6
Cleo had often before passed, but never had reason to enter, the premises of Maid to Order, which were situated on a busy road, lined with shops and houses of Edwardian vintage: the business was run from Val Storey’s own house, the yard being the back garden which had been concreted over. That first morning, there were four snazzy white vans drawn up in the yard, with Maid to Order written across the sides in black and scarlet.
It was a large, double-fronted, villa-type house and Cleo found Val distractedly supervising operations in what had once been a sitting-room and was now her office. It was thronged with women talking fifty to the dozen, receiving their instructions through a haze of cigarette smoke, being issued with invoice pads and replenishing cleaning kits from the bulk supp
