Free Rock a Bye Baby by Mia Dolan

have a smoke. However, it was difficult toconcentrate. Her mother-in-law’s boot button eyes were boring into her.
    ‘You would leave and live in a council house rather than stay here with your family?’ Rosa’s voice was cold. Her daughter-in-law had done the unthinkable. She’d applied for and been given a council house. And all done without her – Rosa Brooks – knowing.
    Babs stiffened but didn’t take her eyes from the words on the page. ‘I want my own place.’
    ‘Antonio will not allow that,’ Rosa exclaimed. She had great faith in her son. He put his family first above everything and cared about his mother’s welfare. That’s what she told herself and that is what she believed. Unfortunately he had not been lucky as far as matrimony was concerned. If Barbara was intending to take the whole family with her, Rosa would be left alone. Rosa did not want that; besides, she saw trouble looming. Babs was not the best of mothers. Things would fall apart. She was sure it would.
    ‘Antonio will want what I want,’ said Babs, blowing a cloud of smoke from pouting pink lips.
    ‘I will write to him,’ said Rosa.
    ‘Yeah! You do that.’
    ‘I will.’
    Rosa threw down the tea towel and made her way to the living room and the dark oak bureau sitting in the corner. That’s where she did her letter writing.
    Babs allowed herself a small smile of triumph. Thistime she had won the battle with the old witch. Soon she and Tony would have a new beginning – and a new house.
    Throwing the magazine back onto the yellow-topped table she took a big puff on her fag and threw her arms in the air. That old bat – Rosa could write all the letters she liked. Tony was on his way home, though neither his mother nor his family knew that.
    The old girl had supposedly received a message from the other side – pie in the sky as far as Babs was concerned. She, however,
knew
beyond doubt that Tony was coming home.
    Reaching into her bra cup she withdrew the letter he’d sent her. Actually the letter was addressed to his mother, but Babs had got to the post first, recognised what it was and who it was from, and decided to keep it for herself. She was fed up of being bossed around, fed up of that cheeky little cow Marcie and her stuck-up ways. Not letting them know he was coming home was her way at getting back at them all. She would be there at the station to greet him.

Chapter Eight
    Humbled by her grandmother’s reprimand, but relieved to be out of the house, Marcie rejoined Garth. He was standing where she’d left him, staring up at the front bedroom windows, with a stupid smile on his face.
    ‘This way.’
    She got as far as the front gate before realising that he might not have heard her. When she looked he was still smiling stupidly up at the bedroom windows.
    ‘Garth!’ she called out.
    It was as though the gangly, misshapen young man was a wooden puppet and someone had suddenly pulled a string. His head jerked round before his body. Another string and his body followed his head.
    She led him along the front of the rank of houses, turning at the end into the lane that ran along the back of the terrace. He made clucking sounds all the way and flapped his arms in a childish interpretation of a chicken.
    It irritated her. She looked over her shoulder, mouth open ready to tell him to shut up. One lookat his face and she clamped her mouth shut. He reminded her of Annie – happy and trusting, lost in a world of his own.
    Tall nettles grew in big clumps the whole length of the stony lane. Too narrow to take a car, the back entrance was mainly used for coal deliveries, the coalmen carrying sack after sack along the lane and up the garden paths to the coal house.
    Beady-eyed chickens strutted up and down their run, watching them approach. The back garden was empty, Archie and Arnold out playing along the beach with their friends.
    Mr Ellis from two doors down was taking a rest from digging his nuclear fallout shelter. He mopped