The concrete and tarmac. A scent of privet and petrol fumes. The shouts of children playing on a large tyre hanging from a tall tree on a frayed rope. The children would swing out over pavement and street and dared each other to take their go when a lorry was approaching. And no one came out of the silent houses to say no. There were no grown-ups around to see the children as they flew, as they urged each other to go higher and higher on the tyre. Stevie swung furthest and most often. She was the biggest child and she looked like a sad Snow White with shiney dark hair, alabaster skin and a rose red pouty mouth. Sometimes she had rose red cheeks and bruised eyes too. But she never said why and none of the other children ever asked.

It was the school holidays and the men were at work and the women were doing washing or cooking or cleaning or whatever it was that women did, whilst Stevie and the others sailed the molten summer air. Stevie’s mother was one of the women and she had bruises of her own to ignore. Back then they didn’t call what housewives did work. Women’s labours didn’t count as work and a swift backhander was often the pay. Stevie’s mother, Patsy, had a wide smile when she wanted, a straight even nose turned up at the end. The pixie nose sat under roguish eyes that sometimes glittered with sly glee. But not often. The children didn’t notice her eyes or understand that her smile was mostly lost behind a face tensed up with concentration as she dumped mashed potatoes and cheap sausages onto twelve chipped plates. Her sister, similarly worn and scuffed looking, filled plastic beakers with weak orange squash from a tired plastic jug that didn’t sit straight on the table. Her pouring artistry made sure each of the twelve beakers held the exact same amount. The sisters had short wiry hair and short tatty skirts, with worn slip-on slippers on their feet. Bare legs sported odd little bruises, sometimes not so little. They spoke rarely but when they did it was with aggression, their tones defensive, guarded against the world.

At some point, Stevie’s mother’s voice would shriek from the house to call the children in to dinner. That’s what they called it, not lunch. Dinner. Her voice would screech out once only and the children would react as one, a single ragged tangle hurrying into the house, blinking at the sudden dark of indoors. They were noisy and clumsy, bumping over one another, rushed and excited desperate to get their favourite place at the table. The boys wanted to be together and the girls were fussy about which girl they sat next to. Sweaty and pink urchins pushing at one another, elbows out, feet reaching under the table to land random kicks.

Patsy’s call to the table sawed loud and scared the birds. Mostly the birds were London pigeons blackened with city dust, idling in trees also blackened with London dust. The year was circa sixty something, London in the last century when the clean air act was still new and air that was supposed to be clean was still being washed in the rain which loaded endless soot into the raindrops. And the rain fell on the trees, the buildings and the bushes and grass to leave a murky slick of black. Concrete was charcoal streaked but the tarmac was black already so when it rained the roads and pavements shone with oily rainbows and the promise of what might come next.

Stevie and her comrades would sit at the table grubby and rowdy and no one would be told more than once to wash their hands or be quiet. No point. They were a mismatched crew being babysat by Stevie’s mum and Stevie’s aunty. Two of the children, little girls with a pretty mother who had an eye for clothes, could see that Stevie’s mum and Stevie’s aunty were old looking. But they knew that their mum and Stevie’s mum were friends. They could see the colourless ugliness of the short A line skirts and battered slippers, and they could observe strangely pointy breasts held tight under thin unmatched twinsets. No pearls.

These women had rough red hands and lined faces with little space for joy. Between them they had six children with six more joining in the school holidays. The paying extras were: a pair being raised by a single father who worked for British Rail, waving a flag; a pair from a family where both parents went out to work, her in an office and him in a band; and a pair from a couple who lived above a shop in a flat full of cardboard boxes filled with knock-off stuff and fake brands.

They knew the names, but the children were shapeless to the sisters and for the children the sisters were anonymous, like most grown-ups. The arrangment was transactional with no expectations other than that the single dad and the working woman would fetch their children at the end of the day. Sometimes the man who lived above the flat would collect his boys. He was well-fed and jolly with a large nose, jovial and with an air about him that was slightly conniving. He was helpful with whatever you might want, but it came at a price. Sometimes his wife would come early and sit at the kitchen table smoking and smirking. Plump with deepset calculating eyes, she pulled her bleached blonde hair that always looked dirty into a ratty pony tail. She enjoyed watching her friends doing the washing up and peeling spuds as she told Patsy and Audrey about the latest goings on at the market, the Liebfraumilch her husband had got in stock and how delicious it was. She liked that word, picked up from an overheard conversation at her husband’s stall. She reminded Patsy and Audrey of the richness of her wonderful life, that she didn’t really need to park her kids with them. But her boys liked playing all day with the other children. Of course she made sure it was known that she knew Patsy and Audrey needed the money.

The single man had lost his wife, somewhere near the hospital after their second son was born. They were on the way to the bus stop and she’d turned back. “I’ve left my slippers,” she’d said. It was the last time he saw her. This was not known to him as he watched her new red coat change colour when the sun came out, sparkling the wet pavements. So he waited at the bus stop with the new baby in its pram, holding his other son’s hand until little Robert got tired and wanted to be picked up. Mr Walters went back to the hospital and they looked uncomfortable as they explained she’d gone but had left him a note. The note was hastily scrawled, yet certain and definite. It said “I’ve had it Ron. I didn’t want the first and now I don’t want either of them.” Bewildered he had shown the note to the duty nurse in the maternity ward and she’d shrugged awkwardly and told him he should leave. “That would be best for you and for the children. You’ve no reason to be here Mr Walters. You should be taking them home for their tea.” Rather pointlessly she added “it’s stopped raining now.” The duty nurse had handed him a bag containing two bottles and some baby formula. As a last minute concession she added a sympathetic smile and the encouraging hope that “Mrs Walters will be home soon I’m sure.” Except Mrs Walters wasn’t home soon. Not soon, not ever. She never did come home and she never saw him or her boys again and she was glad of it.

Patsy and Audrey never spoke of Mrs Walters and weren’t even sure if she was Mrs Walters or someone with a completely different name. They weren’t even sure that she’d been part of their world except for the boys who looked a lot like each other and nothing like their father. Occasionally Robert talked about her, saying that she was the most beautiful lady in the world and that she cried a lot. He cried a lot too so he thought he must be a lot like her.

Those city summers were long, loud, dusty and chaotic. There was never quite enough to eat and the food was always just sort of stuff on a plate. This was understood. It was expected that there would be minimalist corned beef hash that was mashed potatoes laced with stringy pink meat. On the plate it looked like a swirl of white plaster of Paris daubed with a brush with a hint of pink on it. Reliably there would be fish fingers, soft and yellow also with mash. Or sausages made mostly with rusk and stuff that’s now banned. Easy on the teeth, flavourless and nutritionless. Sometimes there would be a grisly stew with dead carrots and onions floating alongside unchewable bits of meat in watery brown gravy. By the time this made it to the plate, the gravy was going cold and its greasy surface was misting into a soft grey congealant. Sometimes there would be chips and always there would be orange or lemon squash in plastic beakers. The hungry children rushed and jostled and elbowed each other for no other reason than it was more interesting than sitting still. Except for the two little girls with the pretty mother, the children didn’t notice what they were eating, thrusting forkfuls at speed into their greedy pink mouths. The two little girls pushed their food around their plates, glancing sideways at one another, and slowly finishing so that they could have the Angel Delight (pink, yellow or brown) that was for afters.

At the single dad’s funeral in a seaside town when the children were all grown up, no one could remember the swinging tyre or the corned beef hash or afters. They remembered not much at all, except each others’ names, held in pairs according to who the children belonged to. They remembered the pretty mother bringing sweets when she came to collect her daughters. Lost in the mess of years there wasn’t much left to talk about. The trials and tribulations of adulthood had usurped memory’s shreds. No one cared about the days where children got smacked and ate what was put in front of them, allergies be damned. No one cared, no one questioned and no one remembered anymore.