She didn’t move. I stood and waited, unsure if I should sit down or not. At last, she sighed heavily, kicked the table again, and got up. She glanced down towards my brother once more, then made a huffing noise and began to walk back towards the house. She didn’t ask me to come with her but I followed anyway. We walked inside and crossed the sitting room, making way for Eleanor who stomped down the stairs with a face like thunder, and went through the kitchen to the utility room. Thankfully, my mother was no longer in there. I really didn’t want Edie to see her with the box of cleaning stuff, in her work clothes and slippers.

Edie bent and opened the drying machine. A warm smell of fabric conditioner filled the room. Inside was a jumble of clothes. She pulled them out and rifled through them, discarding things she didn’t want on the floor. When she’d found what she was looking for she took her jumper off and dropped it on the pile of clean clothes from the dryer. She wore a black bra with a simple lace trim. I didn’t even know they made normal underwear in black. I looked up at the ceiling to avoid staring at her.

She put a T-shirt on, a vest top with skinny black straps and a marijuana leaf stencilled on to it in white, with a scooped neck that showed off the multitude of silver and black necklaces that hung at different lengths around her neck. She stepped out of her skirt and left it on the floor with the other clothes then climbed into some shorts, denim cut-offs like mine only tighter and so short they grazed the curve of her buttocks. Then she reached into her bra and adjusted her breasts, pulling them into the middle to make more of a cleavage.

‘Beachwear,’ she said, answering a question I hadn’t asked.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Angie

July 1986

Angie rang the doorbell and tried to neaten Jago while they waited. She sighed. Grey faded jeans with rips on the knees, scuffed Doc Marten boots, and black leather cuffs around each wrist was hardly the outfit she’d have chosen for him.

‘Couldn’t you have worn something a bit smarter?’ she whispered.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Anything else?’

‘I’m painting a garden fence for them. You want me in a pin-striped suit for that?’

‘You’re not painting it yet. She wants to make sure you’re suitable, remember?’

The door opened and Eleanor appeared. She wore white three-quarter length trousers and a striped top with her hair tied into a low bun at the nape of her neck.

‘I thought you had a key?’

‘Oh, I do.’ Angie’s cheeks grew hot. ‘But it didn’t feel right using it with you home.’

Eleanor looked past her and smiled at Jago.