Custard, Part 1

"Don't stick your head above the wall," Custard said. "I've had enough." She was wearing a pink halter neck top, a short mini-skirt and had tried to style her hair, with limited success.

"It's a bit stinky down here."  I was not impressed.  "I don't think Mrs Key is quite as thorough in her cleaning as my mother."  I paused and the wave of rotting rubbish wafted over us, "And your mam is definitely calling you."

"I'm not here.  She'll get fed up soon.  She never sticks at anything." Custard said.

But Janet, Custard's mother, didn't stop calling and I wondered just how long I could endure the stink of the drains and the slightly sour smell of Custard's unwashed body.  We were a bit too close for comfort.

We'd been sat down that alley for a good 30 minutes already.  I hoped, against hope, that Mrs Key didn't pop out and give the game away, revealing us two fugitives in an act of solidarity with all mothers which seemed to be universal and unspoken, a pact apparently entered into as as soon as mothers gave birth to their off-spring. Equally, I hoped that Mrs Key didn't let Buster, her cross-breed, out for his evening constitutional.  That might not end well either.

"Why don't you just go home?" I asked Custard but I didn't expect an answer.  She was quick to laugh and joke around, take the blame for stuff, be cheeky and say things to boys that I only imagined saying in my wildest dreams but she did not always talk straight.  And I knew that whatever her reasons, it was probably complicated.

Custard shrugged, "You have met my mam and dad, right?" She said this as if no further explanation was required - and I completely understood. I had met them.  I'd lived next door to them for the full 14 years of my life.  Janet and Horace were definitely off-beat.

Janet couldn't really read and write although I'd been to bingo with her and she was something close to a genius at that: she'd had 8 cards to my one, and still managed to identify the called numbers on her own and my card before I did. She was a little wiry woman and a bit of a character.  Plus she never had quite enough money to make ends meet. Regularly, Janet would roll into our kitchen, hitch up her bright orange corduroys (bought cheap at Boyes) to reveal her fluorescent pink socks, and say, "They're his, he'll never know I've borrowed them!" She was referring to Ossie (her husband Horace) but how he'd miss them I couldn't imagine.  With a bit of squint, it'd be possible for an astronaut to see them from space!


You can read the rest here

You can find the second part here