There was barely any furniture, just one or two items in each room, old, antique looking and dusty. In the kitchen there was one cupboard with a worktop, so the kettle had a place to sit, which was covered in grubby finger marks all over the outside. I think it was originally white. A couple of tea-stained mugs and an opened pint of green milk with a teaspoon just lying on the sugar littered worktop.
I hoped he did not offer me a cup of tea because I would have accepted as it wasn’t polite to say no, I made sure I would bring my own drink if I ever came back. I thought how overdressed I was in my black high waisted trousers and floaty blouse, not the sort of clothes for cleaning. But my clothes were all this sort of style so I didn’t really have anything more causal. Spence had taken the mickey out of me as per usual when he saw me, saying I looked like I was going to a wedding or christening or something as I could not possibly be going to do work in those clothes. Spence always took the piss out of the way I dressed and he nicknamed me Posh after one of the biggest girl group members at the time. I did not even own a pair of jeans and luckily, I was the oldest of four so I did not have to wear any hand-me-downs. Unlucky or lucky for my sister, she would get all my old suit jackets and trousers that didn’t fit me no more, poor girl. My mum was always buying me new things; I was very spoilt, didn’t know how she afforded it really. Being a single mum, probably all on tick from the catalogue. She had brought us up on her own since I was seven. We would see our dad, but only at the weekends if his new wife would let him. He married a horrible woman who really was an evil step mum, as cliché as it sounds, but she hated us, I am sure of it, especially me. She just wanted him to pay all the attention to her daughter, Debbie. I must admit, I was jealous when they would go on family days out without us, more so because my brothers and sister were missing out. I can remember the night so clearly that the family split up. I overheard a conversation where my dad asked my mum if she was having an affair. I didn’t know what an affair was, but I knew it couldn’t have been a good thing as after that night he moved out.
For weeks after he left, I use to steal my mum’s cassette tapes of love songs and play them on my Walkman and cry myself to sleep. If I hear one of those songs now on the radio it takes me straight back to my bedroom that I shared with my younger sister, when I would cry quietly into my pillow so I did not wake her.
That day I swept away debris from the dusty floorboards at Malcolm’s and scraped paint off the windowpanes, and had a laugh with Spence who had to leave a bit earlier than me as he had a football match that evening. I felt comfortable enough to stay and finish up on my own otherwise I would have left with him. Black was not a good colour to wear as it showed up every dirty mark, but it would be impossible to stay clean anyway, as you walked up against dusty things without even realising it. I was not into sport at all as I did not want to have to wear trainers, I did not even own a pair. I had to wear plimsolls at school for PE when I did not forge a letter from my mum and that was bad enough, but I drew the line at any kind of sports attire. I was finishing up and about to leave when Malcolm hugged me. It took me a bit by surprise, and it was a hug that lasted longer than my nana’s hugs, and they were long.
I just thought he was happy with my work. He then gave me a quid and said he hoped he would see me again. You may think a quid totally not worth it, but to an eleven-year-old in 1997, it was not bad.
Walking home, I kept thinking about the hug and how strange it was, and how I could still smell him on me. He seemed like a nice man, everyone thought so. He’d even been around my mum’s house a few times for coffee, but she didn’t call him Malcolm. They acted like they had known each other for years as he called my mum Mar, when her name was Marie, which was strange. When I first heard him say it, I thought he was calling her mum. I thought, bloody hell, have I got an extremely older brother that you haven’t told me about, as he was well old, I would have said older than my mum, so that would not have been possible.
Maybe he was just one of those huggy people. You know, like the ones that must hug you every time they see you? My mum was one of those. So, I just shrugged it off. If only I knew what was coming.
Men
As cheesy as it sounds, I am
