Read The Other Ida for Free Online Page B

window,” she said as cheerfully as she could. “That’s where I lived when I left home first. With this mental slag called Tina who sold hash at the pub. God – look at it.”
    It was clear Tom didn’t know what to say as he looked at the gloomy building. The windows were all different, some brightly painted wood, some UPVC, and a broken child’s go-kart lay in the drive.
    â€œWe had one room, to share. Alice came round once, didn’t you? With Terri – to pick up some of my stuff. She wouldn’t drink the tea I made. Said the cups were too dirty. You were what, Al, eleven?”
    Alice nodded.
    They passed the old-man pub where Ida had worked for a bit, and then it was the junk shop – where she’d worked when she’d first left home – still dark and empty with a badly hand-painted sign. It gave her the creeps. Both places brought back horrible memories, and she made a secret sign of the cross on her knee.
    Across the road was the phone box where she’d reversed the charges every week to Terri and Da.
    She tried to imagine the house they were heading to as they turned towards Poole. Square and modern, with a neat paved driveway, net curtains and a pond. There’d be an extension that Terri would have spent years planning. Ida stopped herself, realising that she was thinking in the same snobby way that her mother would have done, the way she’d always sworn not to.
    They passed the green where she’d once snogged Ben Palmer, then all the way along Sandbanks Road, the houses getting bigger the further they went.
    Of course they were heading to Sandbanks, the narrow spit of land jutting out into the sea, beloved by football players and eighties one-hit wonders. Their father had been born to live somewhere like this.
    The huge curve of the sea took Ida by surprise. She had made this place twee in her mind, written it off as shabby and fake, but the view across the water was still wild and past a few brave windsurfers lay the dense green of Brownsea Island.
    They turned off into a tree-lined road, and through black electric gates into a wide, paved drive.
    â€œSo, we’re here,” said Tom as the car came to a halt. He sounded relieved.
    Terri stood in front of a pebble-dashed chalet bungalow, her arms held out towards them and a tea towel dangling from one hand. Her hair was still ash blonde and blow-dried into a stiff ball, and she was wearing the same kind of thing she’d always worn – smart, pressed pale blue trousers and a polyester-satin blouse.
    Ida took a deep breath and got out.
    â€œBaby, it’s been too, too long,” said Terri, wiping away tears.
    Ida walked over, leant down, and let herself be hugged. She was much the same as Ida remembered, thin and neat but the smell of her gave Ida a shock. She had forgotten the strong tinned-fruit sweetness of the perfume Terri wore – one of the only things in the whole wide world that truly hadn’t changed.
    Terri pulled away and turned towards the others. “And you must be Tom. Goodness, what long hair you’ve got. Couldn’t you have given some to Ida? She seems to have lost hers. Come in, come in, I’ve made a quiche.” She summoned them into the hall and locked the door behind them. “You can’t be too careful these days. Some Asians moved in, on Salter Road,” she told them in a loud whisper.
    â€œTerri doesn’t mean it, do you?” Alice said to Tom while looking at her stepmother’s back.
    â€œNo, well, I’m sure they’re perfectly nice,” Terri said gazing earnestly up at Tom. “It’s just when different people move in, different races and classes, it signals something about an area. What?” she asked, noticing Alice’s furious face.
    Ida recognised the stubborn toddler she’d known as a child. She grinned involuntarily and Terri laughed, mistakenly believing that Ida’s smile signalled