Meanwhile, hands on her wide hips, Pat was surveying the contents of Aidy’s well-stocked pantry. No reason for her to be putting her hand in her own pocket to feed herself and that lazy good-for-nothing she was saddled with. He currently lay sprawled in the armchair by the fireplace, having a doze before he made a strenuous effort to get himself off down the pub for the lunchtime session while she was in that stinking hole of a public toilet, earning the money to pay their way. Never mind, at least she had all this food at her disposal. She should have been on her way to work right now. Her delay was down to the fact that she just couldn’t bring herself to shift her huge body out of the comfortable bed she had slept in last night.
Compared to her own ancient mattress, her son and daughter-in-law’s wooden-framed bed had been like sleeping on a cloud. Pat didn’t feel any shame that after she’d insisted Arch should give up his own bed to his parents, and not yet having found the funds to buy a bed for the spare room, he’d been forced to spend an uncomfortable night on the lumpy sofa.
Having decided on a tin of stew to go with some mashed potatoes and tinned peas, she plodded back into the kitchen. The set of gleaming pans displayed on a shelf on the wall caught her eye. They weren’t new when bought from a junk shop by Arch and Aidy, but were in a damned sight better condition than Pat’s old battered, blackened and leaky lot that had been at least third-hand when she’d been given them on her marriage. She’d had to make do with them since, never having had the money to replace them.
She then glanced around and a surge of pure jealousy ran through her. Like they would at the Greenwood house, the better-off residents of this city would no doubt turn their noses up at this house, with its damp patches, cracked ceilings, patched up, rotting windowframes and white-washed brick walls; but compared to the almost derelict hovel she’d just moved out of, situated in a narrow alley between two factories whose chimneys constantly belched out thick clouds of black smoke, to Pat this place was a palace. Her daughter-in-law had the house and everything in it that she herself had always dreamed of having – before, that was, she had realised she was never going to get them through her own poor choice of husband. And now her spoiled daughter-in-law was throwing all her son’s hard work in achieving this back in his face. She had returned to her former home to care for her family, selfishly expecting Arch to go along with it all.
A disagreeable pout disfigured Pat’s already ugly face. After Aidy’s reaction yesterday, Pat was well aware that her own chances of moving into the Greenwood house were very slim. She could intimidate and bully most people, but much to her chagrin Aidy had proved immune to her threats. Aidy wasn’t stupid. She had known from the off what Pat’s real aim was. Damn the woman! Why had Arch had to choose a woman like her and not a little mouse like her two other sons had chosen? If he had, Pat would have been well and truly established in her dream home by now.
Then suddenly an idea struck her and a gleam lit her piggy eyes. Maybe her hopes of bettering herself were not all lost. She might have lost out on the Greenwood house, but why shouldn’t she have this one instead? It might be smaller, two-bedroomed against three, but like the Greenwood house it was in a better part of the area than her old place, among a much better class of people. And, as a bonus, the furniture and furnishings in this house might be second-hand or junk-shop bought, but they were definitely in better condition than anything the Greenwood house boasted. Yes, this house would do Pat nicely, and another bonus was the fact that she didn’t have to put up with any other troublesome residents, like noisy kids and sharp-tongued old biddies. Whether Arch decided to stay here or move in with his wife, she didn’t care any longer. So long as he didn’t expect her to look after him in place of his wife if he did stay put.
Her ears pricked as she heard a key scrape in the front door.