Memories are made of this

This is a Social Services phone
“Tell who it is not to ring here. Don't they know that this is a social services phone, and anyway I'm waiting for him to call?” They left the house quietly leaving Joe yelling and slamming doors, still oblivious to the fact that he was now alone once more.
"Anyway Esther, tell me about his new chap of yours. What's he like and what does he do? Not that that matters. All I want is for you to be with someone kind and thoughtful and just to be happy!
"Well…” Esther thought how she should describe him as they continued their walk down the mill as the intercity sped onto London with miniature people getting on with their lives as they walked and chatted about Arthur and how tall he was. “He actually comes from Peterborough where he works as an engineer at Perkins, but he is not at all posh! In fact when I first met him at that polish club I thought he wasn’t my cup of tea at all, which shows how wrong first impressions can be!”
Surely anyone with the slightest of airs would soon fly from their house without a back-ward glance and with much to say to their friends later “Why should he be posh Esther?”
"Well, he reads the Times, went to Grammar School and his mum lives in a posh house on a private estate in town and he says she talks really well.”
"Living in a posh house doesn’t make you better than anyone who lives in the most humble of places.” Esther didn't reply but knew her mum was right.
“He follows Leeds football, loves steam engines, where he is right now and seems really into motor bikes. I’m sure you will like him. He has asked if you would like to come with us when we go to Northampton to hear the Prime Minister Harold Wilson give an election speech."
"That’s so nice of you and him to take me. Are you sure he won't mind me tagging along?”
"Of course he won't, and anyway, it's a nicer and gentler way to meet him rather than in the house with Joe and his drink and hatred that seems somehow forever there!”
They both walked back up the lane as dusk settled and so they turned up their collars probably both thinking of what would be at home. They met Dee out with her little dog. As they strolled together, leaving the silver stream and the steam of the passing train to paint across the summer patch-work fields Dee chatted and they listened.
“I don’t know where the years have gone but I lived in this very lane as a child and always delighted with the wild flowers, hedgerows, the river, and the rail-way the birds and the farm-workers who in the summer at their threshing machines would stop to wave at me. I still remember the special smell of the leather from the boot and shoe factories. When I was at the little school in Church Street a man with a really sturdy bike sold large ice-cream cornets outside the school gates at either a penny or half-penny. Oh how easy life is now; though to hear folk groan round about us you would think we were living in the back of beyond. I remember how we would visit my friend’s parent’s house for Sunday dinner that had been cooked in the bake house down Church Street and how lovely it was and how it cost five pence and do you know strange to say we were so happy then!”

At the end of that week Esther was on the coach speeding along the M1 to Nottingham Palais, she had thought about apologizing for her stepfather’s aggression but eventually decided to let it pass, as one might let a cold. What else should she say to fill the awkward gaps? Arthur wiped the coach windows with his sleeve, which then slipped almost to the bone of his thin elbow.
“Looks like an accident ahead.” It was. The traffic slowed and Esther wondered whose style had he borrowed, what with drainpipe trousers, one green and one yellow fluorescent sock. Then in a moment of curiosity she wondered what exactly he was carrying in his Tesco carrier bag, although she did just about see the Times newspaper poking out from the top.
“Thought I would miss this bus tonight.”
“Oh, why was that?”
“My brother Graham rang me and being long distance I couldn’t really ask for him to ring back.”
“Of course not.”
“Anyway, he was just ringing to say he is coming home sooner than he had first thought, he was going to travel back from Australia with me but then he met up with some other travelers. I would have loved to have stopped, but work wouldn’t have been happy with me taking off anymore time so here I am!”
Esther felt her heart skip a beat. There was something both gentle and understanding and she saw that he listened to her and didn’t speak about himself all the time. She was also quite envious that he had traveled the world whilst she was still hanging onto the hem of life.
“Did you stop in hostels?” he grinned.
“We actually, stopped in one nice place where I thought there was a cat on the bottom of my bed only realized what it was when its long thin pink tale swept over my face it was a bloody rat, so we didn’t go back there again.”
She thought back to the rats at her grandfathers farm and how they hung by their tails on the shed door-waiting to be incinerated. Then of her street, those that were born there, worked close by and buried closer with a trip to Skeggy or Blackpool. The rush and the crush of the annual torchlight parade to brighten their lives and the gayness and loud noises that filled their streets. Poverty stopped you trying, stopped you dreaming, so perhaps that was why Joe was the way he was. Esther was always trying to make excuses for the man that blighted their lives.
Arthur offered her a drink later that night, but she refused. He then asked her to dance but at first she wasn’t sure perhaps determined not to get hurt. So he then went and leant against the bar with a glass in his hands and stood there alone looking so sad and uncomfortable. He later himself took the risk and asked her to dance spinning her in his long arms and his eyes seemed to sparkle incredibly. At the end of a slow dance he had kissed her and at that moment she forgot about his fluorescent socks, his drainpipe trousers as well as the fact that he had had a little too much to drink. But the next day, when at work whilst dealing with a woman stressed about the fact that her giro had not arrived and there was the week-end coming up with no money coming in. After arranging an urgent payment to tide the young mum and her kids over that week-end she thought of Arthur. Partly she wanted to put the clock back, put that kiss away and forget it. Best she gave love a miss. Yet in all honesty how could she remain at home and give up her own life to the brutal consistency she would undoubtedly face for the rest of her life and share the pain along with her mum.