Teenage Babysitter

Godwin's Tower is the unintentional consequence of a government initiative to provide more homes for single mothers. A Soviet-style concrete block, functional but with no architectural merit whatsoever, comprising twelve floors, with four flats on each floor after the ground floor and two-thirds of them occupied by young, single women with small children. Jason's mother had been one of the first to move in when Jason was six years old. Now, six years later, she is married (but not to Jason's father).

Marion, Jason's mother is twenty-six and met Arthur when he got the job of caretaker at Godwin's and moved into flat number one. She is pregnant with his baby. He is a lot older than her and took the job as caretaker when he retired from the Merchant Navy. They all get on pretty well together and Jason is doing well at school. At twelve years old, he's the oldest kid in the building and he often helps the young mothers with their new babies settle into their new flats. He helps out some of the elderly people that the council in their wisdom, put on the top two floors, presumably so that they can get some exercise when the lifts stop working.

Jason is short for his age at 140 cm but stocky with it. He has dark curly hair and dark brown eyes. When he helps his dad out, going into one of the flats to fix the plumbing or mend a broken door lock, Arthur teases him that the young tenants fancy him. So far, Jason has been more interested in cricket and football than girls, and the magazines he keeps hidden under his bed mostly feature older women with big tits.

The caretaker's flat, where Arthur, Marion, and Jason live is on one side of the ground floor, along with the boiler room, which is Arthur's domain and strictly out of bounds to everyone else apart from Jason. A communal/meeting room and a nursery for the pre-schoolers takes up the other half.

The tenants, some as young as sixteen, are not going to stay home and mind their babies every night even though they haven't got much money, so, in the evenings, some of them operate a kind of rota system, where two or three will go out together and one stays behind to look after the children. In spite of that, there is always a demand for babysitters and now that Jason is twelve, he is considered responsible enough to keep an eye on other people's children.

Marion runs the nursery and it's her suggestion that he has a look at the noticeboard where there are several babysitter ads. "It's easy work; mostly it's just sitting and watching TV or doing your homework while the baby sleeps," she said.

There are several cards on the board when Jason looks:

Mary Dixon Flat 4

• Babysitter wanted on Monday evenings for Lucy, age 9 months

Emily Thatcher Flat 14

• Babysitter wanted on Thursday evenings for Veronica, age 3

Mary Martin Flat 30

• Babysitter wanted on Friday evening for William, age 6

Jane Smith Flat 32

• Babysitter wanted Sunday mornings for Alice (9) and Trevor (8)

Another card, almost hidden by adverts for baby powder and nappies, says:

• Saturday morning help wanted in gadget shop, followed by an address in the smaller of the two shopping malls in town.