Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson Page A

gold lashes so that he still didn’t look grown up. It was hard to see how he was going to stop looking like a boy and start looking like an old man, never mind all the years in between.
    There was always a flock of girls after Albert but there was never one he chose to be special. His brother Tom was married and away from home but Albert said he didn’t think he’d ever get married and both Lillian and Nell agreed that this was a daft thing to say because you could see that he’d make a grand husband, and in private they agreed that if he wasn’t their brother they would have married him themselves.
    The way things were going they’d probably all end their days together anyway. Neither Nell nor Lillian seemed capable of catching a husband, they’d both had broken engagements, Nell’s broken by death and Lillian’s by an act of betrayal, and one day Rachel would die and leave them alone. ‘If only . . .’ Lillian would say as she plaited her hair at night in Nell’s room, and Nell, pressing her face into her pillow, wondered, for the millionth time, why their mother had been taken away and they had been given Rachel in exchange.
    Nell rinsed the teapot with hot water from the kettle, swirling it round and round before emptying it down the sink. Jack Keech had taken his braces down so that they hung around his waist and had rolled up the white sleeves of his shirt so that she could see the muscles in his forearm flexing as he sawed the wood. The skin on his arms was the polished walnut colour that came from working outdoors. Albert looked like a guardian angel standing over him and Nell watched both of them, holding the teapot to her breast and wishing that this moment would go on longer.
    When she went out again with the tray of tea and plate of bread and butter, Jack was marking off a piece of wood with a pencil and with a tremendous effort Nell said shyly, ‘It’s very good of you, mending the bench like this,’ and he looked up and grinned and said, ‘That’s all right, Nell.’ Then he straightened up for a minute and, rubbing the small of his back, said, ‘It’s a nice yard you’ve got here,’ so that both Albert and Nell looked round in surprise because neither of them had ever thought of the back yard in Lowther Street as being ‘nice’; yet now that Jack said so you could see how sunny it was and Nell wondered how they could have lived here for five years and never really noticed the dusty-pink clematis that was climbing all over the wall and the back door.
    ‘Jack’s a chippy,’ Albert said admiringly (although Albert was a train driver which Nell and Lillian agreed must be a wonderful thing to do). Jack knelt down again and started hammering a nail in and Nell found the nerve to stand and watch him for nearly a whole minute and all she could think about was what high, sharp cheekbones he had, like razor-clam shells.
    Jack didn’t stop and drink his tea until he’d finished, by which time it was cold. Nell offered to brew a fresh pot but Albert said he fancied a beer and suggested the Golden Fleece. Jack gave Nell a rueful smile and said, ‘Another time, maybe,’ and she could feel a blush rising up from her chest to her cheeks, so that she had to look away quickly while Albert helped Jack to pack up his tools.
    Nell was left alone to deal with Rachel when she came back from a temperance meeting at the church. She was in a foul mood because no one had put the tea on to cook and they ended up eating bread and butter without speaking because Lillian didn’t come in until later and said she was working a late shift (she worked at Rowntree’s) which Nell knew wasn’t true. Albert didn’t roll in until past midnight; she heard him pause and sit on the bottom stair to take his boots off so he wouldn’t wake anyone and then creep up to his room.
    The next time Nell saw Jack was a few Sundays later when he stopped in with Frank to pick up Albert for the football team’s annual outing. Frank