Free Room for a Stranger by Ann Turnbull

flooded with scarlet.
    So it was true.
    â€œPoster?” Rhoda stammered. “Where?” She wouldn’t meet Doreen’s eye.
    Doreen sprang to her feet, fists clenched. She looked at her mother. Had she known? But she could see from her face that she hadn’t.
    Ian began to cry. Phyl soothed him, unaware of the effect her remark had had. “They must have just gone up,” she said. “I saw one in the High Street, in Jennings’ window, when I got off the bus. All those names. There’s a lot of people in it…”
    â€œDoreen—” began Rhoda.
    â€œI’m going out,” said Doreen.
    She ran all the way to the High Street, and stopped outside Jennings’. There it was: a proper printed poster, with a drawing at the top of someone playing a piano, and underneath the list of performers: “Miss Hilda West … Mrs Elsie Meadows … Mrs Adeline Dyer…” and, last of all, “Miss Rhoda Kelly”.

CHAPTER NINE
    â€œDoreen!”
    Rhoda was running down the street towards her. She arrived panting. “Doreen – don’t think – I’m not going to do it unless you can—”
    â€œYes, you are!” said Doreen. “It says here you are: ‘Miss Rhoda Kelly’. No mention of me.” She was burning up with anger. She had wanted so much to be in the concert; the thought of Rhoda being in it and not her was unbearable. “Now I know what you’ve been doing up at Aunty Elsie’s! Getting round Miss Forrest—”
    â€œI meant to tell you—”
    â€œYou didn’t! You never meant to tell me anything!”
    â€œIt was only last week. I went to Aunty Elsie’s and Miss Forrest was there.”
    â€œSo you showed off and sang for her.”
    â€œShe was interested…Doreen, I
asked
her if you could do it too. She was interested because of my mother—”
    â€œOh, yes, of course, your wonderful mother, who’s so famous and beautiful. Only we’ve never seen her. Maybe she doesn’t exist, like your boyfriend. Like your father—”
    â€œHe does!”
    Doreen saw that she had touched a nerve and continued relentlessly. “She might as well not exist. She never writes. She never visits. You don’t even know where she lives. She doesn’t care much about you, does she? She doesn’t want you and neither do we.”
    â€œYour mam does. She likes me.”
    â€œNo, she doesn’t. She’s just being polite. She thinks you’re precocious; she told me so. The only thing my mum likes about you is the ten and six a week.”
    Rhoda was silent. “I hate you,” she said at last. And she turned away and began to walk back towards home.
    Doreen felt a flicker of guilt; she’d gone too far. “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” she shouted after Rhoda. “You
don’t
know your mother’s address!”
    After Rhoda had gone, Doreen stayed in the High Street. She was shaking. She walked up and down, looking in shop windows, seeing over and over again the offending poster and letting it reinforce her anger and convince her that she had been entitled to say what she had.
    When she got home there was no sign of Rhoda. Phyl and Ian had gone and Mum was ironing.
    â€œ
There
you are,” said Mum. She looked wary, as if Doreen were an unexploded bomb.
    â€œWhere’s Rhoda?” asked Doreen.
    â€œUpstairs. She was very quiet when she came in. Went straight up. Have you two sorted it all out?”
    â€œOh, yes, it’s all sorted out – she’s in the concert and I’m not.”
    â€œThat’s not what I meant. Has she explained? She told me and Phyl that she’d asked Miss Forrest if you could be in it, too. She says she doesn’t want to do it otherwise.”
    â€œShe’s got herself on the poster, though, hasn’t she?”
    Mum sighed, and thumped the iron down. “Poor