Free Postcards From Berlin by Margaret Leroy Page A

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     have children,” I said. “I’d like to have a family of my own. And a place to live, just us and nobody else.” I saw, heard
     it all in my head: a lawn, a lily pool, the splashing of a fountain in the pool, the laughter of children. In a moment of
     hope that warmed me through, there on the thin, frayed carpet: I will have them, I thought, these things.
    My mother visited, occasionally, erratically, dressed up, but not for me. Always in a hurry, as though there was somewhere
     else she needed to be. Like someone at a party, looking over your shoulder for the person they want to talk to, and shifty,
     as though she was implicated in some guilt by merely being there. Sometimes she brought presents: exuberant cuddly toys, large
     fluffy rabbits with satin hearts on their chests. I put the toys on the windowsill of the room I shared with Aimee. Sometimes
     my mother was drunk when she came, sentimental and full of self-pity, saying over and over how she’d done her best for me,
     done everything she could.
    “When can I come home?”
    “Soon. Very soon, Trina.” Smoking her Marlboros, fiddling with her rings. “I just need to get myself together. You’re OK in
     here then, are you?”
    “I hate it.”
    “Oh,” she’d say. “They seem nice enough.”
    Afterward, Lesley would sit on my bed and talk to me.
    “How do you feel about your mum, my love? How does it all make you feel?”
    I never knew how to answer these questions.
    During the week, we were meant to go to school. The others mostly didn’t: They’d go off to the towpath, where they’d sit on
     rubber tires and inhale lighter fuel and throw stones in the water; or maybe to the Glendale Centre, where when they got bored
     they’d steal things from the shops. I was the only one who went on going to school.
    It was a sprawling comprehensive, full of children I envied, with homes to go to and trainers that were regularly replaced.
     I didn’t do well: I was always rather hungry and distracted. I went because of the art, because the art rooms were always
     open at lunchtime. You could mess about with pens and paints and do whatever you wanted and nobody bothered you. It was quiet,
     in a way that The Poplars never was — just Capital Radio playing, and a few other girls softly talking, and the drumming of
     the rain on the mezzanine roof: It always seemed to be raining; that’s how it is in my memory, the windows clouded with condensation
     so no one could see in. And there I discovered this sweet, surprising thing: that with a pen or paintbrush in my hand, there
     was a flow to my life, and I could draw things that pleased me, and the other girls would stop and look as they passed. However
     tired I was, however hungry, this flow and freedom still happened, till The Poplars faded away to a smoky blur on the edges
     of my mind, and I entered a different place, a place of shapes, of colors, viridian and cobalt and burnt sienna, where I felt
     for a while a secret, guarded joy.
    There was a teacher called Miss Jenkins who took an interest in me. She had an ex-hippy air — she wore hoops in her ears and
     liked embroidered cardigans. She never asked me how I felt or wanted to talk about me. She must have known where I came from:
     It didn’t seem to matter. She showed me things: a book of impressionist paintings; a postcard of a picture by Pisanello that
     I adored, of a velvety dark wood studded with birds like jewels; a book of botanical drawings she’d bought at Kew. She gave
     me pictures to copy, to explore, and suggested materials I could try — fine pens, oil paints, acrylics, and plaster to make
     a 3-D picture — which they only used in class at A-level. I was privileged, I knew: at moments like these, I felt rich. So
     I went on going to school, for the quiet hours in the art room and the complicated, sweet scent of acrylic paint that I could
     still smell hours afterward, and Miss Jenkins, whose first name I never knew.
    I didn’t get