Free A Dreadful Past by Peter Turnbull Page B

sighed. ‘All those local authority employees or those civil servants who still get paid if they don’t turn in for the day … Must be nice that – you phone in sick and then have a nice, calm and relaxing day pottering about your house, all the time knowing you’ll still be getting paid. They have no fear of redundancy either, those people. Not bad. That’s not a bad number to have, isn’t that. Not a bad little number at all.’
    â€˜So you spent all day at the Middletons’?’ Carmen Pharoah clarified.
    â€˜Yes, as I said, all day once a week and I got there most weeks. I reckon I got there over forty times a year – forty-plus weeks out of fifty-two – that’s not a bad attendance record. Really only very bad weather would stop me, like I said … or perhaps ill health on my part but I was fit for most of my life. I stayed away over Christmas and New Year and also when they went away on their family holidays, and I took two weeks each year to go and visit my older sister who lives in Ramsgate down in the south of England. It’s handy having a sister who lives in a holiday resort. She still lives there and I still visit. We used to take the ferry across to France for a day, me and her. But most weeks I was there, at the Middletons’, keeping the dust down.’
    â€˜All right.’ Carmen Pharoah nodded. ‘So you ate there?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Anne Graham replied in her raspy, high-pitched voice, ‘they provided that … They provided the little woman with a lunch. If you could call it lunch. All the money they had and all I was given was a bowl of soup, a bread roll and a cup of tea. But at least they didn’t expect me to bring a packed lunch. Other clients I had included me in their home, gave me a proper lunch if I was there all day – meat and two veg, a real meal – and I sat at the dining table with the family, but not the nose-in-the-air-Middletons. Not them. I got served my little snack in the kitchen and was kept well out of the way. I was firmly put and kept in my place in the Middletons’ house, all right.’
    â€˜You sound as though you didn’t like them very much,’ Carmen Pharoah commented.
    â€˜I didn’t,’ Anne Graham replied flatly. ‘I didn’t like them at all and I am not sorry if it shows. Not sorry at all.’
    â€˜So why work for them,’ Carmen Pharoah probed, ‘especially since you had to trek all the way out to Skelton – further than Skelton, in fact?’
    â€˜They paid well,’ Anne Graham sniffed. ‘That’s the reason. I was feeling their pocket, wasn’t I? They were lawyers … well, he was a lawyer anyway, and that’s how lawyers work, so I was once told. Lawyers don’t get a flat fee, like the same fee applied to each client for the same type of service, no matter the client. They don’t work like that. Lawyers “feel their clients’ pocket” and they charge what they believe the client can afford. Imagine being the lawyer to the royal family or to a film star; just imagine what you could charge in such circumstances. Can you imagine being able to feel pockets like that? So I thought, well if he’s doing it … I’ll do it to him. It seemed fair to me – completely fair. It still does. So I was charging them twice as much as my other clients got charged. It was like working for one day and getting paid for two days.’ Anne Graham paused. ‘So the journey out to their house and back once a week was worth it. I reckon in those days I had a client base of six or seven or eight houses … it varied over time. The Middletons and one other were full days; the others were half day jobs and I also needed a half day to myself to go and sign on for my dole money each week. If I missed a client I’d work for them on Saturday.’
    â€˜Had it all worked out, didn’t you?’