‘Well, why would you when you look like you do?’ asked Angie. ‘I assume you didn’t need any qualifications to get work.’
Hope shrugged. ‘Well, no. But it’s not like I’m stupid or anything,’ she added, suddenly wanting to explain herself.
‘That much is obvious from what you’ve just said. I’d call it pretty astute actually,’ Angie said.
Hope could feel her cheeks blush in spite of herself. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
It felt great to have someone acknowledge her idea as at least having potential, and she already had the impression that Angie wasn’t in the habit of saying what she thought people wanted to hear.
The other students were starting to shuffle back into the classroom, brown plastic cups in hands, and take their seats. Hope turned back to face the front, signalling that the time for chatting was over, but, she thought, maybe it wouldn’t be too terrible to sit next to Angie for the next thirty weeks.
30
By week three of the course, Hope had concluded that Carl, the tutor, was irritating in the extreme but that he did actually know his stuff. Having decided that it wasn’t very satisfactory making notes on her laptop, she had invested in a lever arch file together with a set of coloured dividers, and the sections were filling up nicely. The pleasure that she felt at seeing the neat pages of notes was something new for her. This must have been what it felt like to be a swot at school.
She was still getting on well with Angie, too, although she had yet to turn up for class with her own equipment. Hope didn’t mind; she had bought enough supplies for both of them and doled them out at the start of each session, having worked out that if she gave paper and pens to Angie to look after then they wouldn’t make it back for the next class.
She had learned more about Angie in the fifteen-minute comfort breaks that Carl gave them mid-session. It appeared that she was a single mum to a twelve-year-old who, from the stories that Angie recounted, was wise beyond her years. There was no man on the scene, as far as Hope could tell. She had asked her about the child’s father, in a roundabout way to start with, and then more directly. Angie had sighed and looked a little wistful at the thought of him.
‘I think Romany’s dad was probably the love of my life,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t realise it at the time. If I had, I would probably have made a bigger effort to hold on to him.’
‘Did he not want to be involved with his daughter?’ Hope asked.
‘I think it was more that he didn’t really know what to do,’ Angie replied. ‘Even though we weren’t kids, the idea of commitment was all very new for both of us and we didn’t really think things through very well. Plus, Jax lived down south so I barely saw him as it was. And then when Romany was born it took us both by surprise. Not the fact of her. I mean, we knew I was pregnant. It was more the consequences. I should have worked out what I was expecting from him and told him straight away, but I didn’t and so he just kind of wandered off. It was more of an accidental thing really.’
It seemed bizarre to Hope, but then she had never done anything by accident. ‘Do you ever hear from him?’ she asked.
‘Not any more,’ said Angie. ‘We did to start with, but then we moved house and I didn’t let him know. So now he wouldn’t know how to get hold of us even if he wanted to.’
She fell silent for a moment. Hope thought that not giving someone important your new address wasn’t something that you did by accident, but it wasn’t for her to comment.
‘It’s no bad thing, I suppose,’ Angie added. ‘We’re doing just fine on our own.’
Was it ever in the best interests of a child to have no contact with a parent if that parent had done no wrong? Hope wasn’t sure, but then she didn’t have any children herself. She couldn’t quite let it drop, though.
‘And what about Romany?’ she asked. ‘What does she think?’
Angie shrugged. ‘It’s not been an issue so far. When she was little and first worked out that other kids had two parents she asked where he was, and I told her that he lived a long way away. Now it rarely comes up. I suppose with Facebook and things it wouldn’t be that hard for her to track him down when she’s older, but at the moment she seems happy enough as we are. She’s got enough on looking after one parent as it is!’
Angie grinned, but something told Hope that Angie would be making a pretty good job of parenting on her own.
‘And how about you?’ Angie asked her.