Free Crystal's Song by Millie Gray Page B

his hippen changed?” she called through to Etta.
    “Aye, I’m just going to do it. Wish he was potty-trained.”
    “Well, you’ll have to work at that – no spend most of the day smoking fags and with your nose in a paper. Look, if you don’t change him right now he’ll have spread it all not just up his back but right up into his head.”
    Before Etta could speak, a voice from the bathroom shouted, “Etta, where on earth are you with the hot water? This bath is getting to be bearable … and I’m needing the gin topped up.”
    Etta had re-emerged from the kitchen and Patsy was surprised when she skipped over the floor, lifted up Bill and then fled out of the front door.
    “Etta, you dozy besom,” cried Dinah, “you’re supposed to be helping me with my problem. But right now you’re only hindering me. Now get in here pronto with that water.”
    When the bathroom door was kicked fully open, Dinah drew her feet up from the bottom of the bath so they wouldn’t be scalded when the boiling water was poured in. But it wasn’t the water that sent Dinah’s temperature soaring. It was the sight of her mother who, despite the limited daylight coming though the semi-blacked-out window, immediately knew what was going on. Without uttering a word, Patsy plunged a hand into the scalding water, fished out the plug and sent the water cascading away. “What do you think you’re doing?” screamed Dinah while trying to grab the stopper from her mother.
    “Trying to save your soul from eternal damnation,” shouted her mother vehemently, as she grabbed a towel and began to rub Dinah’s back dry. “And why I’m bothering I don’t know, because writhing in purgatory or burning in hell forever more is a sight too good for you!”
    Dinah’s head slumped forward and she began to sob uncontrollably. “Mum. Don’t you realise I’ll be a laughing-stock?” she cried.
    “Well, wouldn’t that be preferable to eternal damnation?” retorted Patsy.
    “You don’t understand.” Dinah hesitated as she searched for an excuse that would have her mother relent. “I was taken advantage of by a …” She just couldn’t continue.
    “A GI Joe?” sneered Patsy, seizing the gin bottle and pouring the remaining contents into the lavatory, flushing it away with a defiant pull of the chain.
    Dinah nodded. “So you see, it would be better to risk damnation and get rid of it.”
    “What?” screeched Patsy. “Look, Dinah, if you, a married woman, hadn’t been keeping company with that blasted man, he couldn’t have … well he just couldn’t have!”
    “But Mum, you seem to think I don’t know I’ve sinned and now am going to commit an even bigger sin – a mortal one – that three Hail Marys and an hour on my knees praying won’t get me out of. But I have to do something.” Dinah could see from the look on her mother’s face that Patsy was going to take a lot more convincing before she’d let her abort the baby so she continued quickly, “Don’t you see that I’d rather be doomed for ever than what it would do to … Oh, Mum, think how Tam would feel when he gets home – and he will get home now that we’re winning.” Dinah looked imploringly at her mother but still there was no sign of weakening from Patsy so she hurriedly added, “Not to mention the disgrace on the bairns.”
    “I am thinking about Tam and the bairns and all the heartache you’ll cause them. But more important, I’m thinking of myself because if I did let you do such a mortal sin I would be condemned too!” Dinah looked as if she was about to interrupt her mother but changed her mind and Patsy continued her tirade: “So the best solution is for you to go to the Sisters in Glasgow where nobody will know who you are – and what you are. The bairn, God bless him or her, can be adopted from there.”
    Dinah leapt out of the bath. “You sanctimonious old witch. You would send me, your only daughter, to a St Jude’s Laundry where the vicious