Free The Tin-Kin by Eleanor Thom

and slether and sick, and a tube of toothpaste half eaten and half smeared into Maeve’s hair, all over her clothes and up the wall. Much worse besides. But maybeenduring the torture of the laundrette so early in life, the sweat and steam and constant roll of driers, was what made Maeve almost obsessively clean now. She worried about mud on the soles of her shoes, picked and pawed at her clothes at the sight of even a tiny stain or spill, and cried if her nose needed blowing. Blue Scarfy was the only exception. She wouldn’t allow it to be washed. Not after the terrible fate of Scarfy the Original, who had disintegrated in the machine. The only traces of it had been the iridescent green threads Dawn Sellotaped off the rest of the washing.
    It didn’t take long to find the spare house keys. They’d been pushed deep into the compost under a clump of wilting ivy. There were five or six on the ring, all different shapes and sizes. Dawn cleaned each one in turn, Maeve wrinkling her nose and blowing on them for fun before they got a quick wipe with a tissue. Dawn would separate the two Shirley had used, the Yale and the Chubb, and then they would be through the front door again and she could make herself a cuppa.
    It was in the middle of all that, before she even realised, that the key to the cupboard was finally in her hands. She was holding out the cold metal nib of it while Maeve pursed her lips and blew breath warm over Dawn’s fingertips. Dawn turned the key over. It was heavy given how small it was. She looked. Not a fancy thing, just like any iron key. But it was old. She had that strange feeling again, as if someone might be watching. She hurried to get into the house. She didn’t stop to take off her coat or worry about Maeve’s stiff new buckles. She went straight to the cupboard, still flustered at locking herself out but feeling something else now too. Sparks in her fingertips. She’d almost given up on finding the key. She’d been thinking of asking Ally for a tool to force the door, but now she didn’t need to. She knew this key was the right one, even before she slotted it neatly into the dark lock.
    There was a splintering as the thick paint round the framebegan to crack. Yes! it seemed to say. Yes! She placed her other hand on the wall and pulled. Part of the door dislocated itself from its seal and Dawn got a first scent of the chill air captive inside. For several seconds she stopped, afraid of disappointment. Maybe Shirley had just been having her on, and the cupboard would actually be empty.
    In that same moment a sharp gust of wind whooped down the chimney, the windows were pelted with a sudden rainfall, a gull shrieked from somewhere over the rooftop, and a car alarm went off. A girl in the street screamed, then laughed, and in the flat downstairs something was dropped or thrown. It shattered. With a bit of whingeing, Maeve had just managed to get her shoes off by herself, and now she crossed the hall.
    I want fish fingers! she was shouting.
    But the cupboard door would only take one sharp tug.
    A black and white photograph fluttered free and landed at Dawn’s feet. Two wee girls with curly hair, dark as treacle. One of them was shy and pulling down the hem of her skirt. The other held her head high, not afraid to look straight at the camera. On the back was a message, a Chinese whisper in carefully placed letters. Dawn traced her finger along the words. ‘ Dearest Lolly ,’ she read, ‘ xxx. ’
    Maeve was opening and closing the kitchen door, swinging it on its hinges.
    She was moaning her numbers with each swing forward and back.
    One. Two.
    Dawn’s eyes filled with tears she couldn’t explain. The slope of the handwriting pulled at her like a road in an atlas, the lie of the land and the lives connected to it. These small faces were not ghosts. They were not make-believe.

   BRUISES   
    Wee Betsy, 1954
    When Daddy lifts me off the ground, Jugs grabs my hands and pulls me high onto