Ladies Who Launch Read Online Free PDF Page B

her drawer of people that she wouldn’t employ in a million years. Lesley Clamp’s name would be joining it shortly.
    ‘If we take you on, we will supply you with your cleaning equipment,’ began Della. Not that Lesley Clamp would need to know that, because Diamond Shine would not be taking her on.
The woman smelt of trouble. She was the type who’d complain about everyone and everything and Jimmy wouldn’t fork out for fripperies like non-latex specialist gloves and branded goods
like Cillit Bang. Although Des’s Discount Warehouse did an import version called ‘Fillit Bong,’ which once burst into flame and burnt off Ruth Fallis’s eyebrow when she
squirted it on a work surface whilst smoking a fag.
    ‘We pay the minimum wage per hour …’
    ‘Is that all?’ humphed Lesley. ‘You must be creaming the profits, then?’
    Della so wanted this miserable sow out of her office. She should be at a jolly gathering in Whitby, not staring at the hairy mole on Lesley Clamp’s sneering top lip.
    ‘We supply a guaranteed wage, insurance, cleaning supplies and back-up service when clients are difficult. Those are the things you get in return for paying administration costs, Mrs
Clamp.’
    Lesley huffed again. ‘I had a pound an hour above minimum wage at Dreamclean.’
    And Dreamclean were unorganised and chucked money away and went down the pan, which is why you’re here asking me for a job
, thought Della to herself.
And no way did they offer
a pound above minimum wage either, but nice try, Lesley
. No, she decided. Desperate as they were for more cleaners, there was no way she could employ this awful woman.
    ‘I’m afraid that’s the standard rate for everyone. I’m so sorry that we aren’t suitable for your requireme—’
    ‘I didn’t say that,’ replied Lesley with an impatient snap in her voice. ‘It’s just less than I’m used to.’
    Della had had enough for this afternoon. She’d ordered chocolates for Jimmy’s fat wife and had interviewed three badly needed potential cleaners so far today and not one was up to
the standard she expected. Her reject file was as full as her potential file was empty. She stood up to indicate this meeting was at a close.
    ‘I’ll be contacting the successful applicants by the end of next week,’ she said. ‘I have your number, Mrs Clamp, and I’ll be in touch.’ God help Mr
Clamp.
    Lesley Clamp rose to her fat little feet. She looked so much older than the forty-five years she purported to be in her Miss Marple shoes and her thick tweed coat straining across her swollen
bosom and stomach.
    ‘Oh and I can’t do Wednesdays or after three on Fridays,’ she said at the door, turning to deliver a parting shot.
    Della dropped onto the chair and blew out two relieved cheekfuls of air. She should have known that the chances were anyone with ‘Clamp’ as a surname would be a no-go, but she
didn’t think it fair to tar everyone with the same brush, since Josie Clamp had been one of their star workers until her death two years ago. The Clamps were one of the town’s most
notorious families, along with the Crookes, the Bellfields and the O’Gowans; but the Clamps were by far the biggest. For decades past, there hadn’t been a month when the Clamp name
wasn’t mentioned in either the
Barnsley
Chronicle
or the
Daily Trumpet
for some misdemeanour or other, from the old days of that notorious old confidence trickster
‘Velvet’ Vernon Clamp, right down to the present generation. Only last week, one of the younger lot – the inaptly named ‘Chiffon’ Clamp, had been given two hundred
hours community service for shoplifting booze from Morrisons. And the papers had reported – God forbid – her cousin Mandy’s marriage to one of the Crooke boys. They’d
already started to push out a brood of hybrid villains into the world with twins Sinitta-Paris and Brooklyn-Jaiden
    Della wished that Ivanka had been there to put the kettle on for her because she