Mr Starlight [antikvár]

one He had six bathrooms at the finish, every one of them done up to a different scheme, although most of them were never used. There was his, with a heart-shaped tub and a mirror on the ceiling, and the monogrammed towels földed just so, and nobody else supposed to go in there, only Pearl who looked after him. And then there was my favourite with a glass block floor and gold-plated dolphin taps, and a whole wall filled with water and trop-ical fish. Not that bathrooms interest me that much. Still, it's funny to think how we started out in Ninevah Street, with a lav down the yard and a jerry under the bed, in case you needed to go in the night, and a tin bath dragged indoors and put on the hearthrug, but only for special occasions. We all had baths when our Dilys was getting married, so that was quite a production, and I had another one, I remember, when I was bad with the measles and the doctor had been sent for. But generally speaking, you could go all year in our house and never see that tin tub. Until Sel started getting top biliing and Mam got stars in her eyes. Ever after that, if it was club night, it was bath night. I was in the trimming shop at Greely's Motors in those days, working six in the morning till two in the afternoon. You could earn more doing a night shift but after I got jilted, the size of my pay packet didn't seem to matter any more. Renée and I had been saving up, getting our little bits and pieces together for when we were married, but when she called it off, well, I lost heart. And if I worked