of my tongue, everything shut down, leaving his expression as blank and dull as this empty grey hall we were standing in.
‘We all planned stupid things when we were younger,’ he said, and then he paused as if he was remembering something. The moment stretched and his frown deepened. ‘I thought you were going to be the next Ruthie Henshall or Darcey Bussell?’ He raised his eyebrows, more in challenge than in curiosity.
I looked down at the floor and couldn’t help focusing on the lardy middle I was desperately trying to hide with my roomy dark top. It was blatantly obvious I hadn’t followed that path.
‘Like you said,’ I said, lifting my head a little, but not quite looking in his direction, ‘we all had stupid dreams back then.’ And, since that seemed to have killed the conversation dead, I decided to change topics. ‘You followed in your dad’s footsteps? Joined his building firm?’
Tom nodded. ‘He’d always wanted me to have a trade to fall back on.’
‘Do you still work with him?’
‘I went out on my own by the time I was twenty-five, started my own firm with a business partner.’ He allowed himself a dark smile, the only kind he seemed capable of these days. ‘Wanted to show the old man I could do better than him.’
Now that sounded like the Tom I’d used to know. Cocky. Self-assured. Never one to be told what to do.
‘Anyway,’ he said abruptly, turning back to Miss Mimi. ‘The first thing I’d suggest is contacting your electricity company and checking if they’re aware of any issues with the building or a disruption in service in the area. If that comes back clear, then I’ll come in and give the place a thorough once-over, see what’s up.’
‘Oh, thank you!’ Miss Mimi reached up on tiptoe and kissed his slightly stubbly cheek. For a split-second, he looked just as he might have done when he’d been sixteen and on the receiving end of such affection and he managed to both smile and cringe at once, but by the time Mimi pulled away, his expression was back in its slightly gruff neutral setting.
‘Do you think you’ll be able to come back this weekend?’ I asked, aware that Miss Mimi was probably losing money she couldn’t afford by cancelling all these classes. One day was bad enough. The last thing she needed was for the situation to extend into next week.
Tom rubbed his chin with his hand. ‘Well, Lucy and I are supposed to be spending the weekend together …’
‘I don’t mind!’ Lucy said, making us all jump a little. She’d been so good and so quiet I’d forgotten she was still there. ‘I like it here.’
Tom gave her an exasperated look. ‘We were going to go go-karting, but … Well, ring if something crops up and I’ll see what I can do.’ He turned to his daughter. ‘Come on, scamp.’
Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘Scamp is a dog’s name. I am not a dog.’
‘Well, whoever you are, get your stuff together, because it’s time to go or we’ll miss it altogether, and I’ve had it booked up for weeks.’
With that Tom headed for the door. His daughter let out a heavy sigh, picked up her bag by its strap and followed him out the door, dragging the bag’s sparkly pinkness along the floor behind her.
‘You should run along too, Philippa. You’ve spent enough time helping me out already.’
I turned to Miss Mimi and saw the gentle smile on her features. She wasn’t worried in the slightest about this, had some kind of inner sense that everything would just work out, fall into place. Unfortunately, I had no such sense. I knew how life could pull the rug from underneath you just when you least expected it and I had a nasty gnawing feeling when I thought about Mimi going back into that office.
And, although it felt a bit bad to admit this, I’d actually quite enjoyed this morning so far. I’d got so used to just being in my house or stacking shelves at the supermarket, I’d forgotten how nice it was to talk to someone, and it had felt good to be useful. My mood was better now than it had been in weeks.
I looked down at my phone. ‘Who do you pay your electric bill to? I can find their number before I go, if you like? Save you some time and trouble.’
A frown cast a shadow over Mimi’s previously sunny expression. ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s South East Electric,’ she said breezily. ‘Or was it Kent Power? I really can’t recall. Anyway, it’s the one with the dog in their adverts on the telly.’
That might have been helpful if I didn’t already know that the dog—who had featured in ads more than ten years ago—had been for a company that served the West Country. The only other option now was to rummage through the piles of paper in the office to find a recent bill, and that could take hours.
I looked at Miss Mimi. She was old and thin, if fit. Not much meat on her bones. Not like me; I had plenty of insulation. And it was freezing in here, even more so now the rain had dampened the wind. ‘I’ll help you look for a bill.’
‘Oh, no,’ Miss Mimi responded, looking slightly horrified. ‘I’m sure a lovely young woman like you has far better things to do with her time on a Saturday than help an old duffer like me.’
I thought about my empty house, about Roberta, who was probably still stretched out on the sofa, fast asleep, and the pile of DVDs stacked up next to the television. ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I really don’t.’
I picked up a pile of paper, saw it was an invoice for ballet lessons for spring term four years ago, and set it down on a stack I’d been making on the desk, then I picked up the next one: a flyer for a Christmas show and turned to put that one down too, only to discover that the invoice was now gone.
‘Miss Mimi? Have you seen that invoice I just put down there?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Miss Mimi said, popping up from behind the filing cabinet. ‘I’ve added it to my pile I’ve made for my best-ever students—over here.’ And she indicated a separate group of papers that she’d made on the floor near the door.
I was tempted to cry. We’d been at this two hours already and I thought we’d got a system going. I’d been sorting papers into promotion, newsletters, stuff to do with rent and utilities, invoices and financial accounts, but it seemed that Miss Mimi had come up with one of her own and had been emptying my piles and making new ones, everything jumbled back in together.
‘Wonderful,’ I said. There was no point in having an argument about it, no matter how frustrated I was. It was Miss Mimi’s dance school, after all. She could do whatever the heck she wanted with her paperwork. However, it did mean that it was going to make the present task all the more complicated.
‘Maybe you should think about running an ad for an admin assistant.’ We weren’t even halfway through yet. Paperwork clearly wasn’t Miss Mimi’s strong suit. Nor Sherri’s, I suspected.
We carried on hunting and about half an hour later I discovered an electricity bill—dated last September—tucked inside a dancewear catalogue that had been under a lost property box full of lone socks, ballet shoes and even underwear. That boggled my
