Wondering who it could be with a key to the house, as both Arch and Aidy would be at work, she plodded her way from the kitchen to the back room, throwing her snoring husband a look of disdain as she passed him by. On reaching the door leading into the parlour, she stopped short, hearing voices. Then she recognised the voices and pulled a face. It was her daughter-in-law and her grandmother! So Aidy wasn’t at work today then. It was a good boss she’d obviously got who allowed her four days off for a death in the family, unlike Pat’s own. She would have had to beg for just a couple of hours’ leave to attend a funeral, no matter how close a relative had died.
A malicious smirk curved her lips. She was about to get her own back on her daughter-in-law for quashing her original plan to better her living conditions.
On walking into the back room, Bertha behind her, Aidy stopped short, her face displaying shock to see her father-in-law sprawled fast asleep in an armchair. The top button of his shabby trousers was undone to reveal grubby underpants, the smell of his unwashed feet wafting up to greet her, and her mother-in-law, fat arms folded under her monstrous bosom dressed in her shoddy grey work dress, staring at them stonily from the kitchen doorway.
‘To what do I owe this honour?’ she demanded.
Aidy gawped at her. ‘Excuse me, Mrs Nelson, but this is my house. I should be the one asking you what you’re doing here, by the looks of things making yourselves very much at home?’
‘Well, yes, I am meking meself at home, ’cos this is my home now. My son needs looking after since his wife has put her own family above him.’ Pat sneered at Aidy. ‘Some wife you turned out to be! If he’s any sense, he’ll have n’ote more to do with yer and find someone else who’ll be a proper wife to him. You can rest assured that I won’t hold back from telling him that meself.’
‘That’s a joke, you looking after anyone. Yer can’t even look after yerself,’ cried an outraged Bertha.
‘Who asked you to stick yer nose in?’ Pat bellowed back at her.
The booming of his wife’s voice woke up Jim. ‘Can’t a man get no peace from you women?’ he asked, bleary eyed.
‘And you can shurrup too, yer lazy, good-for-nothing, fat pig!’ Pat yelled at him.
Jim quickly deduced that his wife was in the mood for a fight and hurriedly heaved his body out of the chair, pushing past her to get into the kitchen. Seconds later the back door was heard to slam shut.
Meanwhile Aidy was saying to her in a warning voice, ‘Don’t speak to my grandmother like that, Mrs Nelson.’
Pat glared back at her. ‘I’ll speak to anyone how I bleddy well like in my own house. Now, what was it that yer came for?’
Aidy was speechless. Was Arch mad, allowing his mother and father to stay! Knowing her mother-in-law, though, he more than likely had had no choice in the matter. But already Pat was calling it ‘her’ house and not Arch’s. His parents had been here barely half a day and their slovenly behaviour was evident. Pat hadn’t bothered to clear the breakfast dishes and it was getting on for noon. Beside the chair Jim had just vacated was a crumpled newspaper and several empty beer bottles. Aidy doubted the bed had been made, or would be before they got into it again. And she guessed that Arch had been made to give up their bed to her in-laws and it’d been one person who had used the pile of spare bedding at the side of the sofa.
It wouldn’t be long before the Nelsons turned this house into the smelly, dirty pigsty they’d left behind. But Pat was right. Aidy didn’t live here any longer. Who Arch invited in from now on was his choice. That didn’t stop her feeling distressed to see that all the hard work and effort they had both put into making this house a lovely home was going to be destroyed if her in-laws occupied it for any length of time.
Not that she felt obliged to inform Pat why she was here, regardless Aidy told her, ‘I came for the rest of my belongings.’
With visions of some of the bits and pieces she’d already earmarked for the pawn disappearing, she warned Aidy, ‘Just make sure it’s only yer