Free 11 The Teashop on the Corner by Milly Johnson

‘unconfrontational’ comment was an indirect reference to her sister, whom Miss Wolf had found very confrontational. Their teacher was a horrible old bat, Molly
chuckled to herself. She hadn’t liked any of her pupils very much, and Margaret least of all. She had been terribly unfair to . . . what was her name . . . Phyllis . . . Phyllis Wood, that
was it. Phyllis came from a very poor family: her clothes were often stained and tatty and she wore the same socks day after day. Miss Wolf had made Phyllis stand on a chair as an example of how
not
to dress for school and Phyllis had been crying until Margaret grabbed her hand and pulled her down from her pedestal of ridicule. Before Miss Wolf could get her words out, Margaret
had told her that she was evil and that their uncle was a solicitor and Margaret was going to tell him what she had done to Phyllis and persuade Mr and Mrs Wood to press charges.
    Miss Wolf had stuck her face in Molly’s and demanded of her: ‘Is your uncle a solicitor?’ She had known that Molly wouldn’t dare lie to her.
    ‘Yes,’ replied Molly, hoping Miss Wolf hadn’t noticed the nervous gulp in her throat. ‘Our mother’s brother, Uncle Frederick. He works in Leeds, for the
court.’ Deception didn’t come easy to Molly, but she would rather tell a lie than get Margaret into trouble.
    Molly hadn’t been able to sleep properly for weeks, thinking that Miss Wolf was going to ask their mother and father if Uncle Frederick really was a solicitor. They didn’t even have
an uncle. But Miss Wolf never did. And she never put Phyllis Wood on a chair again and mocked her either.
    Molly shivered. Miss Wolf had turned out to be an angel compared to some people she had encountered in her life. She could have laughed when the next card in the pile came from
him.
A
postcard, from Blackpool. Harvey Hoyland. The biggest devil of them all.
    My dear Molly,
    Wish you were here
    H x
    He always had such lovely handwriting. She had once looked up his wide-spaced, slanting style in a graphology book to see what it said about him: Trustworthy, loyal and
well-adjusted. Enjoyed freedom and didn’t like to be hemmed in. Well, the last part of that analysis was as true as the first part wasn’t.
    He had been gone three months when that postcard had arrived and she hadn’t known what to make of it. Even now she could recall the quickening in her heart when she plucked it out of the
letter-box. She analysed it for days: did it mean he wanted her to go up to Blackpool and find him? Did he really miss her? Why had he sent it if he didn’t miss her? What would his
fancy-piece think about him sending a postcard to his estranged wife? Did he mean he wished Molly was there as well as, or instead of, her? Was the front picture of a child on a donkey of any
significance? Or was he rubbing it in by telling her that life was so good for him now that he wished she were here to witness it? She didn’t know and never would.
    He didn’t write again. He slipped out of her life like a shadow runs from the sun, never asking for anything in the divorce settlement. She had hated him so much for the silence which was
a torture. Why had she kept that damned postcard anyway? It held a ridiculous power to stir up settled waters within her where old feelings still subsisted in glorious technicolour, even now after
twenty-eight years. Molly made to tear it in two, rip it in shreds the way that Harvey Hoyland had ripped up her heart. It wasn’t the first time that she had tried to rid herself of it, but
she had never managed to. This time was no exception. She hurriedly put the lid on the box and stuffed it back in the desk drawer. Out of sight, out of mind.
    She wished she could have wiped the blackboard of her life clean and started again: been more like Margaret, stood up to Edwin, run away with her son and never let his father or grandmother see
him again.
And what about Harvey Hoyland?
A voice in her head asked her.