Gemma was staying with her trendy night while her mom was in hospital. Gemma had been looking forward to living with her aunt, but things weren’t working out like she hoped.
Geraldine Price was thrilled when her parents started up a successful fashion business selling teenage clothes. But, although Geraldine gained a lot from her new life, she found there was a price to be paid too. Her parents busy life was causing arguments between them.
Lynne Adams, has a good relationship with her divorced mother, but the one problem is she is a teacher at her school. To avoid favourtism her mom doesn’t go easy on her at history class and she always knows what is happening in the school, so Lynne can’t get away with things. One day while waiting for her mom after school she sees the art teacher Mr Dawson looking suspicious and then take money from another staff member, Mr Pullen’s locker. There has been a number of thefts in the school and now Lynne seems to have found the person responsible. She is going to tell her mother, but before she gets a chance, Ms Adams has news of her own, Mr Dawson has asked her out. Lynne wants her mom to be happy but she doesn’t want her dating a thief. She thinks if she accuses him now, people will think its because she doesn’t want her mom dating and because she complains to her friends about her mom being teacher, they will think she’s just not happy about having more teachers in her life.
She hopes the first date won’t go well, and then she will be able to tell her mom her suspicions, but Ms Adams and Mr Dawson hit it off and have a good time and continue to see each other. Lynne then tries to think of other ways to get rid of him. She hopes to set her mom up with their nice neighbour instead, but then finds out he is engaged. Meanwhile there are still things going missing at school. When Ms Adams purse is stolen, she tries to raise the subject that it could be Mr Dawson, but she doesn’t listen. Lynne then sees Mr Dawson out with a woman, and is furious that he is a two timer as well as a thief. She arranges to go out with her mom to same place she heard Mr Dawson make plans with the other woman, so he can be caught in the act. It turns out Ms Adams knows the woman as she is Mr Dawson’s sister.
Lynne then tries to trap him by leaving out her own purse in view of Mr Dawson when he visits the house. He doesn’t take the bait but her gold bracelet that need fixing goes missing instead. Lynne is getting bitter that Mr Dawson has not been caught and he is splashing out on dinner while some kids in her class are struggling because they have had money stolen. She is delighted when she runs into two classmates the next day who have caught the thief in the act and locked him in the classroom. She is confused when the door is opened and it turns out to be one of the pupils at the school, Leon, who had previously claimed to be a victim of the thief. The proof is undeniable that he is a thief. Lynne goes to Mr Pullen and after talking with him finds out him and Mr Dawson were doing a surprise collection for one of the teachers together, that’s why Mr Dawson was secretly getting the money from the locker. She then discovers her bracelet was missing because her mom and Mr Dawson took it to get fixed as a nice surprise for her. Knowing that he is not the thief, Lynne can now be happy for her mom and is pleased to be able to start over.
In a not too surprising twist for these stories the actual thief is one of the supposed victims. This has been seen in such stories like Bunty’s Stop, Thief! or Captain Carol. In this case though the real thief is more of a background character, than a main character. The focus of the story is on Lynne trying to expose Mr Dawson, there is never any other suspects or investigation to try an find the thief, as she believes she already knows who it is.
It is a relief for Lynne to find that Mr Dawson is actually a decent guy, and everything else is just misunderstandings. The story is a shorter one at only 8 episodes, so things move along quickly. The art in some panels I did question if it was Hurst because it looked different to his style, but still overall does a good job. He is especially good at making Mr Dawson look guilty when we first see him in the shadowy empty corridor, it certainly makes it convincing that Lynne is in the right. With that mindset it does make Mr Dawson’s other actions look suspicious, such as suddenly having money to spend on fancy restaurants and Leon telling his friends Mr Dawson was dismissive of his money been taken. But of course as we later find out Leon is the thief so it is likely he made up that story too!
The seven Knight sisters helped their widowed mother to run the Oakfield Hotel. Their mother married again, and while the parents were away on honeymoon, the girls’ new step-brother, Simon, arrived, bringing problems.
Hannah Littleton gets on great with her young stepmother Jill, and is delighted when she hears she is going to have a baby sibling. But after a difficult labour and the arrival of baby Thomas, things change for Hannah. While she is happy to have her brother, Jill suddenly becomes more distant, telling her to no longer call her mum. At first Jill thinks it because she has her own baby now, but soon she notices Jill doesn’t make any effort with him either. The house is getting messy and Jill doesn’t take care of herself like she used to. Worried that her family may break up, especially after fights between Jill and Dad and comments he makes, Hannah starts trying to cover for Jill.
One such times is before a health visitor arrives for check-up, Hannah comes home on her lunch break to clean the house, and because she is spending her time covering for Jill, this starts to affect other things in Hannah’s life. While her dad is working late a lot, Hannah does the cooking and housework which means she is getting bad marks for her rushed homework and on occasion is late for school. Hannah continues to be dismayed as well at Jill’s attitude towards Thomas like when they are out for a walk and Jill says she doesn’t understand people complimenting Thomas as he’s just another baby. When Hannah attempts to get Jill interested in cooking again by hoping she will join her when she does a big batch cook, her plan seems to work at first and Jill actually perks up and helps, but her mood changes completely when Thomas cries. Every-time Jill seems to get back on track, something happens with Thomas, like when she gets a new dress and he spits up on it, or when she tries to get back to exercise and Tomas keeps her awake all night. Jill says whats point of having nice things or pretending she has time for exercise with a baby around.
While dealing with Jill’s mood swings, and trying to keep things secret Hannah falls out with her best friend because of her unexplained behaviour. At home there are even more arguments when her Dad tells his mother that Jill won’t be going back to work, something Jill never agreed to. He has old-fashioned ideas that Jill should stay home to look after the baby. Hannah continues to try and make things better and help, but everyone is miserable. Then Jill accidentally leaves Thomas in his pram in the shop while she is carrying the shopping. Once she realises she is panicked and so grateful to get her son back, as she would be devastated if anything bad happened to him. Hannah is relieved to see she does actually love Thomas and after Jill talks to her husband about how she is struggling, they call the health visitor to come talk. While not mentioned by name it’s implied that Jill has been suffering from post-natal depression, and now she can start getting the support she needs. Hannah realises that by covering for Jill, she wasn’t helping as the actual problem wasn’t being addressed. Hannah’s father also apologizes realising how insensitive he was and they actually agree about Jill going back to work when Thomas is a little older, as her career is still important to her. Hannah is happy to see her family back joking together and while it will take time to recover she knows they will be okay.
There’s a lot going on in this story, and while family drama was common in these comics, I haven’t seen this specific topic addressed before. It talks about how difficult Jill’s labour was and while not named it is recognizable that Jill has post natal depression, along with that is the generational gap between her and her husband, and the issues that causes with his ideas of a traditional family. All this of course from the viewpoint of a daughter, who doesn’t understand the best way to help her step-mother is to ask for support else where. The story is well written handles the topics deftly.
Being a mother now my sympathy is with Jill, while I was lucky not to have post-natal depression, it is not always easy to manage being a new mom. Luckily I have a supportive partner, while Hannah’s dad, Michael,was not very understanding for a lot of the story, like early on commenting that she’s not making an effort with her appearance and such is a bit much, especially when she had such a difficult 12 hour labour. At least Gran seems to be on Jill’s side , pointing out she just had a baby, pity she’s not around more to help out. While he does help out with Thomas which is good (though again it seems doing a nappy change and feed constitutes helping, which Hannah also does), it seems he expects Jill to keep up her appearance and do housework and look after Thomas, with no acknowledgement of what a big lifestyle change has happened. His comments and their fights is also what leads Hannah to try and cover by doing housework, which obviously causes lots of other problems with Hannah’s school and friends.
In the early 90s it was still more common for women to give up their jobs for being stay-at home moms, but in Jill’s case this is not something she wants to do. Even worse Michael doesn’t discuss this properly with Jill and tells his own mother first that Jill won’t return to work. Jill is understandably furious at this, and Michael still won’t negotiate he won’t even consider a creche or a nanny (having him give up his career instead is never even mentioned as an option). He also seems to be expecting her to do as his first wife did, not considering they are different people and that Jill is only 23. Even these days mothers trying to keep their careers and sharing parenting more evenly with partners is a struggle, so it’s interesting that it was being discussed in this story from nearly 30 years ago.
The 20 year age gap between them obviously doesn’t help things either, Jill is only 22 at start of story just after they marry, presumably by the end she must be 23, while people can be in relationships with large age gaps, it’s still a bit concerning that they must have started dating when she was only a few years out of school and there is only 10 years between her and Hannah, and obviously there were some things they didn’t communicate properly (like Jill’s career plans). Clearly these issues don’t really appear until the baby arrives, at least by the end they seem to be on the road to recovery again, and joking and happy together.
While these days I am quite identify with the character of Jill, of course the main protagonist of the story is Hannah. Having to shoulder so much responsibility at a young age is difficult, and fearing that her family will break up and hearing her parents fight all the time is not a healthy environment to be in. It is quite hurtful for Hannah when Jill tells her not to call her “mom” anymore, as they had previously had such a good relationship. The instinct to cover things up both at home and at school, is a lot of young people’s experience, and we see how this impacts on the other aspects of her life. In this case it is nice things have a happy ending, and it is good that Jill reassures Hannah it wasn’t her fault for trying to hide things she knows she meant well. Going forward they should hopefully all be able to communicate and support each other better. It is one of the stories that really holds up well on a reread, it is well written and Dembilio’s art is a good choice to capture the family drama.
Jackie Munroe and Alison Brown meet on the first day of school and immediately hit it off. They are shocked to discover at the end of the day, when talking to their mothers, that the girls are actually half sisters. Both mothers have reasons to dislike the other, Ms Munroe because her husband left her for Mrs Brown, when she was still pregnant with Jackie and Mrs Brown because when her husband got sick Ms Munroe wouldn’t let him reconcile with Jackie before he died. Their mothers don’t know the girls have become friendly and on hearing their mothers’ stories, at first Jackie and Alison decided the other wouldn’t be a good friend after all, but after being paired up in class they realise they still like each other. They decide to continue their friendship but have to hide it from their mothers.
This leads to episodic story where each week the girls miss out in something or get in trouble trying to keep their friendship secret, and at the end of the episode conclude it’s still worth it to be friends. Such events include Jackie sneaking Alison to her birthday party but when her mum comes back early, Alison has to sneak out and accidentally breaks an ornament. Jackie has to pay for it and Alison also gives her money towards replacing so they can’t afford tickets to go to concert they wanted to see. They both miss out on being form rep when a teacher sees them getting in trouble with police for leaving café without paying, they can’t explain to teacher that it was all cleared up and they did leave money but rushed out to avoid being seen by Mrs Brown. When a picture is taken of the girls together at opening of new school library, they expose the film, but that means Jackie doesn’t get her memento photo of presenting flowers to Duchess either. Alison is caught out in one of her lies when she sneaks out to meet Jackie, meaning she is grounded for a month. Jackie has to spend all her money on a top she doesn’t like, to avoid trouble with a shopkeeper, who thinks the girls are messing when they try to avoid her mum. Another time Jackie hurts her leg when she thinks Alison’s mom is going to catch them together, but it turns out to be someone else.
Meanwhile their mom’s begin to ask about friends, Mrs Brown insists she invites her best friend around for tea. They get new girl Sylvia to agree to pretend to be her best friend, but then she wants to hang around as a threesome all the time, and the girls find she is selfish and not so nice. Luckily Sylvia finds a more suitable friend by the end of the episode. With the school holidays approaching Alison and Jackie are not looking forward to it, because it will be harder to meet each other. Ten the Brown’s get into an accident, hearing about it on radio, Alison goes to see Jackie, who is luckily not badly injured but her mum is and will need to stay in hospital. Later at home Alison is surprised when her mum arrives with Jackie. She explains to Alison when she heard about the accident, she felt bad for Jackie who already lost her father and may have lost her mother, as Alison and Jackie share a father, they are the closest thing to family Jackie has so she has taken her in. She asks Alison to try and make an effort with her. Jackie and Alison discuss the situation and decide it is best to not let her know they were already friends. When Mrs Brown recovers she is grateful for the Munroes taking Jackie in. They decide to put past behind them and form a relationship for their daughters.
Like I mentioned above, it is quite an episodic story, with the set up each issue being how their secret friendship causes them trouble, but although they lose out on something they still think it is worth it. There might have been a bit more opportunity to dive into family issues particularly with their dad. How does Jackie feel about being raised without her dad and never meeting him? After finding out he wanted a relationship with her before he dies seems odd she doesn’t does she ever ask Alison more about him (at least from what we see). Does she feel resentment to her mother for not allowing her to get to know him before he died? For Alison, there is less than a year between the girls, so it does seem likely her dad had an affair does this make her feel and differently about her parents now? While it is briefly addressed in the first episode, with the girls taking their respective mother’s side of stories at first, they quickly move past it and decide what happened back then shouldn’t effect them, but it could have been interesting to see them have more conflicted feelings about their parents even if Jackie and Alison weren’t holding resentment against each other.
While they continue to have trouble with hiding the friendship and this means some conflict with their mothers, such as Jackie being grounded because she lied about where she was, the mothers never actually find out what the girls are doing. Perhaps if they talked to them, they could have resolved the feud earlier, but at least the mothers do come around in the end on their own terms. There have been other stories with this theme of two families falling out and the children have to hide their friendship, such as Let’s Pretend or The Secret Friends . For this category of story, it is is quite a strong entry, the actual reason for the mothers disliking each other in this story are quite reasonable motives (even if it would have been nice to dive into it more) and Alison and Jackie are likeable, each episode you hope for once something will work out for them. Each situation they find themselves in is interesting, and Maria Dembilio, who would become a staple artist for M&J, is a perfect choice for depicting the the girls problems. It is a relief to see at the end the girls get their wish of becoming family and no more secrets.
Pat Marlow lived with her widowed father who treated her more like a son. He made her work in his garage and wear boyish clothes. The only time that Pat could enjoy herself was on visits to her grandmother when she could bake, sew and dress up in secret. But then her gran died. Her grandmother’s things were to be auctioned off but Pat couldn’t bear to part with an old doll, Clara.
Linda and Ricky Golden’s father was on the run after being accused of stealing secret plans from government lab. He was now hiding out in a lighthouse cottage near the kids’ holiday caravan.
Gail Desmond wasn’t happy when her gran came to stay while recovering from a broken ankle, because she had to give up her room and Gran kept meddling in Gail’s life.
Tina Lawson doesn’t find it easy being the daughter of Kit Lawson, record star and tv star of the cop show, Kestrel. Especially as her father is also impulsive and impractical. Her mum was his manager, but they fought so much they split-up, now Tina has taken over the job and problems!