Free Misadventures by Sylvia Smith Page A

all my money in the Post Office and had not attempted my ‘get rich scheme’.

1985
E LAINE
    Elaine was a bank clerk aged twenty-seven. I worked for the same bank as a temporary secretary with a three-month booking. She was married but had no children. I was aged forty.
    E laine and I shared the same lunch break and we would chat to each other. During one of our conversations she told me she was the youngest of five children and her mother had died whilst they were all of school age. Her father didn’t think he could cope with raising a large family single-handed and working full-time to support them so he gathered his children around him and said to them, ‘I don’t see how I can look after each one of you and keep you at the same time. I’ve thought about it very carefully and I’ve decided you will have to go into a Home until you are teenagers.’
    Elaine laughed as she told me, ‘We all burst into tears and cried our eyes out until my father felt so terrible he couldn’t go through with it andhe said, “Alright. I’ve had enough. I won’t put any of you in a Home but well have to look after each other as best we can.”’
    Elaine told me her father continued working and managed to cook the dinner every evening and get the shopping at the weekends, leaving the children to share the household chores, with the eldest supervising the younger ones. She said that despite this she had a very happy childhood.

1986
T HE N EIGHBOURS
    I was aged forty-one .
    A middle-aged woman and her elderly mother moved into a newly refurbished house in ‘our’ street. We saw beautiful furnishings being carried up the path by various deliverymen.
    Both women lived together very quietly, not mixing with the neighbours. The older woman was never seen and it was rumoured that the younger woman only left the house for work in the City or to buy the weekly shopping. We did not see any visitors.
    The following year the elderly woman died of natural causes. Some weeks after her funeral a neighbour told me the daughter had committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the office block where she worked, the assumption being because she could not face life alone.

1987
B RIAN R
    Brian was a thirty-eight-year-old Director of a local company, I was his secretary, aged forty-two. His wife Sue, aged thirty-six, was a solicitor. They had a four-year-old son called Simon. I worked for Brian for one year, until I was made redundant. The company eventually closed down.
    B rian and his family went on a two-week package holiday to Spain. On his return to the office I asked him if he’d enjoyed himself. He replied, ‘Not really, no. The first week it rained every day and all day and the second week Simon broke his arm.’
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    Brian and Sue attended many official dos throughout the month. I asked him, ‘Wouldn’t both of you rather be at home of an evening? Surely all these functions are boring?’ He replied, ‘Some times they’re very interesting. For example, Sue went to an official dinner last Tuesday and shetold me the highlight of the night was when a fellow diner vomited all over the table.’

1987
P AT
    Pat was fifty-six. I was forty-two. We were secretaries in the Directorate of a local company and were both made redundant. The company has now ceased trading.
    D uring one shared lunch break Pat chatted about her life. She told me she had been married twice. The first marriage produced a son and then a daughter, but ended in divorce. The second marriage was childless, finishing with widowhood. She now had a live-in boyfriend.
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    Pat told me her mother felt very proud when her grandson was born and insisted on pushing the pram on the child’s first outing. Pat said, ‘We were walking up the road talking away when we heard a terrific bang. We looked round to see the pram had hit a tree. We rushed to see how the baby was and he wasn’t there! We