One Plus One: A Novel by Jojo Moyes Read Free Book Online

Because this was not a holiday park like the Sea Bright caravan park on the top of the hill, a chaotic jumble of wind-battered mobile homes and seasonal lean-to tents. This was a spotless array of architect-designed “living spaces” set among carefully manicured paths. There was a sports club, a spa, tennis courts, a huge pool complex, a handful of overpriced boutiques, and a small grocery store so that residents did not have to venture into the scrappier confines of the town.
    Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, Benson & Thomas cleaned the two three-bedroom rental properties that overlooked the clubhouse, then moved on to the newer properties: six glass-fronted modernist houses that stood on the chalk cliff above the sea.
    Mr. Nicholls kept a spotless Audi in his driveway that they had never seen move. His sister came once with two small children and a gray-looking husband (they left the place immaculately clean). Mr. Nicholls himself rarely visited, and had never, in the year they’d been cleaning the place, used either the kitchen or the laundry room. Jess made extra cash doing his towels and sheets, laundering and ironing them weekly for guests who never came.
    It was a vast house; its slate floors echoed, its living areas were covered with great expanses of sea-grass matting, and there was an expensive sound system wired into the walls. The glass frontages gazed out onto the wide blue arc of the horizon. But there were no photographs on the walls or suggestions of any kind of actual life. Nathalie always said that even when he came, it was as if he were camping there. There must have been women—Nathalie once found a lipstick in the bathroom, and last year they had discovered a pair of tiny lacy knickers under the bed (La Perla) and a bikini top—but there was little to suggest anything else about him.
    “He’s here,” muttered Nathalie.
    As they closed the front door, a man’s voice echoed down the corridor, loud and angry. Nathalie pulled a face. “Cleaners,” she called. He didn’t respond.
    The argument continued the whole time it took to clean the kitchen. He had used one mug, and the bin held two empty takeaway cartons. There was broken glass in the corner by the fridge, small green splinters, as if someone had picked up the larger pieces but couldn’t be bothered with the rest. And there was wine up the walls. Jess washed them down carefully. She and Nathalie worked in silence, speaking in murmurs, trying to pretend they couldn’t hear him.
    Jess moved on to the dining room, dusted the picture frames with a soft cloth, tilting the odd one a centimeter or two to show they’d been done. Outside on the deck sat an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’swith one glass; she picked them up and brought them inside. She thought about Nicky, who had returned from school the previous day with a cut ear, the knees of his trousers scuffed with dirt. He shrugged off any attempt to talk about it. His preferred life now consisted of people on the other side of a screen; boys Jess had never met and never would, people he called SK8RBOI and TERM-N-ATOR, who shot and disemboweled each other for fun. Who could blame him? His real life seemed to be the actual war zone.
    Ever since the interview Jess had lain awake, doing calculations in her head, adding and subtracting in a way that would have made Tanzie laugh. She mentally sold her belongings, ran through lists of every single person she might be able to borrow money from. But the only people likely to offer Jess money were the sharks who circled the neighborhood with their hidden four-figure interest rates. She had seen neighbors borrow from those friendly reps who turned suddenly gimlet-eyed. And again and again she came back to Marty’s words. Was McArthur’s really so bad? Some children did well there. There was no reason why Tanzie shouldn’t be one of them if she kept out of the way of the troublemakers.
    The hard truth of it was there like a brick wall: Jess was