Dot (Araminta Hall)

would be intimidated by it, but Sandra suspected that Alice barely noticed its grandeur.
    Sandra also knew her friend well enough to know that you couldn’t rush things with her, suddenness made her nervous. The girls were running round the lawn and showing Mrs Cartwright a worm they’d found, which was making her laugh.
    ‘Everything OK then?’ asked Sandra.
    Alice nodded, picking at the lawn as a child might.
    ‘Come on, you look upset.’
    ‘It’s just Tony.’
    Sandra sighed. Of course it was Tony, she knew that without being told. Gerry saw him sometimes in the Hare and said he was a jumped-up so and so, always sitting at the bar on his own. She’d seen him at weekends carrying Dot around on his shoulders and he definitely had an air of someone who felt they were too good for their surroundings.
    ‘He’s always at the pub,’ said Alice. ‘He used to come home straight from work every night, but now he’s never in before ten.’
    ‘Men like the pub,’ said Sandra simply. ‘They like to feel they’re still free.’ Alice looked up and her face was so puzzled Sandra wondered how far back she was going to have to go in her explanation. ‘Have you spoken to him about it?’
    ‘Oh, no.’
    ‘So you mean he comes in smelling of beer and missing supper every night and you haven’t asked him where he’s been?’
    ‘I didn’t, I mean, I couldn’t …’
    Sandra felt annoyed, with both of them. ‘Oh come on, Alice. You have to lay down a few ground rules with men. They’re like kids, they like it that way.’
    Alice was close to tears. ‘But how do you do that?’
    ‘Imagine Dot was doing something she shouldn’t, like, I don’t know, picking your mum’s roses. You wouldn’t just stand there watching, you’d explain to her why it was wrong and then you’d maybe say something like she could pick them sometimes, but only when you said. It’s the same with men. Gerry goes to the pub on Thursday evenings. I don’t complain when he comes home drunk and he doesn’t expect to go any other night.’
    ‘Really? Do you think that would work?’
    ‘Of course it will.’ Sandra rubbed Alice’s arm. ‘Come on, cheer up. You’re hardly the first woman who’s had to fight the pub.’ Alice laughed. ‘Anyway, I’ve got some news I’ve been dying to tell you.’
    Alice looked up, all expectation. ‘What?’
    ‘I’m pregnant.’
    ‘Oh my goodness, that’s amazing.’
    Sandra put her fingers to her lips. ‘Shh, it’s still a secret, especially from Madam over there. I mean, I’m only a few weeks, but, well, I don’t mind you knowing.’
    Alice put her arms round her friend’s neck and kissed her on the cheek and Sandra thought it was perhaps the gentlest kiss anyone had ever given her.
    There is a friendship that often exists between women that is the most perfect of relationships. In its best form they feel no rivalry, they love purely, they anticipate and complement each other. Alice and Sandra reached that point quite quickly, when the beginning of a friendship often feels like the beginning of falling in love, except without the sexual tension that makes falling in love so dangerous.
    So when Alice turned up at playgroup the next Tuesday Sandra could immediately tell that she was lighter and happier.
    ‘Did you talk to him then?’ Sandra asked as they moulded play dough into shapes for a table of toddlers.
    ‘No, but he didn’t go to the pub at all this weekend. And he seems much happier. I don’t know, maybe I was making a fuss over nothing.’
    Sandra sucked back her innate worries, she would never trust any man completely. But why rain on Alice’s parade?
    ‘I’ve decided to have a party for Dot’s second birthday,’ Alice was saying. ‘I’ve got Mavis’s invite in my bag and I thought I’d ask a few of the others from here.’
    ‘Great idea. When is it?’
    ‘Two weeks. We’ll just have it at home, hopefully the weather will be good and they can all play in the garden.’
    When Gerry got home that night and he’d poured them both a glass of wine which they drank in front of the TV after dinner, Sandra asked him if he’d seen anything of Tony recently.
    ‘He wasn’t in the pub on Thursday,’ said Gerry, ‘but I’ve heard a stupid rumour that he’s got the hots for the new barmaid.’
    ‘Really? What’s she like?’ Sandra couldn’t imagine anyone matching up to Alice, but then men were odd, they rarely did what was expected of them.
    Gerry shrugged.