The Generation Game Read Online Free Page A

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some interest at the window display of tobacco and pipes before scanning the little hand-written notices by the door. Then she smiles down at me and I notice for the first time that her face is
funny: blotchy and mottled. Has she been crying?
    ‘Are you all right, Mummy?’ I enquire politely. But this just sets her off again.
    ‘Oh, Philippa,’ she says, sniffing. ‘I wish you were a boy.’
    A boy? This is awful. Has she no idea?
    ‘But boys pick their noses, Mummy,’ I inform her, a prickle to my pride.
    She laughs then, blowing her own pretty red nose before pushing me through that door into the shop, whispering the magic words: ‘Sweetie Time.’
    It is an Aladdin’s cave inside. Glass jar upon glass jar filled with rubies and emeralds and diamonds and amethysts and gold and silver and pearls. Sherbet Lemons, Acid Drops, Aniseed
Twist, Toffee Bon Bons. And all the rest of the names I can’t yet read but know by heart from the shapes and colours and smells.
    ‘You can have a quarter of whatever you like,’ she says to me. Then she too is lost in her own world of comfort, the lines of neatly stacked cigarette packets beckoning her from
behind the counter, where a man has looked up from his newspaper at the sound of Mother’s voice.
    ‘Afternoon, madam,’ he says. ‘And what can I do for you?’
    I am far too absorbed in making my decision and distracted by the rows of comics at my feet to hear what she says in reply. It is sometime later that we find ourselves back outside on the
pavement (a paper bag of wine gums clutched in one of my hands, a copy of Twinkle cherished in the other) and Mother is telling me that the Nice Man has offered her a Job.
    ‘But you already have a Job, Mother. Do you need two Jobs? Are we very poor?’
    ‘That other Job was a Bad Job.’ She tears open a fresh packet of Consulate with some venom at the memory of this Bad Job. This one will be a Lovely Job, Philippa. A Proper Job as
they say Down Here. (Down Here being the only place I’ve ever known but still a foreign land to Helena.)
    ‘Just think, Philippa,’ she says. ‘Think of all those sweets!’ And she plants a (second of the day) kiss on the top of my head that I wouldn’t swap for all the
sweets in the shop.
    It is Saturday at last. Hurray! No uniform today. No Christopher Bennett. No Miss Hitchcock with her man-shoes and voice of doom. But Mother has her Job to do and so I have to
go to Auntie Sheila’s for the morning with my duffle bag of ‘things to keep me quiet’.
    I like going to Auntie Sheila’s – as long as Bernie is at the Lot. Terry ignores me as he has recently become a teenager. He spends his time in the garage attempting his Guitar Riffs
and playing darts. Toni treats me like the pony she’s never been allowed to have because Sheila thinks riding will give her bandy legs, which are of no use for ballet. Toni battles with my
frizzy hair, trying to train it into French plaits, pulling my scalp and making my eyes water. But it is worth it for the pretty ribbons she weaves through them. Toni makes obstacle courses in the
garden and I have to gallop-and-trot and leap over bamboo canes pilfered from Bernie’s neglected greenhouse.
    This morning I have been awarded a blue rosette that Toni pins to my jumper (another of her hand-me-downs). She made it from an old cornflakes packet and strips of neatly-cut crepe paper.
‘What do you think, Philly?’ she asks, arms folded, beaming at her handiwork. ‘I saw Valerie Singleton do it on Blue Peter last week.’
    I have no idea who Valerie Singleton is as we do not have Television at home. But I know I want this beautiful handcrafted rosette.
    ‘Can I keep it, Toni?’ I ask in my sweetest voice.
    ‘Course,’ she says. And she pats me on the head and produces a sugar lump from her pocket which she offers to me in the palm of her hand.
    I wish Toni was my big sister. My only hope is for Mother to give me a baby sister but when I asked