There Should Be More Dancing by Rosalie Ham Page A

offices, schools. Then she remembered her criminal record.
    She ground out her last cigarette, paid for Margery’s prescription and bought a packet of Nicorette patches. At Gold Street, she put Margery into bed, made a nice poached egg on toast and, while Margery ate it, she sat propped against the other end of the bed and filled thecomplimentary dosette with tablets. Monday–Sunday; Breakfast – Somac for reflux, two Panadol Osteo for arthritis pain, Coversyl anti-hypertensive, Frusemide diuretic and half an asprin. Lunch – two Panadol Osteo, Frusemide, a multivitamin and potassium. Dinner – Temazepam to sleep and Panadol Osteo. Then she made a list of things that would make life for Margery safer, a ‘Plan for Independence List’.
    1. New glasses
    2. Portable phone – push-button, big numbers
    3. Take the bath out and put a shower base and chair in, OR, put a bench across the bath temporarily. New taps + washers
    4. Move the handrails next to the shower so M can reach them
    5. Replace all floor mats in the house with non-slip ones
    6. Adjust the doors so that they are secure
    7. Get new solid shoes with grip and better insoles
    8. Smoke detectors put in
    Anita studied the list then drew a line from the bottom to the top, making the smoke detectors number one. She tried to sell Margery the idea of getting a SCEM – a Safe Call Emergency Monitor telephone . ‘You hang a monitor around your neck so that when you fall, you just push the button and the council comes.’ But in Margery’s mind she saw three council workers with reflector jackets and Stop/Slow signs standing over her as she lay naked in the bath.
    â€˜Mrs Bist wasn’t able to push a button after she fell,’ Margery said defiantly. ‘She was unconscious.’
    Anita tried guilt. ‘How would your family feel if you’d fallen and had to lie there for hours before Mrs Parsons decided she didn’t want to go to bed with her shoes on?’
    â€˜They’d be happy and relieved,’ Margery replied.
    Anita conceded defeat when she phoned the council and was told that, due to budget restraints, Margery’s name would be added to the bottom of a long, needs-based SCEM waiting list.
    After she’d soaked and scrubbed Margery’s commode pot, cleaned the bath, dragged all the floor mats into the sun, put the chairs up then swept and mopped the floors, she stood in the bedroom doorway and asked if Margery had ever wanted to see the world.
    â€˜Those sorts of things weren’t possible in our day,’ she said. ‘Anyrate, you can see it on the telly for free, and a lot of it isn’t much chop as far as I can tell.’
    â€˜Right,’ Anita said, scratching in her basket for her cigarettes, ‘I’ll be off now. Give us a buzz if you need anything.’
    Margery said again, almost tearfully, though she wasn’t sure why she felt so emotional about something she knew she wasn’t going to do, ‘I don’t want to go to a home.’
    Anita said, ‘You don’t have to go to a home these days. The government prefers you to stay put. It’s cheaper.’
    â€˜Judith will put me in a home.’
    She put a cigarette in her mouth and continued rummaging in her basket for a lighter, a tattoo peeking down from her uniform sleeve, and though they were mostly hidden under her red fringe, Anita’s brilliant eyes were true when she said, ‘Not if I can help it.’
    â€˜You know,’ Margery said, studying her new home help in her short uniform over black, skin-tight shorts, black ankle socks and runners, ‘I cleaned Doctor Woods’ rooms from nineteen sixty-two until two thousand and six, and I never looked like the type of cleaner you look like.’
    Anita admired herself in Margery’s dressing table mirror, said, ‘Well, that’s a great relief to me,’ and sashayed out the front door.At her car she remembered