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“You looked beautiful.”

Chloe stared at her mother with naked hatred. Wendy’s comment on her daughter’s first catwalk show was damning in its brevity.

The word “but” hovered between them. Wendy avoided it and tried another tack.

“Are you still going to the dance classes, darling?”

Chloe exploded.

“Yes, I am, but to hip hop not to ballet because I hate ballet, and do you know what, Mum? I don’t need all those wimpy little moves because they’re not stylish anymore like back in the day when you were the queen”.

Wendy stiffened but couldn’t resist one of her mantras.

“Grace never goes out of fashion.”

Chloe rolled her eyes and watched the catwalk crowd dispersing as her mother’s BMW nosed through it. Jean, the impassive chauffeur, was at the helm. Who the fuck still had a “chauffeur” these days? Just call him “the driver” like a normal person. Her mother lived in a retro fantasy of elegance and privilege. “Total snob,” thought Chloe, smoothing down the Giles Winkler pants she’d been gifted; they were made of turquoise gabardine and had tiny crustaceans embroidered on the crotch.

Wendy’s phone rang. Chloe knew she was talking to the press from the affected voice she used when her image was at stake. “Yes, that was me in the front row…I was supporting young designers…I thought it was daring and innovative and it showed that British fashion is in rude health!” She laughed in a practised musical trill so different from the snorts and hoots that came from her beautiful mouth when she and Chloe’s father were watching a silly old film.

A part of Chloe grudgingly admired the dexterity with which Wendy played the game, then her mother took out a cigarette and Chloe’s loathing returned.

“If you’re going to smoke that in here, I’m getting out”.

“I’ll open the window, sweetheart. I need it after all the stress of the show - I think that loud music has brought on early onset deafness!”

“Smoking’s so bad for you and so bad for us sitting here and it’s naff and makes your skin crack…”

“I have two a day. Loosen up, Chloe, stop making everything in life so serious”.

“Let me out here”.

“We’re in the back end of nowhere”.

“It’s Hackney, Mum, and it’s a totally sick place!”

“Yes, it is” mused Wendy, looking out at a tunnel-like High Street in which she could see only a rough looking charity shop and a William Hill’s but didn’t notice the purveyors of classy vintage and gourmet sushi disguised as graffiti-covered shacks.

Later that night, after a consoling cocktail with Mabel and Z-Boy at the Moth Club, Chloe combed Insta and TikTok for evidence of the show. There was a shot of her in the polythene tube dress dancing jerkily to a rap track, then looking kind of traumatised as she froze for photos. That was cool though, wasn’t it? Then the camera panned to the audience and there was Wendy, all cream woollen pantsuit, big hair and red lips looking up at Chloe adoringly and clasping her hands like an excited 5-year-old. “Putting it on”, thought Chloe, forgetting no one knew she was Wendy’s daughter, so Wendy hadn’t needed to pretend.

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Wendy Whitehouse (née Clack, but swiftly renamed by her first agent) stood in front of the giant mirror in her walk-in dressing room and surveyed her 62-year-old body in her well-constructed bra and big pants, both of which she said she wore to avoid visible lines but in reality were all about comfort. She’d stopped modelling at 34 and didn’t even do “supermodel reunion” features anymore, much though some of the other girls badgered her. She couldn’t believe they needed the money - all of them had enough to last a lifetime - so they must want to do it to have people saying, “Wow, look how well preserved they are!” Wendy liked being told she looked good, but she didn’t want the spotlight ever again. It had nearly killed her the first time.

Her stomach bulged a little over the elastic, and she had sun damage everywhere, but she was still possessed of endless legs and industry-standard shoulder to bust to hip ratio. She took off her wig and popped it on its mannequin, threw on a kimono and called out for her husband. “Terry, love, do you fancy something junky for dinner?” Terry wandered in from his study, held her around the waist from behind and looked at them both in the mirror. “Handsome couple”, he beamed. They admired their grey dignity for a moment, then Wendy took off her makeup whilst Terry looked for his slippers, and they decided on whether to have Indian, Chinese or something with chips in front of that makeover programme they both loved.

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Chloe wished her mum and dad weren’t so old. They’d had her with IVF when Mum was 43 and they felt so culturally distanced from her. Sometimes Dad played some music -post-punk he called it - that she really liked and it made her see them as young for a moment, but otherwise she knew they both liked safe things and they didn’t understand the exhibitions she went to or the short films her friends made or what the hell it was like being young in a world that felt like it could combust at any moment. She looked mournfully at the address for the photoshoot she had that day in a spent industrial estate in Neasden where the client wanted to capture “urban beauty in a derelict mis-en-scene” whilst advertising lip balm. Wendy wouldn’t ever have had to do this: she’d be more likely to be on horseback in front of a hunting lodge or draped over a balcony in Monte Carlo. Maybe she should have made something of being Wendy’s daughter when she’d been touting for agents a year ago, but she hadn’t wanted to be associated with Mum’s brand of beauty - it was too old-school now and anyway she wanted to make her own life, not just be a nepo baby.

Chloe chewed the skin around her thumbnail absentmindedly then looked at what she’d done in horror. Fucking hell, it was bleeding and she had to go and she might have hand close-ups! She called an Uber and stepped out into a gust of pollution on a junction in up-and-coming-but-not-quite-there-yet Homerton, wishing life wasn’t so demanding and weird, but determined not to let Mum and Dad cushion the blows for her.

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Wendy’s campaign to discourage Chloe from modelling wasn’t going very well. She’d thought that the two of them had a good relationship but since Chloe moved to East London and had started earning a living from her mother’s line of work, their bond had begun to unravel. Unbeknownst to Chloe, Wendy had asked Terry’s PA to create false accounts for her on various social media platforms so that she could follow what Chloe was up to. It was hard to distinguish selfies from commercial campaigns sometimes - the images were all so good - but she didn’t take long to work out Chloe was doing well for a 19-year-old with a C-list agent. Feeling a little obsessed, Wendy spent a part of every week googling Chloe and scrolling her socials fearfully looking for signs of what? Disordered eating? Poor mental health? But how could she tell? Filters could mask anything now.

In essence, Chloe had Wendy’s body, but she configured it in ways that no photographer or art director would have suggested in Wendy’s day - bent up, twisted or prioritising pointy elbows or a jutting jaw. Her hair was what Wendy had been told was a mullet – hideous! - but nothing could mar the beauty of her skin. It was pale and limpid and set off with round grey eyes that took up half of her lovely face. Such a shame about the tattoos but they seemed to move about so maybe they were fake. Wendy knew that, despite their vogueishness, no leading designers would accept a neck tattoo or a “full sleeve” - on a woman, at least - but Chloe was so intent on not being ‘acceptable’ that she might get one of those monstrous things anyway. Wendy breathed out, squinted at her mirror - then plucked a thick hair out of her chin.

The Neasden shoot was hard work. Chloe and another androgynous model had to run about in the dilapidated space, finding reasons to leer or pout into the camera at intervals as instructed by a smoothie middle-aged director, until the client got bored and said they had enough. Afterwards, Chloe and the other girl whose name was Flint, were going to share an Uber, but the director said he’d take them out to lunch. He was a twat, but they were both starving, so they went with him to his club and chowed down on some decent scoff, with lots of fizz and a line or two in the loos for dessert, which made Chloe feel reckless and happy. When the director said he had some new designer jewellery he wanted to donate to models it would suit, in his hotel room, not far away, she and Flint piled into a cab with him, giggling and hiccupping. Chloe wasn’t green – she knew about creepy guys - but she was in a mood to tempt fate and when the guy got handsy, then suggested the girls muck about on the bed whilst he watched, she fought through her fuzziness, grabbed Flint – who was messier than her – kicked a bag of cocaine across the room and charged out, shouting, “Back off, dickhead!” like a crim with a gun to a cop in an American TV show. While Flint vomited in a public toilet, Chloe gulped tap water and pinched her own face, feeling dirty and stupid but knowing it would all pass in a day or two. When she saw a bruise on her arm the next day from where the twat had tried to stop them leaving, she was angry and thought about telling her agent, but she didn’t want to mention the coke and the lunch and how she’d lost her mind for an afternoon, so she let it go. She’d see the next git coming a mile off.

Chloe went to dinner at her parents’ tall white house in Kensington. They had another house in the country - where Chloe had had an idyllic childhood - but lived in town full-time now and were always at the theatre or opera or having old friends to dinner – really going for it whilst they still had the energy, Chloe supposed.

She had no beef with her dad – he was so easy-going and made her laugh. Wendy was glad to see Chloe chuckling at one of his daft pranks but knew that a mistrustful glare would be coming her way before long.

“How was that lip-balm shoot?” Wendy enquired as she served up the bouillabaisse (she’d taken up cooking in later life after years of being frightened of food and was amazing everyone with her flair).

Chloe tensed for a moment. Wendy sensed it but said nothing.

“It was pretty horrible, but I’ve been paid. Might go to Majorca next week”.

“Oh, for a job?”

“Yeah, beach clothes, surfing-style, not glam”.

“No, it wouldn’t be”, said Wendy.

Chloe hit boiling point quickly. “I have a certain look, Mum, and it’s right for a lot of contemporary brands. You don’t have to be a bitch about it!”

“Steady now,” said Terry. “Let’s just have a nice dinner and keep the shouting for when I’m not hovering over a bowl of delicious stew”.

Wendy’s hand shook as she doled out the sourdough rolls, but she smiled and said, “I didn’t mean it like that, darling”.

After dinner, Terry went to make a work call. Wendy engineered Spotify to play Joni Mitchell in the lounge and hoped Chloe would join her. Her daughter clattered about in the kitchen then came in with a bottle of vodka and an ice bucket.

“No tonic, darling?”

“Why am I always wrong?”

Wendy paused, then stopped trying to be measured and gave vent instead.

“How can you take my simple observation that you haven’t got any tonic and turn it into a savage criticism of you?! This is CRAZY!!! What happened to the fun we used to have, the teasing, the doing each other’s nails, the watching Friends in our pyjamas?” Wendy went on and on, cataloguing what they’d had and what they’d lost until she ran out of examples and cried, furiously.

Chloe was horrified but made her own case through gritted teeth.

“You mock me, you belittle me, you don’t support my choices, you begrudge me my freedom…”

Wendy tried hard to listen. Chloe’s resentments seemed never-ending. Finally, they stood facing each other under the chandelier which glittered incongruously as Joni crooned about a tricky boyfriend in a spectral voice.

“Sit down,” said Wendy, and dimmed the light to a funereal level. Chloe perched on the sofa, quivering like a newborn foal.

“I have to tell you something”. Wendy dropped down beside her, looking bleak. And out it came.

She’d always been a good girl, living quietly with her mother after her dad left, really thrilled to be spotted when she was the same age as Chloe now - but she was never a wild child. She prioritised her beauty sleep, and doing aerobics, and drank Perrier, but as her career rocketed, she worked harder and travelled further and it became easier to submit to a little booster to wake her up or a little downer to help her sleep, and though it didn’t show - because she had all the beauty treatments she could ever want at her disposal, and she was still young - inside, she started feeling a bit screwed up and not really on top of things. And there was something so wrong with the way that certain men - a lot of men - treated all the top models. There were very powerful guys at all the functions the girls had to go to who thought they were not only worthy of these spectacular women, but that they were entitled to them for being such clever, moneymaking tycoons. It was so tiring having to listen to their gross propositions and dirty jokes, and to dodge their patting and stroking and outright mauling, sometimes in public, and always unchallenged by onlookers. One night, Wendy was followed from the Ritz-Carlton ballroom by a heavyset man in a dinner jacket who she’d rebuffed by not laughing at his witticisms. He grabbed her in the stairwell where she’d gone for a breather and in the tussle, she scratched his face with her long, manicured nails. He called her a bitch then took her by the scruff of the neck and frogmarched her to a corporate room where he raped her over a conference table. After he’d finished, he told her he’d fuck up her career if she told anyone, though she was getting so old now (she was 29) that it was probably over anyway. Then she had to tidy herself up as best as she could and rejoin the party for paparazzi shots.

She carried on for a few more years, but the drug thing got worse, and her heart wasn’t in it, then she met Terry doing a catalogue shoot for his retail fashion stores and he was kind and loving and she gratefully retired. She told him about the rape but no one else ever because she didn’t want to relive it over and over again.

Chloe made a choking sound then reached out for her mother’s hand and held it tightly.

“I want to kill him”, she said.

“He died in a yachting accident”.

“That story’s like a horror film, Mum…”

“I’ve been trying to put you off modelling because I was terrified for you, but I must stop it now because you’re an adult and you must do what you want. It’s not right that I’ve been short of praise for you – though I don’t understand some of your looks, they’re just so odd to me, darling, I’m sorry – but it wasn’t that I didn’t think you were capable, or good at it, not at all. I admire what you’ve achieved. I just didn’t want those vultures to come for you…”

Wendy sank back into the cushions. Chloe kicked off her trainers and curled up next to her mother. She thought about telling her about the recent escapade in the hotel but decided it was wiser to park it.

“I’m so glad you told me, Mum. I’m so sorry that happened to you, I promise I won’t get into any situation where that could happen to me. If I can avoid it. Which I reckon I can. And men are more scared of being found out these days…”

Wendy nearly said something cynical but stopped herself.

“I’ll be alright, Mum. I might give it all up anyway. They want me to surf in Majorca, but I can’t so I’m going to get busted…”

Terry came in cheerfully then caught the mood. “My girls!” he said tenderly and sat at their feet with a little groan as his knees cracked. “The most beautiful – and fiery – women in the world!” They sat in their family cocoon, the room and their emotions settling.

“I’m going to make us hot chocolate!” declared Terry.

“Love you!” the women chimed together, then laughed. They tangled their spaghetti legs and held each other tightly until Joni ran out and was replaced by an inferior singer, then Wendy got up and suggested Chloe put on something she liked, and Chloe chose some 80’s disco, and they both danced round the room, Wendy gracefully and Chloe looking super-cool. Then Terry came and joined them and was neither graceful or cool, and they laughed again, then cried a little bit, and then they laughed some more.

Freda had a very low profile. Some people who knew her slightly thought she was pleasant enough. Some thought she was odd. Most people couldn’t have remembered her features for a photo-fit if she'd committed a grisly murder in front of them. She was - I have to say - bland. Like an invalid’s diet or the decor of a suburban show house or a caravan holiday in Eastbourne. She was only 30 when I met her five years ago, but her clothes would have looked about right on a middle-aged schoolmarm from the 1950s: head to toe M&S, no patterns, all wishy-washy hues.

She lived on her own in a cottage left to her by her parents where she’d grown up an only child. She told me once that her parents were “emotionally unavailable” but as I got to know her, I heard some disturbing stories about how they’d whittled down her ego, her father with his critical patriarchal ways, and her mother by being anxious and squashed, unable to give Freda a useful model of strong womanhood.

I met her when I was escaping from London. I'd spent my 20s in a fog of drugs and alcohol, coming up for air enough to find training and employment as a tattooist, but had to leave the job when my outlines became too shaky. My Dad, who I barely knew, had had a fit of late-stage paternal concern (or guilt for leaving me and Mum when I was 5) and paid for me to have rehab in a private place in the country. One day, when I was deemed safe enough to take a little trip out with my mentor Jack, we visited a nearby village. I'd only seen plain walls, haunted faces and therapists for two months, so it was joyful to be in this cosy old place, front gardens stuffed with early summer flowers and peopled by rosy-cheeked locals who walked at half the speed of city types. Jack laughed at me for raving so much, saying it just looked extra vivid without my drink and dope filter, but I wouldn't let him rain on my parade. I wanted to live there! It felt safe and comforting and just what I needed. Minutes after this realisation, we looked in the window of the corner shop, marvelling that people still put up notices for lost dogs and cleaning services. I saw a sign saying Room to Let. It was Freda’s, and that's how I came to be her lodger.

I guessed it would be a bad idea to turn up to the cottage in my ripped jeans and leather jacket, and I’d decided to transform my look for my new sobriety anyway, so for that first meeting I went for a beige shift dress and white plimsolls. I told Freda I'd been ill for a while and needed peace and quiet and that I could pay the rent with a deposit from my Dad and an online business I’d revived from years ago: designing greetings cards, logos and decals with a Gothic flavour. When she clearly had no idea of the true rentable value of the lovely room she was giving me, I felt I had fallen on my feet in a miraculous way. Though Freda seemed very dull, I was prepared to do whatever it took to hold on to my new clean and comfortable country life.

At first, we moved around one another carefully. She did dog walking and researching local history for the tiny museum and grew vegetables in her allotment. I drew for half the day and read novels or explored the village for the rest. I'd see her coming and going and noticed how she was with people and how they treated her with indifference. Though she was plain and quiet and seemed to lack social skills, I could see there was pride in her, an inner strength that kept her going even as she failed to make much of an impact on her surroundings. I could also see that the dogs loved her and trusted her, and that they obeyed her quiet, firm orders uncomplainingly.

Slowly, we started spending more time together, cooking dinner in turn, going on walks and telling each other about our lives. I muted some of the horrors of mine but gave her the gist. One night, I asked her if she wanted to see my tattoos. I didn’t have any on obvious display but on my back and legs, I’d gone to town. By the light of the standard lamp in her fusty retro living room, I pulled off my T-shirt and leggings and stood in my pants whilst she examined me. I explained that the pictures were inspired by stories I used to love from Edgar Allen Poe, from Alice in Wonderland and Dracula. They were all tangled together and didn’t make any sense as such, but they were all done by the same tattooist, a good mate of mine, Viper, and I knew they were beautiful and flowing, even though they were a product of my fucked-up years. At first, she looked unmoved but by the time she was kneeling on the floor and contemplating the White Rabbit emerging from my knicker-line and scampering down to my kneecap down some winding steps, she was shaking her head with her mouth open like she’d stepped through a portal into another world. She looked beautiful when she was animated.

I was nearly as gobsmacked by the stories of her childhood. It seemed inconceivable to me that a girl born in 1990 could have had such Victorian parenting. When she told me about the many and varied ways her father punished her for the most mundane misbehaviour – tying her hands and feet together and forcing her head down to eat food she disliked, driving her out far into the country at night and letting her find her way home with no food or water for answering him back, making her write, “ I am a person of no consequence” hundreds of times for not buffing his shoes properly - I put my hand on her thin shoulder and left it there for comfort for as long as she seemed OK with it.

I carefully avoided the pub, The Three Bells, though I couldn't fail to notice it was a beautiful 17th century building with quaint beams and chimneys and various additions that had been stuck on over the years, all under a coating of wisteria. I imagined it being maze-like inside and wished I was brave enough to go in without fear of being lured back to drink. One warm evening I sat in the back garden with my landlady and asked nervously,

“Freda, would you do me a big favour?”

She looked at me in her blank way but said, “Yes, why not? What is it?”

“I'd like to go to The Three Bells, but I need support, and I wonder if you'd have a soft drink with me in there so I can see the architecture”.

“That's fine”, she said with one of her tiny dish-shaped smiles that I'd come to realise was her equivalent of warmly embracing something.

So off we went. And before we stepped inside, I felt for her hand and gripped it hard so that when we entered the lounge bar, we walked in like two lost waifs in a forest. I saw a grizzled, scraggy man turn to his warty, obese companion and mouth, “Lesbians” to him, but no one else registered our unglamorous presence. Freda took charge, walked to the bar in her poised and measured way, and ordered two ginger beers. We sat and gazed at the old polished wood, the faded oil paintings of huge pigs and curious wall-mounted metal implements. I sensed Freda was looking at me too, checking I was OK, and I felt moved and grateful.

I’d been short of loving attention myself. My Mum was a kind woman, but she'd had to work at two jobs to keep us, and I spent long hours outside of school with tetchy neighbours, at underfunded youth clubs or later, hanging around on street corners. I was a magnet for dealers and predators, screwing up my education (apart from art class) and thinking that rebellion was some sort of lifestyle. Mum died at 48, worn out, and I still wanted to cry every time I thought about that.

After we'd enjoyed our drinks, sipping delicately like a pair of ladies on the Earl Grey at a teahouse, we explored the rest of the building and sure enough, it was a jumble of crooked passageways, low ceilings, flagstones and surprising odd-shaped rooms. Freda had been there before, of course, but she said that with me it became magical and new. Back at home, Freda improvised a story about a lovelorn girl trapped in the inn by a vicious father. I sketched out images from her tale with slashes of black charcoal. After this burst of communal creativity, we drew closer together on the sofa and found ourselves holding hands again.

People in the village started to call us The Girls, which could have been disrespectful, but we both knew that in many ways we were still childlike, stunted by our pasts. The closer we became, the more I liked it when the greengrocer would say, “Here come The Girls!” or when the vicar asked if “The Girls” would like to run a stall at the jumble sale at a meeting about fund-raising, and everyone knew he meant us.

When I was three years sober, I started thinking about sex and whether I was going to have any more in my life. There were slim pickings in the village and a scroll through the dating sites – for men or women, I was easy - just made me feel tired. They all seemed to be lying through their well-whitened teeth. I was stumped. After some months of nagging sexual deprivation, I started looking at my housemate with different eyes. She was so much hotter than when we'd first met. Still on the demure side, but with more colours: pink in her cheeks, bright blue and green blouses and some really cute yellow sandals. Had my next sexual relationship been under my nose all this time? We were already tactile in gentle ways, but maybe I should go further?

One night after dinner and with some soft jazz in the background, I nuzzled up to her on the sofa whilst she did the crossword. She let out a little “Ooh!” which I completely misinterpreted, and grabbing her knee with one hand, I pulled her face towards me with the other. She didn't push me off or shout, but I felt her go completely rigid. Within seconds, I stopped and looked at her. She was like a stone monument. “Oh, Freda, I'm so sorry!” I cried. She rose slowly and painfully, and left the room. I paced up and down, breathing hard, then I went up the little wooden staircase to our rooms and stood outside hers, listening to a tiny bleating noise coming from inside. I'd never heard her cry before. It was the saddest sound I'd ever known.

“Freda. Please let me in.”

She wouldn't. My night was sleepless and tortured. And the fight not to drink was like grappling with the devil. In the morning, I sat outside her door until she opened it. Then I begged her to talk to me.

“It's OK,” she said, and sat down beside me. “I understand. I just don't want to do that. I like us the way we are.”

“So do I!” I sobbed. “I love our friendship. You saved me. And I repay you with this…”

“You saved yourself,” she said, “Now. If you want to...sleep…with someone, I don't mind. But it won't ever be with me. And would you please keep living here?”

We both had a good cry then.

A few weeks later I started dating Jack. He still worked at the rehab place, and we had some laughs and some awkward - then very pleasant - sex. But he wasn't keen on anything serious. And I realised I wasn't either. Freda met him, but I never took him back to the cottage and our thing fizzled out. It was fun to get back in the saddle though. I daresay I'll want that sort of contact again one day, but I feel I've scratched that itch for now.

And Freda? She's my graceful, wise and precious friend. My housemate, My companion. My platonic spouse. I look after her and she looks after me. We're going on holiday abroad to Italy next week. Her first time. We've been to London and bought stupid amounts of clothes, hats, snorkelling gear and sunblock. I felt fine being in the city but very happy to come home. Tonight we're reading guidebooks and learning some basic phrases. I'm as excited as a little kid. And so is she.

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©Alison Goldie

Photo: Vivian Maier

As soon as I saw him, I knew I'd made a big mistake. The bowl haircut, the pressed linen blazer, the big tortoiseshell glasses, the beige chinos. So radically not my type. He was smiling nervously and I put on the requisite face, playing for time and being polite. He went in for a hug, probably expecting a brief clasp, but I was so mortified, I overcompensated for my cutting assessment of him and squeezed him like a grizzly. He looked surprised.

He fumbled in his man-bag and pulled out a CD compilation he’d made for me. We'd been talking about music in our emails and phone chats; it had been an area of common ground, so this was an entirely reasonable gift, but it made me pity him. He was trying too hard.

We were standing on the South Bank of the Thames, next to the Royal Festival Hall. It was midday in early summer, full of freshness and promise, but I would rather have been in bed in a darkened room. I had been so nervous about the date that I couldn't eat breakfast. I am nothing without breakfast. I was feeling weak from the lack of it and speeding on the excess of coffee I'd had instead. The plan had been for us to have lunch, then proceed to the Tate Modern. A fulsome date. A great date. As long as you felt attracted to the other party. I resolved to plough on and give him a chance. We’d bonded at a distance enough to get to this point - we couldn't be blamed for arriving here. Maybe I'd feel better after the food.

We walked beside the river and chatted inconsequentially. I could hear my own brittle voice, trying hard to be civil. No mention was made of lunch. I was wilting. “Shall we find somewhere to eat? I almost begged. “I'm not really hungry,” he responded. What the fuck? As far as I was concerned, this date was mainly about the lunch. I’d had visions of a nice piece of fish, a dry white wine and a sexy flirt over the mixed salad. I tried to keep going for a while, then broke. “Well, I must eat. How about we just go here?” – I spotted a pub and gestured at it.

The hostelry was grim, old-fashioned and dark with sticky tabletops. I had half a lager and a bowl of chips. He had water, I noted contemptuously. It was even more of a deal breaker if this bloke didn't enjoy food and drink. He didn't even have one of my chips. I felt lonely as I fuelled myself. The chips went down like cement. I went to the loo to give myself a motivational talking to and we resumed walking to the gallery. At least when we're surrounded by art I’ll be nourished, I thought. Sure enough, the big canvases of vivid geometric shapes and stripes and atmospheric washes did their magic. We even managed to share some conversation that wasn’t stiff and forced - but it was too little too late. The afternoon drew on. He still hadn't eaten. His clothes were making me feel irritable. Soon I could go home and never see him again.

I wasn't entirely sure how he was feeling about me, but when we left the Tate to go to the point from where we were parting, he suddenly became impassioned about seeing me again. Could he call me tomorrow? Could we see each other again soon?

I batted him away feebly, trying to say noncommittal things like, “Yeah, sure” and “Give me a bell”. Then I weaselled off to the tube, feeling icky but looking forward to an evening of telly and delicious dinner all by myself.

At 10:30 that evening, I was embedded in the couch when the phone rang. I didn't recognise the number. It was him. “You'll never guess where I am!” he said. “Christ, he's outside!” I thought, preparing to barricade the door and ring the police (I had been stalked in the past and was touchy about these things). “I don't know,” I quavered. “I'm at the hospital,” he declared cheerfully. “I've just had an X-ray. I didn't want to tell you earlier, but after you hugged me. I felt a sharp pain that went on for the rest of the day. I didn't want to eat or drink as it was so uncomfortable. But yeah, you're stronger than you know. You broke my rib!”

Well! I was appalled but also amused. That explains things, I thought. I still didn't fancy him though. “Sorry about that,” I said. “Speak soon.”

Coda:

Although I dumped this crumbly-boned fellow on the phone the next day, I maintained politeness with him, and indulged a few more emails, the content of which became shorter and shorter as the futility of our communication became clear (to him; it already was for me). His final email to me contained a kicker of a question.

“If we had started a relationship, when would it have been a good time to tell you that I spent the first six months of this year in prison?”

You will understand why I never did internet dating again.

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Art: Álvaro Gómez-Pantoja

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I was watching ‘Flog It’, the antiques programme, one of several of the genre that I indulged in now that I was retired. The expert was valuing an Art Deco tea-set which was just like the one my Gran had given to me forty years before. It had been a wedding present, and she’d put it in a display cabinet where it remained unused. I’d admired it and she had entrusted me with it. It was one of my greatest regrets in life – worse than missed job opportunities and a badly-chosen husband – that I had destroyed this tea-set by using it recklessly. I blanched when I remembered fag-ends in the sugar bowl and tots of tequila in the teacups. The grief was not for the monetary value – which was substantial nowadays – but for the squandering of its beauty: the strange harmony of its geometric shaping and colourful hand-painted design.

The phone broke into my thoughts. It was Betty Next Door. I didn’t want to answer – I was protective of my daytime telly-watching time – then imagined how I’d feel if she was having a heart attack and picked up.

‘Soldier’s missing,’ she said, ‘He hasn’t eaten his fish or been in all afternoon.’

‘I’ll go and look for him, I’m sure he’s fine,’ I said in my soothing voice.

I looked in my garden to no avail then opened Betty’s back gate and prowled around in her neglected tangle of bushes and old fruit trees. At the bottom, next to the collapsing fence and a shed that looked like a haunted dolls-house, I found a standoff – Soldier versus a fox. Poor Soldier was the weaker party: fat, old and half-blind, he seemed bewildered at the gleaming young fox who was staring at him with the narrowed eyes of an epicurean contemplating dinner.

‘Bugger off’ I said firmly to the invader and made a half-hearted charge towards him.

He sneered but snaked away.

‘Come on, Soldier, it’s alright my darling…’ I crooned and picked up the cat, his amorphous body poignantly soft and baggy in my hands. ‘Let’s get you back to your Mum.’

Three days later, I heard a knock on the door just as I was sautéing some leeks for soup. I took the pan off the hob and found Betty on the doorstep with a bulging shopping trolley.

‘I’ve lost my keys.’

‘No problem, come inside Betty,’ I said in my cheerful voice. ‘You sit down, and I’ll do the bathroom window thing.’

I didn’t know how much longer I was going to be able to perform this trick – my knees! my back! – but I pulled out the ladder from my shed and propped it up against Betty’s rear wall. Then I climbed up, found the window ajar as usual, opened it fully and tipped myself headfirst into the bathroom sink from where I disentangled my limbs. Avoiding Soldier’s comatose form on the stairs, I drew on my inner Sherlock and found Betty’s keys in a cornflake-encrusted cereal bowl on top of the washing machine. I fetched Betty, unpacked her groceries, then we sat down with a cup of tea and watched ‘Pointless’, Betty commenting throughout on Alexander Armstrong whom she found ‘very debonair.’ I told her she fancied him, and we giggled like schoolgirls.

A week later, Betty rang me in tears. She’d just had a nasty phone call with someone at the council about her missing Recycling Bin and they’d shouted at her. My indignation at this malfeasance propelled me to her door, and I wrote down the story whilst she cuddled Soldier like a teddy bear. Abandoning my weekly appointment at Stitch and Bitch at the W.I., I went to the council’s offices, waited for 90 minutes amongst the ebb and flow of my tetchy and woebegone fellow-citizens, saw an official to make a formal complaint and demanded that a new bin be issued, then regularly emptied, for my elderly friend. As I had honed a lawyer-like voice from years of watching courtroom dramas, I felt satisfied that justice would prevail. When a spanking new bin was delivered to Betty, she invited me in for a celebratory daytime sherry with Garibaldi biscuits.

As I was polishing off the crossword late one evening, I received a phone call from Betty’s son in Australia. She had been admitted to hospital and, as her next of kin, he would try to get over as soon as possible, but as she might be in for a while - something to do with her heart - he wondered if I could look after the cat. I was afraid this meant I would have to ascend to the bathroom again, but when I opened the back door to do my duty, Soldier was sitting there, looking worried.

For the umpteenth time, I felt annoyed that Betty had not had spare keys cut – she was afraid they’d be found in my house by a potential burglar - but as I made a makeshift litter tray for my new charge, I fretted about her and hoped she wasn’t discombobulated by the hospital experience. I wasn’t unduly concerned about her health – so many of my friends and family had been taken into hospital for nasty-sounding issues but had been dispatched home again with a raft of new medicines within days.

Betty never came back. I visited her and she gripped my hand tightly and said, ‘You’re Soldier’s Mum now,’ which made me bawl at the bus-stop. She had given me her keys, at last, and I kept an eye on the house until, three days later, I heard she had died, and her son came over to deal with the estate.

Six months passed, then I received a letter from a solicitor. Betty had left me a bequest. I thought this would be just official confirmation of the relocation of Soldier and didn’t enquire further, but one day, there was a knock on the door, and I found a large parcel on my step.

Inside was a complete and unblemished Clarice Cliff Art Deco tea-set with a little note – ‘I know you like this kind of thing. It belonged to my parents. Don’t let Soldier play with it, love Betty xxx.’

Tracey was doing the washing up when the atmosphere changed. She had all the windows open for the heat and could hear the usual sounds of summer – kids mucking about, radios tuned to pop or dance music, an ice cream van’s tinkling. Then they started cutting out, one after the other in rapid succession, replaced by mothers’ calls for their little ‘uns to get inside. Then came the shouting and chanting, like a football crowd, but in the wrong place and less celebratory. She stopped scouring her egg pan and tried to work out where the noise was coming from. It was her street, from the end near the main road. She dropped the pan, wiped her hands on her apron and went into the front room. Nothing to see, just the ominous racket in the distance. They’d be here in a couple of minutes.

She scanned the street. It was like a Wild West town before the baddies rode in, empty and still. Where were the police? Then she saw movement, a slight shape in a tracksuit and a headscarf carrying shopping bags. It was Shamaila Ahmed, her next-door neighbour, about to turn into her gate but currently standing paralysed as she looked down the road, disbelief all over her face. Christ! What was she playing at?

Tracey threw open the front door and screamed, ‘Shamaila! Come in here!’ Her neighbour seemed hypnotised for a moment then looked at Tracey’s horrified face and ran towards her.

 ‘Get in the kitchen - they’ve been throwing things through people’s front windows, and they won’t care that I’m white.’

She wondered what in God’s name she could do if a missile did come in, then pulled the curtains shut in the hope they’d slow the progress of a brick.

Shamaila was still standing up with her bags, her legs visibly shaking. Tracey took the bags carefully and gestured her to sit.

‘Where’s the kids?’

‘Ali’s on a school trip to the Yorkshire Moors and Nadia’s on a long weekend with her friend’s family in Scarborough.’

‘Thank God for that. Is Yusuf at work?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, they’re not likely to attack an Amazon warehouse in the middle of nowhere…Maybe you should ring him and tell him you’re safe and not to come home - in case he thinks you need rescuing?’

Shamaila groped for her phone and called her husband and Tracy made tea, wondering if custard creams were a daft idea at a time like this.

The ruckus was outside now. In spite of themselves, the women went to the front window, and each pulled a curtain back a fraction.

‘Oh Tracey!’ Shamaila sounded like she was going to cry.

The men were wired, marching and punching the air, some wearing balaclavas, many of them holding bricks. They were all white, some very young, some middle aged, and a lot of them with substantial beer guts sheathed in football shirts, and tattoos thickly painted on arms and necks. Above a general cacophony, certain phrases leapt out: ‘We want our country back!’ ‘Muslims go home!’ ‘Stop the boats!’ A beer bottle whistled through the air and landed on Tracey’s patch of lawn. Both women flinched and dropped their curtains.

‘They’ll be going to the mosque,’ said Shamaila.

‘The police’ll meet them there. Don’t worry.’

They went back to the kitchen table.

‘Shall I put some of your stuff in the fridge? You don’t want it to go off, and you shouldn’t go back to your place for a while.’

Shamaila hunched in her chair and bit the skin round her nails as Tracey went through the bags.

‘Fuckers.’ said Tracey.

Suddenly the back door burst open and both women yelped.

‘You alright, Mum? Alright Sham?’

‘You nearly gave us a heart attack, Marcus, you bloomin’ arse. Why are you here? You’re risking your life being in this street right now.’

‘Well, I am six two and I put me hood up and pulled it in so they couldn’t see my skin and I came round the back way, so I’m like a big ninja. And I couldn’t not come and look after my Mam, could I?’

‘Yesterday, I saw a video of a white mob beating up a black man in a park, in Manchester, in broad daylight. He was cornered and there were loads of them, just shameless. It’s like Germany in the 30’s all over again.’

‘It’s not good, but in Germany, the government ordered the violence, remember? These anarchist wankers haven’t got the backing of the state. Apart from a couple of bastard MPs.’

‘My clever son,’ said Tracey. ‘He did history and politics at school.’

‘And now I’m a car mechanic.’

‘There’s no shame in that.’

Marcus squeezed Tracey round the shoulders with a meaty arm. Then he patted Shamaila on her forearm, gently.

‘We’re gonna look after you.’

‘You can’t look after me forever.’

‘We can and we will,’ Tracey declared with Churchillian firmness.

Marcus made sure all the doors were locked then went upstairs to film the rioters, ‘for evidence.’ Shamaila texted her daughter not to worry. Tracey made more tea. The crowd was thinning out but there was still a strong presence of vicious men trailing behind the leaders, looking around for something, anything, it would feel satisfying to break.

Tracey joined Marcus in his old bedroom and watched as a skinny lad in black lifted the lid of a bin in Mr Michael’s front yard, lit a rolled-up newspaper and threw it in. He laughed wildly, looking around for someone to acknowledge his cleverness and seeing no one, took a photo of the rising flames. Mr Michael’s carer, Janis, seventeen years old with a face like a glamour model, swept out of the house with a bucket of water and doused the bin. She screamed after the disappearing culprit, ‘Shitty little coward!’ and stomped back in.

They heard their front door open and shut, looked at each other in horror, then ran down the stairs.

‘Shamaila!’

She wasn’t in the kitchen.

 They went to the front window and Marcus yanked open the curtain. She couldn’t have gone out in this – or had a fascist broken in and grabbed her? Then Tracey saw her, in her own garden, bending down to pick up a ball that Ali had been using on the path to knock down skittles. She stood up - tiny, valiant - and with a powerful overarm throw, propelled the hard little ball into the sweaty rotund face of a rioter. He grasped his nose with a cry and fell to his knees. One of his drunken compatriots tripped over him and landed face down on the tarmac. Another bloke looked around, frightened, then ran. Shamaila had dropped to her knees behind her hedge, completely out of sight.

‘She could do shot-put for Team GB,’ said Marcus.

‘It’s a gold for Ahmed!’  said Tracey.

Shamaila turned her head to face them, eyes bright, breathing hard. They both clapped and nodded. She gave a proud, defiant thumbs up.

Audrey and Graham were furious. In spite of their vociferous letters to the developers, the council and their MP, the house-building on the conservation area had gone ahead. There was now a most unwelcome blot on the nearby landscape. Their pleasure in Bonnyford, cultivated over 25 years of living there, was distinctly alloyed. They could not eradicate the sense that a brooding presence of invaders was poised to attack their sleepy village and transform it into a den of iniquity, overrun with criminals, children and criminal children.

Whenever Audrey went to the High Street, she kept her eyes peeled for unsavoury strangers. She and Graham were expecting the worst sort because they knew that many of the homes on the new estate were designated ‘affordable,’ and a significant proportion of them were rental properties owned and managed by a housing association. For Audrey and Graham, ‘affordable homes’ meant poor people and ‘housing association’ meant communism.

Audrey kept a beady eye on the charity shops, of which there were now a regrettable number in Bonnyford. She was sure the incomers would be frequenting them rather than Barbara’s Boutique, where tasteful kaftans for the spreading but elegant mature lady could run to £200 a piece.

One Tuesday, she sat in the tea-shop bay window and scanned the street. She had seen plenty of strangers, but they could easily be tourists or relatives of the long-standing inhabitants. Noone had looked particularly shifty or caused a breach of the peace. She sighed and returned to her cheese scone, slathering the remains in butter and swallowing them with the last drops of cooling Earl Grey. Graham had gone fishing with docile Alan and monosyllabic Philip and wouldn’t be back till the evening. She suspected he’d be glad of some peace after the angst-ridden conversations they’d been having of late, wondering if they were too old to move house, and if there was anywhere left in Britain that wasn’t prey to terrible disruption and disfigurement.

Audrey needed balm herself. She made her way through a street of mingled half-timbered and Georgian cottages to the church, a Norman beauty of substantial size set in a cemetery of weathered tombs and rose bushes. As she pulled open the ancient door by its iron ring, the comforting smell of the interior welcomed her. It was hard to tell its components: Wood? Damp? Crumbling parchment? It was certainly peculiar to old churches, and she associated it with many she had visited in her life, giving her solace since she was an insecure child frightened of monsters, spiders, and the dark.

But what was this? The church was not empty, as it usually was on a weekday afternoon. A young woman in fluorescent pink shorts was gawping at the ceiling, and scurrying footsteps were ringing from the stone floor, accompanied by frequent squeaks. Had this gaudy stranger released a giant rat into the hallowed space?

The woman noticed Audrey and said, ‘Hi!’ cheerfully and without the respectful modulation Audrey felt was fitting.

‘Good afternoon,’ Audrey replied tersely.

‘It’s so lovely, isn’t it? Nice carvings. To think they put all this effort into a village church!’

‘The settlement would have been much larger and more important when it was built.’

‘Ohhhh!’ let out Pink Shorts in an understanding way. ‘Well, it’ll be larger and more important again now with the new homes.’

Audrey could barely conceal her rancour.

‘And are you living in one of them?’

‘Yes, me and Poppy,’ smiled the girl and gestured to a small figure in dungarees standing between two pews and looking up at Audrey with frank curiosity.

‘What’s your name?’ it said.

Audrey pursed her lips, debating whether to shut down now before she encouraged these vandals, but found herself saying, ‘Audrey.’

‘Ordery,’ repeated the child and smiled radiantly, her round cheeks glowing, and gappy white teeth twinkling in the dusty sunlight floating in the nave. Audrey felt a palpable punch in her gut and staggered a little.

‘Are you ok?’ said Pink Shorts. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ She guided Audrey into a pew.

‘It’s just indigestion’

‘No probs. Just take it easy for a minute.’

Audrey stared ahead, winded and perplexed.

‘I’ll leave you be. Give me a shout if it gets worse.’

Her mother off marvelling at the stained glass, Poppy assessed the situation then made a decision. She clambered up onto the bench beside the sad-looking lady and patted her, very gently, on the knee. Audrey looked down at the tiny chubby hand in amazement. Then the child started making conversation.

‘Nice cushions. Look at all the pictures!’

Audrey paused, then couldn’t help herself.

‘They’re for kneeling on, when you say your prayers. The Women’s Institute make them and decorate the fabric with things that you can find in the neighbourhood, or that say something about the history of this place…’

‘I like the bird!’ said Poppy excitedly, pointing at an embroidered robin and nearly tipping herself headlong as she reached for it. Audrey put out a steadying hand and brought the cushion up to its admirer. There was that dazzling smile again.

When Sylvie, Poppy’s Mum, came to reclaim her daughter, Audrey and the child were poring over the cushions, Audrey intoning the stories behind the images and Poppy stroking the stitches then saying, ‘Now this one!’ as she pointed at the next in line with hungry enthusiasm.

Sylvie said, ‘Time to go Poppy!’ The little girl screwed up her face but acquiesced, sliding off the bench smoothed by generations of backsides, and taking her mother’s hand.

Audrey wondered how Sylvie could be so confident, wearing those shorts and leaving her child with a stranger.

‘Say bye-bye to Audrey.’

‘Bye-bye!’ Her curly hair bounced as she waved her hand vigorously.

‘I hope we see you again,’ said Sylvie. ‘It’s lovely to meet someone who knows this place so well. Maybe one day you’ll visit us on the estate.’

Audrey gave a tiny nod.

She stood and watched as they left. When they reached the door, Poppy twisted round and gifted her observer one more huge effervescent smile.

Audrey smiled back, the skin on her face cracking like the spine on a new book.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Image credit: Brian Cook, Illustration for The Villages of England 1932

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Mum’s calling me again. Something about bloody line-dancing. Why in God’s name does she think I want to go line-dancing? I’m 17 for fuck’s sake, not 70. I take a deep breath and walk to the top of the stairs. I see her pleading face looking up at me, her hand holding open the front door, all keen to go. “Mum,” I say calmly, not screaming it like I want to, “I don’t want to come line-dancing, it’s not my thing. You go and enjoy yourself and pick up a nice fella.” She gives me that worried look that drives me insane. “I’ll be fine here - I’ve got homework to do,” I lie. “And don’t worry about rushing home if you want to stay and have a drink. I’ll just go to bed when I’m ready.” She’s given up, I can tell. She mutters, “Alright.” And goes. Thank Christ.

I get my fags out of the drawer with the old jumpers in that Mum never opens. I put on a black coat that’s too big for me and makes me feel safe – not that there’s going to be any sex-pests around here. I nip out the back door and climb over the broken fence at the bottom of the patch of weeds we call a garden. We can’t grow nice little flowers here like civilised people because the air’s too salty. Not that we’ve tried. There’s not a soul about. It’s Sunday night. There’s a James Bond film on the telly – they’ll all be watching that. Again. Unless they’re line-dancing or down the pub. That’s it for Seahouses.

There’s a bit of a wind but it’s not too nasty and it feels like it’s blowing all the boredom off me. I look up at the sky and count the different shades of dark blue – at least twelve. There’s a big ship out in the North Sea, a tanker maybe. I wonder what it’s like to have a job that means you’re on the sea most of the time. I love the sea, but I love it from the land.

I scoot down a gravelly slope to the beach, looking for a spot to smoke. There’s a hollow I like, but at this time it’s just a bit too near town if any kids come out and want to do the same. I get nearer to the sea so I can walk more easily. The lapping of the water is soothing. There are some waves breaking a bit further out but they’re not making a racket like they were doing in the storms. I walk for about a mile. I’m trying not to think. Thinking leads to worry. Worrying doesn’t help. I find my spot next to a dune and wiggle my bum around in the sand so that it moulds to me. I have a fag. It’s delicious. Then I have a Polo to take away the taste.

Soon it’ll be spring. The tourists will start drifting in, with their muddy boots and their ordnance survey maps. “You don’t need a map,” I always want to say, “Just walk along the coast for ever and ever.” They must be disappointed when they come to the town though. They think they’re going to be staying in a lovely old inn at the Anchor in Hope but it’s crap inside – horrible squishy beds and melamine furniture. I know that because I went out with Derek the landlord’s son, Aidan, and we used to fuck in the vacant bedrooms – then he went off to university and I haven’t heard from him since. I’m not really bothered. He never looked me in the eyes when we were doing it – it’s like he’d already left.

I’m not sure I’m clever enough to get to university and Mum doesn’t want me to go – she’ll get lonely. But there’s nothing for me to do here. In the summer I might get a job selling boat trips or something but in the winter... When I’ve got through my A-levels, I’ll be free to go anywhere I fancy. Maybe Newcastle to start with. One day I’d like to visit London.

I’m getting chilly. I don’t know what time it is - I left my phone at home because you can’t get a signal out here. I’d better get back. I walk fast next to the water, swinging my arms, singing a sea shanty that my Dad taught me years ago. He used to sing a bunch of them at the Seahouses Shanty Festival when I was little, and everyone would join in and clap along. The festival will be on in the summer – the highlight of the year. I’ll just go to that, then I’m out of here. Sorry Mum

.

The man was baring his teeth. Debbie almost laughed. She imagined David Attenborough describing this in his cosy voice, ‘The attacker adopts a snarl in a reflex primitive action designed to frighten the prey and cause them to stay rooted to the spot.’ The man didn’t have very good teeth: they were jumbled up as if they’d been thrown into his mouth in a hurry. She felt a pang of sympathy for him – he’d never get that lot fixed on the National Health.

They were both silent. He was waiting for her. She hoped he wasn’t a rapist as well as a mugger. She decided he was just a mugger, mainly because he’d blurted, ‘Give us your money!’ like a child playing at bank robbers, and because he had a hungry look, like some food, or possibly drugs, were his top priority. Just in case, she evaluated his size and strength and decided she might be able to fight him off if it came to that.

It had been such a great evening. She’d been at The Rose with Jan and Fred, the first night out she’d had in weeks, and they’d had a pizza afterwards, sitting on a bench on the street, giggling and hiccuping. Passers-by had looked at them indulgently – these forty-year-olds goofing about late at night. The streetlights and the glass shopfronts twinkled, and Debbie thought the little street looked glamorous, with the three of them set against it like stars in their own movie. They’d kissed and hugged lavishly then split three ways to go home. It was such a short trip to her door. And now this.

As she’d stood on her step and groped for her keys in her rucksack’s messy depths, the mugger had appeared out of nowhere and made his demand. She was glad of that pizza – it had sobered her up significantly – but she was aware that her reactions were still slower than usual. The switch of mood felt difficult. She was still happy and mellow, so how could she now go into frightened and vigilant?

‘Give us your money,’ he said again, more urgently this time.

Debbie looked at his mangled teeth, and as she did so, he licked his lips and she realised that he was afraid. She breathed out and looked at him more closely. He was in his twenties and scruffy in a lumpy tracksuit and dirty trainers. He looked rough but not unredeemable. She imagined him now as the Before picture, then a cleaned-up version for the After shot. It could be done.

There was no way she was going to give this bloke anything.

‘I’m not giving you any money or cards or whatever. I’ve got peanuts in the bank, and I need that to feed my kids. My husband’s disabled, I do two part-time jobs which is worse than doing one full-time one and much more badly paid, and I haven’t had a holiday for five years.’

The man frowned and opened his mouth to object, but she ploughed on.

‘You’ve picked the wrong person. There are people who live over that way (she gestured in the direction of the tree-lined streets abutting her own) who could spare a few quid, but as you can see, I live in a dump, my clothes come from charity shops and my boots (she bent up her knee to show him a sole) have got holes in.’

He stared at her and sucked at his poor teeth reflectively. He looked around as if another answer to his predicament might present itself, but failing to find one, he sat down heavily on the low wall next to her door and took out a tin of rolling tobacco.

‘Sorry,’ he said, and rolled himself a thin fag, quickly like a pro. He lit it and inhaled hard, ‘Want one?’ he said and offered her the tin.

She hadn’t had a cigarette for years, but suddenly having one seemed the right thing to do, so she took it and sat down next to him. They smoked quietly.

‘Are you ok?’ she said, eventually.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t’ve done that. My mum’s ill, and I’m skint and I just thought I’d try it.’

‘I’m sorry about your mum.’

Debbie stood up, tired now, and brushed flecks of tobacco off her coat. ‘This isn’t going to solve anything, not really.’  

‘Nah,’ he said.

‘Debs?’ Vince’s worried voice came from inside, ‘Is that you?’

The man flinched and stood up quickly.

‘Yes love, I’m coming’. Debbie put her key in the lock carefully, and half-turned to her accoster.

‘Goodnight.’

‘Night.’ He paused for a moment, then took off down the street.

She waited for him to turn the corner before opening the door. Her hand shook as she closed it behind her.

The two women, unsure of the ropes, collide in the queue.

‘Sorry,’ they both say, and laugh.

The girl on the desk chews gum unhelpfully.

‘Is this where we check in?’ says the older woman.

‘Yeah, have you got your red hat?’

‘What?’

‘You have to wear a red swimming cap so they can see you in the water. You can’t go in if you don’t have one.’

‘I didn’t know that.’ The older woman is flustered, disappointed.

The gum-chewer says, ‘There might be a spare one in that bucket.’

The older woman snatches at the only cap. Then she looks guiltily at the younger woman who says, gently, ‘It’s ok, I have one.’

‘Are you both first timers?’

‘Yes,’ they say.

‘Go over there for your briefing.’ They are dismissed and wander tentatively in the direction of the gum-chewer’s wave.

A cheerful man with long grey hair, ear lobes stuffed with rings and a high vis jacket gilded with water drops, marshals the women to stand in front of him. He looks up at the tall black young woman and down at the short white old woman.

‘Are you both new here?’

‘Yes,’ they say apprehensively.

‘Righto! Well the changing rooms are that big piece of grass there, the loos are inside, you’ve got your red hats (they nod) and if you get into trouble, put your hand up and we’ll come out and get you’.

He points to his kayak, fluorescent and reassuring, moored beside the jetty.

‘There are five courses, you can do a short one from that buoy to that buoy, a longer one from that buoy to that buoy, a third one from yonder buoy and back to the first buoy…’

His briefing is fast and incomprehensible. The older woman gives up trying to follow it and looks longingly at the water. She’ll probably just stay near home base, no need to do anything risky on her first go. The younger woman is still listening. She wants to do the whole thing and she wants to do it properly.

‘Can you just go through that again? I don’t understand if you have to swim to the right or the left of the fourth buoy.’

The older woman thinks, ‘I’m sure it’ll all become clear when I’m out there.’

The younger woman’s face is contorted, she really wants to understand, but the jolly man, who has said all this a thousand times before, is galloping through his speech. The older woman pats the younger woman on the arm, then worries that the action was patronising and that perhaps she can’t touch strangers without permission anymore. The younger woman doesn’t glare at her so perhaps it’s ok.

Eventually, the briefing ends. The older woman and the younger woman go to the patch of grass, tactfully separating to disrobe. A smattering of locals is talking on the grass or sit singly in the bright sunlight, delighted and perhaps a little disturbed that October is now fine for sunbathing. The older woman and the younger woman stand up valiantly in their swimsuits and stuff their hair into their caps. The older woman wears a vivid one-piece, the elastic stretched from use, her breasts on the way to meet her waist. The younger woman wears a monochrome sheath with go-faster stripes, her smooth shape encased like an athlete’s. Both are strong. Both swig water from recycled plastic bottles.

They fall into step as they approach the jetty. They glance at each other. The younger woman says, ‘There’s no stopping us now.’ The older woman gives a nod of assent. They contemplate the vast, cold and beautiful urban lake. And jump in.

I am creative and like writing but I don’t think I’ve got a novel in me. So, short stories it is. They’re often about women and girls, but men also feature. Sometimes they’re fictional, sometimes they’re true. Sometimes, I take the header photos, sometimes they’re the art of other people I admire.

I hope you enjoy them, have a laugh or shed a tear.

Let me know what you think - I really appreciate it, and it helps to know I’m not writing in a vacuum.

Here’s a classic pic of me by Vermeer, in my curlers and shortie dressing gown, waving my quill over some parchment.

Lots of love to you (I’m a bottomless pit of need for that stuff myself) xx