Dot (Araminta Hall)

The wind was whipping Dot’s words away.
    ‘Please, Dot, nothing, I just wanna go home.’
    ‘I’m sick of your bloody nothing.’ Her friend’s voice was harsh.
    Mavis looked up at this and saw the pink on Dot’s nose, her bright lips, a sanctimonious glint in her eye. It made her speak. ‘You’re not the only one who has it hard, you know, Dot. You are so unbelievably selfish.’
    Dot threw her hands up at this and turned to walk away. But then she turned back. ‘I can’t take this any more, Mave. You obviously hate me for some reason you’re not prepared to divulge. And fine. But I’m bored of banging my head against a brick wall.’
    Mavis set off down the hill. She wasn’t crying, it was the wind working its way into her eyes. Her limbs felt so heavy, she wondered if she’d make it home. She tried to see herself from above, to get some perspective as to why she was pushing away the one person who could help her. She had no understanding of herself any more, was unsure what she was going to do next, worried she was turning into someone she didn’t recognise. Maybe she was going mad. Her mind certainly felt disconnected from her body, as if she was watching herself on TV, as if reality could jar out of place at any moment. Anxiety rushed around her unbidden and for none of the usual reasons. It prickled inside her veins until the sweat seeped onto her skin and dried, leaving her smelly and greasy.
    She sat on the bench on the green. She didn’t want to go home but she couldn’t stay out in this cold. Her toes felt like ice even through her boots and socks and her hands ached. She took out her phone and bashed out a text to Dot.
    Sorry, don’t know what’s up with me at mo.
    She set off again but her phone beeped in her pocket almost instantly.
    It’s OK. I’m here if you wanna talk xxxx.

7 … Friendship
    Sandra Loveridge, née Powell, felt that she had been born to be a mother. Which is an odd thing to think about a baby: that their sole purpose in this world could already be simple procreation. But Sandra not only consistently failed to think of herself as anything other than the person she was now, she also didn’t think there was anything simple in growing a whole other person inside you and then being the best mother you could be so that they became confident, kind people. Besides, she couldn‘t find meaning in anything much else and the first time she held Mavis she fell so deeply in love the rest of the world had fallen away. She wished that her parents had been alive to see her baby, but made do with giving the little girl her mother’s name.
    Of course Sandra had known about Gerry’s reputation when they met. Most people thought he was too big for his boots, and he’d had to leave his job at Cartertown Secondary after an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with a pupil. But they were so young themselves, it hardly seemed that much of crime to Sandra. Then he got the job at the music college in Darlington, which was an hour in the other direction from Cartertown, where nobody she knew ever went and Sandra could almost pretend didn’t exist. And besides, he’d loved her so completely, everyone had commented on it, how he couldn’t take his eyes off her and how he laughed at all her jokes. And best of all, he was completely happy for her not to work and to go on producing babies year after year. They’d had Mavis when they were young, both only twenty-three, and even as she’d lain in her hospital bed, her face still red and blotchy from pushing their baby out, she’d told him that she wanted one every two years until they had at least six. And he’d laughed and kissed the top of her head and said, Why stop at six, why not make our very own football team.
    Sandra hadn’t been wrong about her natural abilities either. She not only loved being a mother, but she was undeniably great at it as well. She had the patience of a saint, as her mother would have said, and she took unbridled pleasure in watching Mavis sail through all the various developmental stages. She kept a little book by her bed in which she wrote down everything Mavis did, always dated and sometimes with a photograph taken with the Polaroid camera Gerry had proudly brought home one night.
    When Mavis was eight months old she started taking her to the mother-and-baby group at the church hall, where she met other mothers, some like-minded and others who found parenting hard and relentless. They were fun women and the