Free Out of Step by Maggie Makepeace Page A

cancellation appointment at the health centre for late that afternoon, and trailed off there with both children in tow. Sitting in the waiting room, she tried half-heartedly to keep them from annoying the other patients. She sat Josh on her knee, but Rosie wanted to sit there too and they began, as ever, to whine and hit each other. Cassie thought: Why do I have to have such difficult children? It’s so unfair!
    ‘Stop that, Rosie!’ she said sharply, knowing that this would precipitate a major sulk, but unable to do anything about it. The child’s lower lip trembled. She stumped over to the children’s play corner and began throwing the toys about. Josh was fidgeting on Cassie’s lap, playing with her silk scarf and pulling it too tight around her neck. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said to him. ‘Rosie? That’s naughty. You’ll break it!’
    She looked round rather desperately, hoping that someone else would step in, but most of the people also waiting were elderly and they looked uniformly disapproving, hitching their feet and handbags stiffly out of Rosie’s way as she shuffled round the waiting room on her bottom with a wooden toy train, having as many accidents as possible. Josh wriggled off Cassie’s lap apparently to go and interfere, but just at that moment another boy of about his own age came in with his mother. To Cassie’s relief, Josh went over to talk to him. The young woman sat down next to Cassie.
    ‘Bin waiting long?’ she asked her. She was short andplump, with cropped pink hair, and dressed entirely in black leather.
    Cassie was too exhausted to be critical. ‘About ten minutes.’
    ‘It’s always bad. Dunno why they bother wif an appointments system. It’s a joke, innit?’
    ‘Seems so.’
    Cassie saw with relief that the extra child seemed to have diverted her two away from their inveterate squabbling. They even appeared to be playing a game together. Twenty minutes went by. Every now and again the woman beside her went over and sorted her boy out, keeping Josh and Rosie in order at the same time.
    ‘Thanks,’ Cassie said, looking up briefly.
    ‘No bovver,’ the woman said. ‘I’m good wif kids. I’d like to set meself up as a childminder. I know I could make a go of it an’ earn enough for meself and Gav to live off, but I haven’t got nowhere to do it, so I can’t get started. You don’t know a place, do you? Trouble is, I can’t pay any rent until I’ve earned enough dosh. Hopeless innit?’ Her brief smile was surprisingly endearing. Cassie felt an uncharacteristic urge to confide in her.
    ‘I’m in a difficult position too,’ she said. ‘I’m not well, and I desperately need a nanny for these two, but my husband’s walked out on us, so I can’t possibly afford to pay for one.’
    ‘You got a job though?’
    ‘Not now.’
    ‘But you got a house?’
    ‘Oh yes, a large one. Too large really; the children and I rattle about in it, now Rob’s gone.’ She could hear herself manufacturing a sob story to match the one the woman was telling her. It didn’t strike her as dishonest, just polite; a way to reach across the divisions of class and privilege to say: I understand how you feel. We’re both wronged women fighting against the odds.
    ‘Well then,’ the woman said, hopefully. ‘Now c’rect me if I’m wrong, but you’ve gotta big house and you need a childminder, right? And I’ve got nowhere to live, and I
am
a childminder, yeah?’
    ‘Well… yes.’
    ‘So, you get my drift?’
    ‘Well…’
    ‘How about you let me and Gav have a room in your house rent free? Then weekdays when Gav and your boy’s at school, I can mind free or four kids (including your youngest for nuffink, of course) and make a bob or two, which wif income support’ll pay for our keep. Then we’ve got a roof and food, and you’ve got your kids looked after, and the house ain’t so big no more! I’d need me weekends off, but that’s all. Me name’s Mic, by the way. So, what