she’d meet you at the gates and take you out then. She took you to all sorts of places. The museums, parks, rides on trains … During the school holidays she once took you on a trip to the country so she could show you real animals, not just pictures in books.
‘Not that she begrudged Claudia any happiness, but your mam was always secretly worried that she would meet a man and marry him and then she’d lose her as her lodger. But Claudia never met anyone so special she wanted to settle down with them. She told me once that she didn’t mind spending their money, but washing their dirty underpants was an entirely different matter. I always hoped yer mam would meet someone else herself, but she used to say, “once bitten, twice shy”, and besides, she couldn’t get married again while she still was to your dad, and Jessie wouldn’t even contemplate living in sin as she had you to consider.
‘Ten years Claudia lived with Jessie. It was a dreadful thing what happened to her. That run-away dray cart ploughing into her like that, killing her outright. Shame too that virtually at the same time Mrs Crabtree’s husband gets moved down south with his job, so that meant yer mother lost hers. Biggest shame of all was that that was the time, out of the blue, when yer dad decided to make his return.’
Aidy’s mind flashed back in time to the day her father had come home. Having been only three when he had first disappeared, she’d had no recollection of him, only knew what he looked like from the few photographs her mother possessed of him. She’d been told nothing bad about him. Only that he was a kind, loving man, but that unfortunately some men and women might love each other but could not live together, and that was why her mother and father didn’t. He didn’t come to visit Aidy because he’d had to move to another town far away with his job, she was told.
She was thirteen when he returned out of the blue and she discovered that he wasn’t at all the kind, loving man her mother had portrayed him to be. Oh, at first he appeared to be to his daughter, in front of his wife, but behind Jessie’s back he made Aidy very aware that he found her a nuisance, as he did George and Betty too when they came along. He failed to wait around long enough to meet Marion. His favourite saying to Aidy was, ‘Get lost, kid.’ Her home before his return had been her sanctuary, a place where she felt comfortable and welcome. It had been a happy place, full of laughter, the sight of her mother’s ever-present smile, and the sound of her singing as she went about her household tasks, a delight to see and hear. Only a very short while after Aidy’s father’s return that was all to change as he asserted his position as head of their household again, and couldn’t be bothered any longer hiding his true colours. He hadn’t changed at all. But the atmosphere in the house did, and so did her mother. Tension filled the air. Jessie’s smile faded, she never sang any longer, and her eyes lost their shine.
It was a happy day for Aidy when they got up one morning to find her father had disappeared again, taking all his belongings and any money he could lay his hands on besides anything saleable too. Life was harsh for the family, money so tight that sometimes a scrape of marge on their bread was looked upon as a luxury while Jessie strove to support them all on what she could earn, taking in laundry, mending, minding children … anything, in fact, that made her a few coppers. She worked at home until her children were of an age where she could safely leave them. But almost immediately her father departed Aidy was to see the smile return to her mother’s lips, her eyes shining, and to hear her singing again.
Aidy’s thoughts returned to the present and she realised her grandmother had fallen silent. ‘You all right, Gran?’ she asked.
Sighing, the old lady nodded. ‘I was just thinking of the day Arnold Greenwood came back into Jessie’s life. At the time she was grieving over the loss of Claudia and for the job she had loved so much with Mrs Crabtree. Worried too about losing the house as