Free North Sea Requiem by A. D. Scott Page A

in the face had no explanation except hate. But shinty, whilst fierce, was not vicious off the field.
    McAllister played a soft, haunting piece of music he told her was flamenco. They drank a little wine. He lent her a book. She asked for another, this one a book of poetry, some American woman called Emily whom she’d never heard of.
    He kissed her. Once. But a nice kiss, she decided. Then he took her home.
    Going to bed in her little prefab and the house empty, she enjoyed the rare solitude. And regretted she was never able to sayto McAllister what she didn’t know she wanted to say, which was , I feel so inadequate. Naïve. Uneducated. Unsophisticated. Untraveled. Is that a word ? Mae Bell is much more your style than me .
    Thoughts kept gushing out, unstoppable, like a burst water main. She gave in, got up, went to the kitchen, made cocoa, sipped it in bed. When sleep finally came, the thoughts transformed into dreams, where, in a running race with McAllister, Mae Bell, her girls, and her mother-in-law, she lagged far behind, watching the others disappear across the hill into bright sunshine, leaving her behind in the rain.

S EVEN

    T he following evening Joanne had a little more sleep—marginally.
    â€œWe need Nurse Urquhart and her warning notes,” Joanne muttered to herself when she finally finished remaking Annie’s bed and had the sheets soaking in the boiler. The thought of Nurse Urquhart sent a shudder down her spine.
    The evening had started with Annie’s announcement—said with a whiff of superiority that irritated Joanne: “Maureen Forbes got sent home from school yesterday.”
    Joanne had made cinnamon toast, her favorite, and she was busy fishing the skin off the cocoa, her pet hate.
    Joanne knew what was expected of her—Annie would make these statements, then dribble out the information one sentence, one paragraph, one chapter at a time. Joanne blamed Enid Blyton for the way her daughter perceived the world.
    â€œNits.” The child was aware of the reaction the word would cause, and sure enough, Joanne stood, reached for Jean, who was cutting off the crusts from her toast. Her mother did not say “Eat your crusts, they’re good for your teeth”—she was too busy lifting the hair above her daughter’s ear searching for eggs and hopefully no hatched nits.
    â€œMaureen says her wee brother, the one that’s always sick, is riddled with them.”
    â€œShe doesn’t have a brother,” her sister said, munching on toast whilst her mum parted her hair an inch at a time, examiningeach section as carefully as a mother chimpanzee searching her baby for fleas.
    â€œDoes.” Annie had never seen this brother but would not be contradicted by a sister two and a half years younger.
    â€œYou’re fine.” Joanne went around the table and stood over Annie, who flinched and tried to move her head out of reach.
    â€œSit still.” Joanne had a hold of a thick strand of hair crinkled from the pigtails she insisted Annie kept her hair in for school and which Annie hated and often threatened to cut off but was too afraid of what Granny Ross would say, or do, it being her belief that as well as jam making and chutney making and crunchy toffee cooking, her grandmother could brew up witch’s potions and cast spells.
    Joanne couldn’t see any nits, but they were there, the telltale eggs dotted around the hairline and up in the nest of hair at the back of the head.
    â€œHave you been scratching?” The colony above the ears was particularly thick, and on one side, where the scalp was inflamed, Joanne was certain she saw something move.
    â€œIt’s only dandruff.” Annie knew, from the way her mother stood back, trying to search without her hair coming anywhere near her daughter’s, that it wasn’t.
    â€œIt’s nits.”
    â€œI’ll have to stay off school.”
    The obvious satisfaction in her