LITMIR.BIZ

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‘Midnight Hour’ but Wilson Pickett was late and she only dared listen to two songs before running all the way home with me asleep in her arms. Perhaps that was the night the music seeped into my blood stream.

      By 1969 they were separated and Dad moved to a flat round the corner. My mum trained to be a primary teacher while my dad carried on working in his car-repair workshop. I saw him regularly and there wasn’t too much wrangling, not that there was much to wrangle about, but they both had solicitors and had to go to court a few times. I think it was the mystery of all the legal correspondence and the dressing up for the days in court that made me decide to study law.

      I looked over at Lena as she smiled and chatted with the young man behind the counter. Lena had danced her way out of her estate, and eventually became a teacher of modern dance. You could tell by the way she moved. She was an inch shorter than me and her hair had one or two dashing streaks of grey. But the main difference between us was that she always made people feel that they were the most interesting person in the world. That’s how she always knew what was going on. People told her everything.

      ‘My darling, I thought I was feeling bad, but you look terrible,’ she said, putting two large creamy coffees down on the table. ‘I was going to suggest we go to that new bar this evening, the one that’s just opened off the City Road. To cheer me up. But you might not want to go out, looking like that.’

      ‘I would love to go out,’ I said, ignoring the implications of her comments. ‘My mum’s coming up.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘Why? Ashamed to be seen out with me?’

      She hesitated. ‘Of course not. It should be good. There’s a band too.’

      ‘Oh God, you didn’t say there was a band. They’ll play modern music really loudly.’ My brain was clicking. ‘Oh, I don’t know, I can’t bear to stay in with my mum, not on a Saturday. What would it say about my life?’ I took a small bottle of brandy from my inside pocket and held it up.

      ‘Great,’ she said, and I poured a slug into her coffee. Then I lifted the bottle to my lips but thought better of it.

      ‘Yes, do come,’ she went on. ‘But I will just say one thing. Those sunglasses are a little odd and they don’t actually cover up the blue and purple bits. Are you going to tell me what happened, or am I going to have to drag it out of you?’

      ‘It was a client.’ I didn’t want to tell Lena, I felt there was a need for secrecy, confidentiality, discretion. Perhaps I’d been doing the job too long. She looked at me amazed.

      ‘A client hit you? Why, because you lost? I didn’t realise clients got that unhappy with their barristers.’

      ‘Actually, it was the client’s husband,’ I said wildly. ‘There was a bit of a to do outside court. I don’t really want to talk about it.’

      ‘What did the police say?’

      ‘Well, I haven’t actually told them because it was partly my fault.’

      ‘Frankie,’ she said sadly, ‘violence is never the victim’s fault. Which court was this?’

      ‘I shouldn’t say any more.’ I sneaked back behind professionalism. ‘The case is ongoing.’

      Lena nodded sagely and I turned the conversation to safer matters. ‘What happened in Paris?’

      Lena told me how they had arrived at the Gare du Nord and argued because Sophie had wanted to sit in cafés all day while Lena had wanted to visit as many museums as she could. Then things had got more personal and Lena had had to leave. ‘She called me a tourist!’ Lena gasped.

      I knew I could not afford to say, ‘Well, you were.’

      ‘What am I going to do with my mum?’ I asked.

      ‘She could come with us tonight.’

      ‘Lena!’

      ‘Just a thought. What about Columbia Road tomorrow morning? She could buy some plants to take home.’

      We finished our coffee and wandered down Church Street, window shopping in the secondhand shops. It was hot and sunny and we were half looking for a new table for Lena’s kitchen (she had just reorganised her flat) but half looking for outfits for the evening. In a small shop selling pine furniture and altar cloths was a large cardboard box full of shoes. Most of them were the same style, dull black and gold slingbacks, but one pair had three-inch heels, sharply pointed toes and neat stud buttons up to the ankle.

      ‘Perfect club wear!’ Lena exclaimed.

      ‘They’re 37s,’ I said sadly, feeling like an ugly sister who knows that even if she sliced off the tips of her toes they would never fit. Not that I would ever have worn them, but they were such a bargain at £3. The pair! Lena on the other hand was bouncing with excitement since 37 was exactly her size.

      ‘Come on, Lena, you can’t wear those. They’re far too femme for you,’ I said.

      Lena sighed, as if I was spoiling her fun. ‘As you and I have discussed on many occasions, Frankie, the headings Butch and Femme are merely a shorthand and superficial description of the myriad ways women express their sexuality. And clothes are the least helpful indicator of how a woman feels about herself. I have a leather jacket, you have a leather jacket, and we are sometimes described as butch, but then Kay has a leather jacket and Sophie has a leather jacket, and they are undoubtedly femme. What conclusions can we draw from that?’

      ‘That we’re all very boring people. But those are really femmy boots.’

      She tried them on and she couldn’t walk in them so they went back in the box.

      By the time we’d slipped into Fox’s Wine Bar for a small glass of white wine and some haddock pâté and then gone into the book shop on the High Street for something uplifting and topical to read and discuss, it was gone four o’clock. It was time to prepare myself mentally for my mother’s visit. I sauntered back home, thinking positive thoughts, planning a little more washing up and general tidying, and bought a small bunch of white and orange freesias to perfume a small part of my living room, in her honour.

      As I turned into Amhurst Road I could see a taxi outside the house and a short bulky figure getting out. It was my mother in a large fake fur coat.

      ‘What do you think?’ she said, twirling in the street.

      ‘It’s astonishing,’ I said, paying the driver and picking up her two cases. ‘You’re early.’

      ‘Freda next door was going into town and offered me a lift to the station. Anyway I thought it would be nice to have a bit of time with you – and your black eye – before your big night out.’

      Fortunately, for both our sakes, she didn’t mention the eye again. Instead we spent two hours drinking tea while my mother brought me up to date on all my relatives who lived near her in Colchester: two aunts and their husbands, and one unmarried uncle. Then I heard about the neighbours and the parents of old friends of mine who still lived nearby. By now we were on gin and tonic. When we got to the antics of the couple who were the holiday replacements for the people in the newsagents, I left my mum to watch Blind Date while I went into the bathroom to prepare for the Queen of Sheba, as the club was known.

      ‘Now don’t you worry about me,’ she said, looking up from the Guardian TV page, as I slid my wallet into my inside jacket and decided against wearing a coat. ‘There’s not a lot on television tonight, but I’m sure I’ll find something. Can you get Channel 5 here?’

      ‘Not very well,’ I said, and pointed to the pile of Rock Hudson and Doris Day videos I had dug out from my collection specially for her.

      ‘Oh, you know me,’ she said, ‘I can never work a video. I’ll be all right, dear. Off you go and enjoy yourself.’ She patted my hand bravely and I stomped out of the house, rage and guilt steaming off my skin into the cold night air.

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