Second Chance by Sian James Read Free Book Online Page B

flirting and sweet talk and possibly more, were doing my mother a great deal of good. She started going to the mobile hairdresser in the village to have her hair cut and set, and began ironing her dresses and finding different things to wear from a chest in the small bedroom where we didn’t usually go because of the mice. One day she came to meet me from school in a long silky dress, a lace scarf round her neck and pointy silver shoes on her feet. ‘Was that your mother?’ Elinor Rees asked me the next day. ‘She did look a sketch.’
    â€˜She used to be a famous singer,’ I said. I think it was about this time, when I was eight or nine, that I started living a second life surrounded by riches and luxury, my parents famous celebrities as in the library book Alone for the Summer , which I’d recently been reading and re-reading.
    â€˜You mustn’t wear your best clothes to meet me from school,’ I told my mother. ‘When shall I wear them, then?’ ‘On Saturday evening. I’ll put a candle on the table and we’ll be two rich ladies and we’ll drink some of Auntie Jane’s rhubarb wine.’ (The rhubarb wine was for emergencies only, but I gave her an egg-cupful sometimes. And sometimes a cupful. It made her happy.)
    Uncle Ted brought us chocolate every week; a bar of Cadbury’s milk for my mother and a Mars Bar for me. I always intended to refuse mine, but when he put it down on the table, I never could.
    There are several ways you can eat a Mars Bar. You can cut it into fifteen neat slices and have two every day and three on Sunday, you can eat the two end pieces, thickly coated with ridges of creamy chocolate, and hide the middle part in a cupboard for Saturday – only sometimes your mother finds it first – or if you’re in a bad mood and feeling particularly sorry for yourself, you can gobble it all down like a dog with its dinner, hardly stopping to breathe. But you try not to succumb to that because it leaves you feeling greedy and sick.
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    A knock at the door. God help us, I was crying again. I wiped my eyes and went to answer it. ‘Hello my dear, have I come at a bad time? I’m Mrs Tudor Davies, Top Villa. Lorna told me that you wanted a bit of help for the funeral, but I can easily come back when you’re more yourself.’
    â€˜No, I’m fine. And I’ll be glad to get it all settled, the food arrangements, I mean. I’ll be very grateful if you can see to it for me.’
    â€˜Your mother seemed very well when I saw her recently. It must have been a shock for you. When did you see her last?’
    â€˜She came up to stay with me over Easter.’
    â€˜I remember her mentioning it. I used to see her on a Wednesday afternoon sometimes. You know, the meetings in the village hall, second Wednesday in the month, Merched y Wawr, only sometimes she forgot about them, you know. Her memory.’
    I didn’t particularly want to discuss my mother with this woman who, according to my new friend, Gwenda Rees, was ‘always ready to run her down’. I sniffed and dried my eyes.
    â€˜You cry, bach, don’t mind me. Losing a mother is a terrible blow. “Cledd a min yw claddu mam.” You know that line, I suppose. Lovely piece of cynghanedd, that. And what do you think, Ifor Edwards, Maes yr Haf, had it put down wrong on his mother’s grave, beautiful gold lettering on white marble, and the wrong words. “Cledd a min yw marw mam.” The sense is the same, perhaps, but where’s the poetry? What a shame, and him a solicitor too. Well, half a dozen eight-inch quiches, I was thinking, two dozen small sausage rolls, two large loaves, one white, one brown, for ham sandwiches, a pound and a half of sliced ham and two pounds of cheddar, best tasty, with assorted cheese biscuits. Would that suit you?’
    â€˜That would be fine, I’m sure.’
    â€˜I’ll keep you the bills