She enjoyed her secretarial course. She was enjoying, with reservations, her first job in an accountant’s office. Even within the limitations of her environment, her life seemed to stretch away in front of her, full of possibilities as yet unexplored.
And then, one night of black ice, everything changed for ever. A coachload of football supporters veered across a dual carriageway and crashed into the Mini bringing Mr and Mrs Clayton home from the house of some friends. Mrs Clayton was killed instantly, but Ginny’s father lingered for a few days in intensive care.
Ginny coped because she had to, undergoing the ordeals of funerals and inquests. But there was a greater ordeal to come, one that no one had suspected. Mr Clayton’s small business had been heavily in debt, and he had borrowed from finance companies, not always wisely, using insurances and even his home as security. To her horror, Ginny learned that when all the creditors were paid, there would be hardly anything left in the way of money, and that they would no longer have a home.
In a way she was glad that her mother would never know just how flimsy the outward fabric of her life had been. Her father had never brought his business worries home with him, and for Mrs Clayton life had always been comfortable, with no shortage of little treats and luxuries.
But there was no escaping the fact that she, Ginny, was now responsible for finding accommodation for them all, and for earning sufficient money to pay the rent and support them.
Nor could she avoid the unpleasant truth that Barbara was not prepared to help in any way.
Her sister had made that more than clear during the brief time she had spent at home to attend the funeral.
‘I think you’re completely mad,’ Barbara had declared, stubbing out her cigarette in the saucer of her coffee cup. The sisters were in the kitchen having a bedtime drink the night before Barbara was due to return to London. ‘No one expects you to take on the responsibility for them all—a girl of eighteen. It’s ridiculous!’
‘But if I don’t, who will?’ Ginny asked mildly enough. Her head ached miserably and she felt drained of emotion. The last thing she wanted was an argument.
‘Well, I won’t for one,’ Barbara said bluntly. ‘There’s no room at the flat and I have my own life to lead—my career to think of, thank you very much. And so should you.’
‘I haven’t really got a career, just a job that I don’t much care about.’ Ginny carried the coffee cups over to the sink and began to rinse them under the tap. She looked round at the neat, bright kitchen with its tiles and new kitchen units which Mrs Clayton had been so proud of, and a sharp little pain twisted inside her like the turn of a knife. ‘But it’s been experience, and I can look for something that pays rather better now.’
Barbara’s lips twisted. ‘You’ll need something that pays like a bomb for what you have in mind. For heaven’s sake, Ginny, see sense. You’re biting off altogether more than you can chew. No secretary’s salary in this neck of the woods is going to pay the rent for the size of place you’d need—always supposing you found somewhere, and that won’t be easy. Where landlords are concerned, children and dogs are an anathema, take my word for it.’
Ginny turned off the hot tap with intense concentration. ‘Which do you suggest that I have put down—Tim or Muffin?’ she enquired.
‘Oh, don’t be a fool,’ Barbara snapped. ‘But you’ve got to be realistic. Just because Dad fancied himself as an amateur philanthropist, it doesn’t mean that you have to follow in his footsteps.’
‘You mean Aunt Mary.’ Ginny reached for the tea towel. ‘Doesn’t it matter to you that she’s losing her home as well?’
Barbara shrugged. ‘Of course,’ she said without any conviction. ‘But she can’t rely on you to provide her with another one. She must see that. After all, she has her pension, and there are plenty of places catering for elderly women in her position.’
‘Nursing homes, I suppose, and seedy private hotels.’ Ginny dried a cup and hung it from the appropriate hook. ‘Would you really condemn her to that, Barbie? She was Dad’s favourite aunt.’
‘But not mine,’ Barbara said coolly. ‘I don’t know how Mother put up with her all these years.’
There was a difficult silence, then Barbara picked up the thread again.
‘And as for Tim—well, has it occurred to you that the Social Services might take a hand?’
‘Yes, it has,’ Ginny said coldly. ‘It’s also occurred to Tim, and he’s worried sick about it. Some of the children at school have been telling him that he’ll be taken into care—you know what insensitive little beasts they can be.’
Barbara reached for another cigarette. ‘Would it be such an unthinkable thing?’
‘Barbie!’ Ginny was aghast. ‘You can’t be serious!’
‘I’m trying to be realistic,’ Barbara said sourly. ‘Face facts, Ginny. How can someone of your age be mother and father to an eleven-year-old boy? It’s just not on.’
‘It has to be,’ Ginny said. ‘I’ve given Tim my word that we won’t be split up.’
‘If you don’t find another job and somewhere to live, the choice may not be yours,’ Barbara had pointed out coolly and unanswerably.
It was a fact that was haunting Ginny now that the first shock and grief of losing her parents was beginning to wear off. In a way, she was glad that the harsh practicalities of life were beginning to assume such importance, and make such demands on her time and energy, because they stopped her indulging in bouts of useless emotionalism and self-pity. The very fact that Tim and Aunt Mary depended on her so heavily had lent her a strength and purpose she had never been aware of, but it had not blinded her to the realities of the situation.
She had wondered at first whether Barbara would be able to help financially, if in no other way, but she had soon been disabused of that notion. Her sister was about to go into rehearsal in yet another light comedy which would be taken out on tour before its West End opening, and no one could prophesy what its fate would be in the uncertain world of show business. It might provide Barbara with a steady income for many months to come, or, as she pointed out with unshakeable logic, it might fold almost at once, leaving her to join the dole queue. Whatever happened, she was in no position to commit any of her income.
Ginny was not altogether surprised. She had always been aware that there was a single-minded, almost ruthless streak in Barbara which set her apart from the rest of the family. Certainly their father had never possessed it, Ginny thought with a sigh, otherwise his affairs might not have been in the bleak state they were at the time of the accident.
At the same time, she knew that Barbara’s view of her situation was a realistic one, and this was brought home to her in the weeks which followed. There were other jobs, but none that paid the sort of salary on which she could support a ready-made family, and finding another home was quite a different matter.
None of the flats and small houses she saw were large enough to accommodate them all, and those that were she could not afford. And, as Barbara had prophesied, few prospective landlords were prepared to consider a tenant with a child in tow anyway, and after the first few rebuffs, Ginny did not even dare mention the existence of Muffin, the mongrel dog, past puppyhood it was true, but certainly not past such anti-social habits as burying bones under sofa cushions and scratching paint off doors to facilitate his exits and entrances.
She