The Clutter Corpse - Simon Brett

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