THREE MAYS GONE NEDRA took seven hellsoaked scrubbed-up kids to Heaton Park to see His Holiness Pope John Paul II. This was only one May after the Holy Father had survived an assassin’s bullet; but the day before their trip, which would cut thirteen miles north through town, Nedra reminded her chosen seven in her kitchen why the Bishop of Rome was fit to honour them so soon: because Lord Jesus had turned the filthy Turk’s bullet into smoke. Joey Harvey was four then and loved miracles so on hearing this his eyes held a private mellow joy when he raised them at her from under Susie-Ann’s kitchen chair. Sunday teatimes Joey was Blackbeard’s pet monkey, below deck, caged by the chair’s legs and Susie-Ann’s cotton-string calves. He climbed onto Susie’s lap and let her finger-comb his hair while he ate one of her chips, holding it up for her to blow on. He forgot to chew, so wonderstruck he was by –

the Miracle of the Assassin’s Bullet.

Kevin and Roger Burton had questions on their stained lips. Questions seven- and eight-year-old lads knew better than to ask in case their legs got slapped later by their mams. But Nedra answered daft questions about Adolf Hitler or Captain Scarlet or Sinbad the Sailor or the Six Million Dollar Man. Sometimes her answers satisfied; sometimes they sparked new questions, and so could leave her tangled in lore, mixing cowboys and catechism, as she scrubbed her chip pan. And so she told Kevin and Roger not to talk but to listen.

‘Now, get that et.’ Nedra pointed at their eggs and ham. ‘Then go home and fetch your best shoes and I’ll give them a good brush for tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Joey repeated, climbing Susie-Ann.

Joey’s big brother Gene mopped his plate with a round of buttered bread. He was thirteen and so deaf to miracles, his stuffed cheeks hived with fear of Nedra’s granddaughter, who was sly and rabbit-eared when it came to wickedness. Jan ate at the crowded table and kept reaching under it to thump Gene’s thigh if it grazed hers. Acid looks. Lips growing fat and feminine – a horror to behold in a child’s face – that pulled in disgust at all in this world except for their Kelly. Jan had been that way for weeks – since she came downstairs one morning with a stained sheet and a body too grown by half for twelve. It was Nedra who took her to Lewis’s for her first fitting since Carol couldn’t be mithered. Nedra who had to suffer that Ladies’ Department junior assistant whose mouth ran longer than her measuring tape: Dunno how you managed so long doing PE. Jan answered with star jumps just to mortify Nedra. Then pinched lippy bullets from the sales display while her nana was at the till bleeding a week’s pension on women’s garments for a thieving grandchild in a body almost ripe for ruin. And Jan denied this theft – denied what Nedra witnessed under God – only to laugh it off later, window-seated on the bus home, when Nedra turned out the girl’s pockets and found nothing.

‘Where a’they, then?’ Jan had said like a slattern Bo Peep, the bus window doubling her grin.

Nedra looked hard at her granddaughter, all of her: the painted nails; the plumping legs sprouting wayward from a small turquoise skirt – once too big, that Nedra had never got round to taking in. Jan breathed and Nedra read the broken line of the girl’s chest and from which the girl extracted an assassin’s bullet. Using the bus glass to paint her mouth. No need for pockets now.

Nedra went to scoop out the rest and Jan squealed so the whole bottom deck turned and saw her nana pinching Jan’s butterflesh, the new brassiere cradling them both like a butcher-shop scales. Nedra couldn’t free her fingers unless they withdrew empty.

Jan squealing: ‘Seen this, you lot? I’m being interfered with!’

If Nedra had been home she could’ve downed a shot of vinegar at the cooker and let it burn, but there she could only mutter Enough’s enough and she rose before the next stop and resat opposite, beside an elderly coloured lady – smart in a fur-trim coat, browline specs and mohair cap – quietly rocking to the bus’s motion. Every new passenger the bus welcomed could smell Nedra’s shame. Passing her with their weekly shopping, Nedra bore their judgement, and the next day she begged Father Culler to forgive her. The things she held in.

The following week word came of Jan flogging lipsticks round school. Nedra said nowt – not wanting to waste a prayer – but in the kitchen come Friday Nedra found her own bag undone, purse filled with coin from the sales. She didn’t count it, only tipped the lot in the collection box noisily after Mass.

True, Jan kept the Devil’s shade for herself. Had the cheek to wear it to Heaton Park, to apply it in front of her, on another bus, with a steady hand. Another bullet meant for the Holy Father. Their Kelly was sat with her, having been swayed by little Joey to come see miracles. And where Kelly went Jan followed while she could. Jan got him to say whatever she wanted to hear while she still could – since Kelly was then a gorgeous lad of nineteen growing less sweet by the day. Starting to top up his giro by way of mischief or local enterprise, and only beginning to play out the wish of what others thought he should be. All this Nedra had seen, had known. Jan kissed the bus window scarlet, kissed her big brother’s cheek scarlet, shuffled round and threatened to kiss Joey scarlet, who in horror hid his face in Susie-Ann’s First Communion dress.

The night before – that crowded teatime – Kelly had sat on the counter facing them to eat Sunday roast scraps since there wasn’t table room. When he heard Carol coming in:

‘Ee-ah, Mam?’

But Carol tramped straight upstairs.

He leaned to put his plate in the sink and dig out some banknotes folded small from his denims. Then he slid off the counter and left the money where he’d warmed. Twisting on his trainers, laced.

Nedra opened the oven and took its heat – smelling charcoal but nowt was burned. ‘Your giro’s not in for another week.’

‘The Lord He giveth and He twoc’eth away.’

Jan snickered over her tea, stopping only to thump Gene’s leg.

Nedra shut the oven and boxed Kelly’s ears with her oven mitten but he dodged round the kitchen like Brian London.

‘You’ll be getting a good hiding, and none of this pud.’

‘Then good job I’m going out.’ He rushed her with his chin out, windmilling his fist, then surprised her with a soft peck on the other cheek. His own shadowed, coarse, not yet lipsticked. Then he pecked Jan’s. Then at the other end of the table he messed Joey’s hair before claiming the striped windbreaker off Susie-Ann’s chairback, his housekeys jangling in the pocket. ‘Right. In a bit.’

‘Best be up tomorrow, Kelly. This is history, this. Give yourself enough time for a proper shave.’

To Joey, he said: ‘Wouldn’t miss it, lad. Would we?’

‘When’s history?’ Joey said.

‘History was yesterday,’ Kelly said.

‘It’s tomorrow,’ Nedra said. ‘Take no notice.’

She dished up – chipped bowls and scratched spoons – and divvied frugal, but with plenty custard. She took Joey off Susie-Ann’s lap to let her eat and set him on her own hip. ‘If you get a good night’s sleep, Joey, love, then tomorrow comes quicker. Isn’t that right, Kelly? Tell him, love.’

‘Aye, but you don’t end up kipping through tomorrow into next week.’

‘No tomorrow,’ Joey said.

‘I’ll box you,’ Nedra said.

‘I’m going,’ Kelly said at the backdoor. ‘Tell Mam.’

‘Which pub you be in? I’ll ring and send for you.’

‘Not going pub, going pictures.’

‘Who bloody with?’

‘Right rum sods, Nana. From Trinidad. You’d like them.’

‘I’m coming,’ Jan said and stood.

‘You’re bloody not,’ Nedra said.

Gene scraped his spoon across his teeth. Jan pushed her bowl and Roger and Kevin abandoned theirs to claim it. They ate like factory looms.

‘You’re too young to be going anywhere of a Sunday night,’ Nedra said.

‘Why? We’ve no school tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow.’ Joey twisted Nedra’s arm fat, monkey-gripping her sides with his feet. She put him down.

Jan said: ‘Think the Pope’s gunna catch us yawning?’

Kelly had the backdoor wide and Jan kicked the pyramid of shoes hiding the mat to surface her own pair, lingering on a buckled ruby sandal of Susie-Ann’s which had once been hers.

Nedra glanced at the table and saw the dishes had already been cleared away. Kevin and Roger had run home for their smart shoes, their places empty. Susie-Ann was reading her book about well-to-do Cheshire children meeting Merlin. They’d all gone.

Nedra said to nobody: ‘I’ll keep Kelly’s covered in case he fancies it when he gets in.’

But the table was spotless and the smart shoes polished and the stove cool and the kitchen silent and alone now at the table it seemed everso big with her feeling like Queen Victoria taking her supper – a mug of Ovaltine hours cold – long after Carol came down to brew up and eat leftovers, looking more tired than she’d ever seen a woman look, and she’d seen tired, known tired; but Carol couldn’t fill the table again even with that accusing silence of hers or with that insistent hum of sexual satisfaction about her which was the only thing about her daughterinlaw which was frank and indisputable even though she knew Carol hadn’t been touched in years, had courted not once since Sefton died. Carol wasn’t mithered where in the dark her only daughter and son were or weren’t. And of the seven sinners that Nedra was shepherdessing tomorrow to worship under the Holy Father Himself, only her two weren’t home in their beds.

Nedra left the light on for them.

 

Under a brass-necklace sun they caught the bus from Civic. That brass-necklace sun scored the orange and white paint and Nedra shooed ahead some of her seven to keep the bus from going without her. Monday’s queue of queerfolk – bark-skinned elders dressed for sea or snow: ancient matriarchs of other denominations; unwashed bovver boys of precious hairdos and jewellery. . . the queue was shrinking faster than her toddle. A quickstep at sixty-two and fat as fruit. She was only breathless once she sat down. With her flock seated and counted for. Eight commemorative return tickets to Heaton Park for the papal visit. She shut her purse.

Susie-Ann watched her – sweetly beside her with Joey on her knee, creasing her First Communion dress. Nedra took him and pulled smooth Susie-Ann’s frock.

After climbing Princess Road to town:

‘Look!’ Roger said, two benches in front with Kevin.

Nedra squinted at the grubby window: a helicopter low under cleanest high Heaven. It looked like a dangerous insect. Kevin, Roger and Joey followed it with their fingers to the glass. She blinked at it and caught sunspots.

‘It was Him,’ Kevin said.

They’d heard on Piccadilly Radio that the Pope would travel by helicopter and for a moment she wondered.

‘Was it Jesus?’ Joey whispered.

‘Don’t talk daft.’

‘The Pope knows Jesus,’ Susie-Ann said.

‘He’s. . . Jesus’s dad,’ Roger said.

‘That’s Joseph,’ Kevin said.

‘That’s God,’ Nedra said.

‘Who’s the Pope’s dad?’ asked Susie-Ann.

‘He’s not got one,’ Nedra said.

Joey tipped to see her, tom-tom-ing her gammon arm which barred him like a seatbelt. ‘Like Kelly and Jan.’

‘Like you and your Gene now and all,’ Jan said, then sat round. But Kelly touched her with a look and Jan turned, to him, then to Joey, then spoke again, softer:

‘Oi, mate – don’t be getting upset. Yours’ll be home before you know it. Ours won’t.’

‘He’s with Jesus.’

‘That’s right, love.’ Nedra matched his whisper.

Joey pushed to the window, chasing Heaven or helicopters, crawling over Susie-Ann for purchase. Nedra retrieved him and jogged him on her knees but he wouldn’t be still until a kick juddered the back of their seat.

‘Now be good,’ Gene Harvey said, twitching behind them, sat by himself. A torrential nosebleed spotting his blue collar shirt and his dad’s tie.

The shock of him.

All she could do was pass Joey up to Kelly and root in her handbag for tissues.

 

An hour before, Gene’s shirt still crisp and spotless, the breeze lifted his tie; his expression drawn as he stood farthest right, lined up at the privets with the rest, to have his picture taken in front of her house. Waiting on Jan.

‘Kevin, don’t fidget,’ Nedra said.

Linda Harvey stood with her, off the kerb in white curlers, a bloke’s dressing gown and slippers, winding a disposable camera. Her eyes were small and shot from kipless nights spent worrying on a husband calendared for sentencing that week at Crown Court. Linda’s duty was to see him off, to spend tears like he spent his wages. He was and would be ‘working away’, as far as Joey knew. But Nedra wondered, what with Gene, Linda’s eldest, now at big school, where you couldn’t hide them from owt. Joseph Senior had lost another pay packet on the dogs, and his pride in the Happy Man, and smashed up Cornishway bookies, demanding his money back. To get it he crossed the counter to have words with the bookie’s middle daughter – a brainy lass fair and slim with darkened freckles – who worked Saturdays. Nedra had fed her through primary school and always got waved at by her round Civic. She’d even passed the senior entrance exam for Withington’s Girls’ School. Dead keen on sums. Having robbed the till, Joseph had stopped battering her to stab the father twice through the neck with his betting pencil. Left the poor girl wearing his blood. Yet she managed to ring for the ambulance that saved him. And saved Joseph too. The Evening News said it looked like Dracula’s den. BOOKMAKER AND DAUGHTER ALIVE AGAINST THE ODDS. But by the time the papers printed half the story Joseph Senior had turned himself in at Benchill Police Station – brought those crooked bobbies the money and a full confession. He brought Father Culler along too, for courage, meaning Father Culler had really brought him. The good Father postponing Mass to be at the station, ensuring a local man got treated just or at least met his cell walking. Nedra pictured the scene at the bookies after Joe had scarpered: all the blood and prayer. Nedra was careful what she said to poor Linda on that jewelled morning, who was doing better than Nedra had expected. Linda was grateful to her for taking her Gene and Joey for the day. . .

‘This lot don’t half scrub up well, d’they?’ Linda said, winding on the camera.

‘I’ve stitched tags in their clothes in case God forbid. . .’

‘Bless you. Our little Joey’ll be dead good. It’s your Kelly you’ll have to watch don’t get lost.’

Kelly had surfaced, hungover but cat-washed and shaved. And hearing his name he cringed at them through the morning’s gold. Joey, Kevin, Roger were spotless for the minute; their shoes blazed on the pavestones. Susie-Ann pigtailed and frocked and hop-scotching now from one end of the restless line to the other, looking like a vision of Whitsun past. Two Harveys, two Burtons, one Dodds (one still dressing) and one Stone. Nedra’s necklaces clattered as she spun to read her Sunday wristwatch without glare. Not late enough to leave without Jan. Only Joey seemed as keen to go, the others just glad of a Monday off school.

Linda wasted a picture: everybody was slouched in doing, looking somewhere different.

Kelly cupped his yawn, which left Roger boxing into one palm. ‘Ballies,’ Kelly shouted, dodging low blows.

‘Right. Someone go fetch our Jan.’ Her wristwatch ticked but hadn’t moved.

‘Speak the Devil,’ Linda said.

‘Our kid!’ Their Jan, calling from the top window, damp-haired, in her bloody bra, to drop a pack of Sterling which bounced out of Kelly’s hands with the glare, so he had to catch it twice, but it didn’t touch the slabs.

He sparked up like his granddad and said Ta through his teeth even though Jan had shut the window. Then he offered a fag to Linda who scuttled over in her slippers. He lit it for her and dropped another few down the torn gape of her husband’s dressing-gown pocket which had her blushing. Seeing through the camera, Linda shuffled backwards into the road to get them all in, just as Jan came out and locked up, Carol having already left for work. Jan cat-stepped along the privets in front of six lambs before joining the photo at Gene’s end, not Kelly’s.

‘Them are more bloody hole than tights,’ Nedra said. ‘Go in and put on a decent pair.’

‘There’s no time,’ Linda said out the corner of her mouth, smoking hands-free. ‘You’ll miss your bus.’

Nedra read her wristwatch and saw the Devil’s tricks on its face.

Linda said: ‘Gene, squeeze in a bit, love.’

Gene did. Jan didn’t thump him. All seven young sinners quieted, and almost all of them smart in their Sunday best on a Holy Monday. But their smiles began to strain. The moment sieving away. . .

‘What you waiting for?’ Nedra said.

Linda lowered the camera, then gave it to Nedra, then held her knees to sob. She went in quick. Nedra took the photo instead. It captured a gravity befitting the day. And despite all, it got framed and joined her lifeblood on the mantelpiece for Carol to dust.

 

Other buses corked Oxford Road and Princess Street, slowing their ascent to Heaton Park. Nedra read her wristwatch, read the window. Heights of Manchester brick. Used-to-bes, she called them. Gloomy picturehouses, grand hotels, warehouses, palaces, hippodromes and public baths, loose-knitted together for survival.

Kelly and Jan had swapped seats and he smoked with his temple to the glass as he ticked ash into the tray behind Roger’s seat. Nedra leaned into the aisle to check on Gene, behind her – shutting her out to study the street at his window. His nosebleed had finished off her tissues. His jacket fastened to hide his spattered shirt and tie. Even Jan had the gumption not to say owt.

Meanwhile Joey fretted at the bus’s crawl, sensing they ought to be closer by now, while Kevin wrestled Roger, Susie-Ann scissoring her cotton legs to control her excitement.

When Joey began to cry Nedra told him an old story. ‘You know, love, when I was your age my mam’s mam met the Sultan of Zanzibar on his royal visit to Manchester. He seen her through the crowds, through all them people, and sent his grand chief to tell her he wanted to meet her. Now, she wasn’t much more than a girl then, me granny, and didn’t know what to say to a sultan. But she went, thinking she might as well.’

‘Was he wanting to marry her?’ Susie-Ann said, her legs falling still.

‘Listen. Here’s the rest: the Sultan give her a perfect white rose from his garden in the desert across the sea, and he pinned it to her hair like a princess and she curtsied, which is what y’have to do whenever you meet a sultan.’

‘And the Queen,’ Susie-Ann said.

‘And the Pope,’ Joey said.

‘And the sultan asked to marry her. But of course she never. Since she was already engaged to be wed to me granddad, you see? And you can’t be having two husbands, can you?’

‘Was the sultan sad?’ Susie-Ann said.

‘Was he mad?’ Kevin said.

‘Yes, but Sinbad helped him find a new wife. The Queen of Sheba.’

Kelly was snoring; Jan held his fag, low, out of sight; Nedra snapped her fingers and Jan waited, head cocked, before stubbing it out.

‘But me granny kept his white rose.’

Joey: ‘Will the Pope want a flower?’

‘We could’ve brought him a few of your mam’s freesias. Ah well.’

The bus crawled to a halt for a blue fancy car overtaking. She saw into it and thought of her Jim’s Triumph, of those with Conservative Club dads; of those who’d worship closer to the Holy Father in Heaton Park that morning than she and her fold.

The bus doors split for a mithered lass who’d sooner walk to the next stop instead of waiting for the traffic to uncork.

Gene flew from his seat –

and bolted to the front of the bus. He was outside, with the window between them, before Nedra could scream.

Kelly jerked awake as the scream came out of her like a hand making a wild grab for a wayward child too wayward to catch in time –

the bus doors clapped.

Nedra stood and all of them stood shouting and patting the glass.

GENE HARVEY 13 Y.O.

292 FELLSIDE RD

WOODHOUSE PARK

WYTHENSHAWE

RC CHURCH

And Gene sprinting through shoppers to round the corner of was it Whitworth or Fairfield? She twittered a prayer that she hadn’t heard herself recite since girlhood and couldn’t place – not even with the pontiff in town.

And Gene gone. The shame.

She sent Kelly after him. The bus driver swore at her when neither returned after a couple of minutes. Off the bus, on a noisy scrum of pavement, she counted what was left of her flock, trying to fit them inside one stretch of sight while they hassled and jostled, questioned and strayed. It was then she remembered her bag on the seat: her purse and commemorative tickets, her rosaries and bible and housekeys, the eight tinfoiled butties for dinner.

She saw Kelly smoking at fifty yards, but didn’t know if she could make it to the end of the marching street without rest.

‘I know where Gene’s gone,’ Nedra said to her lipsticked granddaughter, but her swelled tongue wouldn’t give edges to the words. Jan only nodded before her eyes set on little Joey, like they both agreed she’d gone mad.

Four shallow steps weathered and graced with rubbish. They took her to Gene. This was once the front entrance to Minshull Crown Court. Back before the city dug up its tramlines. Now the stone arch was sealed and shaded. Discreet yet grander than any Wythie church’s. He was panting and white as a cross-country runner. He smelled like lads his age smelled.

Nedra sighed for mercy and crossed herself. The doorway hid them from the street. She gripped his arm and lowered herself onto the cool dry dirty step, taking him down with her. ‘You get in round that corner, you daft thing. Shut today, anyroad.’

Nedra read her wristwatch and saw the Devil had cheated her again. ‘Can’t be running off. Your mam’s enough on her mind, hasn’t she, without me losing you.’

‘I just wanted to see me dad, before. That’s it.’

Nedra cuffed him round the head. He let out a scraping sound, like a knife buttering burnt toast. Then shrank from her into the corner of the doorway to rub his hot hair. Then as quick as he’d fled off the bus –

he hugged her.

A dampness on her dress front, shining on her coat collar. Not noseblood.

‘Your dad’s tie still looks smart. Keep that shirt covered and they’ll never know.’

They nodded at each other –

while a young woman with bunned hair passing them in loud heels and an electric blue suit sprinkled coins on the steps, between their feet, and carried on. Nedra tried to stand but her knees locked. She rocked onto her backside, choking: ‘They take us for bloody beggars.’

Roger and Kevin blew into the doorway in a rush to collect the coins. The rest were there, waiting at the kerb with joined hands, as if posed for another snap. Kelly was ashing their shadows – looking the spit of his young grandfather. Only what she saw wasn’t the ghost of the bad-tempered bugger that her Jim could be, but some germ of propitiation. And she did not know whether it was for her to witness or bring to pass.

Roger claimed a new twenty-pence piece; she slapped the coin out of his palm, dragging three lads from the dark doorway onto the baked street.

 

‘Maybe he’ll wait,’ Jan said with her mam’s sarcastic air and one of Kelly’s fags on her breath.

They got off a Bee Line bus and hit the day’s heat. Quickly each was sweating, nowty with hunger and thirst; all eight of them dragging or carrying somebody smaller.

The hazy stretch of path and meadow before them littered with torn flags, chucked banners, picnic rubbish. Thinning crowds dotted about, sun-stupid and blessed. A tall policeman with what looked like birdseed down his roomy uniform approached them after the Middleton Road gate.

‘We’re here to see the Pope,’ Nedra said but knew.

He was baby-faced with a tash. Sweat dripped from under his hat. ‘Afraid you missed him, love. He’s gone.’

She read her wristwatch. It’d stopped.

‘In his helicopter?’ Roger said.

Nedra’s ping-pong eyes clocked the carefree and gabbing. The idle curious. Shirtless pink-backed lads. Cheap young lasses. Skiving mites off the local estate who’d climbed a fence to see what the fuss was about.

Nedra gripped her grandson’s arm tight. By the time Kelly let go the bobby was nowhere and the two of them were sat on a bench in a different slice of the park, a little further in. Steaming trees behind metal platforms with concert equipment and manned stations flogging frozen lollies and fizzy drinks. Trampled flowers lay on the smooth dusty path. A fallen flyer in the latticed shade beneath her was for an under-twelves C of E choir in Rochdale. Nedra read it in amazement, just fine without glasses – the bench paint tacky under her stout thighs.

‘Ee-ah,’ Kelly said, people-watching with her, while lapping raspberry sauce off a 99.

‘Where’d you find spends for that?’ she said.

He offered a choc-ice. ‘Our kid just found a tenner in her bra.’

Nedra split the blue wrapper with her good fillings, cracked the thin chocolate and spilled liquid ice-cream.

‘Our Jan. Sorted out the lot of them. Whatever they wanted.’

‘That girl. You daren’t ask. Where they now?’

Kelly pointed and she looked and counted six: ducked at a section of park fence nearby. Roger was talking excitedly but she couldn’t make out what was said. She got up with her choc-ice and started for them. Kelly caught up and she slipped her arm through his.

Joey was sat in the dry earth where grass and park finished – protecting a lumpy bin bag.

‘The Pope chucked it out his helicopter,’ Roger said, cupping his eyes to see her against the sun.

Joey’s sleeves and hands one rust-coloured stain.

‘Come away from that,’ Nedra said.

Jan leaned at the fence, chewing a lolly stick, her lips another colour again. Gene was squatting and squinting farthest along the fence – his jacket and shirt arms pushed up, stained like Joey’s.

Nedra pointed to the fence. ‘Joey! Get out of it.’

He widened the top of the bin bag to show her a litter of brown dead pups, tiny and swollen and greasy with shared blood.

Nedra threw her choc-ice at the bag in horror. A slap of brown and white. Brooks of ice-cream spreading.

‘Baby Jesus mended this one, see?’ he whispered. ‘A miracle.’

Kelly crouched with him as Joey lost his whole arm into the bag and scooped out a white squirming dog pup from the dark still pile. Rolling and matted in filth. Giving his cuffs fresh stains.

Kelly scrunched the bag shut. ‘Listen, mate. Some right wicked knobhead’s gone and done this.’

‘It was Lord Jesus,’ Nedra announced –

as another helicopter chugged overhead.

She stared at it, against the high blue.

Before it had passed over, Joey began feeding the pup drips of ice-cream.

Roger and Kevin sat on the grass, grinning in silence.

Susie-Ann swished her frock and inched nearer.

Even Jan wanted to see.

***

Heaton Park dissolved into her own kitchen, three years later, the same young’uns with her, half-grown half-thanks to her feeding and minding. This was teatime Friday, when the wall clock ticked ten after five. . .

‘Get washed up, loves,’ Nedra said as some ran in through the backdoor. She’d sent Kevin, Roger, Joey, Susie-Ann to pick blackberries after school, then called to Linda over the fence to send Gene to fetch them for their tea. Snowy, little Joey’s white staffie, trotted in too like a monster from a Sinbad film and lay under the table, hoping for scraps. His chops were purple; the kids had tried feeding him berries.

Roger raised their sandcastle bucket filled with dark pickings. They talked at her at once, waggled their dyed fingers. Only Joey’s hands were clean but she ran them under the tap the same and wiped his grubby specs on a warm teatowel.

‘Where’s your Kelly?’ he said, letting her adjust his specs.

‘Where’d you think, love? Off out courting with—’

‘Zoo-lee.’

‘Don’t be learning names like that. Do you no good.’

‘She’s eighteen and a half and I’m seven. Her bestest colour is red and mine’s red.’

She gave him his cheddar butty. ‘Yours is blue. City blue. And besides, your Snowy don’t like her, or that great big scar she’s down her face.’

He ate standing, flitting about while she rinsed the berries.

‘We’ll make crumble, ay? Then pie for Father Culler. How’s that?’

Joey dropped half his butty.

‘What’s matter?’

Snowy lapped at the mess, pushing it along the green lino.

Gene dawdled shy now at the backdoor, asking after Jan without asking, having heard no doubt that she’d come in last night with a blackeye. She’d be with Bev Willows’ scramble-brained girl, Alice. Trust Jan to knock about with a lass whose mam drank pubs dry and had broken four Wythenshawe marriages and counting, aborting the sons and daughters of good women’s husbands like their souls were hers to damn.

Creaking and puffing, Nedra dried the lino with a rag under her foot, then scrubbed her own chapped hands at the sink. As she served the table Jan came in, shoved through Gene, who didn’t dare look twice, just went home.

That blackeye swelled shut. The same shade of berry. Jan sat where she sat, picked up knife and fork, and stared with her good eye at Susie-Ann, at the chest of her threadbare playing-out jumper, specked in berry juice. Susie-Ann was wise enough at nearly twelve to say nowt. Knew better than to meet her eye, especially with Jan’s face how it was.

‘Hm,’ Jan said. ‘Time you got yourself a bra.’