Chapter One – That Bloody Bike Handle

Well, I can tell you, we had some right characters living round Hexthorpe in the 1950s, but there was one girl who was an absolute bloody disgrace. Everybody knew her as Bike Handle, and believe me, the name suited her down to the ground. She was seventeen, fat as a barrel, ugly as sin, permanently scruffy and had a mouth on her that would have made a navvy blush. You couldn't have a decent conversation within fifty yards of her without hearing some filthy expression or another coming out of that great gob of hers.

She'd had the nickname since school. Apparently, she'd spend half her dinner break hanging round the back of the bicycle shed with the boys. While the other girls were playing in the playground, Bike Handle was always lurking round there, giggling and making herself available for a bit of attention. The teachers were forever chasing her away, but she'd be back again before they'd got to the other end of the playground. The boys thought it was hilarious, and before long nobody bothered using her proper name. She was Bike Handle, and that was that.

She lived with her family in one of those old terraces where you could hear your neighbours arguing through the walls. The lavatory was outside, the coal house was full of dust, and the back yard was hardly big enough to swing a cat. Most families round there worked bloody hard for what little they had. The men went off to the railway works or the factories, and the women kept the house, fed the children and somehow managed to make ends meet.

Bike Handle, on the other hand, seemed to think work was something other people did. She'd spend her time hanging about, gossiping, interfering and making a nuisance of herself. She was forever borrowing things and forgetting to return them, and if anybody dared ask for their property back, she'd start shouting as though she'd been terribly insulted.

I remember one occasion when she had a row with an elderly neighbour over a washing line. The poor woman had asked her to move some clothes that Bike Handle had dumped across it. Well, you'd have thought she'd been accused of murder. She started swearing, calling the woman a miserable old cow and shouting that she could do what she liked. We could hear the whole performance from our kitchen.

Her mother must have been at her wits' end. There was no reasoning with the girl. She'd talk back, slam doors, stomp about and behave as though everybody else was born purely to annoy her. She was forever falling out with somebody, and the minute she'd finished one argument she'd find another person to have a go at.

We weren't exactly living in a posh part of Doncaster, and nobody expected young girls to behave like little princesses, but there was a difference between being a bit cheeky and being an out-and-out bloody nuisance. Bike Handle had crossed that line years before.

What really made her unpleasant was that she seemed to enjoy upsetting people. She'd say something particularly nasty, watch the reaction and then laugh. If somebody got upset, she'd tell them they couldn't take a joke. She had absolutely no consideration for anybody else's feelings.

I don't think there was a woman in our street who hadn't had a run-in with her. We all knew what she was like, and most of us hoped she'd eventually grow out of it. Unfortunately, she was about to give us something considerably worse to talk about.