Lives less Ordinary

There was no time for talking and so the three of us ran back to the bus stop. Then we had time to talk as we waited. I thought about my dad again then counted the red cars that passed us. Not in a million years could anyone have guessed where we'd just been. Me in my very best second hand green gingham dress and plastic sandals to match. Hair tangled, with pretty brown hairclip matching my hair, lost enroute. I misbuttoned my knitted cardigan; casting my eye's upwards to black clouds and thought again. My brothers were both occupied with searching for their return tickets-realising there trouser pockets were empty. It wasn't unusual for them to lose things but it didn't help on this day. By the time the bus appeared, carrying the remnants of Saturday market shoppers, their tickets were found in their rolled down socks.

  It was the same conductress . She smiled down at my youngest brother and enquired "Have you had a nice day-up to mischief I'd be bound! We clambered up the winding stairs- grabbing the silver rails at the top. We sat, again, at the front of the bus and looked across at the gardenfields where tiny crouched bodies continued with their own work. Our bus stopped for the last time, before heading home to our town. We didn't talk about where we'd been together. Wasn't it an everyday experience to get on a bus.

 We walked later down the dark tunnel that connected one red bricked terrace council house to the next, then past the outside toilet-hearing the toilet flush we looked ahead and then down the long garden where someone else we didn't yet know was smoking a cigarette. Mum and our new stepfather, our could never call him dad, were sitting on the leather sofa thathe'd brought from his home. A wedding cake, bought by our neighbours, sat in the middle of a vynyl tablecloth. I didn't feel that hungry but would manage the wedding cake when it was cut.

  I stared at my mum and saw tears in her eye's. What had she gone and done?.