‘I don’t want to.’
The old man snatched the money out of Luke’s hand. He shoved it into the machine.
‘You want to see your mother again, don’t you?’
Trembles, painful and ugly shuddered across the boy’s chin. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded his head.
Dull music groaned into life. Inside the filthy booth the threadbare curtain juddered to one side leaving Luke to stare at a dark room through finger-stained glass. He waited, terrified by what he might see, scared stiff at what could have stolen his mother away from him.
And there she was. Naked, pale, expressionless. Lying across tattered sheets on a broken bed. She stood. Draping herself around a thin steel pole, she spun slowly, round and around. The boy’s eyes lit up, not seeing the holes in his mother’s arms or the bruises across her emaciated body.
‘So what do you make of her now?’ Luke’s father sneered, wanting his son to be appalled, disgusted.
The coin dropped. The time was up.
‘I think she’s beautiful’ Luke said as they left the booth, the final vision of his mother playing its way into his memory.
‘She’s a dancer.’
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