Tom

She’d told Tom that in her days folk only had one dustbin. That in her day’s people didn’t have central heating and in her days the bin lid was used for drawing the fire up in the hearth. Sometimes, when her father took the lid away from the smouldering coals there would be smoke everywhere. But, in her days, that was the way it was. In her days, when her spine was straight and skin glowing, she thought she looked fairly nice. Long blonde hair, false eye-lashed, long painted nails and short skirt she thought herself fairly lucky. Lucky to have a job in a shoe factory, where years later they were to make kinky boots. Lucky to have her own bedroom; whilst her three brothers had to share. Lucky to have the love of reading. Lucky to have a day at the sea-side once every year; usually Skeggy. Usually they ate fish and chips from yesterday’s news. Batter bits would drop down their clothes or stick to their fingers. If it wasn’t pouring with rain or the easterly wind wasn’t whipping and whirling everything round they’d huddle together in the fair-ground or beneath the pier. She was also lucky to fall in love with a good and kind man who worked at the Weetabix factory in a little village in Northamptonshire; not far away from the A6 where traffic ground to a halt before Finedon.
Everything in her world felt quietly lucky until Tom was born as the blossom blew away from Eeastfield Road. News soon spread about his arrival and people whispered kindly about her situation. Everyone seemed to know what to do; apart from her.