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to help. Why don’t you stick the kettle on while I run a brush through this?’
    Jennifer nodded, following her into the kitchen through the open double doors. The pair of them chatted, Jennifer about work, and Amy about the pressures of raising a family. Their lives were poles apart, and Joshua seemed to be the only thing keeping them together. She watched Amy brush her long brown hair, teasing out the tangles, just as Jennifer had done for her when she was a little girl.
    ‘Remember when Mum used to brush our hair?’ Amy said, smiling at the memory.
    Jennifer sat on the high stool, her face haunted from the past. ‘I remember a lot of things. I remember her leaving us to fend for ourselves.’
    Amy frowned. ‘Why do you always have to spoil it? Every time I talk about Mum, you bring up the bad stuff. Don’t you have any happy memories at all?’
    ‘I have memories. Mine are different to yours, that’s all.’ Jennifer blew the steam from her coffee before taking a sip.
    Amy lay down the brush and began to braid her hair into a plait. ‘You need to move on with your life.’
    ‘You’re probably right,’ Jennifer said, wishing she could.
    As Jennifer drove home, she wondered if her sister even liked her. She had never expected thanks for taking on the mothering role, but lately all she felt from Amy was simmering resentment. Now that Amy was married with a family of her own, Jennifer was not sure what part she played in her sister’s life anymore.

5 Chapter Five
    Frank – 1973
    F rank could not find the words to tell Gloria he didn’t like being touched. Her fingers bit into his shoulder as she spoke.
    ‘It’s a bit late for you to be out alone. Is your mum at home?’ she said, smiling with lipstick-stained teeth.
    Frank nodded in response. He liked sitting on the steps of the town hall. Faded posters of variety acts hinted at better days. But the theatre had long since closed its doors to the public, who preferred the advent of television to stage shows.
    ‘Has your mum got … visitors?’
    He stared, willing her to go back to the other women on the street opposite. Back to the kerb-crawlers. Frank was almost thirteen, and knew all about sex. He knew about everything. He chewed his nail. She just stood there, smiling patiently, waiting for him to answer. Her dark bobbed hair and black lined eyelids masked a ghostly white face, tinged by a faint bruise above her cheekbone.
    She ruffled his hair. ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’
    Frank nodded, pushing his skinny hands into the sleeves of his jumper to stop the biting cold numbing his fingers. A newspaper clung to the lamppost in the winter breeze, and Frank shivered, feeling like a gutter rat with no place to go. The last few years had not been kind, and he had taken to the cobbled streets to escape his mother’s temper.
    Gloria dropped her gaze and sighed. ‘It’s not right, you being out here alone at this time of night, with no proper coat. You go home to bed. I’ll speak to your mum tomorrow.’
    Gloria turned to the others. ‘It’s Viv’s kid. Look at the state of him. She needs a good telling off, letting him out in this weather.’
    ‘Well he shouldn’t be here, should he? We ain’t no social services.’ The young woman laughed as she joined them, her dishevelled blonde hair framing her sharp features. She knelt down, her breath stinking of cigarettes and alcohol. It was his mother’s signature aroma.
    ‘Come back in a couple of years when you know what to do with it.’ She cackled and Frank blushed furiously as the anger spread from his gut to the rest of his body.
    Gloria pulled her away by the scruff of her leopard print coat, almost knocking her off her high-heeled feet. ‘Get lost, Tina, he’s only a kid.’
    The beam of a car’s headlights illuminated the path as it slowed.
    ‘Fuck’s sake Glo, you nearly had me over there!’ Tina found her balance and brushed herself off as she sauntered over to the car, her hips jutting