Strictly Love. Julia Williams

spiky fringe.

      Sam gave him a withering look.

      ‘Gemma's right,’ she said. ‘You do live in the past. Things are different now. It's not safe for kids to cycle. Or walk. There are all sorts of weirdos about. She just wouldn't be safe on her own.’

      And it's nothing to do with you worrying that Gemma can't be trusted to actually go to school, is it? Mark thought to himself. Sam would never admit it, but though Gemma had never actually bunked off school to their knowledge, she was probably the most likely candidate to. Taking her in every day meant Sam knew Gemma had actually got there. Mark blamed the influence of Gemma's new best friend Shelly. Shelly was the reason Gemma had adopted her goth-like stance, eschewing all other colours in favour of black, and listening to bloody miserable music, which Mark had discovered was known as ‘emo’, whatever that was.

      Sam had been quite frantic about it for a time, claiming that all kids who were into emo either committed suicide young or self-harmed. So far there was no evidence of either, but Gemma was displaying a singular reluctance to go to school. And while Mark was all in favour of his daughter getting a decent education, there were days when he hoped Sam would finally trust Gemma to make it to school on her own. The thought of Sam going to prison for Gemma's non-compliance in matters educational was one of the few things that had made him smile in recent months.

      Sam dashed off in a flurry of self-importance while Mark went to finish shaving and ring Diana, his wonderfully efficient area manager, to say he'd be late. Then he bundled the kids in the car and drove as quickly as possible to Gemma's school.

      He watched Gemma going in (if she did bunk off, he didn't want Sam accusing him of negligence), shoulders hunched, head down, bag slung loosely over her shoulder, presenting a glowering presence, and wondered with dismay what had happened to his cute little girl. Gemma was definitely not cute now, with her punky hairstyle, dyed a different colour every week – Mark frequently pointed out to her that what she thought was groundbreaking was in fact only the style his girlfriends had adopted twenty years previously, but he was always silenced with a, ‘Whatever, Dad. It's just different now. You wouldn't understand.’

      No, of course not. To Gemma, he'd never been young.

      Once Gemma had been dispatched it was on to school with Beth. An entirely different proposition. Though she was ten, Beth was still cuddly enough to remind him what he enjoyed about fatherhood, not yet too embarrassed to kiss him goodbye. He felt vaguely guilty about comparing his children, but it was restful to be with Beth, whose sunny disposition made a nice contrast to Gemma's spikiness.

      Then he drove like a maniac to the surgery. Despite the phone call to Diana, Mark still felt stressed. He hated being late and he hoped that anyone waiting wouldn't be too grumpy – some of his patients had a tendency to think that, as their dentist, his sole function in life was to be ready and waiting for them at all times. The fact that he might have an existence, a family, a life even, outside the narrow confines of his surgery seemed to be beyond them.

      Mark squeezed his ageing Volvo into the one remaining parking space outside the surgery and got out to the distinctive wail of the alarm going off. That was all he needed.

      He ran into the surgery and found Maya standing looking helpless, while three patients sat around looking pained.

      ‘I'm so sorry,’ she said. ‘I was here first and there were patients waiting so I opened the door, but I had forgotten about the alarm and I don't know the code.’

      Mark keyed in the right number and thankfully the alarm fell silent. It wasn't Maya's fault, she'd only started working at the practice two weeks ago, and as a newly qualified dentist it shouldn't be her job to make sure the surgery was open on time. That's why they had a practice manageress. Talking of which –

      ‘Where the bloody hell is Kerry?’ asked Mark.

      Maya shrugged her shoulders.

      ‘I was the first one here,’ she said.

      There was no sign of either of the nurses who were supposed to be working with them today. Mark sighed. It was going to be one of those days.

      He apologised to the bemused patients sitting in the waiting room, answered the phone to Lorna's (nurse number one's) mum, whose defiant explanation that ‘Lorna had a stomach ache, innit’ didn't fool him for a second, and called in the first of his patients.

      By the time he'd seen the second, Kerry had swanned in breezily. ‘Sorry I'm late, the trains were bad.’

      ‘But you drive,’ replied Mark.

      ‘Oh, not today, I was out last night.’ She leered lasciviously and bent down over the desk to reveal a rather lacy thong peeping out of a somewhat less than sexy behind. It was more than a man could take first thing in the morning.

      ‘I think that's what you call a whale tail,’ whispered Maya, who had come out to get her next patient.

      Mark snorted, before insisting that Kerry went and nursed for Maya, who needed the help more than he did. While he was phoning Diana, who unfortunately today was working at another surgery, in order to get her to find some cover for them, Sasha (nurse number two) walked in. Sasha, their latest recruit, seemed to be the only Eastern European in the country who didn't understand the value of hard work. Mark considered admonishing her, but, mindful that there were still patients in the waiting room, and aware that she probably wouldn't understand him anyway, he decided that, like much of his life, there really was No Point.

      He looked down at his day roster to see what else lay in store for him, and groaned out loud. Jasmine Symonds – a so-called celebrity who was famous for shagging on some god-awful reality TV show, and, if the rumours were true, was the new face of Smile, Please! – was coming in. It was one more indication that someone somewhere didn't like him. Not only had Jasmine and her ghastly mother Kayla been his patients for years, but despite her newfound fame she wouldn't go to any other dentist. Trust him to have the misfortune to have Jasmine as his most loyal patient …

      Katie Caldwell was standing at the school gates and watching her ten-year-old son, George, walk mournfully away from her. It cut her heart to the quick to watch his misery and be unable to help. But what could she do when any questions about what was upsetting him were just met with a shrug? George had been in a foul mood this morning, still sore about the fact that he'd spent the previous day on the subs bench – again. He and Charlie had both been peculiarly reticent about why George, the team's best striker, seemed to spend more time off the pitch than on it, but Katie had the deepest suspicion that there was something Charlie wasn't telling her.

      It was probably nothing, but Katie knew if she did ask Charlie about it, he would just do that annoying trick of touching his nose and saying ‘A Caldwell never blabs’ – a phrase no doubt passed on to him by his mother. Was it rather pathetic, she won dered, to have been married for ten years and still be frightened of your mother-in-law?

      She sighed, and kissed her younger son, Aidan, goodbye. At least she had no worries on that score. Aidan was a happy-go-lucky child who rarely cried and seemed to shrug off life's slings and arrows with an insouciance she envied, and which she longed for her older, more sensitive son to have too.

      ‘Charlie been winding them up at football again?’ Katie turned away from waving Aidan goodbye to see the tall shadow of Mandy Allwick, school gossip extraordinaire, framed in the early-morning sunshine. That was all she needed.

      ‘What do you mean?’ Katie squinted up at Mandy, who, as usual, looked perfectly (if a little tartily) manicured and well turned out for first thing in the morning. With her tight leather miniskirt and crop top (revealing as it did a ridiculously well-toned stomach for someone with three children), her high heels, painted nails and even more painted face, a casual observer might have fancied she was on the pull. Though the choice among the stay-at-home dads was hardly wonderful. Still, tarty or not, Mandy always had the knack of making Katie feel wrong-footed.

      ‘Oh, you know Charlie,’ Mandy laughed heartily. ‘He's always giving that poncy coach a mouthful. And quite right too. That guy goes on and on about being fair to