Free Various Pets Alive and Dead by Marina Lewycka

a guilty twinge of relief when she departed.
    Askern was on the edge of the Yorkshire coalfield, and Marcus applied for work at the coalface to be alongside the proletariat, but was deemed overqualified and offered a job in the new Coal Board offices instead. He was their first ever PhD. Fred, whose PhD was still unfinished, got a job underground at South Kirby, but only lasted a month before he decided to devote his energies to setting up the Marxism Study Centre in a bedroom of the annexe. Nick taught maths at a Doncaster comprehensive, and was possibly the most highly qualified teacher they’d ever had. Moira worked two days a week as an art therapist at a centre for people with head injuries in Rotherham, and later got a stall on the Saturday market in Pontefract where she sold paintings, lampshades, coloured-paper mobiles and glass-bead jewellery, which she made at the kitchen table in the annexe. ‘To beautify the lives of the masses,’ she said. Doro worked part-time at the Tech, teaching liberal studies to Coal Board apprentice electricians and fitters, which left her with enough time to start taming the garden.
    In the evenings, they sat around the long yellow-painted table in the kitchen, smoking pot under the watchful eye of the Che Guevara poster on the wall and discussing the progress they’d made in advancing the revolution.
    She still has the poster somewhere, rolled up in the back of a cupboard.

CLARA: The slowness of plants
     
    Roll on, three thirty! The kids have been playing Clara up all afternoon. They’re at their worst when the weather’s warm and humid, like today. She’s been explaining about the tree seedlings on the window sill. The thing about plants is their slowness – they take time to settle into their environment; they adapt to its demands. Some trees take thirteen thousand years to grow to their full size; these seedlings have hardly started, she tells the kids. They groan and yawn.
    Before leaving for home, she checks on Hamlet. He’s got entangled in his bedding. With a flutter of panic, she untangles him, tops up his water bottle and tickles his tummy.
Please don’t die on me, Hamlet!
He throws her a grumpy look and retreats under a duvet of peed-on straw.
    Mr Gorst/Alan’s car is still there as she makes her way out with her bag full of marking slung over her shoulder. And here he comes, striding hunkily across the car park. She smiles; he smiles back. The door opens again and here comes someone else wiggling towards them, wearing a busty Regency frock with Roman centurion sandals and a Gladstone-style handbag. She climbs into the passenger seat of his car. Where’s the prehistoric Fiat? Written off? Could Mr Gorst/Alan be attracted to Miss Historical Postlethwaite, her bad driving, her breathless enthusiasm and her history-themed wardrobe? They give Clara a friendly wave and drive off.
    Yes, she knows her reaction is irrational, unkind and unwarranted, and for this reason she always makes sure to treat Miss Postlethwaite with absolute politeness. But she is one of those people who make Clara appreciate the company of plants.
    It’s almost six when she gets back to her flat. On the landing by the door, Ida Blessingman, who has the flat opposite, has spread the contents of her several shopping bags as she rummages for her keys, cursing softly and filthily under her breath. This is a fairly regular occurrence.
    ‘So how was it?’ Ida asks, finding the key at last and turning the lock, ‘or should I say how was
he
?’
    Clara has already told her about Mr Gorst/Alan. She sighs, describing his departure with Miss Hippo.
    ‘Darling, there are men who wallow in banality,’ says Ida, heaving her shopping bags into the flat. ‘And they choose their women accordingly.’
    ‘Trouble is, she’s really quite nice.’
    ‘Doesn’t matter. Try thinking of her as a bitch.’
    Ida is four years older than Clara and at least twenty pounds heavier, but wears the sort of expensive