Secrets My Mother Kept Read Free Page A

Ginger”.’ She turned to Jane. ‘You go and knock on the door and we’ll hide here.’
    Jane did as she was told, while Hannah and I ducked down behind the fence. As soon as she had knocked, Jane flew back down the path and joined us to watch and wait. After a minute or two, a lady with a baby in her arms opened the door and peered out while we crouched down laughing our heads off. This was a game that we played often, but sometimes the person who opened the door would catch sight of us and shout out and occasionally even chase us along the road.
    More scary than that was the Milk Float Game.
    The horse-drawn milk floats of my sisters’ childhood had now disappeared and been replaced with electric versions. These could pick up a fair bit of speed on a straight road. We would wait for the milkman to get on board and then run behind.
    ‘Jump!’ we would encourage each other, and we would leap onto the back of the float and hang there for a free ride.
     
    When I return to Dagenham now to visit my sister, who still lives in our house, I sometimes walk around the familiar streets remembering the games and the children that I played them with. I also remember the stark mixture of tension, fear, excitement and fun that was part of my childhood, and it helps me to understand and make sense of my life now – despite all the unanswered questions.

3
    A New Friend
    The most popular girl in my class was called Christine. She had short brown bobbed hair with a ribbon tied round it, and was always dressed in clean clothes. I was desperate for her to be my best friend.
    ‘Christine is coming round to play!’ I announced proudly. Mum just lifted her eyes to heaven. I looked around me. I wanted Christine to play in our back garden with me but was acutely aware that it was completely overgrown. It didn’t seem to matter when Margaret and I played out there. In fact it made it more exciting, as we had very fertile imaginations. One of our favourite games was being explorers. We would play until the summer sun set red and gold over Mr Stan’s corrugated garden shed, and I’d nudge Margaret and say, ‘Look! Aurora borealis!’ I must have heard about the northern lights from the television or from my sisters. Either way, I knew they were something exciting!
    The only flowers that were visible in the garden were a few white flag irises and a big bushy pink dog rose, remnants of our grandfather’s days. Most of the space was now covered in a dense layer of weeds and grass, almost as tall as we were. The thick scratchy heads of couch grass were difficult to cut with a pair of old blunt scissors, but that was all I had. I needed to ‘tidy up’ the garden before Christine came to play and so knelt down and slowly began to cut. My sister Marge came out into the garden.
    ‘What are you up to?’ she asked, watching me with a curious expression.
    ‘Gardening.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because my friend is coming to play.’
    Marge smirked, ‘You’ll be lucky!’ and she went back inside laughing. The sun was hot on my back but I didn’t mind. I must have stayed there for a long time, because I remember how the grass and stones began to cut into my knees, and how my fingers ached from working the scissors.
    Marge was right – Christine never did come to play. She told me her dad had forbidden her to come.
    ‘He says I’m not allowed round your house cos he knows your dad. He works with him at Ford’s.’
    This was a bolt out of the blue for me. My dad?
    I met her words with silence. I was used to not knowing things, used to things not making sense, and I was also used to keeping quiet. I just stared back, swallowing the disappointment and trying not to care.
    Margaret and I continued to enjoy our garden throughout the summer, and played lots of pretend games, building homes with the sheets on the line, draping chairs with old bits of cloth, and using them as ‘Indian tepees’. Other favourite games involved steeping flower petals in