The Talk of Pram Town by Joanna Nadin

Author:Joanna Nadin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Connie

Leeds, July 1981

The box is on top of the wardrobe, pushed to the back behind a wide-brimmed sunhat that last saw light in the summer of 1976, a pair of stack-heeled stage boots in cracked silver, an old bong. She has to teeter on a chair to get to it, brush off months of dust, but here it is now, sitting on the bedspread like Pandora’s own, not that she can remember who Pandora was exactly, Classics being one of many lessons she’d spent adrift in her own imagination or slack-jawed at the window instead of riveted to Miss Whoever. But she knows instinctively there was magic in it, and menace as well; bad things that, if you prised it open even an inch, might fly at you and unleash terrible memories or fates worse than death.

At that thought she glances out the window again, checking that Sadie’s still walking the wall, her and Deborah in lemon-yellow mini dresses they picked out (or Deborah did) from the Littlewoods catalogue, dresses she and Donna have still got to pay off on the monthly. They were meant for best, for the wedding, but the minute the packages arrived they were itching to get in them, turning themselves into Cheryl and Jay, wrapping towels over the top to whip off in the middle of their routine. That’s what they’re at now – performing for an audience of gawping small Mehtas, Billy Hepworth, and Mrs Higgins, no doubt, twitching behind her nets.

She’s safe, then. Happy. For now.

Because Sadie’s the thing. The point of it all. It’s for Sadie she’s even thinking of doing this. Because someone’s got to be responsible for her, if . . . if you know what. Got to look after her, clothe her, pay for her, anyway. And she can hardly ask the father, can she? A year ago she might have begged Elvis, but things have changed. Everything’s changed. And who’d want to take on someone else’s kid for that kind of never-never, if they were honest? Only one person she knows. A man she hasn’t seen in exactly twelve years – since the night they put the man on the moon. He’d jump at it, she thinks. But it’s not him she’s thinking about, not really. It’s who he comes attached to.

Sometimes, she can’t believe she’s even considering it. Because what would that Connie have thought? That seventeen-year-old, hurt, determined version of her. But that girl’s gone, or mostly, worn down from years of hard graft and high tar and low rent. Only here she is, looking for that very girl at the bottom of a Kitekat box she’d got from Morrisons when they were first moving here from the flat in Chapeltown. Two days before she got the job. A few weeks before she played the Adelphi and met the man she’s sent merrily to Skegness and then packing for good because, when it came down to it, she realized they were all the flaming same.

Except one.

She steels herself then with an Embassy, lighting it with the Zippo Elvis left on the bedside.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.