Free Leather Wings by Marilyn Duckworth

enough, watched over by all these neighbours, it was okay to talk to the Rawleigh’s man. I began to relax.
    “Isn’t it getting near your tea time?” I asked Jania. With any luck I could offer to drive them home, I didn’t think at that point about the chance of letting Sharon off first, it didn’t occur to me, honestly. Anyway, I didn’t offer then. Jania started to tell me about the toy city — she called it her “bedroom city” because that’s where she’d built it. She needs a car, she says, for her Rawleigh’s man. She actually said that — she’s got a doll Rawleigh’s man, it made me feel quite strange, light headed.
    “Esther can’t hoover under my bed, she fusses but she says it keeps me quiet.”
    I say again that it must be getting near her tea time. “I have to go for my tea soon, don’t you, Sharon?”
    Sharon looks at her watch. “Soon.”
    “He wanted rid of me,” Jania says, quite cheerfully it seems, used to it I expect.
    “Her Grandad had some business,” Sharon explains, rather sharply I thought, making excuses where none were due, I bet.
    I’d said I was leaving for my tea so I had to go. It would have looked funny not to. I had this stretchy feeling, which I’ve had on other occasions, terrible but lovely too: a feeling in my hands and arms as if they want to stretch out and touch, like there’s strings attached and something tugging, tugging. Oh, Christ! I was so lucky that afternoon. It’s my second bit of luck. As if someone is giving me permission to be near her. I need to be close to her, she needs a person who truly cares about her to watch over her, protect her, don’t laugh at me, I’m serious. How much real affection do you think she gets from those two selfish wankers? My father would have said “ me generation” — it was one of his smart swear words, well two words I suppose. What about Jania’s daddy, dumping the kid so he can get on with his life, pick up women, you can bet on it, why go back to school if you’re not going to take advantage? No mention of Mummy. Dead or buggered off, it comes to the same thing. She has that look of an orphan, I’m notbeing sentimental, I’m not one of those who sit in front of a television, sniffing. The thing is she looks — separate. I might have given the wrong impression when I said that stuff about her fine skin, her soft hair. That’s right, but she doesn’t have a cute round face like the other kids who’ve got me in trouble (with myself, don’t worry, not with the law, I’m not a fool.) No, Jania has a pointy face and big eyes, like a little pixie, with a fringe of white hair. She looks like no one else I’ve ever known, I don’t know why she makes me feel — the eyes have a lot to do with it I expect, and the way she shrugs her shoulders at you. She does this when she says hello, as if her body is saying hello with the rest of her, a bit of a wriggle — shyness is there too — I can’t tell you what that does to a man. I’ve always liked shyness, modesty. A shy body and a forward talker, a shy talker and a forward body, both of these work for me but there has to be shy in it somewhere, I guess I’m a shy man. The shy Rawleigh’s man — that’s a contradiction, isn’t it? That’s me. Anyway, Jania likes me. She’s made a doll of me.

     
    E STHER IS IN trouble with Donald. She has done just what she promised him she would never do, mislaid some papers, at home, where they had no right to be. It was days after she smuggled the two box files back into the office that she discovered the loss and now suddenly it is important that she produce the folder instantly.
    “I’ll go home and look,” she whispers, keeping her eyes down and aware that people could be watching her through the glass.
    “No you won’t, Mr Finn’s waiting on that other report. I’ll have to think of something to stall them downstairs. Oh, God, Esther, I don’t need this!”
    Esther’s eyes start to water. She hasn’t