The Palace of Strange Girls. Sallie Day

mean the X-ray machine. No one will notice they’re brown. Anyway they match your hair,’ says Helen, in a moment of inspiration.

      They are interrupted by a sharp rapping at the door. Both girls jump.

      ‘That’s Mum! Quick, get your sandals on or we’ll both catch it.’

      Ruth Singleton, her arms full of clothes, waits in the hallway, her right foot tapping on the varnished floorboards. If her patience is short today it’s due to her husband’s ill-starred attempt at marital intimacy this morning. Surely he can see how she is after all these months of anxiety? But not Jack. No. Jack thinks a bit of early-morning sex is on the menu now they’re on holiday. Ruth had tolerated his caresses until his increasing insistence had forced her to push his hand away and say, ‘Don’t, Jack. I have to get up to get the girls ready.’

      He hadn’t said anything, had limited himself to a drawn-out sigh. Ruth felt an answering rush of anger. Does it always have to come down to this?

      Ruth is prised from the memory by the sound of the door finally opening. None of this palaver with locks would be necessary if it weren’t for her younger daughter’s recently acquired habit of sleepwalking. This is bad enough at home, but there’s no telling what trouble the seven-year-old might get into in a hotel the size of the Belvedere. In a doomed attempt to allay Mrs Singleton’s worst fears, the hotel manager has sworn on his mother’s life (a lady much missed since her demise three years previously) that the room locks are made by the same firm who supplied the MOD during the war. Even the ‘blasted Hun’ couldn’t breach the security of the Belvedere’s rooms and thus Beth’s habit of going AWOL at night has been curtailed. This desirable state being attained not by the hoped-for Yale lock and chain, but by the effect of damp salt air on turn-of-the-century iron locks. All of which means that Helen must use the combined strength of both hands and the leverage of her shoulder to release the door.

      Though barely topping five foot six, Ruth appears much larger. Her face is scrubbed to a shine and her brown hair (already falling victim to the stealthy approach of grey) is brushed and fixed neatly into a Victory Roll that evokes memories of the war years and oppressive rationing. She is an energetic woman. A woman devoted to hard work. A woman reliant upon the writings of Elizabeth Craig to guide her through the minefield of domestic practice. Once in the room, Ruth dumps the clothes on the nearest bed and heads straight for the window to let in the sunshine. This involves coaxing, flicking, tugging and hauling the pea-green damask curtains to either end of a buckled and sagging wire. Halfway through this daily ordeal Ruth is distracted by the sight of the hotel yard, four floors below. It is lined with overflowing bins and a miscellaneous collection of mops, buckets and rusty chairs occupied by members of the hotel staff during their tea breaks. There, in full view, stands a line of sullen grey dustbins on an island of cracked concrete; the whole amply irrigated by the backwash of overflowing kitchen drains. Ruth’s whitewashed backyard boasts two bins, double the capacity of her terraced neighbours’. One (supplied by the local council) for ashes, and the other (privately purchased) for household waste. Ruth always wraps potato peelings and the like before disposal. Only by wrapping everything in fresh newspaper can Ruth ensure that the inside of her bin remains as clean as the day she bought it.

      The sight of the hotel bins is aggravated further by the appearance of two overturned buckets that roll back and forth as the wind shifts. Surely the hotel owns more by way of cleaning equipment than that? Ruth has a whole selection of buckets in her backyard. One for gathering up the hot ashes from the kitchen fire, one for scrubbing floors, another for washing windows and, finally, a monstrous aluminium bucket, twice the size of its iron counterparts, for ‘best’. In line with its elevated status this bucket stands in glorious isolation in the scullery, immaculately clean and gleaming with potential, waiting for the next load of cottons that need starching.

      Ruth’s ruminations on household equipment are interrupted by a cry of protest from her older daughter: ‘Isn’t it time I changed my skirt, Mum?’

      Ruth turns her gaze from the window. ‘I don’t know what you’re fussing about. That skirt will do another day. You’ve got clean underwear. You wouldn’t have that if I hadn’t spent half an hour in the laundry room last night.’

      This is not quite the irksome job it might appear. The hotel laundry room houses a brand-new Bendix Twin Tub. Under the pretext of hand-washing the family’s underwear, Ruth has admired the top-loader lids and neat hoses on the twin tub, seen the spinner in action. As the adverts say: ‘This is the future of household laundry.’ Ruth has a Hotpoint Empress at home. With its built-in ‘automatic’ wringer and Bakelite agitator it used to be the last word in laundry. But the advent of the Bendix Twin Tub has changed all that. Who would want the backache of hauling double sheets through the wringer if they could drop them in a spinner and pull them out forty minutes later drip free? This is the modern world of post-war Britain. A world made familiar to Ruth through magazines. A world she is determined to enter.

      Ruth turns her attention to her younger daughter. ‘Have you washed your face, Elizabeth? Elizabeth!’

      Beth has her head firmly in the I-Spy codebook. She is practising stroking her cheek in the manner prescribed at the beginning of chapter 3 ‘Greeting other Redskins’. Beth has been rehearsing this move for the past four days but no one has yet responded.

      ‘Elizabeth!’ Ruth says, taking her daughter firmly by the arm. ‘Are you listening? Have you washed your face?’

      ‘Yes.’ It is a small lie. So small that it barely deserves the name. But it affords a morsel of revenge, a minor victory in the guerrilla war Beth has been waging since Easter, a war that Ruth is only dimly aware is being fought.

      ‘Looks more like a lick and a promise to me,’ Ruth says, scanning her daughter’s face. ‘You could do with using a bit of soap next time.’

      ‘Can I have a summer dress today? Please. I hate wearing shorts. I look like a boy in them.’

      Ruth holds up the brown shorts. The weave is a right-hand twill, perfect for rough wear because it will resist snags and tears. And it won’t wear out. ‘Well, if these shorts and those sandals aren’t summery I don’t know what is,’ she says. ‘I’ve only brought your jumper because we’ve got to keep you warm.’

      ‘Can I wear this?’ Beth asks as she pulls a smocked cotton dress from the bottom of the pile. Beth has inherited the dress from her sister but has yet to be allowed to wear it.

      Ruth holds up the dress. ‘It might do,’ she concedes. There follow a frantic ten minutes while Ruth tries and fails to fit the dress over Beth’s wool vest and fleece-lined liberty bodice. ‘It’s no good, Elizabeth. It’s not going to fit. Hold your arms up while I get it off.’

      Beth raises her arms as the dress is pulled up over her head, bringing the vest and liberty bodice with it. By the time Beth emerges from the struggle her face is the colour of the rising sun – for a minute she looks healthy. In her haste to protect her daughter from any potential draughts Ruth yanks the vest back across Beth’s skin so sharply that the child flinches with pain. In another moment she is dressed in the prescribed brown knee-length shorts, olive-green jumper and thick socks to take up the slack in her sandals.

      ‘There. Now you’re done.’ Ruth heaves a sigh with the effort involved in arming her daughter against all the sharp winds and torrential rain that Blackpool can offer in the middle of July.

       2

       RED-EYED SANDHOPPER

       These little animals live between the tidemarks, chiefly under stones and in the rotting seaweed at the top of the beach. They are white with bright-red eyes and five pairs of legs. Score 10 points for a bleary-eyed sandhopper.

      Jack has escaped early to buy a newspaper. With this end in mind he has made his way to the promenade in holiday mood. The sun is still a bit fitful but the air is fresh. He is easily tempted