I’m meeting Eva, my granddaughter, at a café in town. A Moroccan couple run it, they sell dishes of chickpeas with couscous. I love the spicy smell. When I was young we distrusted foreign food. As if they were trying to poison us! Charlie wouldn’t eat pizza, “I’m not eating anything made by the Italians. I haven’t forgotten the war.” I served it once and he folded his arms, lips set in a line. The old sod, strictly meat and two veg, he didn’t serve in the war. Flat feet. Did I have breakfast? I can’t remember.
I walk into town, gets my old legs working. Past lines of terraced houses like brick coloured icing piped along each side of the road. Back gardens concreted over, the flowers in pots, high wooden fences. When Charlie and I moved in everyone had wire fencing you could see through. We grew vegetables, put out water butts to catch the rain, hung over those fences on warm evenings, swapping gossip and comparing ailments. People don’t talk of illness now. The fear of death. It’s just a circle, starts at the beginning and ends at the end. Today people want to live forever, with botox and vitamin pills. Not me.
When it comes to sex my Eva can use those rubber things, whereas I fell pregnant. Disastrously, but deliciously, pregnant. I refused to tell anyone who the father was. The baby was mine. I would call her Beth. I shuddered at suggestions of knitting needles and ‘aunts’ who would know what to do. And the convent? Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. I wander what Our Lady would have thought of what went on there. Not a sacred heart between them. I didn’t want my baby wrenched from me and given to ‘deserving’ parents. Who said I didn’t deserve her? God? The Virgin Mary? Or those bloody nuns. It made Charlie seem a good idea.
My feet throb as I reach the café and my cheeks are aflame. I find a seat near the window, I don’t want Eva to miss me. I ask for a glass of water and wait for my girl, listening to Moroccan folk music. The café is decorated in deep shades of red and violet and I can smell lemons. Charlie and I grew them. Strange that a man so cruel would love to nurture, green shoots and small children. So wonderful with Beth but he never forgave me for not giving him a child.
“Bitch! You think you’re so beautiful! See how you look after this.” His arms raised, the jolting blows. Black- eyes and bruises. I cut my hair and wore shapeless clothes. It didn’t keep him away. That’s what you get when your brothers pay someone to marry you. But I got to keep Beth and Charlie got a wife and servant. A fair exchange? The old bastard’s dead now.
Eva comes bursting through the door wearing a floaty orange dress. All aglow with bangles tinkling.
“Sorry, Gran.”
I stand to let her kiss me. “Don’t worry, dear. Would you order me one of those fancy coffee’s I can’t pronounce?”
Eva smiles and my heart warms. Only my girl would wear orange more than halfway through her pregnancy.
“You mean a macchiato, Gran?” She giggles. “Nancy’s been kicking all morning. Must have been the curry I had last night.”
“Eva, you can’t call her Nancy. It’s so old fashioned and ugly.” Secretly I am pleased, another circle. But Eva’s Nancy will be loved.

I wait for my coffee, listening to the music. If my life were a song I know what the title be – ‘Nancy’s Circle’. Something with a strong melody.