[Phoenix Court 02] - Does It Show?

an orange and blue minidress, helping a \ plump Jane into one of those banana boats. The postcard was I framed on her wall. Mother and daughter had been employed to promote the town. Come to our town, their beaming faces 1 said. Rose felt that she and Jane had done their bit, had signalled people to bring their health, wealth and happiness to the burgeoning new town. And people came. She liked to think that their brave effort, single-parented and self-sufficient, a happy park outing one Saturday in the midseventies, had stood for something. Had, in some small way, helped. People came and, she hoped, they had their happy Saturdays too.

Happy Saturdays on your own with a kid took a lot of effort. Teachers must find that too, thirty times over. Rose had a lot of respect for teachers, but she had never had the brains to be one or really talk to one. Teachers, though, could wash their hands. Love, obligation, and the disapproving eyes of everybody else didn’t come into it. Teachers were doing a career. Single parents were doing a life sentence.

Rose still worried about Jane. She had trained her to full self-sufficiency, trained her too well, and now Jane showed no inclination to end her solitary confinement. She wouldn’t stir herself to seek out a Prince Charming. She never thought of herself as a princess. But at least she still went out. That was something.

‘Me and you’ — she smiled down at Ethan — ‘will set an example to our Jane and all the other young’uns.’ His face creased in pleasure, hanging on to her arm and every word. ‘We’ll show them they can’t do without marriage and a family and a proper home, no matter what.’ She sighed expansively, crushing his hand in hers.

Following the Burnside path lined with poplars, they passed by the junior school Jane had attended. The grass was long and rank, full of the bright purple tails of foxgloves and those fleshy, pink flowers that stood taller than Rose herself. Sometimes the Burn was like a wilderness. They should do something about cleaning it up, she thought. And she certainly wouldn’t come down here without her escort.

At last they came to the town centre. They made straight for the cafe, where the waiter looked cross and flustered again. He had a stub of pencil behind one ear and a Silk Cut behind the other. Rose asked if the ladies were in yet. The boy rolled his eyes and led them to the table at the back. There, the pensioners who edited the free local paper were waiting for the happy couple, their yellow legal pads open on the gritty tablecloth. Love had been found locally again, among their own. Rose and Ethan deserved to be publicised as an example. Cilia Black should turn up, really, singing something. Rose was leading the way forward, the town’s figurehead and inspiration once more.

Once she sat down, her coat over her knees, sipping tea.

Rose found herself warming to the idea of being interviewed. She told them that the secret of making a relationship tick was never going to bed not talking. Ethan and the lady reporters beamed. Then they told them to pull in closer, they were going to take their picture.

For Fran there was a certain cut-off point at which another cup of tea would just taste of so much hot water with a dribble of milk in it. But Jane never seemed to mind.

There was a Battenburg cake on the table, waiting for the kids and teatime, cut into eight irregular slices. Fran urged one on Jane. She took one, then another and another, at five-minute intervals, talking as she did so and hardly aware of what she was eating. Her fingers went picking automatically over greasy yellow crumbs. Fran had a rush of protectiveness for her kids. Their cake, she thought. I’ll never do enough for them. They deserve more because they’re mine. She felt a sudden hatred of Jane, smacking her pale lips, but quelled it. ‘So Nesta’s really missing? How do you know?’

Fran sighed. The novelty had worn off her piece of news. Jane would talk things to death and gossip with her became less fun as the hours went by. It was like Aladdin’s lamp rubbed too hard, too often. ‘Well, first of all she never came round for milk this morning. Then I saw that gormless husband of hers, Tony, taking their Vicki to school.’

‘Poor kid! They’ll have her crackers as well.’

‘After that he came here to ask if I’d seen his wife. He said it like that — “Have you seen my wife?” — as if I’d shoved her under the settee.’ Fran thought that Jane wouldn’t find the whole thing as funny if she had dealt with Tony at that point. He was in his blue, snorkel-hooded anorak, looking red in the face, and his eyes looked weepy, though that might just have been the cold. He really wanted Nesta to be hiding out at Fran’s house. Fran thought at that moment, He really loves her. We spend so long laughing at them or saying they’re daft and drinking cider all the time, we don’t really think about that. A few hours apart from dozy, lumpy, obnoxious Nesta and Tony was pining away. He was banging on doors belonging to people he was usually too shy to talk to.

‘He’s probably shoved her under the settee himself and forgotten. Have you seen their manky settee?’

‘He looked really worried.’

‘I think he’s got a look of that Fred West.’

‘Oh, don’t say that, Jane. That’s awful!’

‘She’s on pills, isn’t she?’

‘They’re bringing her off them again.’

‘Don’t you think we should pop round, see if she’s back?’

‘I’ll wait till he brings Vicki back at hometime. I’ll ask then. I’ve got my own life to get on with.’ This was aimed pointedly at Jane. ‘I can’t go worrying about neighbours all the time.’

‘There goes Liz.’ Jane stood and went to the