Dot by Araminta Hall Page A

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 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