by K. L. Slater
Today, the playgroup seemed busier and noisier than ever. The venue was a large, carpeted room at the back of the library in Berry Hill, a desirable residential area on the south side of Mansfield. There was a £1 entry fee and the bus fare, which Bridget really had to think about seeing as she was on her uppers after being laid off recently from the supermarket. But Jesse got a glass of juice and a biscuit, and there was a cup of tea or coffee provided for her, too. And most importantly, it was nice here. Nice surroundings and people with safe, clean toys.
She looked around her at the quality clothing worn by the other parents. Bridget had on the only coat she owned, a frayed, thin beige mac she’d bought in the Debenhams sale three years ago. Underneath she’d dressed in two T-shirts and a polyester sweater to help keep the cold from sinking into her bones. Her right ankle boot had a small split where the man-made upper met the sole, and so, after the walk over here in the rain and sleet this morning, the bottom of her foot was soaking. She found a seat and reached down, pulling her foot halfway out of the boot to give the sock chance to dry out a little.
Despite the weather, she’d made the twenty-minute trek through the snowy streets from the nearest bus stop because Jesse loved it here so much. Interactions with other kids were a treat when you lived in a crumbling terraced house with mouldy walls on the wrong side of town. And there weren’t any other small children on the street for him to play with.
Bridget watched Jesse now and felt a swell of pride and affection. He had beautiful thick, naturally wavy hair that she liked to keep long in the neck. Today, though, it was damp and frizzy from the weather, and his elasticated-waist trousers were too short for his growing legs. Her heart sank when she realised he bore more than a passing resemblance to a little scarecrow – a cute one admittedly – amongst the well-dressed girls and boys in this middle-class enclave. She’d had to come here, had to escape their grim reality just for a short time. The boost that being part of another world, a better life, gave her – even if it was just for a couple of hours – was priceless to her state of mind.
Settled at last, with Jesse happily running off to play, she looked around for a friendly face. The two women sitting on either side had discreetly turned away from her to talk to other people. Their own sort.
Bridget sat quietly in her soggy coat and boots with her hands folded in her lap and closed her eyes briefly. She hadn’t slept well because the neighbours had had another drink-induced row. Something had smashed against the wall in the early hours and woken her up, but luckily, Jesse had slept through it. Bridget knew that Sandra next door was the self-confessed ‘thrower’ in that relationship, so she had no fear that the other woman was in danger. Living there often made her glad she was single.
She opened her eyes in time to catch the sideways glances being directed her way. She noticed the discreet, almost invisible ushering away of well-dressed sons and daughters from little Jesse, as if being slightly scruffy and obviously poor might be catching.
There was another playgroup, a free one, run by the local council in a draughty, musty-smelling church hall a couple of streets away from their house. All the kids looked like Jesse there; all the mums dressed the same as Bridget. They were people with identical problems and challenges to the ones she had in her own life. She would not have felt judged there.
But she didn’t want that for her son. She wanted him to grow up able to feel at home with different kinds of people. To never feel inferior like she herself had as a child when her troubled mother had dumped her at Aunt Brenda’s house and never returned for her.
She understood now how resentful her aunt must’ve felt, but she’d had a fearsome temper and frequently unleashed her fury on a young, impressionable Bridget for even a minor misdemeanour.
The words Brenda had uttered on the day of Bridget’s mum’s funeral were forever seared into her mind: ‘You’re useless. You’ll never make anything of yourself; you’ll end up just like her. A dirty slut, too old and ugly to be loved.’ That was the last thing her aunt had said before she’d put Bridget into foster care. At fifteen years old she had silently vowed she’d make something of her life. And if only to prove Aunt Brenda wrong, she would start by never growing old and ugly.
Something had clicked into place when she’d made herself that promise, because since that day, Bridget had possessed a kind of conviction that however bleak life looked, she would eventually claw her way up to a better existence for herself and her son. They would enjoy comfort, warmth and security and a nice place to live. She would find a career she loved and work hard at it, and she would eventually find a partner who respected and supported her, instead of settling for one of the local lowlifes, who would only drag her further down.
One day she would have a wardrobe full of the best clothes and look after herself. Most important of all, she’d work hard to stay youthful and never let herself go like her mother had.
Exactly how and when this miraculous shift would occur, she had no idea yet, but the mechanics of it really didn’t matter. For now, trips away from the swamp to nice places like this helped her to keep believing in the dream.
An angry yell broke her out of her reverie, and she turned just in time to catch Jesse tussling with another little boy over a big blue truck. The other boy was shorter than Jesse, but he was stocky and confident and gave as good as he got. Before Bridget had a chance to intervene, the other boy’s mother rushed over.
Unlike most of the other parents here, who looked like they might have lunch plans straight after the playgroup, this woman was what Bridget would call functional. She had unfussy short brown hair and minimal make-up, and she wore well-cut jeans paired with a simple beige cashmere sweater, a navy blazer and tan leather loafers.
Bridget braced herself for the boy being pulled away from Jesse and an angry look directed her way. She felt her hackles rising in readiness.
But the woman didn’t pull her son away. Instead, she crouched down between the boys and spoke to them encouragingly. Both children stopped tugging at the toy and looked at her, nodding. She took the truck and placed it on the floor between them. Jesse grabbed some brightly coloured blocks from behind him, and the other boy helped him load the bed of the truck with them.
Bridget left her bag on the chair and walked over.
‘Hi.’ She smiled as the woman stood up. ‘Sorry about that. Jesse can be possessive about toys, he doesn’t see many other children.’
‘No worries, Tom is just as bad. People here like to bicker about which kid is right, but it’s part of playing, isn’t it? Sorting out their problems with a bit of help.’ The woman grinned. ‘I’m Jill, by the way. Jill Billinghurst. I think I saw you here last week too.’
‘It’s my third week coming here. Jesse loves it, so I trek across town. I’m Bridget Wilson.’
‘Across town? Where is it you live?’
Bridget’s smile faltered and a vague reply danced on her tongue. But what was the use in trying to be something she wasn’t? Jill and the rest of the parents here would tell a mile off that she and Jesse weren’t from Berry Hill.
‘Just off Sherwood Hall Road,’ she said simply, a vision of the damp, shabby accommodation they called home spoiling her optimism for a moment. The area’s biggest achievement in recent years was its ranking in the country’s most deprived neighbourhoods.
With a heavy heart, she prepared herself for Jill to remember she had something pressing to take care of and to haul Jesse’s new playmate away to find a more suitable friend.
Jill hesitated. ‘I was going to get myself a coffee. If you don’t mind watching the children, I could get you one too.’
‘That would be lovely, thanks,’ Bridget said, trying to cover up her surprise.
She sat back down as Jill made her way over to the refreshment hatch, acknowledging other mums as she walked. Bridget felt brighter, somehow validated. Jill was obviously very much part of the in-crowd here, and had taken the time to be kind to her and Jesse. It was a nic
e feeling. Bridget wasn’t the sort of woman to feel intimidated. She’d brazened it out here for three weeks with no one offering so much as a friendly smile until today. But it still felt good to have a chat with another human being. She did a low-paid job from home, collating and folding assembly instructions into envelopes, and some days she and Jesse didn’t see another soul.
She watched as Jesse and his little friend worked together to load the truck with coloured bricks. They took turns to push it round in a big circle and then worked as a team to offload the bricks before the process started again.
Jill returned with their coffees, plus juice and biscuits for the boys on a small tray. The woman on the seat to Bridget’s right had moved away, so Jill sat down on the vacant chair.
As the boys devoured their juice and biscuits, the two women chatted. Bridget learned that she and Jill were nearly the same age, and that Jill’s husband, Robert, worked as an architect in Mansfield.
‘You know, Tom hasn’t played this nicely with anyone for a long time. He’s an only child, so it’s lovely to see him sharing,’ Jill said as they watched the boys move away from the truck to a colourful cloth Wendy house. ‘Would you like to come over to our house one afternoon next week? We can have a coffee while the boys play. We’ve got lots of space for them to run around.’
‘Thank you, Jill,’ Bridget said, hardly believing her ears. ‘That would be really lovely.’
Nine
Jill
October 2019
We drove out of the prison gates and suddenly the car seemed too small to contain the three of us. All the things I’d been so desperate to say to Tom bounced silently round my head because I didn’t want to expose myself to Robert’s scathing criticism.
‘I’ve got crisps, and Fanta or water if you want them,’ I said brightly. ‘I even got a bag of Haribo, your favourite.’ Tom was sitting behind his father and I turned to face him.
‘I try to watch my sugar and saturated fat intake these days, Mum,’ Tom said, looking out of the window at the buildings, the people. ‘I’m fine, please don’t worry.’
His head twisted this way and that, tracking something or someone outside the window as the car moved past. He seemed fascinated, as if it surprised him that the world outside had continued to prosper while he’d been serving his time.
He looked clean and handsome wearing the new clothes I’d taken in for him on my last visit. I’d selected a navy bomber jacket with black denim jeans and a simple white T-shirt. He wore no jewellery, not even a watch, but when I kissed his cheek he was clean-shaven and smelled pleasingly of shampoo and soap.
I twisted around in my seat. ‘Did they give you lunch before you left?’
‘It’s a prison, not a hotel, Jill.’ Robert’s fingertips tapped a disjointed beat on the steering wheel.
‘I’m not hungry, Mum,’ Tom said, and I saw him meet his father’s cold eyes in the rear-view mirror. I looked away as the air in the car seemed to thicken. The old animosities were still alive and kicking.
Driving as a family like this felt like going back in time twenty years. One weekend a month, Robert would load up the car with roughly double the amount of stuff we needed and we’d set off to our static caravan on a small rural site in Northumberland. Me and Robert in the front, Tom and Jesse in the back like nodding dogs in time with the music they listened to through their sponge Walkman headphones. I felt a yearning inside me when I thought about those times.
I tolerated a minute of two of the silence before I felt moved to fill it.
‘It’s hard to know what to talk about, isn’t it?’ I turned my upper body to face Tom again. ‘I mean, it’s not like we’re picking you up from a holiday or you’ve been living somewhere else all this time.’
Tom gave me a weak smile but said nothing.
‘It must have felt like you were existing in a whole different world in there, like a parallel universe.’
On his lap, his phone lit up and he opened a text message. Vaguely, without looking at me, he said, ‘Yes, that’s sort of how it feels.’
‘How did you get the phone?’ I asked casually.
‘There’s a scheme at the prison. If you qualify, support services provide you with one on release together with your discharge grant.’
‘All funded by the taxpayer, no doubt,’ Robert said disapprovingly.
‘I’m surprised anyone knows your new number,’ I remarked. ‘Who’s texting you?’
‘It’s a message about my data allowance,’ he said easily.
He tapped at the screen and I thought it seemed odd that he was texting back to an automated service. He noticed me watching and stuffed the phone into his jacket pocket.
‘I thought there might be delays at the prison, or on the road,’ I said, rustling the bag of goodies at my feet. ‘That’s why I brought plenty of snacks and drinks, in case we needed them.’
‘Your problem is, you plan for every eventuality,’ Robert said scornfully. ‘Why not try going with the flow for once? You never know, you might even enjoy it and cut down those new tablets you keep popping.’
Tom frowned. ‘Tablets for what?’
‘To calm me down when I need it,’ I said, glaring at Robert. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘She can’t sleep at night, hasn’t done for years,’ Robert said with some satisfaction. ‘The ripples of what you did travelled far and wide, Tom, you’d do well to remember that.’
‘How can I forget with you around to remind me?’ Tom clamped his mouth closed and continued to stare out as we passed through the outskirts of the city.
The car fell quiet again. Only twenty minutes to go and we’d be home.
‘I almost forgot. Put the playlist on, Robert.’
‘Honestly, I’m fine, Mum, I don’t—’
‘But it’s Oasis, you’ve always loved them. I found a greatest hits playlist.’
‘I’d rather sit quietly for now.’
I felt the tension rolling off him in waves. I’d almost forgotten how on edge it made me when he and his father were in close proximity, sniping relentlessly at one another. I had imagined the journey back home being light with pleasant conversation and everyone glad that the moment had finally arrived. Even Robert.
Tom took his phone out again and glanced at the screen before sliding it back into his pocket. Something was bothering him.
I rooted around in the passenger footwell for my handbag and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
‘If you’re sitting there fretting about what your life is going to look like now, there’s no need.’ I glanced at Robert, who kept his eyes on the road ahead. ‘I was waiting until we got home to tell you all this, but we might as well use the time we’re stuck in the car.’
‘Tell me what?’ Tom sounded tired.
I unfolded the sheet. ‘So, I started off by googling difficulties people face when leaving prison, and lots of stuff came up. I also found some super resources on the Prisoners’ Families website. Have you heard of them? They even have a helpline you can ring.’
‘No. I haven’t,’ Tom said, his voice a monotone.
‘I addressed some of the biggest worries I found, so you’d get the best fresh start possible. First thing, accommodation. I’ve found a lovely little two-bedroom apartment near the park that’s come up for rent. If we move fast you might get it.’ Tom opened his mouth to say something but I instantly filled the gap. It was important he had all the facts before deciding. ‘When you went away, there was nothing around that area of town, I know. But now there are quite a few nice little shops, and a lovely café at the end of the road. They put a chalkboard outside most days, specials for lunch and breakfast. I met Audrey there last week and we had coffee and a croissant for a fiver. Can’t grumble at that!’
‘But I—’
‘It’s overwhelming to think about living on your own so soon, I know, and there’s absolutely no rush, but I felt sure you’d want space after living in such cramped conditions for so long. It�
�s going to take some adjusting to.’ I waited for Tom to respond, but he stayed quiet. ‘Anyway, we can view it and you can make your own mind up.’
‘He wants to thank his lucky stars he’s not headed straight for some grubby hostel,’ Robert added unhelpfully, as if Tom wasn’t sitting in the car with us.
‘Next one on the list was getting a job. I called on one of my old contacts in the library service, and you’ll never guess what … I’ve only managed to set up an opportunity for you!’
Tom looked incredulous. ‘What kind of opportunity?’
I held up a hand. ‘Before you panic, nothing is set in stone, so there’s no need to feel pressured. I thought you might even fancy retraining in something completely different, and that’s fine, too. I read that finding a job is one of the most difficult things for someone with a criminal record, and so I thought I’d give you the option if you wanted to get some normality back quickly.’
‘I’ll be fine sorting myself out,’ Tom said, leaning his head against the glass. ‘My probation officer can help with all that. I’ll be meeting with him soon enough.’
‘Well, mind that you get it sorted out sooner rather than later,’ Robert interjected. ‘We don’t want a replay of where you left off.’
Tom had gone to college to study for A levels when he left school, but he found he didn’t enjoy the subjects he’d chosen. The principal wrote to us to say he was falling behind with his studies. Then he got into his boxing and was excited when he found out that another local college did a year-long sports science foundation degree. He’d applied and was waiting for an interview when that terrible night changed the course of his life.
‘We can talk about it all when we get home,’ I said, deflated. I refolded the piece of paper and pushed it back into my handbag.