Never before had the young woman been allowed to see the family she'd left behind. All she wanted was to let them know she was safe and being well cared for. Today was going to be her first contact. She walked down the aisle of the near empty church...
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It was a hot afternoon and the side-street beside St. Cecilia's primary school buzzed with the sound of small children playing. Marjory, a stout woman in her early fifties and with bunched up greying brown hair, sat on a white plastic chair by a wedged open fire escape door. She fanned herself with a school text book. She had taken on the role of infant 'after school club' supervisor only a few months earlier, so she wasn't sure if she was breaking with protocol by allowing the children to play on the quiet pedestrianised side-street next to the school. But the classroom had been too warm and the playground offered little shade against the hot sun. So it was that she now anxiously watched over the small group of five to seven year old children as they ran about excitedly in their new environment. Directly opposite the side of the school where Marjory was sitting were high solid wooden garden fences with closed gates. Along the street to her right was a quiet residential area with little traffic, and fifty yards or so to her left was a fairly busy street and road in the full flow of rush hour traffic. So, she had chalked out dotted lines between the school building and the garden fences and told the children to stay between them. She was happy that the three little girls sitting on the grass were playing quietly; but the group of five small boys were running about wildly. She'd already had to reprimand two of them for stone throwing. She was beginning to think that this maybe wasn't a good idea after all and that she should bring them all in. The phone just inside the school building, as close to her position as its cable would allow, started to ring.
Little Wendy poured pretend tea into small plastic cups for her two friends. All the time, she hummed the tune to the song Eternal Flame by 'The Bangles'. The year was 1968, 20 years before that song and melody had been written.
Little Sophie stood up and put her hands on her hips, "Stop humming that Wendy! It's obnoxious!"
"What does ob-nok-ses mean?" said Karuna, a little Indian girl with long black hair.
"I don't know. My mummy says it when she's angry," said Sophie.
Wendy didn't look up from her tea pouring, but stopped humming, out loud at least. A young woman with short slicked back black hair and dark shades lay in the grass beside the girls. She flicked through the current copy of Vogue magazine, humming the tune to Eternal Flame.
Suddenly, there was a sharp clatter sound on the asphalt pavement nearby. The young woman sat upright, lowering her shades. The boys had taken to throwing stones again, Milene thought. Where's Marjory?
Just then, Marjory marched out of the school building and into the side-street. "Right! I've told you boys before, do not throw stones! Someone could get hurt! If I have to tell you again we'll all be going back into the classroom and you'll have to sit quietly at your desks!"
