Her nails are always long and painted. Today they’re a shiny brownish-pink.
‘Don’t do that, chick,’ she says when I slurp the end of my glass of limeade through the straw.
‘That’s the best bit, isn’t it?’ says Ian, winking. He’s having two toasted teacakes with his frothy coffee.
‘She’s old enough to know better,’ says Mum, pushing my fringe out of my eyes. She observes me professionally. ‘Time for a haircut.’
Ian wants to order me a second limeade, but there isn’t time, because we have to be back for Dad’s tea.
‘Everything seems to be in order,’ says Ian, shuffling the papers into a pile. ‘We can do the rest next time.’
‘I’ll make sure about this one,’ says Mum, cocking her head over at me, as though I’m deaf, even though I’m sitting next to her. I know she’d rather have got a babysitter for me.
Mum wants to get the bus home but Ian insists on taking us back in his car, which is big and also smells of mints. When he drops us off, Mum turns to me and demands, ‘What do you say for the pancakes?’ I say thank you, and Ian asks for a kiss, which I give him on his fat, minty cheek. I go to follow Mum out of the car, but the toe of my sandal catches against the door sill and I stumble to the pavement. Although I manage not to fall badly, an exclamation trips from me.
‘What did you say?’ Mum swivels on me, eyes locking into mine as she pulls me up.
‘Nothing.’
‘What did you say?’
I whisper it. ‘Jam rags.’
She pulls me to the house, gripping my arm hard, and slams the door as Ian drives away. My legs are smacked. According to Mum, at length to my dad over his tea, she’s never been so embarrassed in her life. What’s worse, she claims that Ian, who she suddenly calls Mr Haskell, was ‘disgusted’.
I say sorry, keep saying it, but it makes no difference. She doesn’t look at me for the rest of the evening, and even when I go to kiss her goodnight, her own lips don’t reply.
Of course I tell her where I’ve heard it; I’d tell her anything to make her look at me again. To my dread, Mum sends me into school on Monday with a note for Mrs Maclaren, who passes it on to Mr Scott for a full investigation. I am summoned to his office. There is no sign of the strap, although Mr Scott’s desk contains many promising drawers. I admire Mr Scott. He has wire-framed aviator glasses and rolls his checked shirts over muscled forearms woolly with gingerish hair. Once, during an assembly, he removed a wasp that was distracting us from his version of the Exodus from Egypt by pursuing it to a window pane where he crushed it, oblivious of stings, between finger and thumb.
I can’t bear the thought of repeating the guilty words to him now that Mum has left me in no doubt of their weight. ‘Disgusting language’ is the phrase she’s used in her note, signed, as only her notes to school are, ‘S Barlow (Mrs)’. The nonchalant authority of that bracketed ‘Mrs’ sums up for me all Mum’s ease with the mysteries of life. While my ignorance has led me here, close to the strap. No threat is needed to get Pauline Bright’s name from me. As soon as I say it, Mr Scott’s face relaxes into a silent, mournful sigh. I am released, without swearing, and Pauline is sent for. The blame has passed to her, where it traditionally belongs.
She gets me after school. I’m walking home, across the playing fields that divide the school from the subway under the main road, when she comes at me from nowhere and chops me to the ground. I taste dirt, and squeal. She manages to straddle me and uses my own laden bag to clout me across the head with full force.
‘I got fucking done ’cause of you, you little cow!’
‘I never!’ I wail into her face, then the bag wallops me again.
I quickly feel dizzy, but also exhilarated. I’m quite a lot bigger than Pauline Bright. Although my arms are pinned, I wriggle enough to throw her off me and kick sightlessly in her direction. The fat crepe sole of my Clark’s school sandal gets her in the mouth. She runs off, howling, her hand dabbing at blood on her face. I’m bleeding as well. A sharp edge on the plastic