’re also the kind of things that can easily get left behind in properties.
Though I say it myself, I am pretty damned quick at assembling a collapsed cardboard box with a tape-dispenser gun. In fact, if it were an Olympic event, I am quietly confident I could make the national team.
The cardboard boxes, incidentally, I get from a greengrocer who has a stall every Saturday in the Cattle Market car park. Like me, he’s manic about recycling and happy to supply me with all the containers his fruit and vegetables are delivered in. Better they go to me than to the municipal dump or incinerator.
So, the morning of the day when I found the corpse, having checked out my kit in the back of the Yeti, and having rechecked my Outlook calendar for the appointments ahead, I set off to visit my first client.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been going to see Queenie virtually daily. If I’m honest with myself, I worry that one day I’ll get there and find her dead. But hers wasn’t to be the corpse I found that particular day.
As with many of my clients, I was put in touch with Queenie by one of the local housing associations. I have an ongoing relationship with them, and I’m registered with the local authority as a hoarding consultant.
Queenie was in rent arrears, and there had been complaints from residents of nearby flats. I tackled the rent arrears first. She was a slightly other-worldly figure in her early eighties, who had once made a reasonable, if modest, living as a children’s book illustrator. But over the years arthritis had so crippled her fingers that she could no longer hold a paintbrush. As a result, she took her state pension and eked out her dwindling savings, unaware of the various grants available to people in her position. I sorted out her financial situation with the local authority pretty quickly. It’s something I’ve had to do many times before.