Secrets My Mother Kept by Kath Hardy Page A

times in my young life where exactly that had happened. Everything could turn on a sixpence, and happiness could descend into chaos with a single look, word or action.
     
    There was one time when Margaret and I had been playing happily upstairs. Mum was just about to serve up dinner. It was one of the ‘plenty’ days. We were having meat pudding. The savoury smells from downstairs were wafting up to us and our tummies were getting excited at the thought of the feast to come. Aunty, Pat and Jo were home and Marion and Marge were doing their homework on their laps at the top of the stairs, under the landing light.
    ‘Shush,’ Marion complained to us. She always had the hardest homework as she’d won a scholarship to a very posh grammar school in Hackney called St Victoire’s. When the time had come for her to start she still hadn’t got her special grey uniform and the tailored stripy blazer that was a requirement. The girls who were there on a scholarship had been sent grant cheques to pay for their uniform, and so they were to collect them direct from the school office. When her first day came she was called with the group of three other scholarship girls to go and collect it. When she came forward the lady looked down through her glasses at the label on top of the neatly folded pile.
    ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she said kindly but with a knowing look in her eye, ‘I’m afraid you can’t take yours today; it hasn’t been paid for yet.’ Marion slunk back to class with a dreadful dawning awareness that tomorrow she would be the only girl in the class with the wrong clothes. When she came home and told us, Mum was furious.
    ‘What do you mean she wouldn’t let you have your uniform?’ she said angrily. ‘Just you wait; I’ll write you a letter.’
    It had taken more than a letter, Mum made many visits to the school and many protestations to the head teacher before the school accepted that the grant cheque had never arrived and Marion was allowed her uniform.
    Today she had brought it home, and so was determined that this was a new start. Tomorrow she would look like the other girls, she would have done all of her homework and she would be able to walk into school without feeling that everyone was looking at her. She had even saved her bus fare by walking the three miles from the station so that she could buy some celebration sweets on the way home. It was going to be a good day.
    Suddenly there was a sharp, loud bang bang at the front door. When Mum opened it the shouting started.
    ‘I want me bleeding money!’
    I recognised the man from next door. Margaret and I sat huddled together on the stairs, terrified. Mum was soon joined by Aunty and Pat and they all began to shout together. Then the man’s wife Vera arrived on the doorstep.
    ‘You promised! It’s been over free bleeding weeks naw!’ she bellowed and began swinging for Mum. The noise reached a crescendo and suddenly Mum pitched forward, clutching her chest.
    Aunty let out a cry. ‘Flo, oh no! Flo are you awright?’ Pat supported Mum, who looked as though she was going to pass out, but the shouting carried on. I wanted to run to Mum, but was holding tightly on to Margaret who was now crying.
    ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s all right,’ I kept repeating, while I rocked back and forth, feeling as though my limbs were turning to liquid, and my tummy sinking in on itself. Aunty gave a huge push and managed to slam the door on the man and woman.
    ‘Flo, Florrie,’ she kept repeating as Mum slowly started to recover herself. Aunty was panicking as she always did. ‘Paddy, get the doctor! Flo, Flo, oh my gawd, you awright Flo?’
    Pat calmly led Mum into the kitchen, sat her down and then went to put the kettle on. We stayed on the stairs trembling for a while and then crept down and peeped into the kitchen; seeing Mum sitting on her usual chair by the side of the fire, we rushed over to cuddle her. Marion and Marge had stayed at the