More Than Love Letters (10 page)

Last night after the collective meeting we all went out for a drink, because it was Susan’s birthday. It was good to get to talk, other than about the problems of the women in the hostel. Not that these women don’t have problems of their own. One of them, Ding, has a mother with Alzheimer’s living with her, and she worries about whether she’s really safe to be left. The other day she put her Marks and Spencer meal for one in the spin dryer and microwaved the non-fast coloureds. The state of Ding’s favourite blue silk shirt was bad enough after ten minutes on Defrost, but at least she didn’t set the house on fire. Alison (she’s the one who would be in charge if we weren’t a collective) was telling us about her family. She’s got three sons, and the middle one, Edward, has been diagnosed with a mild form of autism. Apparently he has always been ‘difficult’ – a bit uncommunicative and withdrawn, and given to furious tantrums. But the school just got him to a child psychologist, who referred him to a specialist. Alison being Alison, she’s researched it all on the internet, and she’s joined the local support group for parents of autistic kids. I expect she’ll be organising them, too – she’ll probably be chair by next month. Persephone, who’s keen on alternative medicine and things, said that the Indian head massage she is learning can help with emotional problems and anger. It’s all to do with getting the energy centres in the brain properly aligned, apparently. Alison said she could go over and try it on Edward, though I suspect she was only agreeing to be nice. Meanwhile Pat and Pat, who live together, were busy having an argument about whose mum they were due to visit for the bank holiday weekend. I am really getting very fond of all these people.

No, I’m not ‘courting’ at the moment, as Mrs Ashby puts it! I don’t seem to meet any nice boys. I think it’s hard once you aren’t a student any more, and are out in the ‘real world’. Not that I am exactly looking for someone. I’ve got lots of friends here now and plenty to fill my time, with being on the hostel support group. I haven’t been out with anyone for quite a while actually, not since Mark. I know how much you all liked him – Mum and Dad as well as you, Gran. But it had to end, and it wasn’t really his fault, not entirely. You see, we had been seeing each other at college, but he also had a girlfriend back home, someone he’d been seeing when they were both still at school, since they were fifteen. He had tried to end it with her when he met me, but it was difficult . . . She has problems, you see, mental health problems I mean, and whenever he tried to talk to her about breaking things off, she would get hysterical and clingy and go all to pieces, so somehow he could never quite bring himself to end it with her. I think he even worried what she might do, you know, if he really abandoned her. And of course I know he should have told me about her at the start, he knows that too, and he said he was sorry over and over. But when I found out about her, about the fact that he had been seeing her as well all that time, nearly two years it was, I just found I couldn’t trust him any more. He said he would tell her it was over, if that’s what I wanted, but I didn’t want that either – how could I, Gran? How could I make the decision for him? How could I take the responsibility for doing that to this poor girl, when he hadn’t been able to? Please don’t say anything to Mum, though, will you? I have never told them, never told anyone about it really except my friend Becs, and now you.

Take care of that cold, anyway.

Lots of love,

Margaret x

METROPOLITAN POLICE

HOUSE OF COMMONS SPECIAL SECURITY SERVICE

House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

 

 

At 10.15 a suspicious package was found in the House of Commons mail room, addressed to Mr Richard Slater, MP. The package consisted of a brown padded envelope, which was revealed by detection devices as appearing to contain a chemical substance, possibly in the form of small tablets. The package was sealed by the Chemical Response Unit and taken to the police laboratory, where analysis under controlled conditions revealed that the substance was exactly what an enclosed note claimed it to be, namely a herbal remedy, echinacea, sent to Mr Slater for his sore throat by a constituent.

 

Incident logged at 13.05 by Inspector R. D. Hampson, officer on duty.

 

 

From:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent:
29/4/05 22:38
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

 

Hi Margaret,

I’ve got him here in my facinorous lair at last! Zoe is at her grandma’s for the weekend, and I’ve got Declan all to myself until Sunday morning when he picks her up – a whole day and, more importantly, two whole nights! He’s in the shower now, or else I would not be frittering any of it away on the computer, believe me, but I was just dying to tell somebody, and I wasn’t about to go bandying it around the staffroom at break. Nor can you exactly phone your mother and say, score, got my boyfriend tied down for two long nights of passion. Oh, Margaret, he’s D-licious, D-lectable, D-stinctly D-sirable, and he’s mine, all mine!

Big hugs,

Becs xx

 

 

From:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent:
29/4/05 22:59
To:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]

 

Dear Becs,

Lucky you! Cora is out tonight, at a wedding anniversary bash which (and I tell you this only because it will satisfy your city-dwelling prejudices) is being held at the social club at the sugar factory. A club which, I kid you not, glories in the name of ‘The Beet Goes On’. I suspect it may not exactly be 21 Piccadilly or Club V. So, with Cora out hitting the terpsichorean bacchanalia of the Ipswich club scene, my Friday night has consisted of sitting here writing a letter to my Gran. All I needed was a mug of cocoa and a plaid dressing gown and I would be a third-former at Mallory Towers. Or possibly I’m just in my convent again – do you picture contemplative Carmelites writing to their grandmothers?

Also, my head is itching. There has been an outbreak of head lice at school, apparently a much-anticipated annual event at St Edith’s Primary when the weather grows warmer in the spring, much like hearing the first cuckoo. Or (so I am told, though it means nothing to me) like Ipswich’s football team reaching the promotion play-offs. I guess we’ll have to treat it as an occupational hazard, like coming home with three different cold bugs in the first week of term (at college they called it Fresher’s Flu, remember?). Once the nits have arrived, the whole school is soon hopping with them, as a never-ending cycle of infection and reinfection is established. The girls are the worst, as they not only tend to have more hair, but also habitually congregate in gaggles with their heads bent close together. I’m fairly sure I haven’t got them, but there is nothing like writing discreet notes to mothers in home-school journals all week to get your own scalp developing a sympathetic itch. Maybe I’ll get some tea tree oil and douse myself anyway, if only to put a stop to all that imaginary scuttling that starts as soon as my head hits the pillow.

My sole consolation in this lonely and pest-ridden misery is W. G. Snuffy Walden. Have I mentioned her? She is Cora’s dog. She’s actually on my knee at the moment, with her head on my typing arm, which does interfere somewhat with my mouse action. She has comedy ears, and when she pants (which is almost all the time) there is so much acreage of tongue that it is difficult to imagine how she eats or breathes when it’s all inside. Her mouth also opens from an implausibly long way back in her head. Do you remember when we were small, there was an advert on TV (I remember it because it always made me laugh) for a toothbrush that had a bend in the handle, and it said you had to either use this toothbrush or else get a flip-top head? Well, Snuffy in panting mode is like the cartoon man with the flip-top head.

Oh, and I suppose you can have 6.5 for ‘facinorous’.

Lots of love,

Margaret xx

 

 

From:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent:
29/4/05 23:06
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

 

We don’t have any nits in Moss Side – they’ve all moved out to nicer areas.

I’m not convinced that Greek scholars would allow the authenticity of your terpsichorean bacchanalia, but I’ll give them a total of 13.

Becs xxx

42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich

Highways Department
Suffolk County Council
Shire Hall
King Street
Ipswich IP1 6JJ

30 April 2005

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to you to bring to your attention the non-functioning of a number of street lights in the neighbourhood of Gledhill Street and Emery Street. Two adjacent lights near the southern end of Emery Street, next to the turning into St Matthew’s Road, have been out of order for over three months, and there are several others in the vicinity which have not been working for some time either.

These gaps in the street lighting are of particular concern in view of the fact that the narrow pavements in this part of the town are frequently dotted with wheelie bins. Many of the houses lack any rear or side access and therefore the bins have to be left out all week and not just on the eve of a refuse collection. The bins being black, they are very difficult to see when lying in the patches of darkness created by broken street lamps. Only yesterday my landlady, when out for a run without her spectacles, was in collision with a wheelie bin thus concealed in shadow.

I urge you to make it a priority to check and repair the street lighting in this area of town, and thus to avert any further danger to short-sighted joggers and other members of the public.

Yours faithfully,

Margaret Hayton.

 

 

From:
Michael Carragan
[[email protected]]
Sent:
2/5/05 11:23
To:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]

 

OK, not ASBOs, and not PFI – so what about ID cards? Get your upright and law-abiding mug put on a mocked-up identity card. Then you can stage your own arrest by those friends of yours in blue (Kev and Ian, was it?). As they are about to throw you into the back of the van, you produce your card, proving that you are not Billy ‘Beet-face’ Benson the notorious Stowmarket safe-cracker (or whoever tops the list of Suffolk’s most wanted), but are in fact their democratically elected representative – thus demonstrating how the carrying of ID cards will protect the honest citizenry of Ipswich from the risk of being mistakenly apprehended.

Michael.

 

Michael Carragan (Labour)

Member of Parliament for West Bromwich West

From:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent:
2/5/05 11:42
To:
Michael Carragan [[email protected]]

 

No, Michael, enough! I would probably mislay the card, anyway, and end up serving a five stretch as Billy Beet-face. I have given up seeking the oxygen of publicity over causes in which I don’t believe. I’m concentrating on constituency work from now on. I may be left with nothing but fresh air – but at least it will be less polluted!

Richard.

 

Richard Slater (Labour)

Member of Parliament for Ipswich

 

 

42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich

 

4 May 2005

My darling Pete,

It’s been quite exciting since I last wrote, love. Dora and Dave’s ‘do’ was on Friday, and it was a lovely occasion. Dave made a sweet speech, but funny too, he quite made Dora blush with some of it, and there was a buffet – a beautiful spread it was, not just the usual cold pizza slices and dips but proper homemade vol-au-vents and quiches, and gorgeous puddings that you would have had to steer me away from if you’d been there. And then I felt guilty because I’d never thought to offer to help with the food, or even just to bring something, and it must have taken Dora half the week cooking and freezing in the evenings after work. There was dancing, not just a disco but live music, it was – some of Dave’s workmates who have a tribute band called The Beet, and they played all those old ska numbers we used to love. Dave insisted on having me up on the floor (his bad back didn’t seem to be getting in the way of his dance-floor moves), and I must admit I really enjoyed it. I can’t remember the last time I danced! I hadn’t heard some of those songs for years. Do you remember how you used to hum ‘Mirror in the Bathroom’ under your breath if you were waiting and I was taking too long getting ready to go out?

Today after work we had a big surprise. I answered the phone (I never just leave it ringing now, not since Margaret got that block on all the sales calls), and you’ll never guess who it was. It was Margaret’s MP (well, I suppose he’s mine too, but you know what I mean). I called her, and she took the receiver, and she didn’t seem able to say anything except ‘yes’ and ‘OK’ and ‘thank you’ a lot, especially ‘thank you’. Then she put the phone down, and said in a dazed sort of voice, ‘He’s arranged another meeting, this time with the chair of the housing department as well,’ and she was definitely a little bit pink. I’ve never seen so much colour in her cheeks – she is normally so pale. She seemed quite taken aback. I suppose it was being rung up at home by someone so important, someone from the government. And now she’s going to meet this man from the council, too – she’s quite the political wheeler-dealer these days, it seems!

Another thing: and this you really wouldn’t believe, Pete, but Margaret has got me going out jogging with her! (Running, she calls it, I don’t think they say jogging any more.) We just go round and round the little park at the end of the road, and she makes me do one more circuit each day. She says it’s nicer with two, because you can chat and it takes your mind off the fact you are running, but actually Margaret chats and I just listen and grunt a bit – I don’t have any puff left for talking. Yesterday we thought we’d take Snuffy along, kill two birds with one stone so to speak, but I don’t think we’ll be trying that again. She ran round with us for two circuits, sat at the gate and watched us with a puzzled look on her face for two more, and then the fifth time round she ran with us again, but just behind us, barking and jumping up to nip our bottoms every other stride! Poor old Snuffs – I think she thought I’d gone quite mad. She may be right, judging by the way my knees have been creaking this week when I get out of bed in the mornings.