Liz sat, cross-legged, with the light on and the gas fire blazing. Her Indian-print skirt was stretched tight across her knees, the excess tucked beneath her, forming a taut surface to serve as a table from which to eat her paper of chips. She sat with her back to where the television set would have been. Jim was strapped in his bouncer. She blew on a chip and held it out, but he ignored it. One day, she told him. Food of the gods. She was ravenous from swimming again. Even though the usual woman hadn’t been there she’d managed to get someone else to look after Silly and she’d done fifteen lengths. She was aiming for twenty by the end of the month, and as well as that, a class for mothers and babies was starting up in three weeks’ time. ‘Our names are already on the list,’ she told Jim. ‘They say babies can swim naturally. It’s impossible for them to breathe in water, because until about a year old they have this reflex that protects them, and of course they tend to float anyway.
What do You think about Frankie Styne & The Silver Man?
