Extract taken from Catch the Moments as They Fly
by Zoë Strachan
Published by Blackwater Press

Rena, 1936 

Today Rena is going to change her life. The thought lights something inside her and for a second she imagines a future in which she’ll recall this day like a scene from a motion picture: bags being packed, doors slamming, cold words spoken clear and hard. Usually when she wakes up her anger has faded and she starts her day resigned, more than a little resentful, but not today. This morning she clings to that flutter in her tummy that tells her this is it, I’ve had it up to here, this is it. 

With the fiery pulse of rage spurring every footstep, every movement of her hands, Rena looks in on her mother, who shrinks under the covers and mumbles that she’s going to have a long lie on account of a headache. Little wonder, after last night. Rena’s father is not home, thank the Lord. He stormed out, temper and all, and usually when that happens he’s gone until teatime the next day. Rena assumes he stays up in town, although she has no inkling of where. She gets Jamie up and dressed and takes him downstairs for his breakfast. Once his egg is in front of him, chopped up with butter in the little blue bowl, she makes tea for her mother, checking around as she does so to make sure there’s nothing at Jamie’s height for him to get into mischief with. He’s a good quiet child, but the last thing she needs is for him to wrap his chubby paw around the bread knife, or a box of matches. 

‘Finish your breakfast,’ she tells him. ‘And don’t move from there.’ 

She summons as much authority into her voice as she can and it works: her little brother looks at her wideeyed and fearful. She stands for a moment and slowly, still watching her, he spoons some egg into his mouth. A fleck of yolk falls onto the handkerchief she has tied round his neck. 

‘Good,’ she says. 

After delivering the tea she marches along to Thomas’s room, bangs on the door and walks in without waiting. He sits up in bed, bleary, dark hair falling in a cow’s lick over his forehead. 

‘You’ll need to look after Jamie today,’ she tells him. ‘And check those cuts on ma’s head. I combed the glass out of her hair and there’s only scratches, but have a look at that lump. If she feels bad we’ll need to do something.’ 

‘But I’m playing in the match this afternoon.’ He rubs his eyes. ‘What’s happening anyway? Are you not going to school?’ 

‘No, I am not.’ Rena lowers her voice. ‘I was lying awake all night thinking and I’m putting an end to it.’ 

‘To school?’ he says, a smile creeping across his face. 

‘Don’t be a dafty.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Thomas, I’m going to do what I said.’ 

He pulls his blanket up to his chin. ‘Last night was bad.’ 

‘And if it gets worse?’ 

Thomas looks towards the open door of his bedroom. 

‘Oh don’t bother, she can’t hear us. What will Bandy Sanderson do if you aren’t there?’ 

‘Come and get me,’ Thomas says. ‘Probably. He went round and dragged Wullie McGee out of his scratcher for the semi-finals. That’s how we all ended up with the German measles.’ He scratches behind his ear, as if at the memory. 

‘All right then, you’d better go. But wake her when you go out.’ Just do something, Rena is thinking; You’re the oldest and I’m the one making all the decisions, all you have to do is mind your wee brother. ‘Or leave him with Mrs Skilling next door. Write a note and Ma can collect him later.’ 

Thomas looks pained. ‘Can’t you do it? I don’t like Mrs Skilling.’ 

‘Nobody likes Mrs Skilling. Just ignore her when she starts prying. Curiosity killed the cat.’ 

‘Aye and imagine the look on her face if I said that to her,’ Thomas says, and they both smile. ‘Seriously though, what about the window?’ 

‘Oh, bugger the window,’ she says, and then claps her hand over her mouth, astonished that one of her father’s words has escaped her lips. 

Thomas grins and swings his legs out of bed. ‘All right then,’ he says, standing up. ‘Good luck.’ 

Rena goes to her room where she finishes dressing in her smart, sober clothes: her skirt with the large pleats, her good blouse, the black wool belted jacket. She pins her cameo brooch at the neck, as if she’s going to church or visiting. Tucked away at the back of her drawer, under her handkerchiefs and scarves, is a manicure set in a leather case. She unfastens it and looks inside. Money, slowly and carefully pilfered from her father’s wallet, ever since she overheard her aunts telling her mother that she didn’t have to put up with it, that she could leave. Hetty flustered, stuttering. But, but he… until finally she got her words out: No. The children. So, a penny here and there, Rena took, nothing he’d notice. Needs must, she told herself, and she’s been proven right. If the devil wasn’t driving before, he is now. 

She counts it, then counts it again as she puts it into her own coin purse, even though she has known for a fortnight that there’s enough to get her to town. She made her decision last night. Not when the dining room window shattered, not when her father grabbed his hat and slammed the front door behind him, not even while she dabbed peroxide on the cuts on her mother’s scalp. No, Rena made up her mind when she was crawling around the floor with dustpan and brush, picking up every last shard of glass so that Jamie couldn’t hurt himself on it. She ties the laces on her shoes and surveys herself in the mirror one last time to check she’s respectable. The set of her eyes looks older than her fifteen years and her skin is as pale as an invalid’s, but respectable she is, for now. 

Catch the Moments as They Fly by Zoë Strachan is published by Blackwater Press, priced £13.99.