Memories are made of this

Growing up
Esther left school at fifteen, not much expected, so not then given. In spite of this, and after a succession of clerical and shop jobs, Esther was shocked to discover she might just have a brain, having passed the entry exam in the Civil Service to be a clerical assistant at the nearby Labour Exchange, based in an imposing old hall. The place was drowning with rooms and draughty corridors and there was an underground passageway to the nearby parish church. Inside the high, wide windows and flapping, grey, dingy blinds sat Esther, behind her small desk, working out Manual Benefit Entitlements (dependent on National Insurance Contributions).
As she worked, she was forced to listen to her young boss and her world took on a deeper and darker tone. Every Friday in that same office, claimants were forced to stand in a rigid queue in order to sign on their blue UB50 form. Between 9 and 11 the unskilled workers stood. One of these was slow Mr Ben, whose home were a couple of rooms above the greasy spoon café. Shuffling his feet, adjusting his oily cap and dropping his money into his overall pockets he explained,
“I’m off to the market for my cabbage and carrots and then my paper”.
“What a waste” she thought, knowing full well how he struggled to sign his name on his UB50 form.
“No rain at present, Mr Ben” replied Esther. “Take care and, yes, put your money safely away Mr Ben.”
Next in line was Suzy Ibis, who no catering establishment would agree to employ once they heard how she got the sack from a local cafe by licking the tops of the tomato ketchup bottles spotlessly clean.
Following a tea break, Esther had a chat with Terry, one of their employment advisers who would, at least once a week, treat her to dinner in the Greasy Spoon. After the break she would sign-on the Executive Officers with their neat brown shoes, clicking heels and briefcases that contained sandwiches, a flask and a pen; then an out-of-work actor who worked for a long-running radio program. He would face the rancour of the bully-boss, Sandy, if he was more than five minutes late signing-on.
The bully who was her young boss and the bully that was Joe, after eighteen months, became simply too much to cope with. Unable to hold the gaze of anyone and, with her eyes in the gutter, panic, fear and crushing pain refused to go away. Then, some months later, relieved, she had been forced to admit her own terrors.

On her way to the clinic she walked past the prams and pushchairs outside the Co-op and could see figures vanishing up the steep connecting stairs as mums went up to the mother-and-tots group in the hall above.

Dr T. moved and sat on the front of his desk. It was her fourth visit when he said,
“Esther, you can reach for the stars, you can do whatever you want, and you are neither thick nor useless…but you must try…in order to change you have to try”.
So it was that Esther gradually learned to lift her eyes from the ground and hold first Dr T.’s gaze and then, very slowly, other people. For a long time she had been unable to look any human being directly in the eyes. Yet then the miracle happened and she began to see the world from eye-level. The sun shone at last. She could think of tomorrows. Of a life to be lived rather that thrown stupidly away. Slowly Esther felt more relaxed as she sat with Dr T. on the upper step talking quietly, with pots and pans rattling from the kitchen, where washing-up was being done by the patients who shared such tasks. Ahead were two men, a nurse dressed in a shirt and trousers, but no white coat, and an elderly man who was having a coughing fit.
“Have you never thought of leaving home?”
It was an obvious question, and one she had thought about many times.
“I can’t leave Mum there with him…one day I know I must…but I can’t do it now”. Dr T. had offered to get her a job working as a nursing assistant, supporting people who had severe learning difficulties.
“I will think about it, thank you”.
Esther played Scrabble in the same room where she ate with other patients and staff, including Dr T. Then, at times, usually on a Wednesday, they would sit on green, comfy chairs in a circle in the large room at the front of the creaking old house whilst those living in homes round about them in the leafy street got on with living.
Returning home, one mid-afternoon, walking down the quiet but beaten street an ambulance was drawing away with its light flashing.
A week later there was a cortège and Esther was there, in a limo, sitting next to her family and feeling sorrow but also hate as she looked at the sad figure of her mum in her ill-fitting coat, and black but scuffed shoes, at her unseeing eyes whilst he, Laura’s father, the man responsible for her dark world, was being carried away…she didn’t know whether to judgement, and atonement…or to nothing.
Her grandfather had shown no desire to make things better; it was for that reason that Esther hated him most. Then, as they followed the hearse, Esther thought of the words of Dave as they talked in the cycle shed after his dog had been knocked over and killed.
“You don’t have to stay in the gutter”