Dot (Araminta Hall)

group extended its remit into coffee mornings at each other’s houses and picnics on the village green. Relatively quickly, as easily its most capable member, Sandra took to running the group herself, welcoming new mothers, devising art activities and leading the end of session sing-a-long. She was aware of how she looked to the other women and liked it, so capable and serene, so that often she would lock up the hall with a feeling of contentment not unlike an old, fat cat stretched out on tiles warmed through by the sun.
    She had seen the very pretty young girl with the red-haired daughter around in the village for a while, but she’d never spoken to her or seen her at the mother-and-baby group. Sandra liked to keep things neat and she didn’t like the thought of another mother missing out on being sucked into her orbit. So, when she saw her pushing her daughter on the swings on the green one morning, she stepped off the pavement and made her way over with Mavis.
    Sandra lifted Mavis into the neighbouring swing and started pushing, until the two little girls fell into line.
    ‘Don’t they look sweet,’ she said, ‘both with their red hair.’ Sandra felt the woman next to her tense slightly. ‘How old’s yours?’
    ‘Nearly two.’
    ‘Oh, so’s Mavis. What’s her name?’
    ‘Dot.’
    They pushed on in silence. Sandra hadn’t yet met a mother who didn’t want to talk.
    ‘How’s her sleeping?’ she asked, deploying the standard mother question.
    ‘Oh, OK.’
    But the woman still sounded guarded.
    Sandra looked at the woman’s amazing profile, at the smoothness of her skin. ‘Really? Lucky you, Mavis is a nightmare. Up every couple of hours.’
    This got her attention. ‘Really? So’s Dot actually. I thought I was doing something wrong.’
    Sandra laughed, on much firmer ground now. ‘Of course you’re not. None of them sleep. Don’t you talk to other mothers?’ The girl blushed. ‘You live in Druith, don’t you? I’ve seen you around.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But I’ve never seen you at the mother-and baby-group.’
    ‘The what?’
    Sandra wondered if she was for real. ‘I run a mother-and-baby group at the church hall. We meet every Tuesday at ten. Just a group of mothers, we talk, the kids play. Many biscuits are eaten!’
    ‘There are other mothers in Druith?’
    Sandra laughed. ‘Of course there are. There are mothers everywhere.’
    ‘Tony, my husband, said he thought there’d be something like that going on. We were only talking about it the other night.’
    ‘Well, he’s right. You should come along.’
    ‘Thank you, yes.’
    ‘My name’s Sandra, I run it so I’m always there, I can introduce you to everyone.’
    ‘Thanks.’ The girl blushed. ‘Alice.’
    The swings started to slow. ‘Do you mind me asking how old you are?’ Sandra asked. ‘It’s just you look so young. I mean, you could be sixteen or something.’
    Alice laughed. ‘Not quite. I’m twenty-one.’
    ‘Oh, right. I think it’s your skin, it’s so smooth and you haven’t got any bags. Not like me, I could carry the weekly shop in mine.’
    Dot was squalling to get out and Alice lifted her up, kissing the top of her head, resting her on her hip. Sandra did the same with Mavis, who immediately wriggled free and toddled across the grass. ‘Anyway, nice to meet you, Alice. Hopefully we’ll see you and Dot next Tuesday.’
    ‘And you.’ Alice smiled. ‘We’ll be there.’
    Sandra was confident they would be, and of course they came, the next Tuesday and all the following ones. The other mothers were wary of Alice at first, as Sandra knew they would be; she watched them pulling T-shirts down over their still flabby stomachs or smoothing their hair whenever she walked in. They soon learnt, like Sandra had, that Alice was not a woman to play on her beauty, in fact if anything Sandra would have laid money on her not liking it.
    There was something charmingly vulnerable in Alice that made Sandra want to protect her, like an older sister. So when she turned up to Alice’s house for coffee one morning and saw her eyes rimmed in red she felt her heart lurch with worry.
    ‘Hello, Mrs Cartwright,’ she sang to Alice’s mother as brightly as possible as they followed the little girls through the back door into the garden. Sandra had grown used to Alice’s house by then, and even to Mrs Cartwright, who seemed to belong to another time altogether; she prided herself on the fact that the other mothers