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They are every where.

From leafy suburbs with sprawling gardens to tidy flats with tired backyards, from Richmond to Blackpool, from Nottingham to Margate.

You cannot see them and if they see you then the spell is broken and the music has to stop.

They clean windows and they wash dishes.

They dream their dreams of love in warm climates and find only drizzle in thin grimy streets.

They were not always like this.

Once they sang a different tune. Once they were awash with a red jagged vibrancy. It made them bold and big, loud and brash.

Now the music is secret. They are smaller, somehow they have faded. You frown to see but their colour is indistinct. Do not rush to judge them. There is still passion beneath the torpor. There is still a flash of scarlet beneath the grey.

Dance they must and the dancing must go on because when it stops they have to face the certainty of the present and cease to live in the possibilities of the past.

They are the dancing housewives and one almost certainly lives near you.

If you have just picked up this book, be you in a library or bookshop, before you continue, be warned that it is set in Peterborough and there are no juicy excuses for flying off to California to visit old friends or relations in large houses in the Hampshire country side. If you want that kind of book then better just stop reading this one and move along before anyone notices.

Yes, Peterborough where lives are lived in a blaze of obscurity. Where all emotion is laid bare and then hastily covered up in case anyone should see, like too much white flesh on a Spanish beach. What stories unfurl in this green and satellite dish land, in suburbia where no one can hear you scream. Read on for all to be revealed.

"Peterborough!" I can hear you mutter even from where I’m sitting. Be assured there are many fine and talented people of this city and there is no going back now, no wittering on about setting it in France or Dublin. Just accept it as a fait acompli, which is about as French as it gets. Besides Peterborough is not so bad these days - it even has a Waitrose, now there is class for you.

So get used to the idea of staying in Peterborough, as this is where the events of this story will unfold. Browns Close - an inauspicious name but that means there will be less interest and we won’t have to worry about the crowds that may be bothersome in streets with more exciting names. The houses here are red brick built tight together like fat grandmothers jostling for space at a bus stop.

They were built when Queen Victoria ruled over an empire that is now long forgotten except by those who still remember it. The houses here have breathed in the lives of the people that have lived in them and every so often they will breathe out and the voices, laughter, tears and singing of the people who played out their lives will waft into the modern air.

If you sit quietly at a table or in large and comfortable chair and listen to the clock tick and listen hard as if you were trying to learn French or Japanese (okay French, Japanese is just too hard and there is someone in the story who has a CSE in French) then you might hear the walls gently exhale and whisper sighs that only they remember. You might hear a moan or a murmur and live a moment’s sadness that was lived by another over a hundred years ago. Those sighs might stay with you like a half forgotten dream and suddenly reappear when you are least expecting it.

You might be in Halfords or buying fish fingers when the past will curl around you and goose pimples will crawl down your back. You might remain frozen, like the fish fingers, or gaze absently at the many different shades of white that a car may be until a greasy and rather pimply youth finishes his break and cuts off abruptly those sighs that had seeped from those red brick Victorian walls. Just as they might leave you now they will return later to tug at the edges of your mind and tease your memory.

Browns Close then, where houses store up memories and have a vested interest in the inhabitants of the present as they will become the memories of the future. Browns Close, not too far from the City centre and with a new Sainsburys just a short drive away. The last sentence has been included for all of you who aspire to be Estate Agents. Of course the sentence would probably only work in Peterborough but you could change the details in order to use it in say Dagenham. In all events the chances are that you are relieved that this story was not set in Dagenham, unless of course you live there and you like it. In which case its probably disappointing that the story takes place in Peterborough, but we must proceed apace if we are ever going to get anywhere.

So on this point, just to clarify, that is probably the only reference that will be made to Estate agents in the course of this story. I cannot guarantee that one of the characters might know an Estate Agent but they do not play any further major role in the story that is yet to come.

In all there are ten houses in the Close, they are tightly packed together and look as though they are huddling for warmth. In Browns Close the trees have pushed up through the pavement and their roots have made cracks in the concrete.

Could it be said that you can tell the kind of person who lives in a house by their garden and indeed could this be an idea for a celebrity game show. In Browns Close there are a myriad of garden styles to choose from. From minimalist futuristic to open plan Rococo, nouveau rain forest to Etruscan retro. Hard work then for our celebrity panel, bearing in mind that they are not too bright, they are the people who were famous once for about a week and now cling to their celebrity status by appearing on game shows such as these.

Any way back at Browns Close, the most popular style is that of the few pots of limp lobelia. This style stems mainly from a rush of inactivity at garden centres that coincides with the first vaguely warm day in May, and then loses interest by the time that June makes an appearance, late and full of apologies for the rain that accompanies it. This style starts so full of promise and ends up forgotten as the British Summer disappoints again much to the relief of the general public who would be hard pushed to cope with anything else other than disappointment.

Gardens as such do not play a significant part in this story only so much as they are the first impression that we gain about the Close and the people that live there. On the April day that we arrive there the sun is trying to make an appearance through a murky sky. Occasionally it will offer up a sudden burst of warmth and a collective sigh reverberates from the houses that seem to quiver in the excitement. Then the murkiness returns and the houses seem to sink down again with the inevitably of it all.

At number 8 Browns Close lives Mr Jackson. His wife lives there too but it would be misleading to say that they lived together. Mr Jackson is busy in his garden pulling out any errant weeds that may have had the audacity to blight the foliage. There is a small lawn in Mr Jackson’s garden this is kept neatly trimmed and mowed through out the Seasons. The flowers keep themselves to them selves and do not stray out of their borders, nor do they grow in an unruly or unreasonable manner. There are only tidy flowers in regimented rows and contrary to popular belief Mr Jackson takes little pleasure in gardening or his garden. The reason for his gardening is two fold, the first reason is he is determined that his garden will be neater and have more old English roses than all the others in Browns Close. The second is that quite simply it gives him a reason to get up in the morning; it provides the purpose for him to live. He is of the opinion that everyone should have a purpose, however slight, however flimsy.

Mr Jackson is a small bird like man. He makes up in aggression for what he lacks in size, he is angry for as long as he is awake and this is a long time as he doesn’t like to waste a moment of the day. So he gets up early to cram in as much pent up fury as possible. Even now as he weeds his garden he mutters under his breath that he found three whatsname packets, two sweet wrappers and a whatsname can in the garden that morning. This is something of a record as the most he has ever found before has been two whatsname packets and one sweet wrapper in one whatsname. He thinks he knows who is to blame and will lie in wait for them later in the day.

Mr Jackson wears large dark framed glasses that he neglects to clean so that the world seems gloomier and greasier than it really is, he views the world through glasses darkly to coin a phrase. He has long since lost his hair and the sun glints on his shiny pate. The hair that once grew on his head has deserted and is now intent on sprouting from his ears and his nose. Mr Jackson can’t help feeling that this is an unfair turn of events and indeed he would seem justified in this opinion.

He is retired now but worked for over thirty years as Clerk of the Court in Peterborough. In this role he was rigid and unimaginative to the end. In all the years that he had worked there no one could remember a single act of kindness. Although there must have been one, perhaps no one had seen it, maybe they were all at lunch when it happened or by the photocopier.

Unsurprisingly he was the butt of many jokes in his workplace as no one could quite gain the measure of the man.

If he had a first name no one knew it. Behind his back he was called whatsname. I will explain why. Daily conversations went like this;

‘What have you done with that whatsname? No, not you Whatsname I mean Whatsname over there by the whatsname.

Whatsname you’re late again what’s the excuse this time was it the whatsname? I can’t come now Whatsname I’m talking to Whatsname.’

Okay so maybe I have laboured the point but as you will now have realised and if you haven’t then you should have been paying more attention, Mr Jackson is a man with little sense of humour and about as much fun as Skegness Butlins in the rain with several small children, high on sugar and a yapping, incontinent dog.

It was a source of constant wonder that Mr Jackson stayed in his post for thirty years, but we have all known the people who stay forever because they can’t move anywhere else, until of course the time arrives when they have to go.

So Mr Jackson reluctantly left the legal world behind and now he gardens as if his very life depended on it. Retirement is not easy for him, there were courses that he could have attended that would help him get the most of his free time, but he never saw the value of them, he had never liked courses even when he was younger. Now a retirement course sent shivers down his spine. Bouncy, happy, irritatingly lively buggers telling him what to do and how to do it. How could they know what it was like day in day out, the mind numbingly tedious routine of trying to fill the days where once they had been filled with the smell of criminals and the swish of barristers.

He could see the long empty years stretching away far into the distance and just every so often, in a quieter moment, he feels regret, that he showed no one a kind word or a second chance. Sometimes it is like a physical ache, it is almost tangible, it weighs him down, it slows him down, and his face looks a little greyer, a little older. If you saw him when one of these moments descends you might feel some pity for this lonely and unloved old man. But it would be a waste as pity is something that none of us want and Mr Jackson would neither recognise it nor thank you for it.

He brushes away these temporary lapses of weakness and blinks twice into the light. He sits up and stretches his aching back; he looks at his watch - 10.25. At 11 o’clock he will stop have a milky coffee and two custard creams. If he did but know it he is marking the timelessness between time but he has never studied the art of ritual in anthropology and it is unlikely now that he ever will.

He turns to the part of the garden that inspires his passion. Mr Jackson soothes himself with the knowledge that no other garden in the close has trimmed profiles of the Queen and Prince Philip cut from privet hedge. They make his garden a cut above the others, a small joke that he regularly shares with himself and still finds that it raises a small inward chuckle no matter how often he tells it.

His most recent project is a tribute to the honourable Margaret Thatcher. This piece of Tory topiary is proving a might tricky and as he turns his attention to it once again Mr Jackson has to admit that the iron lady looks more like Harpo Marx, still better that than Karl eh? Mr Jackson chuckles at his own particular brand of wit, two jokes in a day, he must be on a roll.

With an appraising look Mr Jackson weighs up where he should plan the next point of attack and as he contemplates that illustrious head he is reminded of her famous victory speech when she first entered number 10. ‘Where there is discord let us bring harmony, where there is something or another (he had forgotten that bit) let us bring whatsname". Mr Jackson stood in his garden on that April morning with a tear in his eye as he remembered that happier time in British history. Indeed it would seem opportune to leave him there, so close to being happy. We will return later to see how he is fairing.

But, hold on, what of Mrs Jackson I hear you ask. We heard mention of her at the beginning but nothing since. To find Mrs Jackson we have to go indoors to number 8. She isn’t hard to find, she is sat where she is always sat, in the dining room /kitchen next to the two bar electric heater, which reddens her legs nicely, like two fat, glistening sausages.

It seems gloomy in here after being out in the garden. Soon though you realise that it is just gloomy in here, the walls are beige green. There is a hint of a pattern that once long ago would have looked just dreadful. Luckily enough years of neglect and cooking mean that it is no longer clearly discernible. The carpet has suffered the same fate and is slightly sticky underfoot.

Mrs Jackson has two passions in life and sadly Mr Jackson does not list amongst them. The first two of these passions concern collecting. Mrs Jackson first spotted a beautifully crafted china puppy, with huge brown eyes and a lolling, pink tongue in a small trinket shop in Ramsgate where Mr and Mrs Jackson were honeymooning.

These were happier days for the Jackson’s, both in the first flush of youth and lust. They had met through mutual friends on a boating party. Both were singularly unattractive people and that in itself formed an attraction. They went out on a series of dates, to the cinema, to the pub, enjoyed some rather furtive fumbling in the local park. Eventually the furtive fumbling began to loose its appeal and when Gertie Simpson met Whatsname Jackson, (for already the name had stuck) there was no alternative, if they wanted to consummate their relationship, but marriage.

And so they planned a small affair with twenty guests including family and friends. There was a sit down meal at the pub that they had frequented when they were courting. Gertie chose her frock, veil and shoes, her mother who had thought that her daughter would never marry wept copiously, large wet tears. She was disconcerted by her new son-in law and his unnerving habit of saying whatsname every other word. She desperately wanted to shake him until he stopped but she was so relieved that her daughter had found someone who would marry her that she said nothing. In later years Mrs Simpson wished she had stuck her oar in, to coin a phrase, but it was too late by then.

In the lead up to the big day Mrs Simpson, a widow, who had loved her rather dull husband in a way that inspires martyrdom, could not stop worrying about the bridegroom’s speech and his speech impediment. She could not discuss this with her daughter who, for the first time, smiled and sighed and was in love. She carried the burden alone, although others may have worried, and you would think that his parents would have done. But if they did they too kept it to themselves.

In the end there was no need to worry as the young Whatsname Jackson, even at that stage was totally unaware of his inarticulacy and his worrying tendency to pick his ears in public. So as he rose that day to deliver his speech to the waiting audience it was the gathered throng that felt the butterflies flit from side to side.

Mrs Simpson hiccupped gently, feeling queasy as she realised that she had drunk six sweet sherries in quick succession. She had slept badly and eaten little, her dreams troubled by her son in law sitting motionless in her front room staring at her. Mrs Simpson, in the dream, was naked, apart from an apron which had landmarks of London on it. It was her favourite and she kept it for Christmas or other festive occasions. She was unable to move until Mr Jackson asked her "Why are you wearing that whatsname?" She replied "Because its your wedding and this is my special occasion whatsname" Even in the dream Mrs Simpson realised that this was a silly thing to say, but she couldn’t help herself. Mr Jackson stood up and advanced towards her and as he did so she realised that he too was naked. This was too much and as he came closer and started to reach out to her she shouted "No, you Whatsname" and sat bolt upright in bed, sweating and clutching the bed clothes around her. It took her several moments to stop gasping for air and for her heart to slow to a measured pace.

She replayed the dream now in her head, unable to shake the terrible images from her mind as the Young Mr Jackson took to his feet, and the audience collectively held their breath. He cleared his throat, he shuffled his papers, and everyone willed it to be alright, he shuffled his papers again, the suspense was killing. Mrs Simpson felt hot, a small boy who had eaten sixteen meringues was quietly sick under one of the tables.

"Well" Mr Jackson began, so far so good, thought Mrs Simpson, distractedly, who was now feeling decidedly off colour. "My wh," his voice trailed off as all eyes in the room shifted from the bridegroom and turned to the sound of a low moaning. Mrs Simpson was on her feet, swaying slightly, her lavender veiled hat, purchased especially for the purpose, was sliding down the back of her head and then toppled on to the floor. After a second’s hesitation it was shortly followed by Mrs Simpson herself. Down she went, bringing with her two other guests who had risen to assist her, she fell backwards clutching at the tablecloth, plates, forks, spoons glasses were hurled through the air. Afterwards several remarked that it was a graceful fall, as falls go.

Mrs Simpson, hit the ground with the full force of a statuesque woman in her prime. A collective gasp reverberated around the room. Her skirt lifted to show a large but shapely thigh and a tempting glimpse of stocking top before the two assisting guests landed on top of her, restoring her dignity. For a moment, as the dust settled, the audience held an embarrassed minutes silence on behalf of Mrs Simpson. The two felled men stumbled to their feet, one of them lingering for a moment longer than was strictly necessary, to catch a glimpse of the afore mentioned stocking top and thigh.

Then, seemingly, the whole room moved as one, chairs were pushed rapidly backwards, grating sharply on the floor and the wedding party gathered around the still form of Mrs Simpson. Mr Herman Fitzpatrick, a first aider and know it all, who was tolerated rather than liked, pronounced her dead at the scene. This piece of news produced hysterical screaming from Gertie, a purely natural reaction when your mother drops down dead on your wedding day just as your new husband was about to make his speech.

The Landlord’s dog, a small Jack Russell called Ted, made his way through the assembled throng and started to lick Mrs Simpson’s cheek, mainly to remove some small residue of gravy that had spilt on Mrs Simpson as she fell. This revived Mrs Simpson who of course was not dead, but had fainted as women were wont to do then, and she sat up, aghast and confused at her present predicament. Even more hysterical screaming escaped from Gertie’s mouth, who, again naturally enough, was upset that her mother had passed away and come back from the dead in the middle of the wedding breakfast.

Mrs Simpson, who has never, ever felt so humiliated, well not since she inadvertently and noisily broke wind in the Women’s Guild bridge tournament, started screaming in a loud and uncontrollable manner. The sherry has loosened her usual reserve and she found herself unable to stop, indeed, it could be said that she was enjoying this unaccustomed lack of control and began to scream louder.

The newly wed Mrs Jackson, now feeling put out that her mother was the centre of attention, started to scream yet louder still and to thrash about rather alarmingly, her husband thought. Ted, the Jack Russell, who moments ago had been a hero in that it was he that had revived Mrs Simpson, joined in by throwing his head back and howling. He then launched himself, as if jet propelled, straight at Mr Jackson’s nether regions and sunk his teeth in to a place where Mr Jackson was hoping that only Mrs Jackson was going to go. His anguished cry of "WHATSNAME" was terrible indeed.

It should be said at this point that there was a general feeing of uncertainty amongst the guests, shored up by years of British reserve and reticence. No one was willing to make the first move. In fact some of them started to look around the room to see if there was anything else that could occupy them till things had died down a bit.

Mr Herman Fitzpatrick, he of the erroneous death diagnosis and no small sense of his own importance, took it upon himself to slap Mrs Simpson rather harder than was necessary. Mrs Simpson, unfettered from years of repressed behaviour by the alcohol surging round her system punched him, straight back and down he went, out cold. Mrs Simpson realised she has never felt better and proceeded to extricate Ted from her son in laws trousers, a brave woman, Mrs Simpson, no shrinking violet, buoyed up by liquor and adrenalin, before the days of recreational drugs. She then slapped her daughter, and in this instance you’ll be relieved to know that it worked and Gertie stopped screaming and wept quietly until someone brought her a large medicinal brandy, which she downed in one.

Unsurprisingly the heart had really gone out of the party now, but the guests departed in a chatty and cheerful frame of mind. It was by far the most enjoyable wedding that they had been to for years.

Mrs Simpson later married Mr Herman Fitzpatrick. It was a small affair, with no dogs, no sherry and no son in law. On her wedding night she wore her landmarks of London apron and little else, since, for some inexplicable reason, she became erotically charged whenever she thought about it. Mr Fitzpatrick was surprised and delighted to discover that Mrs Fitzpatrick nee Simpson was a woman with voracious and on occasion unnerving sexual appetite.

Look, I know that Mrs Simpson has turned out more interesting than she first appeared and it is tempting to linger here but we must return to the now more mature Mrs Jackson who is still as we left her, although she is sucking on a barley sugar now and has just pulled her cardigan around her for warmth. She also took a nip from the brandy flask that was never far away. Brandy and barley sugar, her favourite.

It was an inauspicious start to married life, certainly the injuries sustained to Mr Jackson by Ted, the Jack Russell brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Be gentle with me’. If there was any long lasting damage it was never mentioned and the Jacksons went on to produce two large, if not too articulate son’s, both of whom emigrated to Australia in their early twenties. They had stayed in the family home and in the verbal stand off that was their parents marriage for long enough and in recent years the only form of contact has been a Christmas card and pictures of the Jackson’s grandchildren smiling toothily in to the camera.

Mrs Jackson doesn’t ponder on these things, she is not a pondering sort of person. If she feels sad about the way her life has turned out she doesn’t mention it. You must be wondering if a great tragedy occurred that so divided this lonely pair, but no, merely a drifting, slow but inevitable movement towards indifference. No divorce here though, better or worse, richer or poorer, they barely notice each other now, apart from when they needed each other for the practicalities of life. Mr Jackson lives in his garden, Mrs Jackson has the house. They are able to speak volumes without uttering a word. There is little laughter here and the walls breathe in the cold silence that lives in this house saving it up for happier times. The walls long ago gave up trying to breathe warmth into the quiet still air.

Mrs Jackson is a collector, this being one of the two passions that were mentioned a while back. The china dog that was purchased by Mr Jackson for his new wife on their honeymoon in Ramsgate was the beginning of this hobby. Before then she had never had any real interests as such. In the early years of their marriage, Mr Jackson was the one who would seek out these small trinkets for Mrs Jackson. But as the years passed it was she who had to do the buying.

The front room at the Jackson’s house is a glint with the light that is reflected from over a hundred cheeky (although some of them look at you beseechingly) china dogs of various breeds. The poodles are Mrs Jackson’s particular favourite. Mr Jackson doesn’t have a favourite, indeed it would be true to say that he finds this passion for things canine rather baffling, but this relationship has never been a meeting of minds.

The other passion in Mrs Jackson’s life is the one that we find her engrossed in now. It is not surprising that we find her here as this is how she occupies her time almost from the moment that she wakes. She will first have her breakfast, however. She is partial to breakfast and particularly and perhaps rather surprisingly to Coco Pops. Mr Jackson cannot abide Coco pops and looks at his wife with derision when she eats them. It is on these occasions that Mrs Jackson is especially good at ignoring him.

I wonder by now if you have guessed Mrs Jackson’s hobby. For most it is a pastime but for Mrs Jackson it is a passion and a purpose. Mrs Jackson fills her days with puzzles, all sorts of puzzles, word searches, cross words all from magazines that ask for nothing more from you than letters and words, words and letters dancing before your eyes, dazzling and dizzy.

Words - they fill up Mrs Jackson’s head, they fill up her mind, they flit and fly freewheeling, tripping lightly through the dust lit by the April sunshine, sometimes the room seems full of them, they swarm and then they recede, hiding from her, elusive, gently teasing. The words fill up her day, there’s nothing else, only words. Letters, clues, short words, long words, indecipherable words, onomatopoeic words, simple words, complex words, over wrought words. They shut out the world like a thick woollen blanket; they pull down the corners so tight that no chink of light can get in. In the dark warmth Mrs Jackson has no intention of leaving, no will to face the bright light of day.

Mrs Jackson sat, lost in her world of words, she stared at a grease spot on the wall, long and hard, her reverie only interrupted as her husband comes for his elevenses, crashing and bashing the saucepans, preparing the milk for his coffee, Mrs Jackson sighs, momentarily distracted but is soon lost again, dreaming of a white Christmas special of Take a break.

Mr Jackson sips at his coffee at the kitchen table, turning through the pages of the Daily Mail, a cautious ray of sun light warming the dishes draining on the side. The clock ticks away the minutes and Mr and Mrs Jackson sit only three feet away from one another in total and impenetrable silence. There is no hope left here in this chilled, cold house. Let’s go back into the sunshine, that’s if there is any.