Free Games People Play by Louise Voss

not matter. Here, here is your wine back. Number twelve. Janice Murray is the person with the nose in the air, you won’t miss her. Have a good time. It was nice to meet you. I’m sorry for any inconvenience.’ I was practically pushing him towards the front door, thrusting his bottle back at him, determined not to let him see the fresh tears which were springing up fast.
    Ted turned and put his hands on my shoulders – not in a perverted way, but in a kind way which made it unavoidable that the tears spill down my face. ‘Poor kid,’ he said. ‘You, I mean, not the baby. Where’s the father?’
    ‘Gone,’ I said, not meeting his eyes, feeling his hands almost burning into my shoulders. ‘Didn’t want to know.’
    ‘His loss,’ Ted said. ‘I like you. Do you reckon your mother would babysit one evening, and we can go dancing then?’
    ‘She might, I suppose.’ I gave a sob. I was so tempted to bury my face in his jacket that I felt pulled like a magnet towards him. He’s a stranger, I tell myself. Don’t be so forward. But it felt natural. And he’d told me he liked me! Paul Tyler never said anything with nearly so much affection.
    ‘Well then. Shame about tonight, but how about we go back into your front room and have a little dance there instead? I haven’t finished my drink yet.’
    Ted never made it to the party that night. When my parents returned, they were too drunk themselves to notice the excessive number of cigarette stubs in the ashtray, the two empty glasses left on the floor next to the settee, or the fact that the settee cushions were flattened in the middle in an unmistakable hollow caused by two people, one on top of the other. But the next morning, they noticed how bright-eyed I looked, how willingly I played with Ivan, whistling ‘Tonight’ from West Side Story , and even offering to go to the shop when we ran out of tea.
    Me and Ted had been married for nearly three years when, in 1968, Sandie wed the dashing young dress designer, Jeff Banks, and the pair were the most hip young couple of the Swinging Sixties.
    ‘I could have had him,’ I lamented to myself as I looked at Ted and sighed. I loved him, but there was no way he’d ever get in a pair of those groovy tight striped trousers like the ones Jeff Banks wore. Ted thought men with facial hair were all damn Commie hippies. But at least he was rich, and I would never have to work in a factory again.
    And I really did love him.

Chapter 9
    Rachel
    I wake up, again, on the morning of my twenty-third birthday. This time there is a wintry daylight outside – I’ve really slept in – and there are tears running down my cheeks.
    I dreamed I was on Centre Court at Wimbledon, racket in hand, but I couldn’t seem to move. Instead of an opponent, tennis balls were firing at me out of the ball machine, flying straight at my head, bang, bang, bang, right between the eyes, pummelling me into the ground until I began to slowly collapse beneath the barrage. Dad was yelling at me from the stands, something about ‘ footwork ! ’, fury etched between his eyebrows; but it was no good, I couldn’t get any of those balls back, or stop them from hammering me. The capacity crowd jeered and slow hand-clapped.
    Gordana and Mum were sitting in the front row, on the opposite side of the stadium to Ivan. For reasons which I was unable to fathom, they wore matching designer wedding dresses. They looked disappointed in me. Then, to add to the dream’s humiliation, I wet myself on court; just like I did in my first ever umpired short tennis match, seventeen years ago, as a red-faced six-year-old too embarrassed to ask for the toilet in case Dad shouted at me.
    Even though I was awake most of the night, it still takes me a few seconds to remember what happened at the club with Elsie and Gordana, but as soon as it does, I can’t stop the worry settling back on my shoulders again like dandruff.
    I climb wearily out of bed and put on a tracksuit, but