'If that happens ...' by Irene Lofthouse

She said it when I was little. I thought it was rude, that mum’s shouldn’t say such things and definitely not in company. I’d blush each time she said it ciggie in one hand, Babycham in the other, gossiping with her cronies in our parlour.

Lipsticked, perfumed, powder-blue crimpolene two-piece, black court shoes, fake pearls, she was a different woman. Floury apron and hairnet hung up for ‘a good night visit to the club’. The ‘coven’ were loud and raucous, Mum cackling her ‘If that happens, I’ll - ’ refrain in response to comments.

Who knows where the years go? In a blink of an eye she was eighty, no longer able to rub butter into flour, hands bent and gnarled. Her memory wasn’t as sharp, but her delight in a ciggie and Babycham was undiminished. On a trip to Leeds we’d wandered into the new Victoria Quarter and were browsing cosmetics, when Mum was offered a makeover. Praising Mum’s ‘youthful complexion’, the assistant said she should be modelling for them. Mum laughed, ‘Aye, if that happens, I’ll -’. I cut her off, knowing what was coming. To distract her, I suggested we have a nosey in the clothes department.

I was searching through the Per Uno section when I heard a kerfuffle. Looking round, I saw a crowd around the nearest window display, many of them sniggering. Turning back, I began to talk to Mum, only to discover she was nowhere in sight.

‘Madam, please!,’ a woman boomed. ‘It is most unladylike. Come out of there.’

I felt my heart plummet. I wobbled over, hearing a piping voice address her audience.

‘She said I should be a model. And I said, “If that happens, I’ll show my bum in Lewis’s.” Well it has, and I have.’

And she did.