Gave me quite a shock to read this. I haven’t read this book for many years. This new character was based on my Mum.
I am standing by a window at the side of my dead father looking out. I tried writing the different characters from varying perspectives.
excerpt – Bodies in a Window
I don’t like it here. I never have done and I never will. I don’t fit in. I’m like a fish out of water. They are all a bunch of snobby gits. They put on their airs and graces – pretentious idiots. All they care about is showing off. They swank around like they’re the big ‘I am’.
It’s Jim’s fault. He wants to move up in the world. Still does. He thinks we should do better than our parents did. I can see that. I want my kids to have better opportunities than I did. Part of me says that we’re every bit as good as any of them. But it is one thing thinking it and quite another doing it. It feels so wrong to me – not how I was brought up. I wouldn’t mind the affluence of the estate but it’s the people. They all seem so false and unreal to me – plastic people living plastic lives. Jim thinks I’m daft. We scrimped and scraped to buy this bungalow. I love it as a house, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with it as a home except that it’s just not me – well not so much the place as where it is, in the middle of this bunch. It’s not the bungalow that’s wrong as the people around on this bloody estate – the snobby gits. I was brought up among real people and I’m happy with people who are down to earth. I grew up in a community where people cared about each other, looked out for each other. People mattered – not things. This lot couldn’t care less about each other. They’d trample each other to death if they thought they could gain some advantage. They don’t care. I don’t want to fit in with them.
Here on this estate they’re out mowing the grass with straight lines, polishing the car and showing off with their dinner parties, golf and kids in boarding schools. Imagine having kids and even wanting to send them away to some bloody boarding school? What’s the point of having them in the first place if you want shot of them? It’s bloody peculiar, that’s what it is. I can’t stand it. They are so cold and selfish. They’re just not my sort and never will be.
The trouble is that I have no friends here, well, very few. There is Mrs O’Grady, but she’s a fish out of water just like me. The truth is that I don’t want to have friends here, leastways not with the likes of them. I’d rather be on my own. But Jim goes off to work each day and I’m all by myself. I’ve got nothing to occupy myself with. I’m not one for housework. It was fine when the kids were little and my mum was alive. She’d come round with the car and take us out for the day. We went everywhere. She’d knock on the door and shout through the letter box ‘come on open up. I know you’re in there.’ We’d come running. I’m lost without her. The kids loved her. But now she’s gone and the kids are at school and life seems empty. I don’t want to fit in and I’ve got far too much time on my hands.
So I’ve got my bike. I cycle everywhere. I cycle in to Kingston, up the big hill at Esher, to go to the cattle market. I used to take the kids there on the back of my bike. Can you imagine that? It’s a good way – a good seven or eight miles – but I don’t mind. It passes the time. The exercise is good for me. Cycling up that bloody hill you sure get enough exercise I can tell you. I used to be able to do that without stopping, even with the kids on the back. I can’t now. I have to stop and push it up the last bit – fair takes the wind out of me I can tell you.
I like my bargains. That’s why I like the market. I hunt out bargains. There’s plenty of reasonably priced stuff to be had there. Then on Saturdays I go round all the jumble sales. You can pick up stuff for next to nothing – good stuff too. I enjoy doing that. It stops me thinking about my mum. It fills in the time. I live for my bargains – and the kids of course.
Bodies in a Window: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781986269544: Books