with me packing while yer gone. I thought I told you to find the kids and send ’em round to help me … obviously you disobeyed me again. I’ll deal with you later over that. And make sure you hurry back so you can help get our stuff round there. I wanna be moved in tonight, not termorra.’
Pat flashed a scathing glance at her hotchpotch of shabby furniture. ‘New tenants can do what they like with this lot of old rubbish. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.’ She gave a malicious grin. ‘Me new house is fully furnished with better stuff than this so I don’t need none of this old crap, do I? That house is a palace in every way compared to this one. Oh, it’ll be like living in heaven! Folks around here better start showing me more respect or I’ll give ’em what for.’
The back door was heard to open then and seconds later the burly figure of Jim Nelson appeared in the doorway. He was visibly drunk. ‘We ready for the off then?’ He cast his bleary eyes over the filthy, cluttered room, and gave a loud belch. ‘Space to stretch me legs out in our new place. Yer can hardly swing a cat in here.’
Pat turned on him then. ‘If you’d ever got off yer fat, lazy arse and got yerself a decent job, we’d have had a house like we’re moving into years ago,’ she spat. Then she commanded, ‘Get that old trunk out from the cellar so we can pack our clothes in it. Now, not termorra.’ She addressed her son next. ‘What you standing there for, like the village idiot? Order them kids to get their backsides round here to give us a hand, and tell that wife of yours what’s what. And don’t stand for no nonsense off her this time.’
A few streets away, cradling a cup of tea between her gnarled hands, Bertha issued a weary sigh as she sank down on a worn armchair by the range in the back room. She kicked off her shoes to reveal her misshapen feet and sighed, ‘Ah, that’s better.’
Marion, now changed out of her school clothes into shabbier playing-out ones, was sitting on the clippy rug by her gran’s chair absently staring into the fire. Leaning over, the old lady ruffled the top of her head. ‘You all right, chick?’
She shook her head. ‘No, Gran, I ain’t. Elsie took her doll back. She’s spiteful, so she is. I’m never talking to her again.’
Bertha wasn’t surprised to hear this. ‘What’s gone off between you both this time?’
‘She was mad ’cos I never took her some cake from Mam’s do. I told her there weren’t any left ’cos Mrs Nelson took the last bit.’ Marion turned her head and looked up at her grandmother, her own face filled with disgust. ‘She took the last three pieces, Gran. Mrs Mullet went to get a piece and Mrs Nelson pushed her out of the way and put the three last pieces on her own plate. Arch’s mam is so greedy! Anyway, Elsie didn’t believe me that there weren’t no cake left, said I just forgot to take her some.
‘I don’t care she’s took her doll back, I didn’t like it anyway. It hadn’t got any eyes ’cos Elsie poked ’em out … her mam smacked her for doing that … and its hair was all tatty and its clothes, so I was gonna give it her back anyway.’
Bertha ruffled the girl’s hair again. ‘Oh, well, that’s all right then. At least Elsie taking it back saved you doing that.’
Marion’s little face puckered. ‘But that means I won’t get to sleep, Gran. I always slept with Janet, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did. Are you sorry you gave Janet to your mam now, to look after?’
Marion said with conviction, ‘Oh, no, Gran. I’m glad I gave Janet to her, to keep her company ’til she wakes up and comes home. I’ll get her back then, won’t I?’ She shot her grandmother a worried look. ‘But I just don’t know how I’m gonna sleep without a dolly to cuddle.’
‘Oh, I see.’ A vision of a long-limbed, threadbare rag doll, sprang to Bertha’s mind. ‘Oh, but what about Flossie?’
‘Flossie?’ Marion queried.
‘You can’t have forgotten about Flossie, love. Aidy bought her for you the day you were born. You and Flossie went everywhere together until you got Janet a couple of Christmases ago.’