Playing Out by Paul Magrs (free biff chip and kipper ebooks TXT) 📗

of them round here shove their bairns straight out on the street, or take them out of school, or get them a job in the same factory as their dad. And that’s if they’re lucky, if they have a dad. That’s no life.

Anyway, yeah, that Roseanne. She’s had a hard time of it by all accounts. And you can tell. Although she makes you laugh and stuff—eeh, I nearly pissed meself one week, there was summat on, I can’t remember, but it was bloody funny—you can see in her eyes that she’s had a bad time really. It’s always in the eyes. There’s a sincerity in eyes.

You can never see it in your own eyes. Only other people can see it for you. Only, they aren’t always up to the job of seeing the hurt in other people’s eyes. Yet you have to rely on them. Mind, you don’t want just anyone seeing into you. That’s like broadcasting all your business.

It’s funny, mind, how when you look in a mirror you can never see your own hurt. You might feel—I don’t know—wounded or whatever, shat upon, but when you look in a mirror your eyes are suddenly bright and glassy and smiling just as mine were when I was being glamorous and young for me years at Grab a Granny night.

That’s daft, though. As if anyone—especially a woman—can hide stuff from herself.

On the cover of this stack of TV Times Roseanne’s smiling and advertising her new series. They reckon she’s lost weight and she looks pleased with herself. She’s got a new hairdo but I can see what’s in them eyes and she’s had it up to here, poor cow.

Sincerity.

I’m putting on me anorak round the back at the end of my shift. The staff room is tiny and it’s full of all the breakages ready to go back. I tell you Eric’s greedy—he wants his money back off everything dropped on his lino. There’s smashed jars of pickles in the staff room and it reeks of vinegar.

So I’m zipping up me coat and crunching a pickle when Eric comes in with a full carrier bag. He gives us a smile like he knows summat I don’t. Since he’s the boss that’s usually true, like, and I worry that some day he’s gonna just give us me cards and that’ll be the friggin’ surprise. But the night he just gives us this filled carrier.

‘You might as well have these, Judith,’ he says. ‘You’ve most prob’ly read them all already, but they’re left over and I can’t do nowt with them.’

I look in the bag and there’s all this week’s unsold magazines in there. What’s on TV, Top Santy, Just Seventeen, the bloody lot. Well, I’m not too sure whether he’s taking the piss or what, so I just shove it under me arm, collect me things, say good night and then I go. I know for a fact he can usually get a few pence for leftover magazines, so I decide he must be trying to be nice to me. He gives us a silly little wave from the back door.

I reckon it must be like that male menopause he’s getting. I read about it and he’s the proper age.

The proper age! It’s not right that he shouldn’t still be twelve. The age he was at first when I knew him.

He’s looking tireder just lately. But he’s all right ’cause him and his younger wife are off on a holiday next week anyway. Second honeymoon. They get about. Florida, he reckons. They’ll visit the place with the killer whales and Disneyland. Not that they’ve any bairns to take. His son Alex is looking after the shop next week, that’s why he was telling me all about it. Besides showing off, like. I had to nod and say how lovely it sounded and how I hoped it kept nice for them and all the while I was thinking I’ll have to put up with that kid again. In his little suit.

It makes no difference, really, though, who’s in charge when I’m behind the till. Alex won’t usually order me around unless his tarty little girlfriend is down to visit. They drive around in this big car of his. The roof comes off like they think they’re in America. Sometimes all I can wonder is whether he’s got owt in his trousers like Eric had back then, and I bet he has. He’s the same sort of good-looking short-arse like his dad.

But I shouldn’t even be thinking about the boss’s son’s trousers. The lad’s over four years younger than our Andrew. Doing well for hisel’, mind, whatever you say about him. My Andrew doesn’t drive. He’s had no one to teach him, no one around to do that, no dad. I don’t drive. I think he’d be… not timid, but too careful behind the wheel of a car.

There’s so many things to watch for. With your gear sticks changing and mirrors and looking at the road ahead and stuff. He’d be letting every other bugger get past first. You have to dig your heels in, push your nose in, get in there. I’ve told him. His mam knows that much. Our Andrew’s not one to push hisel’.

When I get in the house Andrew’s already there. He knows that when I finish work I need to sit down a while and relax. It’s a full day on your feet and it takes it out of you. I’ve started getting palpitations in the night in me heart. When you push your thumbnail through the skin of an orange to start peeling it—that’s what it feels like sometimes.

Andrew jumps up straight away when he hears the garden gate rattle and he’s opening the kitchen door, ushering me in like an old woman, and whipping the kettle on, gabbling on.

He’s a good lad and I can tell by the way he goes on when I come in that he’s pleased to see me. He’s had no