from any other day. Well, except in so much as they served to remind her of the distance that was growing, and would carry on growing, between her childhood and the place she was now. How much she yearned to grow up, have it gone.
Her arms mottling from the cold, Kathleen pulled a thick cardigan over her nightie and ran downstairs to the bar. It wasn’t time to start the cleaning yet, but this was another of her rituals; to make a rough assessment of how bad it was so she could work out how long it was going to take.
She had to factor in extra time today, as well, it being Saturday, because on Saturdays, as well as cleaning the tap room and toilets, the foyer and back of bar, there was also the best room to give a proper clean. That was a particularly long job because in order to vacuum the enormous expanse of carpet, all the chairs had first to be lifted onto the tables.
She completed her inspection. Two hours, she reckoned, heading back into the foyer to go upstairs again, then she’d have some time to herself for a bit. She was just at the foot of the stairs when the letterbox rattled behind her, as Eddie the postie fed a clutch of letters through the slot. ‘Morning!’ she called out, waving to him through the frosted glass. She liked Eddie. He was a habitually smiling presence in a day often lacking them. He’d also, it seemed, delivered something for her.
Kathleen never got post. After all, who would write to her? Even on this day, her birthday, such cards as she might get would be delivered by hand. She’d had a pen friend once – a wild-looking girl called Ingrid, who lived somewhere in Germany, and would write to Kathleen in halting, sometimes comic English, but once she went to secondary school, it had all fizzled out. Since then, there’d been hardly anything, the only moment of excitement being when she’d written to a nature organisation, as part of a school project about wildlife conservation, and had received several leaflets, a letter and a poster of a tiger, which adorned her part of the bedroom wall for a good two years.
Funny to realise that she actually felt wistful about school now, despite counting the days till she’d left. But perhaps her eagerness to leave was because she saw better things ahead of her, yet, here she was, just over a year later, stuck working in this place, working like a skivvy for a paltry wage.
She scanned the envelope, wondering who on earth it might be from. There was something familiar about the handwriting, though, even if it was all written in capitals, and when she saw the postmark, it dawned on her who the sender might be.
She ripped open the envelope, as she climbed the stairs back up to the flat, smiling as she pulled out what was indeed a birthday card, and from the person she’d thought it might be from – her Auntie Sal. She was thrilled to see a ten-shilling note fluttering out, but then her face fell. This must mean that she wasn’t going to visit. And so it seemed, as she read the short message:
Have a lovely day, Kathleen
So sorry I can’t be there but our Lisa has the mumps. Hope to see you soon, though – just as soon as we’re no longer infectious!
Lots of love, Auntie Sal xxx
Sally McArdle wasn’t really Kathleen’s aunt. She was, in fact, her stepmum’s younger sister. Married to a lovely man called Ronnie (who she called uncle, and who was the blueprint for the sort of man she hoped to marry one day) Sally was the complete opposite of Irene. Blonde, slim and pretty, and with the sort of personality that could light up a room as soon as she entered it, she was everything Irene was not, and, as such, that Irene hated in a woman. Which was part of the reason that Kathleen loved her so much.
Auntie Sally lived in Thornton, which was two buses away, so she wasn’t able to visit all that often. But when she did, she always spoiled Kathleen rotten. She’d bring her a new jumper or something, and always a bar of Fry’s Chocolate Cream. She also shouted at Irene if she was being nasty to Kathleen, which meant she shouted at Irene quite a lot.
Kathleen could never quite fathom how you could have the joy of a proper sister (as opposed to Monica, who she’d never grace with that name, despite her dad, from day one, always suggesting she should) and manage to hate her so much. Kathleen would have loved a sister – or a brother, just a sibling to call her own – but Irene didn’t seem to like Sally at all; she called her all sorts of names behind her back, and hated it when she visited. She had even accused Kathleen’s dad of fancying her. ‘You’d love to get her into the kip wouldn’t you, you dirty old get!’ she’d yelled once after Sally had left. ‘I’ve seen the way you leer at her.’ That had been followed by the usual four-hour argument, with her dad having to crawl round Irene and tell her how beautiful she was and how he didn’t ever want anyone else. It made Kathleen want to puke.
The kettle was whistling on the stove so she quickly propped the birthday card up on the breakfast table before filling the teapot. It was a huge blue ceramic thing and weighed half a ton, but a year of working long hours in the pub had built up her muscles. She might be downtrodden, but she was young, fit and strong, and that pleased her, even if it was just another reason for Irene and Monica, both short and podgy, to resent her.
She spotted Irene’s cigarettes on the windowsill and pinched one to smoke while the tea brewed. She did this most mornings, and didn’t feel a shred of guilt about it. Irene made sure half her wages got taken straight off her for her board and lodgings, so there was never enough left to justify buying her own Woodbines – and certainly not when her stupid stepmother was so careless with her own. It was another ritual she enjoyed before the rest of the family rose. The back door of the flat opened out onto a small section of flat roof with a railing round it, from when the last owners of the Dog and Duck kept their dog there. Now it served as a sort of patio, perfectly placed as a sun trap, and though her table and chair were an upturned beer crate and a wonky stool respectively, it always felt a treat to be out there, out of the way, with just her own thoughts for company.
Despite the nip in the air, the sun was shining and the day looked like being glorious, so Kathleen lingered as long as she could before going back in to start rousing the family. Darren was first; he needed to be off soon for his early start down at the hospital, and as she went into his bedroom her nose was immediately assaulted by the stale, smelly air that filled the room. What was it with lads and their bodily functions? It was the same in the gents downstairs in the pub. The ladies was never half as bad.
‘Daz! It’s half seven,’ she whispered, shaking him awake. ‘Time to get up.’
Darren rubbed his eyes and yawned, adding another gust of fetid air into the room. He looked done in and Kathleen wondered what time he’d come in the previous evening. He was a closed one – you never really knew what was going on in his head. Not these days, anyway. Not since he’d left school, really.
He sat up and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. ‘Ooh, is there some tea on, our kid?’ he asked, as if there wasn’t tea on every morning. Still, at least Darren appreciated how much she did.
‘Course there is,’ she said. ‘But you’d better hurry up. And don’t you be falling back to sleep,’ she added, fanning her face in the wake of another gale of foul air, ‘because I’m not coming back in here again, you smelly get!’
She left Darren and trotted along the corridor back to her and Monica’s room. It wasn’t much of a room, really – not like the big bedrooms that people always seemed to share on telly – just two beds, a chest between them, a wardrobe and a sink. A tight squeeze for two girls and all their things. Well, all Monica’s things, mostly, because she had so many more of them, so she had three drawers to Kathleen’s one, and took up most of the space in the wardrobe – in fact, Kathleen had never really considered it to be her room. It felt like Monica’s, right down to the horrible brown velvet curtains she’d chosen, which sucked all the life from the room, even when they
