Free The Lives of Women by Christine Dwyer Hickey

do you mean ‘our age’, Junior?’
    â€˜All right – your age then. Seventeen.’
    â€˜Give me five words to describe her,’ Agatha says.
    She gives her more than five – tall, tanned, tennis-player’s legs; blonde fuzzy plait over one shoulder. Slow bouncy walk.
    â€˜And…?’ Agatha says.
    â€˜And what?’
    â€˜The cigarette! The cigarette!’
    The girl walked over to the woman, took the cigarette from her hand, helped herself to two short pulls, before returning it to the V between the woman’s fingers. The woman looked up then, spotted her standing there and waved. Elaine pauses a moment to imagine how she must have looked to the newcomers, after the taximan had pulled away, leaving her exposed on the pavement like something that had been under a rock, grey-faced and gawky, blinking into the light.
    â€˜And what did you do then?’
    â€˜I waved back, but I don’t think they noticed.’
    Days went by. The women talked of nothing else. Elaine heard them through the kitchen window while she was lying on the patio, reading. Their voices straying out along with the smell of cigarettes and coffee. They were German, it was decided.
    Mrs Osborne was known to have German relatives – wasn’t she?
Was she?
I didn’t know that.
Oh yes, now that I think of it, you’re right
. She’s right. I heard that too.
It would certainly explain the sporty look of them
. Sporty! Is that what you call it? And now that you mention it, Mrs Townsend’s cleaner thought she’d heard funny talk coming from the back garden while taking in the washing.
Funny talk?
Yes, you know, foreign.
Oh, foreign
.
    â€˜Oh God!’ Agatha says. ‘What next!’
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    Next, the double beds. Two double beds – brand new, mattresses wrapped in plastic, confirming it all: two sisters waiting to bejoined by two husbands. Mrs Caudwell said, ‘It wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, of course, two couples living together in the same house, but they do things differently in these countries, I believe.’
    â€˜And the car?’ Agatha urges. ‘Don’t forget the car.’
    â€˜Yes, the car.’
    The German sisters bought a car. The younger one drove it home. She banged it off the side of the gate when she was pulling into the driveway. Then she jumped out of the car, slammed the door, screamed something through the window at the other one, before stomping up the drive and kicking the garage door. That one kick to the garage door changed everything.
    â€˜Your mother?’
    â€˜My mother. She got on the phone to Martha Shillman.’
    â€˜Don’t forget her voice!’
    â€˜Not sisters at all, Martha, I’m telling you. Mother and daughter. Of course I’m sure. Yes. Yes. God, if I can’t recognise a teen-tantrum by now!’
    â€˜A teen-tantrum – Jesus!’
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    The women were back, this time they took to the sitting room. There was no smell of coffee, but the ice bucket was missing. Elaine had to earwig over the banisters.
    There had been reports of the newcomers sunbathing in bikinis in the back garden.
    When the sun turned in the evening, the mother – as she was now called – had been seen in the front garden reading a book, although she at least had the decency to throw on a few clothes.
    â€˜If you could call shorts and T-shirt clothes,’ Agatha says, taking off Mrs Townsend’s voice.
    â€˜Yes, exactly, and my mother agreed – as usual – with everything Mrs Doctor had to say.’
    There was something quite common about the whole sorry scene, it was agreed, sitting by her front door on a kitchen chair. It was the sort of thing people living in terraced houses on the far side of town were rumoured to do. And all that waving at the men as they drove by on their way home from work, flashing that smile.
    â€˜And who did she wave to?’
    â€˜Only randy Caudwell