Changing Seasons. Summer part 2

Chapter 2 I found out what I’d let myself in for! I figured I was going to have to keep her sweet. I mean – I could see and hear her. What if she decided to pay a visit to Old Perch and tell him all about me. I’d told her my name! And I really didn’t want to be found.
“As you can see, my dear Clara, this fascinating building has been sadly neglected. Not to say vandalised. You could be of immense help – for one thing, these walls could be scrubbed clean.” Quick! Find an excuse! A polite one!
“I don’t think my nailbrush is going to be up to shifting that,” I said politely, pointing at the nearest wall. "And I don’t want to ruin it. Clean nails are one of the hallmarks of a gentlewoman, I always think.”
And it’s true. Nice, clean, unpainted nails, and people think you’re much more innocent than you really are. A nice open-eyed gaze helps too. “Oh, I do so agree with you. But I know where you might find some cleaning implements. There’s a house over there” – she gestured – “long empty now, but it used to belong to the caretaker of the graveyard. The other graveyard, but he also took care of this one too, as a kindness. You could go and investigate as to whether there was anything left behind. I know the house was not properly cleared.” “Steal something?” I was beginning to like this old biddy, but I did the sounding shocked thing.
“Borrow,” she said firmly. “For a good cause. Naturally, if a new caretaker were to be appointed, we would return his possessions.” I saw what Adelaide-Miss-Kirk-to-you meant when I got to the house. Anything left there was fair pickings. And it looked like the same wall artists had been busy here too. I went in carefully. Breaking my ankle by putting it through a rotten floorboard would be a seriously bad move. But actually the wood wasn’t rotten – I think the holes were where floorboards had been ripped out for firewood. The stairs bore my weight too, and so I raided kitchen and bathroom alike. And Addy was right. A quick search round did produce leftover cleaning stuff. Including a washboard and tub – easier than washing my underwear under the tap. I swiped – sorry, borrowed – some old bits of rag as well to use as cleaning cloths. I had a feeling I was going to be forced to use them And boy, was I right! She had me scrubbing the graffiti off the walls – my arms ached so much afterwards. And then she started me on the floors as well. And that church had a lot of floor! If I’d known what I was letting myself in for, I’d never have picked this place to stay. And she supervised me! Told me how to do it properly. “This lovely building deserves to be treated with more respect,” she said. I cleaned up in the vestry on my own initiative. Dear Great Aunt Addy didn’t seem to think the vestry mattered as much, but I was living here. If out there was going to be clean, so was in here. Then it was, “Get the broom to those cobwebs. We don’t need that many spiders in here.” “Now the next thing that needs cleaning is…”
Oh no, lady. I’ve been inside cleaning for you for long enough. Time to stand up for myself a bit before you walk all over me. I put on my sweetest smile.
“The next thing that needs cleaning is my lungs. All this dust I’ve been raising isn’t good for them, you know. And I saw another empty house over that way. I thought I’d see if anything got left behind there too.” I escaped before she could give me chapter and verse on who’d lived there.
“Ah yes,” she’d said, and I’d had a feeling a long story was coming. So I coughed a bit – well, a lot – and made my exit.
It was a nice-looking house, but in such an old-fashioned style! Someone with money had built it, I reckoned and had wanted to copy a house they’d seen somewhere else once. It was looking a bit the worse for wear now though. Paint! And a roller and a paintbrush. Someone had been thinking of smartening this up, and then given up. But I could use this. And a block of soap as well – and there was food in the garden, that I was coming back for tomorrow. And I was going to check upstairs tomorrow as well. But it was beginning to get dark and, ghost or no ghost, I’d rather be back at that church than out here on my own. That house led to a lot of finds – not of them all good.
Good thing though – the veg and fruit in the garden. Maybe I should learn how to cook more than just campfire food. If there was a greengrocer’s nearby, I could sell this stuff – I should ask Great Aunt Addie (sorry: Miss Kirk). Amazing thing – I found a bike! Upstairs, in one of the bedrooms. Complete with basket, which was going to make things a lot easier. Really worrying thing: Great Aunt Addie had assured me that the only person I needed to worry about was Old Smollett. And he lived by the pier, and fished. But here was a farm, obviously being tended. And someone living there. And if her name was Old Smollett, I’d eat the carpet that Great Aunt Addie wanted me to clean. I watched her from behind a tree for a while. There was someone else there too – male, but not old. What was I going to do if they spotted me?

This building and these characters were created by AlphaFen! https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9310815 Back story here: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/17074021/#Comment_17074021