'That's a long way from here, Carol love.' Edith put the bone-china teacup gently down on the melamine tabletop, then turned the cup precisely so that the handle was at an oblique angle to her hand.
'Did I tell you, I went to see your Auntie Megan this week? She's still living in Chester, in one of those tower blocks by the fire station. Seventy two she is. She's got the arthritis now, and it's not good for her, that place, all those steps. You should have seen it, Carol. The place was a tip. She's really let it go, ever since her Eric went. I says to her, "Megan," I says, "why don’t you tidy up a little bit?" She looked right in my face, and says to me, "Edith, who's to see it now? Who visits me now?" And where was I, then? I ask you. Well, she's always had a melodramatic streak, has Megan. But it's a shame. Growing up in that little terrace house in Cefn, of course we shared a room. Me and big sister. The hours she spent admiring herself in a mirror, plucking her eyebrows, pursing her lips. We didn’t have much money for make-up, mind, it was all make-believe mainly. "Greer Garson," she'd say, holding her chin up. And she was always well turned out, our Megan, always one for the boys. Always neat and tidy. And now this. Tell the truth, Carol, she'd been letting herself go a while before Eric went.'
Edith picked up the teacup by the handle, and went to the sink. Looking in the window, she poured out the cold tea, tea without milk, tea with lemon, just a hint of the bitter in the brew. The colour of the tea was the rich red of her hair. With her other hand she pushed a strand behind her ear.
Her slim back turned to her daughter, Edith said, 'Eric? Yes, I've seen him. They say he's taken up with a younger woman.'
(first published in An Anatomy of Chester: A Collection of Short-Short Stories, ed. Ashley Chantler (Chester: Chester Academic Press, 2007))
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