The Generation Game Read Online Free Page B

her one time, she spat her tea across the kitchen table with such force it hit the far wall,
so I don’t hold out much hope.
    ‘Let’s go and ask Mum for a Nesquik. It’ll help keep your coat all shiny.’
    And with a click-click of her tongue and a tug on the reins (one of Bernie’s best polyester ties), we walk on to the kitchen.
    Auntie Sheila is baking a cake. She has a smut of flour on her rouged cheek (she is almost as glamorous as Mother – but it has been a long time since Helena has done any baking). She pops
the cake in the oven and dabs at her face with a tea towel. We sit down and watch her make two chocolate milkshakes and – with a finger to her lips as Mother has modified my dairy intake
– she sets one of them on the table in front of me.
    That night, my (slightly crumpled) uniform hangs on the back of the bedroom door, waiting for Mother to wash it, moving like a ghost in the draught from the window. My rosette
is pinned to my pyjama top.
    It is daylight still (of course) but I don’t really mind. I am so tired after my first week of school and a day of gymkhanas that it takes just a few minutes of trying to work out the
pattern in my curtains before sleep takes me off to dream of a horse in a hat being ridden by a boy with messy hair and skin like egg shell.

2006
    The pattern in these hospital curtains is disturbing. Laura Ashley slash IKEA. It’s using up all my energy when I should be conserving it for the job in hand –
Motherhood – which is probably going to be even trickier than I thought.
    I could have trouble bonding with you, Fran says, my over-friendly midwife. She’s worried that you will remind me of your ‘father’ (who she is yet to meet but has heard all
about) and that will inevitably lead to resentment. I think resentment is the least of my worries. Resentment is a bit of a luxury I wish I had more time for.
    My friends have never liked Adrian. They think he is patronising and insincere. They are right. But then I don’t particularly mind those qualities in him. It is the Casanova stuff
I’m not so keen on. Or the golf. Or the mother. Or the cocaine habit that he promised he’d left behind in the 90s along with the Spice Girls and the Teletubbies. But then his promises
have proved to be empty words.
    So there’s just you and me, Baby. And you smell divine. I could breathe in your scent forever.
    The boy I was going to marry smelt of currant buns.

Chapter Three: 1969
New Faces
    The boy’s name is Lucas Jones. Although he lives in the next street, I’ve never seen him before, not until that fateful day when School brings us together. By the
end of the second week of term Mother has discovered the reason for this: he’s only recently moved to Torquay from London with his mother who had a Divorce from his father – which means
they don’t like each other anymore. My mother likes his mother however, because now she doesn’t feel so bad about leaving the capital behind, knowing she isn’t alone in such
recklessness.
    She’d like to ask Lucas and Mrs Jones to tea but she can’t possibly let them see the Squalor we live in so she arranges for us all to meet in a teashop in town one Saturday afternoon
after Mother’s stint at the newsagents. She makes me wear white gloves and a flowery dress that shows off my chubby knees. She unravels this week’s French plaits and tries to brush out
the kinks in my hair. ‘A hundred brushes a day, Philippa… fifty-nine, sixty… If I’ve taught you nothing, I’ve taught you that… sixty-two, sixty-three...
’
    The tearoom is full of genteel ladies nibbling cream cakes and sipping tea from bone china cups. Lucas and I are each given psychedelic orange squash with a straw and an iced
bun. Helena and Mrs Jones order Earl Grey with no milk, throwing the uniformed waitress into a flurry.
    The conversation is a little awkward at first but our mothers soon get into their stride:
    ‘Don’t slurp, Lucas.’
    ‘Take