Free Every Good Girl by Judy Astley

woof-hello” and drift off back to dreamland again. About as much use as Lucy’s hamster. We should get a great big evil Rotty, then we three girlies could feel safe in our beds.’
    â€˜
Do
you actually feel less safe without a man around the house?’ Nina asked. It hadn’t occurred to her before that it made a difference, since Joe had gone. Man as guard-dog had never really been an issue – it had been more a case of trying to keep Joe in than intruders out. ‘We could get a lodger, I suppose, put him in the old music room.’
    â€˜
No
, no lodgers,
please
. I’m fine, truly. I feel just the same in the house as I always did. Anyway, it’s not as if Dad was even here all the time, is it? He was often away, or in really late or whatever.’ Emily picked up her tea and headed back towards the door. ‘Actually I’ve got to make a quick phone call, so I’ll leave you to the books. OK?’
    â€˜Good grief who on earth do you need to call at this hour? They won’t thank you, whoever it is.’
    Emily was halfway up the stairs now and her voice was trailing away, out of earshot. ‘S’OK, it’s just someone about a Wordsworth essay. They’ll be just getting ready for work . . .’ If more information was being volunteered, Nina could no longer hear it. She didn’t waste time wondering over why Emily didn’t stay and use the kitchen phone. She was perfectly well used to the teenage need for phone privacy, even if it was only for checking the time with the speaking clock.
    Concentrating again on the piles of books, Nina looked around the room and fought off the feeling of defeat which threatened to overtake her now she had started on this job. After the books there would be thepictures to take down, all the plates, dishes, vases and collected bills, catalogues and bits of paper on the dresser to be sorted and put away, the kitchen equipment to have cupboard space found for it, curtains and their rails to be dismantled. Then there was the actual painting. There seemed to be acres and acres of wall. It suddenly seemed a pity that her brother had never been the kind of man who’d taken to DIY, but then it was deplorably sexist of her to expect him to. Instead Graham did have an enviable address book full of tradesmen, which he consulted the moment Monica so much as glanced at guttering or gatepost and pronounced them sub-standard.
    â€˜No. I
can do
this,’ Nina assured herself, turning back to the books and refusing to look towards any further effort till that one job was done, and done properly. That evening she would ring the local Scout group. They were sure to be having a fund-raising sale soon. She felt as if she was nesting, though for her own comfort, not for the raising of new babies. Presumably Joe would have to think about the baby sort of nesting soon, if Catherine got her way. Lucy and Emily would then have a half-brother or sister. They’d be connected with it, would have moved on into the future with Joe but she wouldn’t. There was something in that which made her horribly miserable, left out, like being the only child in an infants’ school class not invited to a party. She hurled a copy of
Brave New World
into the box of books for the jumble and then just as quickly took it out again. Lucy might want to read it one day – or even her little brother or sister.
    The slam of a car door at the front of the house made her look up and out of the window. The day seemed to be starting early for the entire street. Across the road she could see the legs of two men climbing out of anAudi and walking up the path of the empty number 26. Aha, the new arrivals, she thought, going to the window to indulge natural curiosity. She watched them on the doorstep, the taller, blonder of the two fumbling for the right keys. They both wore jeans; one of them also wore a long denim jacket and the other was in soft