Free Monday to Friday Man by Alice Peterson Page A

mental note to insure my painting against theft.
    ‘How’s Flora?’ I ask, as we stall at the zebra crossing. ‘Any news?’
    ‘We spoke yesterday – it was her birthday.’ He pauses. ‘She’s having such a good time, I sometimes wonder if she’ll ever come back and marry me.’
    ‘Bobby Shaftoe’s gone to sea,’ I recount nostalgically, ‘Silver buckles on his knee. He’ll come back and marry me, Bonny Bobby Shaftoe.’
    Guy looks bemused.
    ‘It was Megan’s favourite song: we used to sing it with her on long car journeys,’ I explain.
    ‘Do you think about her?’ Guy asks gently.
    ‘Sometimes,’ I confess.
    Her memory is like a pebble in my shoe. There are some days when I know it’s there but I can live with it. Other times it’s so sharp that it digs and cuts into my skin, my foot bleeds and I can’t walk on. I have to stop because I’m crying unexpectedly.
    Tears fill my eyes.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again. ‘She must have been special.’
    ‘She was. It’s stupid really, when it happened such a long time ago.’
    ‘You haven’t really told me how she died.’
    Traffic rushes past, our dogs are pulling on their leads and a police car’s siren blasts.
    ‘Tell me another time,’ Guy suggests, touching my arm.
    I nod, feeling the warmth of his hand. ‘Flora will come back, Guy. She’d be mad not to.’
    Guy turns left; I turn right.

13
     
    December 1985
    ‘Happy birthday dear Megan, happy birthday to you!’ we sing as Mum walks into the sitting room with a chocolate cake lit with one pink candle.
    Megan, one today, sits in her high chair made of foam, moulded to her shape to support her spine. I’m glad her birthday is close to Christmas because her purple dress covers the splints on her legs; her cardigan covers the splints on her arms. As she sits in her chair, I make myself believe she is normal, that she’ll go on to have lots more birthdays, like Nick and me.
    I cut the cake and Mum tells me to make a wish. Normally I wish to be a famous author like Enid Blyton. Today I wish that Megan will live forever.
    We take it in turns opening her presents: animal mobiles for her bedroom, sparkling hairclips and nursery rhyme books. Megan points to the ‘Bobby Shaftoe’ page, insisting, ‘That one!’ and Aunt Pearl, Mum’s sister who lives in Dorset, reads it to her. Aunt Pearl isn’t married. She has long dark hair dyed with plum-coloured streaks and she wears gypsy dresses with high-heeled boots. Nick and I love staying with Aunt Pearl during the holidays because she has a dog called Snoop and she lives in a pretty thatched cottage with a large garden that we can play in. My bedroom looks out at horses in a field, and I tell myself that when I grow up I will live in a country cottage too, just like this one. Aunt Pearl always has funny lodgers staying in her house The last time we stayed we met a Japanese man called Luke, who taught Nick and me origami at her kitchen table. Her current lodger is an opera singer, and Aunt Pearl says she wakes up to the most beautiful voice.
    I saw Aunt Pearl handing our mother an envelope earlier. It was from Granny. ‘Megan needs our mother’s support, not her bloody money,’ Mum said angrily when she took out a fifty-pound note. ‘Why doesn’t she visit us? Is she ashamed?’
    We play games and it seems unfair that my baby sister can only watch, but each time I look at her, she’s smiling. I decide Megan is the real miracle in our family.
    Over the following year we’re happy. At mealtimes we sit down together to home-made fish pies. We talk to Megan about our day and ask her what she has done in playgroup.
    Megan becomes the reason why my father starts to come home early from work. He strides into the kitchen and scoops Megan up from her chair before taking her upstairs for her bath. Sometimes I help him. We pile crocodiles, sharks and ducks into the bubbling foam and Dad rolls up his shirtsleeves to support Megan’s head and lean her