There Should Be More Dancing by Rosalie Ham

knowing she was telling a lie, that she and her children had been victim of organisms – nits – from school.
    And so Margery felt a sort of soaring disappointment as she noticed the rug rise and fall, felt her stomach turn with churlish malice when the rug fell away to reveal Pat, alive and breathing, crunched up on the back seat, clutching the street directory. There were twigs in her hair, or what was left of it, and she looked like she’d been eating dirt. But she was alive. She opened her eyes, looked at Margery and said, ‘Are we there yet?’
    Margery was wondering what to do when she sensed her toe was unusually cold. Looking down, she saw a dark circle in the dirt. A puddle. Pat had emptied her bladder, and Margery’s big toe, protruding from a hole at the tip of her worn slipper, was resting in it.
    â€˜You always said to kill you rather than put you in a home, Pat,’ Margery said, calculating that it was a full twelve days until she’d need to use the car again, twelve full days until the next pension Thursday, the day she and Mrs Parsons would do their Big Shop.
    She bolted the shed door behind her, dropped her slippers in hot, soapy water in the laundry trough and went inside for breakfast.
    After tea and toast Margery reluctantly decided to do the right thing. Kevin seemed concerned, so she would tell him. Then Mrs Parsons’ blind went up, so she made her way up to her room and gother new slippers out of their box. Walter gave her a brand-new pair every Christmas, but as she squeezed her right foot into one slipper she found it antagonised her bunion. The other slipper crushed her corn. Her indignation growing, Margery carefully negotiated the undulating cement squares of her garden path in the stiff-soled slippers, holding the front fence as she travelled over the unrelenting footpath to Mrs Parsons. She knocked and called ‘Yoo-hoo’, and let herself in to Mrs Parsons’ kitchen. Her neighbour was waiting in her old rocking chair, tending the rinsed cottontails and wool stockings draped over the upright electric oil heater. Margery sat opposite her, said, ‘Good morning, how are you today, Mrs Parsons?’ and Mrs Parsons said she was as well as could be expected, thank you. Margery reached down and lifted her right foot, and as Mrs Parsons rocked back in her chair, Margery said, ‘Sorry I took so long. I had trouble getting my feet into these new slippers. The trip here today was quite painful.’
    â€˜I’m very sorry.’
    â€˜It’s not your fault. You haven’t seen Pat, have you?’
    â€˜No. Kevin’s been in to ask.’
    â€˜Are you alright then, Mrs Parsons?’
    â€˜Yes, thank you, you’re very kind.’
    â€˜See you later.’
    â€˜If it’s not too much trouble,’ Mrs Parsons said.
    Back in her own kitchen, Margery kicked off her painful slippers, put her apron on over her dressing gown and turned up the radio. Buddy Holly was singing, ‘ My lonely heart grows cold and old .’ She stuffed her thawed chicken and popped it in the oven, peeled the potatoes and carrots and put them in with the chook. She washed, dressed, dabbed some face powder on her nose and chin, admired her fresh blue set in the mirror, then sluiced out the letterbox. Thelass in the small sparkly dress had obviously been drinking something with orange juice. Over at Tyson’s, noise thumped through the front window. She stayed waiting at the gate, and soon Walter came striding down the street, thick and hairy in his shorts and black-and-white guernsey, waving like a super star. Under one arm he carried a frozen chook and a newspaper, and his thongs flicked at his imaginary rhinestone cuffs.
    â€˜Nine hundred and eighty-seven days, Mumsy. Nine hundred and eighty-seven days since my last drink.’
    â€˜Nine hundred and eighty-seven days,’ Margery said. ‘How are you, Walter dear?’
    â€˜Never