Doll's House
My dolls house had four rooms, the front was painted metal with a yellow door and bay windows that opened out and fastened closed with a tiny gold latch at the side.
I liked taking it outside and making furniture from matchboxes and scraps of fabric. I had a red toy car that could hold two children and I would take the house on the back down to the cul-de-sac at the bottom of the street with the boy next door, as his granny lived there.
He would keep a hand on the roof when we rounded the corner, and we would sit by the house on the large front step outside her door. She was a tall, thin woman, frequently dressed in a hyacinth-patterned blue dressing gown and she would smile down on us and make us tea.
The tea would come out to the step on a tray in tiny cups, china cups with a navy and orange pattern and a plate of iced-gems or other small biscuits. Once, when we called she offered toast but when it came out, she had spread marmalade on the little triangles. I did not like marmalade but I smiled and said, ‘thank you.’ When my friend went into the house, I hid the toast in the bedroom of the dolls house, pretending to have eaten it. When we drove home, I carefully took the toast out to my garden and left it for the birds, watching his windows to make sure he wouldn’t see.
I gave the house to my brother-in-law’s niece when I was older, but she kindly returned it and it now rests in my attic.