J is for Josie

That would be good, yes. But the next day I began to wonder just what Dad had meant about 'getting really dressed up'. He was out at the time, I couldn't ask directly. But he did seem to have quite liked my own dressing-up efforts in a way. Maybe I should do that again? Was that what he meant? But if I did I couldn't just wear jeans, not for a 'special occasion'.

So I had another look, more carefully this time, into Mum's wardrobe, at all the clothes she'd left behind. Literally she'd only taken the clothes she was wearing and a very few more, with some jewellery and passport and so on. Most of her stuff was still there. And as I looked through her make-up drawer I noticed - Dad must have shoved it in there - the letter he had shown me when she'd left. And her wedding ring. She'd left that behind too.

I spent the next week thinking, then decided to do something about it. Just before going to college one day I asked Dad about the money I'd been saving, towards a new PC.

"Would it be OK if I used it to get something else instead? Just my money, I mean."

"Sure, Joseph. Sure."

He wasn't really listening though, he was reading some work stuff. He'd started to bury himself in his work a bit, partly to get over Mum, I think, and partly because there was a chance of a promotion coming up. One of the Regional Managers was retiring and Dad reckoned he was in with an outside chance of the job. So he did spend quite some time in the evenings working, trying to make sure his bosses wouldn't have any reason at all to find fault.

I had several hundred saved up altogether but really I didn't want to spend it all yet, not on a PC anyway. Because I'd discovered something else. On a website, a company selling things specially for people who liked to dress up, in all sorts of clothes and uniforms and so on. Some of them were, I thought, rather rude. And some -- well! They were way beyond 'rude'.

But others looked good, maybe just the sort of thing I could use. I'd just set up my Pal-Pay account so I used it to send in an order. I knew some of Mum's stuff would be useful for me but there were a few extra items I'd need, if I was going to do it properly.