Sweetie by Jenny Tomlin

lieutenant of Lizzie’s, and always had been. The two of them went back a long way. Although Sue appeared to be the leader, it was Lizzie who often pulled the strings.
    Gillian was round at Grace’s that morning, doing the shopping and cleaning, but said she would pop in later. She had felt the need to do something.
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    Chantal’s funeral was still on her mind, as it was on everybody’s, but her first duty was to her sister and her family now.
    The three women sat grim-faced and businesslike around the Formica-covered table, drinking strong tea from bone china cups and saucers. ‘Kiss and Say Goodbye’ by The Manhattans was playing appro -
    priately on the kitchen radio. The washing-up bowl was upturned in the sink and the draining board had been rigorously Ajax-ed. The grey standard council-issue linoleum was similarly well-scrubbed and a strong smell of bleach permeated the room.
    Everything had its place in Lizzie’s kitchen. The paper-towel holder held a new roll, the tea, coffee and sugar canisters were neatly lined up, and the two-slice toaster gleamed in yellow and stainless steel. A gentle breeze lifted the pristine white net curtains above the kitchen sink and dispersed the clouds of smoke which hovered above the heavy glass ashtray in the middle of the table.
    Sue Williams broke the silence.
    ‘My Wayne was in the park after school and he says Steven was definitely there, hanging around the swings all afternoon.’ Sue referred to her eleven-year-old son while she jiggled her youngest, three-year-old TJ, on her lap.
    Born with cerebral palsy, TJ was the apple of her eye and was adored by friends and family alike.
    Always smiling, he was the easiest of her four 49
    children and, despite his problems, always happy just to sit and play contentedly with bricks or anything else he found lying around. Sue never had any problems finding people to watch or hold TJ. The child seemed to have a rare quality about him that made up for his disability.
    ‘And it’s no coincidence that this all started when he came back from that spastic school he goes to.’
    Any irony in Sue’s observation was lost on her; having a child of her own with special needs in no way made her sympathetic to Steven Archer. TJ was still the baby everybody loved. She never once con -
    sidered the problems he could face when he reached Steven’s age. She was so sure that she’d identified the guilty party that she prompted the other women and exaggerated all the things Wayne had told her. ‘My Wayne said he was sure he saw Steven fumbling with his willy. Bloody pervert! Probably getting off on seeing the young kids playing.’
    Her words enraged the other women round the table.
    Nanny Parks stubbed out her cigarette angrily.
    ‘I’ve always said he was a weirdo.’ She picked up her spoon and stirred two sugars into her tea. ‘Don’t you remember how he used to lose his temper and chuck stuff about? He always threw wobblies in the classroom. No wonder they wanted to send him away from other kids! I don’t know how Eileen has coped with him all these years.’
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    Eileen Archer, Steven’s mother, had already seen the second of her children leave home pregnant and bound for a shotgun wedding when she herself became pregnant with Steven at forty-four. She knew she was old and the baby could be at risk, but for her as a religious woman there was no alternative but to continue with the pregnancy. At the time there’d been lots of jokes and cruel remarks about the egg from the speckled hen. All sorts of old wives’ tales flew about, and for nine months, Eileen was the talk of the neighbourhood. Everyone said ‘I told you so’ when Steven was born a spastic. Eileen struggled on as best she could. Even after her husband, unable to cope, had left them and moved down to the south coast, she stuck by her boy. He was hers, and he was called
    ‘special’ because he was. He wasn’t the only child in the area to have cerebral palsy, as it was