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bloodied. Little brat! Since the
Pierces had moved in next door, six months ago, there had been nothing but fights with the youngsters in the cul-de-sac. It wasn’t really Jason’s fault; it was that obnoxious father of
his, Owen. Owen Pierce was the most bigheaded, boastful, superior individual Izzy had ever had the misfortune to encounter.
    Owen was a tax consultant, who had begun to make good money. On the way up, he revelled in his yuppie lifestyle. He and his wife Nicole and their two children, Jason and Diana, had moved in
mid-summer, and had proceeded to make themselves thoroughly unpopular with their neighbours.
    At first, the ten other families in the cul-de-sac had welcomed them and been friendly and chatty, but gradually Owen’s thoroughly bumptious ways had begun to grate. It was his
hail-fellow-well-met ‘I’m a tax consultant. What do you do for a living?’ carry-on that got under people’s skin. Owen had the biggest satellite dish, the biggest barbecue
pit, the most expensive shrubs and the flashiest car. He loved boasting and always made sure that when he was telling Izzy or Bill something, the rest of the neighbours could hear as well. Izzy
normally did not make snap judgments about people, but she knew very soon after she met him that he was someone she couldn’t stand.
    Nicole had invited Izzy in for a cup of coffee about a month after they had moved in. Nicole, with her heavily made-up face and her perfectly manicured nails, had made sure to let Izzy know that
she had a woman who came in to clean twice a week. She had timed the coffee invite with the arrival of the woman who did her ironing. Nicole’s daughter, Diana, was the same age as Jessica and
as they sat drinking their freshly ground coffee, the other woman paused in their conversation and said meditatively, ‘I wonder if I have anything I could give you for Jessica. She and Diana
are the same age and Diana has
so
many clothes. She gets so many presents. I’ve got lots of stuff that she’s never worn.’
    Izzy was flabbergasted. She’d only met the woman twice, for heaven’s sake, and here she was offering her clothes for Jessica. Did she think the Reynolds were on their uppers and
needed charity, just because Bill was unemployed? Izzy had assured her new next-door neighbour that Jessica had
plenty
of clothes and hastily finished her coffee and made her escape. Even
if Jessica had to go around in
rags
, she wouldn’t accept such impertinent help from the superior Pierces.
    You weren’t very neighbourly
, she accused herself silently, glad to get back to the comfort of her own kitchen Was she being so prickly because her pride was hurting and she
didn’t want to seem like the poor man at his better’s table? If Bill had been working and she’d been free of all her financial worries would she have handled Owen and Nicole
differently and felt more gracious towards them? Was she, in fact, just indulging in a fit of extremely large sour grapes?
    ‘Definitely not. Most definitely not, Izzy!’ Jill, her other next-door neighbour, retorted emphatically when Izzy, shame-faced, put this scenario to her one day when they were
waiting at the school gates to collect their children.
    ‘He’s a pushy shagger!’ Jill exclaimed irritably, ‘and she’s a stuck-up madam with notions about herself.’
    Izzy had laughed and didn’t feel so bad knowing that it wasn’t just her straightened circumstances and envy of her neighbours that had put her off Owen, Nicole and their
offspring.
    ‘Mammy, can we go to Disneyland sometime?’ Keith’s big blue eyes stared up into hers, wide and innocent, as blue as two cornflowers, as he shovelled the last of his macaroni
cheese into his mouth.
    ‘Well . . . um . . . some day, please God, we’ll get to Disneyland. We’ll just have to say a prayer that Daddy gets a job soon.’ She smiled down at her son, who had gone
trotting off, saying, ‘Dear Holy God, please let my daddy get a job