B A Jones

However, winter soon came, meaning they were not allowed out to play as it was too cold. Gladys bought Teresa a new hat and coat, which came complete with a hand muff to keep her hands warm; Terry had a smart coat with a brown suede collar but he hated it. One day, whilst at her bedroom window, Teresa heard the sound of a man shouting, “Rag and bone, rag and bone, sixpence or a goldfish!”  She had never heard this before. She saw people taking things to him and he would give them sixpence or a goldfish. Teresa ran to her mum and pleaded, “Can I have a goldfish?”  Gladys replied, “No, you cannot; you have a cat, and the cat will eat your goldfish.”  Teresa ran off crying, saying, “You’re mean, you are; you’re mean! Fluffy wouldn’t eat a goldfish”. Terry had a mouse that he kept in a cage in the shed out the back. When he went into the shed one day, he found he had lots of mice as his mouse was a girl and she had given birth. Terry ran into the house and asked his mum if he could bring the mice indoors, as it was warmer for the baby mice, but Gladys replied, “No! I don’t like mice and you will have to get rid of them”. Terry burst into tears and told Gladys to fuck off. Gladys was peeling potatoes in the sink, and with that, she turned around and slapped Terry in the face, hitting him hard enough to push him into the hallway. Teresa hadn’t seen behaviour like this before so she ran into the bedroom, followed by a very upset Terry. Teresa and Terry heard arguments downstairs all the time but had never witnessed angry violence like that before. Teresa couldn’t even understand why Terry got slapped as she had never heard those words before. Both sat in the bedroom consoling each other and looking at the marks on Terry’s face made by Gladys’s wet hands as she hadn’t stopped to dry them before hitting Terry. Both siblings stayed out of Gladys’s way in shock. Michael came home from work and Terry and Teresa listened on the stairs whilst Gladys was telling him what had happened. They heard Michael say, “Well, where did he get that from?” Gladys replied, “Bloody school, that’s where”. Minutes later, she called upstairs to Terry and Teresa; “Dinner’s ready!” It was egg and chips. They all sat down at the table then Teresa said, “We had chips yesterday,” to which Gladys replied, “No, you didn’t, you had fritters.” Teresa thought they were the same thing but a different shape, which they were, of course. A sack of potatoes was always there in the pantry, and Gladys had a new kitchen tool which made the chips crinkle cut, so now there were three different-shaped meals on the teatime table. Weeks went by before Teresa heard the rag and bone man again in the street. Gladys was hanging the washing out, so Teresa hurried downstairs, grabbed her new coat and muff, and took it to the rag and bone man. He said to the little girl, “Does your mother know what you’re doing?” Teresa replied, “Yes, it’s too small for me”. With that, Teresa got her goldfish and hurried back to her house carrying the goldfish in a plastic bag. Gladys spotted her and went mad! She stopped what she was doing, took the goldfish from Teresa and hurried up the street to get her coat back. Teresa hid behind the kitchen table, and when Gladys came in, she smacked Teresa very hard on the legs and sent her to bed. Terry found this very funny and told Teresa, “Hahaha, you got slapped now!” The siblings started fighting, hitting as hard as they could, when Gladys came in and dragged Terry out, slapped him as well and he too was sent to bed. That evening, neither Terry nor Teresa was allowed back downstairs, so Michael took a jam sandwich up for both siblings.

An excerpt from chapter 2 " Tensions progress as Teresa Starts School".