Page 4 of A Clean Sweep

B ack home after several cups of coffee with her mum, Tabitha sank down on the loo seat.

What a relief! It was all very well drinking the recommended eight glasses of water a day (plus tea, coffee, wine etc) but not if your bladder was the size of a peanut.

OK, it was probably perfectly normal sized for a twenty-something female but it always seemed to scream ‘time for a pee!’ at the most inopportune moments.

Like ten minutes into a movie when she was squashed into the middle row of the cinema between a man the size of Magic Johnson and a woman the width of a small bungalow.

Both nursing buckets of popcorn that could have fed a small African nation for a week.

And as reluctant to budge as a soon-to-be neutered spaniel on its way to the vet.

Or – even worse – on a rickety old bus in the middle of nowhere in Indonesia where the choices were behind a bush where goodness knows what creatures lay in wait or a delightful hole in the ground with strategically placed foot markings on either side.

That was a memorable trip, thought Tabitha.

She’d been proud of her pelvic floor, lasting two excruciating hours until the relative luxury of the backpackers hostel.

But wait a minute. Didn’t Tom mumble something this morning over his Shreddies that he might go for a pint – or two – with Clive and Keith from work?

Maybe even a curry if they hadn’t put the Premier League to rights in the pub?

Tabitha, sitting at the kitchen counter with her tongue sticking out as she applied her mascara, had barely been listening.

She’d had a long day ahead – sorting out new stock, packing up internet orders, listening to the latest tales of dating disasters from her boss – so Tom’s after-work movements hardly warranted more than a cursory ‘whatever’.

He could be at least an hour, probably more like two – or three – or …

Feeling her heart racing faster than Usain Bolt, Tabitha attempted to clear her mind, particularly of the image of two lightly fried eggs, crispy golden chips and a side of Heinz’s finest. She could survive without food for a few hours.

Might even help lose some of that excess flab she packed on over the Christmas holidays.

But water? Wasn’t the maximum survival time something like a week, less if you were in the baking heat of the Australian outback?

Which, of course, she wasn’t but the bathroom was pretty warm.

What if Tom, strolling back from a tasty chicken tikka Balti and garlic naan, got hit by a bus?

Or an asteroid? Or collapsed with an undiagnosed brain haemorrhage?

And, having left his wallet in the Delhi Delight, was now lying in intensive care while staff desperately tried to trace his next of kin.

Tears began to well in Tabitha’s eyes, then spill down her cheeks.

Which made this morning’s mascara – a departure from her usual brand – join the cascade.

Blinking hard, for there was now a nasty stinging sensation, she squinted painfully at the mirror.

Great, just great. Now she resembled a blinking giant panda.

As she turned on the tap and grabbed a wodge of toilet paper to wipe away the smudges she ever so slowly registered the trickle of water that gradually became a steady flow.

OK, so she might not die a horrible death by dehydration just yet.

Or be accepted as a member of Mensa anytime soon.

The morning after the night before and Tabitha unlocked the door of The Little Shop of Treasures, plonked her handbag on the counter and wandered through the back, the beaded curtain jangling behind her.

Her boss was already there, opening boxes of greeting cards and sorting them into neat piles.

ABBA’s ‘Take A Chance on Me’ played in the background and the air positively reeked of a consignment of scented candles meant to enhance a romantic evening but more likely to bring on a migraine.

'Darling, you’re late!' Meryl tapped her watch pointedly but with a smile. Clearly last night’s blind date had gone well. A blow by blow account would follow, but for now it was time to get the shop ready to open in thirty minutes.

Tabitha had worked there for almost eighteen months now.

It wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind when she’d graduated with a degree in events management.

She’d stood there proudly on the stage, clutching her empty cardboard tube (for photo purposes only), and beamed at her mum.

And begged her silently not to leap to her feet and scream ‘Love you!’ hysterically like a pubescent One Direction fan.

Sadly, her fantasies of micro-managing high-end parties, teetering around in Jimmy Choos and barking orders at minions laden with hideously pretentious canapés – sautéed snails a la cro?te, anyone?

– and balancing trays of Pol Roger had not been realised.

She’d managed a couple of corporate events, but these were more vol au vents, paint-stripping wine and a couple of unfortunateincidents involving ageing executives with bad breath and wandering hands.

The closest she’d got to celebrities was assisting at the end-of-season wrap party for reality TV show, Scots Wa Hae.

This featured a delightfully colourful cast of Glaswegians being filmed going about their day to day lives.

There was Wee Jock, a six foot three bundle of tattooed joy, who claimed to be in the Guinness Book of Records for most pints of Tennents Lager consumed in one minute; Senga, boasting of bedding half a Scottish third division football team (presumably not all on the same night), and Big Tam, her personal favourite.

A die-hard Braveheart fan, he had watched the film a mind-boggling 250 times and still blubbed like a baby whenever Mel made his ‘freedom’ speech.

A surprise nationwide hit – with subtitles, of course – the show was scheduled for a second series.

So a rather inebriated Tam informed her, his blue-striped face coming perilously close to her crisp white blouse.

'Aye, hen, we’ve had better ratings than Emmerdale and Corrie put together.

' Swaying slightly, he proffered a congealing plate of deep-fried Mars bars. Tabitha politely declined.

So here she was, hardly in the job of her dreams but it paid the rent and she was very fond of Meryl.

Somewhere in her mid to late forties, she’d never been married but still believed the perfect man was out there somewhere.

Her real name was Beryl but she’d changed it in homage to her favourite actress who also happened to star in her number one movie, Mamma Mia .

Such was her devotion she frequently sported dungarees and would burst into ABBA songs at the drop of a hat.

Unfortunately, Beryl/Meryl made Pierce Brosnan sound like Alfie Boe.

'If you change your mind, I’m the first in line,' warbled Meryl. Tabitha looked at a display of hand-painted wine glasses and wondered why they didn’t shatter as her boss did a passable impression of a cat being administered an enema.

Grabbing a Stanley knife, she began attacking a box of cutesy fridge magnets bearing such slogans as "Cleaning the house while the kids are still growing is like shovelling snow while it’s still snowing".

As she began to arrange them on their special board, Meryl – thank you, God – switched off the CD player.

'Time for a brew, methinks, before the hordes descend.' Tabitha nodded in agreement. She’d overslept this morning, still traumatised by her near-death experience in the loo. Luckily, Tom was home sharpish as Clive had been off sick and Keith under threat of castration from his missus if he wasn’t back in time for the kids’ bath and bedtime story.

Once he’d released her from captivity – and stopped laughing long enough to put the oven on – she’d felt vaguely sick and more than a little miffed at his lack of sympathy.

Then her sleep had been peppered with vivid nightmares involving killer toilet brushes and lakes of elephant wee.

'So, how was last night?' she asked, sipping her builder’s brew. Meryl had recently joined an online dating service. She’d only been on four dates so far – including this one – but the first three had been unmitigated disasters.

The first, with recently divorced car salesman Dave, mainly involved him weeping openly about how his wife had run off with his best friend.

The second – Nathaniel (call me Nate) – started more promisingly until she discovered his passion for taxidermy.

‘Just finished the most amazing ferret. It’s getting the eyes right, that’s the tough bit,’ he’d enthused, eyes glittering with all the fervour of a mass murderer.

Slapping down a fiver for her drink, she’d fixed him with her own beady stare and the parting words, ‘Get stuffed.’ Which she was really rather proud of.

Date number three – accountant Alan – might have had potential if he hadn’t so blatantly lied in his profile about his height.

His alleged five foot eleven could only be achieved if he carried around a large crate to stand on.

More like five foot two, and she suspected even then that he had lifts in his highly polished brogues.

Which meant, standing up, his nose came perilously close to nesting in her not-inconsiderable cleavage.

Admiring her décolletage was one thing, but using it as a set of well-padded earmuffs was quite another.