Julie Shaw - Blood Ties - Family is not always a place of safety

Kathleen always tried to wake up before the alarm went off in the mornings, but given how late she’d had to work the previous evening, she was still surprised to find herself staring at the ceiling a full quarter hour before it did.

Not that she couldn’t have predicted it. It was always the same when her dad and stepmum had one of their rows: Irene having one of her convenient migraines come on (because of all the shouting, obviously ) then demanding that her dad stay up in the flat with her for the evening, leaving Kathleen to pick up the resultant slack.

Silly old cow , she thought. Pathetic . Though even more pathetic was the way her dad ran around after her all the time. Always had. She lay still a little longer, contemplating the unfairness of it all, then reached across to the brass alarm clock that sat on the chest of drawers that separated her bed from Monica’s, and clicked it off before it started ringing.

The air in the bedroom was cold, despite it supposedly being summer, and the lino beneath her bare feet felt icy. This was her dominion, being first up, braving the cold and – for half the year, at least – the dark, but Kathleen had learned to find a grim satisfaction in her Cinderella status. Always the first up. Always the one brewing the tea, opening the curtains and, in the winter, stoking the fire. Only then would she dare to get her stepbrother and stepsister out of bed – then clean the pub. Only then would her dad and Irene get out of bed.

As she tiptoed out of the bedroom, Kathleen glanced back at her sleeping stepsister and smiled to herself. It was funny, because today and for the next two whole months, they would be the same age. Both seventeen. Two months during which Monica couldn’t drone on about Kathleen being only sixteen. Come her own birthday, of course, Kathleen would start being only seventeen. But she’d enjoy the hiatus while it lasted.

Not that today would be much different to any other day. Yes, it was Kathleen’s birthday, and yes, her dad had promised her he might take her to the pictures to see The Sound of Music , but if past birthdays were anything to go by, she wasn’t going to hold her breath. Instead, she clung to memories of happier times, when her real mother had still been alive. Before she’d died in the car crash, Kathleen’s mum had made every birthday special. Trips out and parties, fancy dresses and visits to family – these were always on the agenda, sometimes all on the same birthday, but that was all a long time ago. Since she was eight – that was the last one, still bright in her memory – a birthday was really no different from any other day. Well, except in so much as they served to remind her of the distance that was growing, and would carry on growing, between her childhood and the place she was now. How much she yearned to grow up, have it gone.

Her arms mottling from the cold, Kathleen pulled a thick cardigan over her nightie and ran downstairs to the bar. It wasn’t time to start the cleaning yet, but this was another of her rituals; to make a rough assessment of how bad it was so she could work out how long it was going to take.

She had to factor in extra time today, as well, it being Saturday, because on Saturdays, as well as cleaning the tap room and toilets, the foyer and back of bar, there was also the best room to give a proper clean. That was a particularly long job because in order to vacuum the enormous expanse of carpet, all the chairs had first to be lifted onto the tables.

She completed her inspection. Two hours, she reckoned, heading back into the foyer to go upstairs again, then she’d have some time to herself for a bit. She was just at the foot of the stairs when the letterbox rattled behind her, as Eddie the postie fed a clutch of letters through the slot. ‘Morning!’ she called out, waving to him through the frosted glass. She liked Eddie. He was a habitually smiling presence in a day often lacking them. He’d also, it seemed, delivered something for her.

Kathleen never got post. After all, who would write to her? Even on this day, her birthday, such cards as she might get would be delivered by hand. She’d had a pen friend once – a wild-looking girl called Ingrid, who lived somewhere in Germany, and would write to Kathleen in halting, sometimes comic English, but once she went to secondary school, it had all fizzled out. Since then, there’d been hardly anything, the only moment of excitement being when she’d written to a nature organisation, as part of a school project about wildlife conservation, and had received several leaflets, a letter and a poster of a tiger, which adorned her part of the bedroom wall for a good two years.

Funny to realise that she actually felt wistful about school now, despite counting the days till she’d left. But perhaps her eagerness to leave was because she saw better things ahead of her, yet, here she was, just over a year later, stuck working in this place, working like a skivvy for a paltry wage.

She scanned the envelope, wondering who on earth it might be from. There was something familiar about the handwriting, though, even if it was all written in capitals, and when she saw the postmark, it dawned on her who the sender might be.

She ripped open the envelope, as she climbed the stairs back up to the flat, smiling as she pulled out what was indeed a birthday card, and from the person she’d thought it might be from – her Auntie Sal. She was thrilled to see a ten-shilling note fluttering out, but then her face fell. This must mean that she wasn’t going to visit. And so it seemed, as she read the short message:

Have a lovely day, Kathleen

So sorry I can’t be there but our Lisa has the mumps. Hope to see you soon, though – just as soon as we’re no longer infectious!

Lots of love, Auntie Sal xxx

Sally McArdle wasn’t really Kathleen’s aunt. She was, in fact, her stepmum’s younger sister. Married to a lovely man called Ronnie (who she called uncle, and who was the blueprint for the sort of man she hoped to marry one day) Sally was the complete opposite of Irene. Blonde, slim and pretty, and with the sort of personality that could light up a room as soon as she entered it, she was everything Irene was not, and, as such, that Irene hated in a woman. Which was part of the reason that Kathleen loved her so much.

Auntie Sally lived in Thornton, which was two buses away, so she wasn’t able to visit all that often. But when she did, she always spoiled Kathleen rotten. She’d bring her a new jumper or something, and always a bar of Fry’s Chocolate Cream. She also shouted at Irene if she was being nasty to Kathleen, which meant she shouted at Irene quite a lot.

Kathleen could never quite fathom how you could have the joy of a proper sister (as opposed to Monica, who she’d never grace with that name, despite her dad, from day one, always suggesting she should) and manage to hate her so much. Kathleen would have loved a sister – or a brother, just a sibling to call her own – but Irene didn’t seem to like Sally at all; she called her all sorts of names behind her back, and hated it when she visited. She had even accused Kathleen’s dad of fancying her. ‘You’d love to get her into the kip wouldn’t you, you dirty old get!’ she’d yelled once after Sally had left. ‘I’ve seen the way you leer at her.’ That had been followed by the usual four-hour argument, with her dad having to crawl round Irene and tell her how beautiful she was and how he didn’t ever want anyone else. It made Kathleen want to puke.

The kettle was whistling on the stove so she quickly propped the birthday card up on the breakfast table before filling the teapot. It was a huge blue ceramic thing and weighed half a ton, but a year of working long hours in the pub had built up her muscles. She might be downtrodden, but she was young, fit and strong, and that pleased her, even if it was just another reason for Irene and Monica, both short and podgy, to resent her.