Dip the toothbrush in the Silkeen mix. Then using light even strokes, gently coax any stain from the grouting with the brush. Dab the cleaned area lightly with the cotton cloth. Under no circumstances use bleach or . . .

Rosalie pursed her lips. Other people’s hygiene obsessions sometimes perplexed her. Still it wasn’t her floor. And if this was how Cerise Downey wanted her tiles cleaned – then it wasn’t up to Rosalie to argue about it. Her mind was far away in any case and the rhythmic strokes of the toothbrush were oddly soothing. She’d been at it now since seven o’clock and could expect to continue scrubbing gently for another hour at least.
Still – the money was good. The money she earned from forty hours of scrubbing and polishing with Maggie Mops was at least twice as much as she could hope to bring in as a free-lance graphics designer. It was also guaranteed income. 
She caught a blurred glimpse of her reflection in the frosted bevelled glass of a cupboard door and frowned at the sight of what she’d become – crouched on all fours, crinkly straw blond hair pulled tightly back from her gaunt face, a shapeless t shirt and track suit bottoms – worn thin from daily washing.
She lowered her head to the tiles once more and forced her mind to dwell on higher things. She listened to Rossini’s Thieving Magpie – a free cd that had arrived through her letterbox the week before with her mail. In days not long past, Rosalie might have turned up her nose at Rossini. She was more into rap and indie rock.  But Rossini was free and she’d discovered that if she turned up the volume really loud, then the Thieving Magpie was just as good for blotting out the empty tedium of her life – as the slickest indie band. It had an interesting story too about a maid accused of stealing a silver spoon who is sentenced to death for her crime, But it turns out that the thief is really a magpie. 
She hummed away and thought of how silly the plot of the story was. Imagine being sentenced to death for stealing a spoon. And - why would anybody steal a spoon in the first place? She thought of the house she was in at this very moment and reflected on all the really useful things she could steal out of it – if she had a mind to – paintings and prints from the walls that her artistic eye knew at a glance to be valuable; some old blue china plates which hung on the kitchen wall and she guessed to be Chinese; a Rodin style marble sculpture of a reclining nude figure in the big old wood panelled drawing room; some intricately carved and painted figurines which adorned the magnificent old mahogany dressing table in the bedroom where Cerise Downey would be sleeping for the next three months during the filming of Waiting for Bono.
As Rosalie had trudged sleepily up the gravelled driveway earlier in the misty morning light, a lone paparazzo sat huddled against the stone perimeter wall of Glenninver House. The house was a large sprawl of Edwardian opulence, all ornate brick and elaborate terracotta tiling, with flamboyant plaster work and the front porch arched and framed to mimic the entrance to a medieval cloister. The gateway was shared with the house next door and impressive wrought iron gates led into twin-gravelled driveways. From the outside at least, the house attached to Glenninver looked equally grand.
The paparazzo’s head was bent low and several massive cameras and telephoto lens were strung round his neck like old medieval harnesses of penitence and shame. He looked like some sort of modern day martyr. Rosalie had shuffled past him quickly. She was afraid he might try to bribe her into spying on Cerise Downey. Rosalie knew very little about the glamorous film star beyond the facts that she was beautiful and suffered from a number of allergies. There hadn’t been much time in the past two years to waste on monitoring the lives of the rich and famous. 
The sun crept up into its allotted place in the cold January sky and shone a few sullen beams into the kitchen. Rosalie would be out of there by noon. Cerise Downey would arrive some two hours later to a house redolent with the smell of wax polish and freshly delivered stargazer lilies (her preferred flowers). A Philippino housekeeper would have arrived by then, and there would be fresh coffee brewing and traditional Irish scones baking in the traditional Irish Aga stove.
No one would even know that Rosalie Muir had spent the best part of five hours scrubbing cleaning and polishing Glenninver house for the arrival of the fabulous actress.