The Step Child by Donna Ford, Linda Watson-Brown Page B

tired, and home offered no respite. She was at him when he left for work, and she was waiting for him when he got back. He was immediately given a list of things I had done during the day – most of them created and based around being ‘evil’ or looking at Helen ‘funny’ – and berated for bringing me back into their lives. Helen would shout at him to work on the alcove, to do things around the house, to help out with neighbours she had promised his assistance to. The man never got a moment’s peace. But when we went on visits he changed, and I felt the benefit as much as anyone.
    Uncle Alex and his family lived in Burntisland, a coastal town on the Firth of Forth. They lived near the ‘Bin’ – a law, or a hill that sits in the centre of the town, and which you can see from the other side of the Firth of Forth. I can remember always visiting them in summer, and only ever for the day. In those days, kids were generally sent out to play while the adults stayed in the house. Burntisland was a small place when I was little, and everyone seemed to know everyone else. Even today it has a population of only about six thousand, and people from Edinburgh still see it as an ideal place for a day trip. To me, it was a place of fun – I loved the trip there; I loved going to the beach and the parks; I loved the fairground even though we didn’t have the money to do any of the things other families were enjoying.
    When I got a couple of years older and Simon and Frances had been staying with us for a while, we could pretend to be famous in Burntisland. My cousin, one of Uncle Alex’s daughters, was going out with one of the sons of the man who owned Macari’s, the ice-cream shop – and in that convoluted relationship, we saw our claim to fame. Whenever we passed the shop, whenever we threw a few words at any other kids playing outside, we’d loudly declare that we were ‘related’ to them. And didn’t it make us feel grand! By the end of any visit, we had completely convinced ourselves – but no one else – that weowned the entire shop and café. The irony was that we couldn’t even afford a single cone between the three of us.
    My Dad also had a younger sister whom we would visit regularly. Auntie Madge was the baby of the whole family. Helen always referred to her as ‘the spinster’, although it was a long time before I found out what that meant. It always sounded like an insult coming from Helen, but I don’t think Madge would have seen it as such. She always liked things just right, and was quite set in her ways, despite being younger than her siblings. She was particularly neat and tidy, and had quite precise manners. Appearance was everything to Auntie Madge and I remember her clothes very clearly. She wore smart, woollen, Chanel-type suits, with nylon turtle-neck sweaters, flat patent leather sensible shoes with matching handbag, and a hat pinned ‘just so’. Madge always had perfectly coiffed permed curls, a bit in the Irish mammy style, and delicate glasses. Her pearls were a permanent fixture, and I can still see her pulling on her gloves one finger at a time. She had a sickly sweet smell of foundation and perfume, combined with the air of being extremely prim and proper. Madge went to church regularly and was a Girl Guide leader. Whenever we went to visit her, I had a sense of something different, a different way of being that was very correct and absolutely unwavering. All of this made her so different from her brothers that it was hard to place them all in the same family.
    Until you met Granny Ford.
     

     
    Granny Ford was the original family matriarch. She ruled the Fords, and no one would ever dare dispute anything she said to her face. Of course, Helen would have the last laugh in that department, but to her children, Granny Ford was the woman who mattered. She was tiny with a smiley face and grey curly hair. Round and warm, she often cuddled us when we went tovisit. I clearly remember the