members of the household? It appeared they were. It appeared they could not. Someone, she decided, was going to be talked to.
Bella was going through the mental preparation for such a conversation when the bell went on the front door down below. She gathered up her cleaning supplies, removed her Marigolds, and huffed down the stairs. The bell rang again, and she shouted, "Coming," and she opened it to see a girl on her porch, rucksack at her feet, hopeful expression on her face. She didn't look English to Bella, and when she spoke, her voice gave her away as someone from what had once probably been Czechoslovakia but was now any one of a number of countries with many syllables, even more consonants, and few vowels, because Bella could not keep track of them and no longer tried.
"You have room?" the girl said hopefully, gesturing in the direction of the dining room window where the room-to-let sign was displayed. "I see your notice there ... ?"
Bella was about to tell her yes, she had a room to let, and how are you at obeying rules, missy? But her attention shifted to movement on the pavement as someone dodged behind what shrubbery managed to grow in her front garden among the plethora of recycling bins. It was a woman moving out of sight, a woman in a tailored wool suit, despite the heat, with a brightly patterned scarf - her sodding trademark, that was, Bella thought - folded into a band and holding back masses of dyed orange hair.
"You!" Bella shouted at her. "I'm ringing the cops, I am! You've been bloody told to stay away from this house and this is the limit!"
WHETHER THE ACTIVITY was going to eat up time or not - and Barbara Havers knew which alternative was actually the case - there was no way she was going to face the sister of Simon St. James in her current getup and with her face attempting to divest itself of its smear of makeup through the means of excessive perspiration. So instead of heading from Chelsea directly to Bethnal Green, she drove home to Chalk Farm first. She scrubbed her face, breathed a sigh of relief, and decided to compromise with the weeest bit of blusher. She then went for a change of apparel - hallelujah to drawstring trousers and T-shirts - and having thus resumed her normal state of dishabille, she was ready to face Sidney St. James.
Her conversation with Sidney was not effected immediately, however. Upon leaving her tiny bungalow, Barbara heard her name called out by Hadiyyah, crying from above, "Hullo, oh hullo, Barbara!" as if she hadn't seen her in an eon or so. The little girl went on enthusiastically with, "Mrs. Silver is teaching me how to polish silver today," and Barbara followed the sound of the voice to see Hadiyyah hanging out of a window on the second floor of the Big House.
"We're using baking powder, Barbara," she announced and then she turned as someone within the flat said something to which the little girl corrected herself with, "Oh! Baking soda, Barbara.
'Course Mrs. Silver doesn't ackshully have any silver, so we're using her cutlery, but it makes the cutlery shine so. Isn't that brilliant? Barbara, why've you not got on your new skirt?"
"End of day, kiddo," Barbara said. "It's mufti time."
"And are you - " Hadiyyah's attention was caught by something beyond Barbara's line of vision because she interrupted herself with, "Dad! Dad! Hullo! Hullo! Sh'll I come home now?"
She sounded even more enthusiastic about this prospect than she had about seeing Barbara, which gave Barbara an idea of how much the little girl was actually enjoying learning yet another of Mrs. Silver's "housewifely skills," as she called them. So far in the summer they'd done starching, ironing, dusting, hoovering, removing scale from toilet bowls, and learning the myriad uses of white vinegar, all of which Hadiyyah had obediently mastered and then dutifully reported to Barbara and demonstrated either for her or for her father. But the bloom had faded from the rose of acquiring domestic skills - how could it be otherwise, Barbara thought - and while Hadiyyah was far too polite to complain to the elderly woman, who could blame her for embracing the thought of escape with a joy that daily increased?
Barbara heard Taymullah Azhar's response, muted, from the direction of the street.
Hadiyyah's hand fluttered in farewell to Barbara, she disappeared within the flat, and Barbara herself