Jenny shivered she felt reasonably confident that her father would never feel the urge to darken any doorway in her mother’s vicinity ever again. Her mother’s voice, though muffled then by floor and ceiling, still stabbed through into Jenny’s mind, screeching that “the slag was welcome to him”, and loudly assuring the four walls of her living room, and any neighbours unfortunate enough to be nearby, that Jenny’s father would never darken her doorway again. On the single occasion she had ventured to ask her mother where her father lived, and why he was not a part of their lives, her temerity had been rewarded with a hard, icy glare, a couple of seconds of complete silence, and then a venomous tirade, the sheer force of which sent Jenny rushing upstairs into her bedroom for sanctuary. Jenny had never known a father - indeed, things may well have been very different in her life if she had.
She could not honestly say that she really knew a living soul in Oldham.Īlways a shy, withdrawn youngster, habitually preferring the company of a good book to that of her peers, Jenny’s developing character had been almost totally obliterated in childhood by a domineering, jealous mother who regarded her only child as nothing short of cheap labour, and cared not a jot for her offspring’s right to happiness. That fact had not changed in the last two years and Jenny was, predictably you may think, as alone now as she had been then. No matter though Jenny wasn’t particularly interested in her new environment anyway. That first blurred glimpse of Oldham was uninspiring she could have been standing in the centre of any of a dozen towns in the north of England. The sharp glare of low-angle winter sunshine reflecting off a dozen wet buildings hurt her eyes, and she could see little or nothing of her surroundings. She hadn’t grown up in that town, or even visited it as a child, and two years ago when she had first arrived there, she hadn’t known anyone at all.Īlighting wearily from the long distance coach, hitching her backpack over one shoulder, Jenny stood on the rain-damp pavement and gazed around. Jenny White was twenty three years old and lived in Oldham.
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