Bad Girls Good Women by Rosie Thomas Page B

that. It sounds to me as if your mum and dad were trying to do their best for you, that’s all, in their own way.’
    ‘What would you have done, Jessie?’
    She laughed. ‘Asked the boy in first, so’s I could have a good look at him. And smacked your backside for lying to me, as soon as I got a chance.’
    Mattie talked about her home too. Jessie soon knew all about Ricky and Sam, and Marilyn and Phil, and all their particular talents, and the funny things that they had done as babies and little children.
    It was the things that Mattie left out that made Jessie’s little dark eyes peer shrewdly at her.
    ‘What about your ma?’
    ‘I told you. She died, three years ago.’
    ‘Miss her still?’
    ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. She never said very much, Mum didn’t. I know she loved us all, but she was ill a lot, for a long time, almost all the time I can remember. We got used to managing, Rozzie and me.’
    ‘And your dad?’
    ‘He’s all right.’
    Mattie looked down, or away and out of the window, or got up on some pretext and left the room. Jessie didn’t ask that particular question more than two or three times. If Mattie didn’t want to talk about her father, then that was her own business. When Mattie came back into the room the last time, Jessie startled her with a sudden enveloping hug.
    ‘There’s my girl,’ she murmured, and Mattie smiled again.
    Jessie loved physical warmth, and she was demonstrative in her affection. Julia was surprised by her weighty arms around her shoulders, and the relish of her smacking, vodka-wet kisses on her cheek. It was more surprising because neither Betty nor Vernon ever touched her, nor each other, seemingly.
    ‘Oh, I like a bit of a cuddle,’ Jessie beamed. ‘And Felix never lets me have one these days. He used to be such a lovely, affectionate little boy, but he’s that touchy about himself nowadays.’
    It was Felix, oddly, who the girls found the more difficult to live with in those early days.
    On one of the very first evenings, they found him standing at the door of their room looking in at the mess. The floor and the beds were strewn with tangled clothes and make-up and crumpled papers and discarded shoes.
    ‘Do you always live like this?’ he asked, raising one black eyebrow.
    Mattie had muddled through in domestic chaos all her life, and Julia copied it as part of her rebellion against Betty.
    ‘Always,’ they chorused.
    ‘You don’t here,’ Felix said coldly. He watched as they sheepishly picked up their belongings and folded them away, and when he was satisfied he said, ‘The bathroom’s full of dripping stockings and things.’
    ‘Knickers and bras, you mean?’ Mattie tried to tease him.
    ‘I know what they are, thank you. Just don’t leave them slopping everywhere.’
    They tried to make a joke between themselves about his old-maidishness but for some reason it didn’t amuse either of them particularly. The found themselves trying to be tidier, in order to please him.
    Julia found it more confusing than Mattie did. Part of her resented Felix’s authority, but she submitted to it just the same. She wanted to challenge him, but she didn’t quite know how to do it. She found herself watching him covertly, admiring the way that he looked and dressed, trying to adopt some of his style for herself. She would stand in the kitchen doorway when he was cooking, looking at the way his hands moved amongst the pots and pans.
    ‘I wish I could do that,’ she said. Felix put down his boning knife and looked at her.
    ‘Why shouldn’t you be able to do it?’
    He made room for her at the scrubbed worktop and she tried to copy him, but her fingers felt thick and stiff and the meat slithered awkwardly in her fist.
    ‘No. It’s like this,’ he said, and put his hand over hers. The knife moved, neatly severing the lean meat from the fat and glistening connective tissue. Felix’s skin was tawny against Julia’s whiteness, but his touch was light and