At the toddler group yesterday I was having a nice chat with Mrs Discoman about her new house. She’s still in lots of chaos but so happy to have a spacious new home. Sitting with us was another mum, who has six kids, aged 2 to 16. She mentioned that she’d applied for one of the lovely new houses that Mrs D has moved into, but hadn’t been successful.
‘How big is your house now?’ I asked.
‘You don’t want to know.’ A period of silence.
‘Go on, tell me.’
‘You don’t want to know.’ I can see some internal seething, a biting of the tongue.
We chat a little more about local housing. Mumofsix has been on various waiting lists for housing for eight years. She thinks there is ‘discrimination’, although she doesn’t say what sort.
‘I’m in a two bedroomed house.’
‘Seven of you with two bedrooms?’ I have to check that this is really her situation. Surely people stopped living like that once Queen Victoria had died.
‘I sleep in the front room.’ she tells me.
I tell her that she’s amazing. Mrs Discoman and I begin talking about something else: we don’t want to rub any more salt in her wounds.
The Vicar's Wife 
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