✏️ The Littlest Spy

6. Clean Slate

Isadora paced nervously around her apartment, her mind whirling with doubts. Agreeing to this experiment had seemed like the only choice back in Kane's office, but now she wasn't sure if she could even go through with it. Living with Brock for the next two weeks, putting on an act as husband and wife... It seemed like an impossible task. It wasn't just playing a role, she'd had plenty of training in that. But how was she supposed to feign intimacy with a man she barely knew, and was almost certain she wouldn't even like?

She spotted a stray letter, something about the maintenance fees, lying on the floor, and quickly transported it to the right drawer. Then she saw that the countertop in the kitchen was dirty and needed wiping down. But she quickly realised that all this work was just displacement activity. She was trying to avoid the important things she needed to do before Brock got here, as if not being ready would somehow postpone the so-called master spy's arrival.

She took a deep breath and bit the bullet. There were things all over the apartment that she absolutely didn't want Brock to see. And he wasn't going to avoid looking at things just because they were still out in the open. Everything else was a secondary concern; there were plenty of things that she couldn't afford for her partner to know about her. So she started in the bedroom, pulling out an old suitcase that she hadn't touched since she was a child. It was bright pink, with a much-repaired plastic shell. One corner had a dozen layers of duct tape wrapped around it to keep a crack from spreading; and smudged marker on the tape that might have spelled out lewd words, courtesy of one of her college roommates. Of course, it hadn't remained unused since the childhood holidays where she remembered dragging it around cobbled streets and lifting it onto a funicular railway. It had been pressed into service at college too, simply because she didn't have enough cases to transport all of her things. But in her mind, it was always going to be a piece of her childhood.

It was exactly what she needed now: Battered and clearly well-used. All her secrets could be shoved in there and moved to the back of the closet, covered with coats that hadn't fitted for years or would never be in style again. With a plan in mind, she knelt down on the floor and reached under her bed, first grabbing some books that a respectable young woman like her would never be interested in. They went into the case. All the toys from the bottom drawer of her nightstand quickly followed them; along with a couple which she must not have cared enough to put away, and which had been scattered across the bedroom floor. And just like that, the case was almost full. There were still more things though, all over the house. Things that a casual visitor might not have paid attention to, but which she knew she couldn't keep a secret agent from noticing during a three week stay.

While she was looking around for anything that could possibly give her away, she noticed the boiler cupboard in the box room. Once upon a time, she thought, someone might have hung drying clothes over the boiler, so that everything would be warm and dry, easy to fold later in the day. Or people like her dad would have put bread in the warm space to rise. But her boiler was relatively new; the landlord had replaced it a couple of months before she moved in. So the space above and below it was barely any warmer than the rest of the building, and reserved for the storage of dust and cobwebs. A perfect place to put a tiny suitcase and two cardboard boxes. To make the illusion a little stronger, Isadora brushed some of the dust and dead flies from the cupboard over them before pushing them inside. A perfect example of old college things that she hadn't touched in years; certainly not something she would have been embarrassed about. There was no way Brock would think of looking in there.

Cleaning the rest of the apartment should have been easy. She wasn't particularly untidy, and would never let unwashed dishes pile up for longer than a couple of days; a week if she was having a particularly bad time at work. She always made an effort to vacuum regularly, and flicked a duster over all the surfaces she could reach. She might not be obsessively houseproud, but she knew how much effort it would be to clean up without the regular daily or weekly chores, and so she always did her best. In her mind, that was the real sign of maturity: to understand that she couldn't put anything off forever. And she would have to be an adult now. So there wasn't too much mess; but with every surface she cleared, she found something else that should have been secreted away.