Hold on.(Short Story)

Mrs Jordan scowled at her daughter, "What's the matter with you? I told you to go before we left home." Theresa shrugged her shoulders and looked down at the floor. She was a thin child with dull copper-coloured hair and a smattering of freckles across her pale face. She said nothing.

Mrs Jordan's huge breasts heaved up and down and the yellow roses printed on her woollen blouse danced boldly on either side of her deep cleavage.

"Well, I'm not taking you now and that's that."

The toilet block was outside, behind the tearooms down a narrow laneway, which backed onto the car park. You needed to ask at the front counter for a key. The manager was fed up with finding overdosed addicts slumped on the concrete floor. He'd even put in a special blue light so they couldn't find their veins.

Mrs Jordan pushed her coat further back onto the chain She had no intention of moving out from the warmth of the tearooms. She'd already started on her first scone. Knife poised in the air, she jabbed it in the direction of her husband.

"You take her, Ralph. I took her last time." She spread the butter over her scone in thick lumps, then smeared the lot with a blood-red layer of jam, and reached for the cream.

"I can't do that and you know it." Mr Jordan looked peeved. He was a skinny man with a receding hairline and a face shaped rather like an upside-down turnip. He too disliked the idea of the cold outside.