SFAT The Mum

For the next four days the stories are based on the sketches of like first outlined in Scenes from a Tram Stop
The old man watched the young lad help the woman off the tram with her pushchair. She had a smiling face but tired eyes. The boy was not much younger than the mother, his hair gelled forward, all going in 'one direction'. He smiled at the woman as he put the wheels of the pram on the pavement, ‘a beautiful baby, takes after her mother.’  With that he was gone but those 7 words put the spring in the step of woman who thought her spring had sprung some months before.

Hanka smiled as she pushed the pram up the hill.

‘Did you hear that Lucka, you take after your beautiful mother,’ Lucka gurgled back at her mother, responding to the changing tone of her mother’s voice. The words of the wannabe boy band member had replaced the cloud with a hint of sunshine, replaced the frown with a smile, made her feel young again.
‘I should have got his number’ she said to the baby, ‘he had a pretty smile didn't he? Oh gosh what would your father say if he could hear me now?’ She continued to babble to the baby while still smiling at the compliment, she didn’t get too many these days.

She got home just at the same time as her husband,

‘You look nice today.’ He said with a smile as he opened the door for her. For a moment Hanka thought he must be talking to the baby, but that wasn’t how you talked to a child.

‘Me?’

‘Yes you,’ he said smile again. ‘Who else?’

‘Thank you.’ she murmured a bit shocked, Pavel was a great dad but he had been so absorbed by the baby that she felt it was more that a life had been replaced than one created. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d given her a compliment.

After they’d got Lucka off to sleep Pavel came up behind Hanka and put his arms round her, and nuzzled his mouth into her neck.

‘You really do look lovely today, have you done something different?’

‘No,’ she said shivering as he kissed her neck and massaged her shoulders.  She wondered if to tell him about the One Direction fan but decided to just silently thank the stranger and enjoy being the object of her husband’s desires again.