‘You don’t know anything about it, so you can just go back inside your house and stay there!’ Lynne said. ‘You keep right away from Angie, you’re only wasting your time trying to help her and be nice to her. How dare you say we never…for your information, Dad’s got to leave an important meeting and take her to Rankin House! And that makes the third time since…’

‘Rankin House? Is that a hospital? How long will she have to stay in there?’

Please, please say it’s the flu…

‘She never ever stays there more than a couple of days…Oh, you mind your own business!’

Her voice was as final as a slammed door and he stood wretchedly in Thelma’s garden, listening to her footsteps across the alley. After a while, all defiance gone and replaced by sadness, he peered out through the slot above the padlock. He could see the grey flagstones and the open gate of Angie’s yard. He waited for a long time, chilled in spite of the blazing sun, and eventually a car turned into the alley. Seymour blinked. He’d expected Angie’s father to be a stern, forbidding sort of person, but the man who got out and hurried in through the opposite gate was too ordinary to be anyone’s idea of an ogre. Mr Easterbrook came out just as quickly, carrying Angie wrapped up in a blanket. Lynne held the rear door of the car open while Angie was placed inside, and then she and her father got in and the car edged back into the traffic of the main road.

Seymour watched it all and raged silently, ‘All her family, they’re so rotten and stuck up, you’ve only got to look at them! They don’t give a stuff about Angie. That Lynne, she can hardly wait to get off to her old ballet class, doesn’t give a damn, you only have to look at her! Him, too…the way he just dumped her in the back of his rotten car like she was a sack or something…’

But he knew that actually, that wasn’t the truth of it at all. He’d caught a glimpse of their faces as they’d carried Angie out to the car, and what he’d witnessed there was a kind of raw and hopeless grief.

pram, cot, singlets, bassinet, baby bath, nappies, maternity clothes, talc, playpen, bunny rugs, pusher, bouncinette, bibs, jumpsuits, plastic pants, booties, nappy pins, baby album, ceiling mobile—cow jumping over the moon, night light—teddy bear one, shawl, carry basket, high chair, mosquito net, little woollies, rattle,

NAMES:

David, James Jamie Jimmy, Aaron, Troy, Stuart, Andrew, Patrick, Seymour.

Melissa, Lynne, Jeanette, Juliet, Judith, Kylie, Samantha, Kirsty, Lyneve, Chantelle, Fleur.

Supporting Parents benefit or whatever it’s called?

Part time job somewhere, Jude might babysit for me?

Put name down for emergency state housing flat?