Playing Around Read Free

her blue-and-white striped, granddad-collared nightshirt that had recently usurped her pink baby dolls, she screwed up her face in anger. ‘The buggery, rotten old sod. What did your mum say?’
    All Angie could do was shake her head as the tears flowed.
    ‘Was this last night?’
    She nodded.
    ‘Drunk, I suppose.’
    Another nod.
    ‘I told you, you should have come with me to the Palais.’
    ‘I couldn’t. You know I don’t …’
    ‘Angie, it’s only the Ilford Palais we’re talking about, not the Scotch of flipping St James or the Canvas Club.’
    ‘I wouldn’t fit in with your friends,’ wailed Angie. ‘You know I can’t …’
    ‘Angie,
you
are my friend. And you know I’d love you to come out with me. It’s only because you won’t that I still knock around with that lot from school.’ Jackie put her arm round Angie’s shoulder and gave her a little shake, in the mistaken belief that it would cheer her up. ‘We had a right laugh.’
    The door opened and a male voice asked, ‘Who did? What have you pair been up to?’
    Angie and Jackie looked round to see Martin Murray, Jackie’s big brother, standing in the doorway.
    ‘Hello, Squirt,’ he said, smiling at Angie, ‘you look pissed off. My little sister’s not been upsetting you, has she? If she has I’ll take her teddy off her. She still cuddles that ratty old bear every night, you know.’
    Angie managed to wring out a feeble smile in reply. Last October, Martin had become an economics student at London University, but he didn’t have a duffel coat or a scruffy beard. Martin was a mod, with a parka, a tonic mohair suit and a chrome-covered Lambretta, and, during the past couple of years, had grown into just about the most beautiful thing that Angie had set eyes on.
    ‘Ignore him, Ange,’ Jackie said haughtily. ‘Being the first one in the family to go to college has gone to that fat head of his. But what he doesn’t realize is, being clever doesn’t mean he’s got any sense.’ She pointed to the box of tissues on her bedside table. ‘Why don’t you make yourself useful and give Angie a paper hankie, then go down and brew up so me and Angie can have a cup of tea?’
    Martin handed the tissues to Angie. ‘Actually, I was going to offer to put the kettle on, sis, but, now you’ve asked, I think I’ve changed my mind.’
    He ducked just in time to avoid the tissue box, expertly aimed by Jackie, from hitting him on the head.
    ‘That was one sugar, wasn’t it, Squirt?’ he called as he ran down the stairs to the kitchen.
    ‘Listen, you two.’ Martin held out a tin tray bearing two cups of tea and a plate of Jammy Dodgers. ‘Mum’s bending my ear about persuading Angie to stay for lunch.’
    ‘
Lunch
? Ooh, lah-dee-flaming-dah!’ Jackie jeered at her brother in a high, mock-posh voice. ‘Don’t they have Sunday dinner at your toffee-nosed college, then? Too common for the likes of them?’
    Martin did not rise to the bait. He had sworn he would never wind up in a job like his dad’s: ruining his lungs as he cleaned out the crud from the boilers in the local car factory, with only a nightly pint of mild and bitter in the Fanshawe Tavern and a fortnight in a chalet in Leysdown to look forward to. He wanted more from life, a better life, but that hadn’t stopped him being as scared as hell about going to university. Jackie knew all about his anxieties, and, despite being at times boastfully proud of her big brother, it didn’t stop her exploiting them whenever she wanted to jerk his chain around.
    ‘How about it, Squirt?’ he went on, ignoring Jackie. ‘How about helping us all out by giving Mum the chance to cook an extra mountain of food?’
    Angie took one of the cups and handed it to Jackie, then took the other one for herself. ‘It’s really kind, but I already promised Nan I’d go over to see her.’
    Jackie blew across the top of her steaming cup, while helping herself to the plate of biscuits. ‘Go