On it sat a battered, blackened aluminium kettle. Under the window that looked out into a small cluttered back yard stood a cracked brown pot sink with one large cold water tap, turned green with age. Against a wall stood a grubby-looking yellow kitchenette which would hold all their eating and cooking utensils plus their food. Jan wouldn’t be able to bring herself to prepare anything in here until she had given all the appliances a good scrub. There were two small bedrooms, each holding a metal-framed bed, rusting in parts, with a thin mattress and tallboy and in a recess by the boarded-up fireplace a clothes rail where they would hang clothes. The toilet was outside in the yard. The wallpaper in all the rooms was very faded, coming away from the wall in places, and the paintwork was chipped and needing a scrub. The furniture had seen far better days. But it was reasonably priced and vacant, and certainly the best out of the four places they had already viewed.
Glen was aware that living here would be a vast comedown for Jan, having seen the home she had been forced to leave, but to him the thought of a chair to sit in, a bed to sleep in, the means to cook a hot meal, and all undercover . . . this place was like a palace. He was just terrified it could all be taken away as quickly as it had been handed to him, and that he’d find himself back on the streets. He was also surprised by the fact that after spending so many years keeping himself to himself, he felt comfortable enough with Jan to drop his guard and be open and honest with her, have faith that her only motive in doing what she was for him was because she sincerely wanted to try and help him get his life back on track. She could so easily have used all the money she had taken for herself. She was indeed a special person and he felt it a great pity that her husband hadn’t realised that what he had caught her doing was in fact a cry for help from him, to recognise that his wife was a woman with needs of her own, which he seemed to have forgotten in his grief.
‘We’ll take it.’ Without consulting Glen, Jan clinched the deal with the portly, ruddy-faced landlord, who lived in the flat downstairs with his equally rotund wife. They did seem a nice enough couple, though, and not likely to give their tenants any bother unless they didn’t keep up with the rent.
‘Good, then I’ll get you a rent book, you pay me the necessary and you can move in when you like, Mr and Mrs . . . er . . .’
‘Trainer,’ ‘Clayton,’ Glen and Jan told him in unison.
With the landlord eyeing them both suspiciously, Jan quickly laughed and told him, ‘Don’t take any notice of me. It’s Trainer. We’ve only been married twenty years and I still keep referring to my maiden name. Give me another twenty and I might accept the fact that I’m not Clayton any longer.’
The landlord laughed then. ‘There’re times when I wish my wife would forget she’s married and where she lives. Anyway, I’ll leave you to have another look round while I sort the rent book out.’
Glen and Jan were both extremely grateful that their new landlord was taking them both at face value and not asking for any references.
A few hours later, Jan handed Glen a cup of tea and sat down wearily in the worn brown moquette armchair opposite him, sipping from her own cup. ‘Ah, that’s better,’ she sighed. ‘Tea to your liking, husband dear?’ she jocularly asked.
He smiled back at her. ‘Perfect.’ He leaned back in his chair, resting his feet on the hearth of the tiled fireplace. ‘I could get used to this.’
She gave a snort. ‘I bet you could! I’m not your real wife, though, so housework is shared between us. All right, Mr Trainer?’
‘I didn’t need to be asked to help you give this place a scrub, did I? It certainly needed it. When I lived rough I’d nothing to clean up but I did my fair share of sweeping, mopping floors and preparing food in the kitchen when I was in prison. Oh, not to forget the latrines and showers. That wasn’t a job for the faint-hearted, believe me.’
Jan shuddered at the thought. There was a