The Girls from See Saw Lane by Sandy Taylor Page A

of very stewed tea before she noticed me.
    Â â€˜Why is Dottie winking at me?’ she asked Mum.
    â€˜She’s not winking at you, Brenda,’ said Mum. ‘She’s glued her eye shut, hasn’t she.’
    Aunty Brenda didn’t appear to be surprised by this at all.
    She put two sugar lumps into her tea and said: ‘That happened to my neighbour Mrs Baxter, you know, her with the funny husband and the mock-Georgian door. You know the one, got a girl called Penelope with thin hair, about Dottie’s age. Well anyway, she squirted glue in her eye instead of Optrex. That eye never saw the light of day again; they had to give her a glass one in the end.’
    Disgusting! I thought.
    â€˜It was ever such a good match though,’ said Aunty Brenda. ‘Of course, you might not be so lucky, Dottie, what with you having such funny colour eyes.’
    Rita had come in to the kitchen some time during this conversation. Her hair was still in curlers. She helped herself to a triangle of toast off the plate.
    â€˜Well, she can forget about being my bridesmaid,’ said Rita. ‘I’m not having her walking down the aisle with a glass eye.’
    â€˜Dottie won’t need a glass eye,’ said Mum, squeezing my shoulder.
    Â â€˜I wouldn’t bank on it,’ said Aunty Brenda, shaking her head.
    â€˜You’ll have to go down the hospital,’ said Mum, ‘they’ll know what to do. I expect they get this sort of thing all the time.’
    Rita snorted.
    â€˜I can’t go on the bus looking like this,’ I said.
    â€˜Well not in your dressing gown, obviously,’ said Mum. ‘But how else do you think you’re going to get there?’
    â€˜You could always call an ambulance,’ said Clark, who was all for a bit of drama.
    â€˜Couldn’t you call me a taxi?’ I asked hopefully.
    â€˜You’re a taxi,’ said Clark.
    â€˜Very funny.’
    â€˜I know,’ said Mum, who did sometimes have good ideas. ‘Clark? Where’s that patch you had to wear when you got hit by that cricket ball?’
    â€˜Upstairs, I’ll get it!’
    â€˜Make sure you disinfect it,’ I called after him. All in all I was feeling quite miserable.
    I went back upstairs and got dressed and put Clark’s patch over my eye and I looked really, really stupid. I thought all I could do was hang my head low and hope I didn’t bump into anyone I knew. Sometimes I really wished I was small, like Mary. You could get away with things if you were little, but when you were the size of a house, like me, you tended to stick out at the best of times.
    Back in the kitchen, Mum smiled at me and said: ‘That’s better, nobody’ll notice now.’ 
    Oh really? 
    â€˜Would you like me to come with you?’ she asked.
    â€˜No, I’ll be fine,’ I said miserably.
    â€˜Go on, let me. It’d get me out of this madhouse for a couple of hours,’ Mum said quietly.
    â€˜Are you sure?’
    She passed me my cardi and shouted to Dad, who was in the front room. ‘Nelson! I’m taking Dottie to the doctor, she’s glued her eye shut.’
    â€˜Pity it wasn’t her mouth,’ Dad said, and then started laughing his head off as if he’d said something funny, which he hadn’t.
    â€˜It’s your mouth that needs gluing up,’ said Mum. ‘Then you wouldn’t be able to keep sticking all them fags in it. And you can do the washing up while I’m gone.’
    â€˜That told him,’ giggled Clark, spraying cornflakes all over the table.
    â€˜And you can dry,’ said Mum.
    Â Â  I sat on the bus thinking about the night before. The Whisky A Go Go hadn’t been a bit like I thought it would be. It had been so crowded and dark and so full of smoke it put me in mind of our front room. If that’s what spreading your wings is like, you can keep it, I thought.
    Mary had