Second Chance by Sian James Page B

home from school, but perhaps it was at this time that I felt mature enough to start smiling and nodding at her. She was old with thin grey hair and glasses, the skin of her face was crinkled like knitting, but she had a very gentle smile. Hers was the last house in the village. All the other children had already reached their homes and I was alone with another long mile to walk.
    After we’d reached the waving stage, she started calling me in to help her with something or other. She usually wanted me to find something she’d mislaid; a pair of scissors, her best shoes, her bottom teeth. I had no trouble finding the lost article, often it didn’t take more than a minute, but she was always very grateful and repaid me with sweets or biscuits which made the uphill walk home far more tolerable. I was always disappointed when she didn’t appear, a little grey ghost in the garden, to beckon me into the house.
    One afternoon she took me round to the back garden and showed me the neat rows of carrots, lettuce, peas and radish her son had planted for her when he came to visit her on a Saturday afternoon. ‘He told me to keep the weeds down,’ she said, ‘but I can’t see the dratted things on account of my cataracts.’
    â€˜I’ll keep the weeds down,’ I said. I’d never done any gardening but that day the sun was warm on my back and I felt ready for anything. She brought me a hoe and showed me how to poke it into the soil round the little plants. ‘You are a good girl,’ she said. ‘When you’re old and have cataracts, you don’t see no weeds but only great landscapes clouding your eyes.’
    It was early summer and the earth was crumbly and soft, there were butterflies flittering about the gilly-flowers that grew down the path, golden gilly-flowers and bronze and chestnut; the smell of them was like being rich. I called in every day to keep down those dratted weeds.
    When I’d worked for about ten minutes, Mrs Bevan would call me in to the kitchen to wash my hands. She’d praise my work, though she couldn’t see what I’d done, thank me and then hand me a brown paper bag with apples in it or some slices of sponge cake, once a whole swiss roll.
    One day when I’d been working longer than usual, she called me in to her front room to see some newborn kittens on the television. We didn’t have television; I never saw it except on Christmas Day at Auntie Jane’s. Mrs Bevan seemed to realise that from the way I was watching it. ‘You can come in and see Jackanory every day if you’d like to,’ she said.
    â€˜Can I bring my mother?’ I asked her. ‘She gets nervous if I’m not home by half-past four.’
    â€˜Of course you can. I used to know your mother years ago. Nice little woman.’
    It became a ritual, a daily treat. My mother would walk down to meet me every day at half-past four and we’d go into Mrs Bevan’s front room and there we’d stay until it was time for the early evening news.
    At first my mother was very shy with Mrs Bevan but she soon got engrossed in the programmes and forgot about her.
    We continued to call once or twice a week all through the summer holidays and we were always welcomed.
    â€˜I wonder if you’d like to come to work for me, mornings,’ Mrs Bevan asked my mother one day as we were leaving. My mother looked startled, almost as though she was about to run away. ‘You see, I’m almost ninety years old and my son wants me to go into Penparc. If I had someone here for a couple of hours every morning, I could manage nicely.’
    â€˜What would you want her to do?’ I asked. ‘She can do the dishes and sweep the kitchen.’
    My mother came to life. ‘I can do washing and ironing,’ she said, her words tumbling out of her, ‘and, and... something else as well.’
    â€˜Hoovering?’ Mrs Bevan asked. ‘My son bought