What They Do in the Dark - By Amanda Coe Page 0,69

but he’s upset. They tell me off for going into town without saying anything, although I can’t see how it’s different from me taking the bus to school like I’ve been doing for weeks. I try to point this out, but it goes down badly. All sorts could happen, they say. Bad men. While they have a go at me, Mum’s weather front disentangles itself from Ian’s, and I see that she’s angry about me seeing Dad, and Ian’s more angry about the bad men. As soon as I’ve worked this out, they collide into something new:

‘It has to stop, Gemma, all this.’

All this what? I don’t say it. I’d get a slap.

‘Fighting at school, defying me—’

‘I’m not defying you!’

‘You see?’

Mum flips a what-did-I-tell-you look at Ian. Pretend helpless.

‘Your mother does everything for you, young lady. You should appreciate her more. You only get one mother, let me tell you that.’

Ian’s eyes, horribly, are soft with actual tears. Mum squeezes his hand.

‘You see? You’re upsetting Ian.’

She squeezes his hand again. ‘Anyway …’

And then they tell me. Next year, when school starts in September, I’ll be going to the private school, Hill House. Mum tells me it’s hundreds of pounds a term, and Ian will be paying for it because he loves me and thinks it’s important I get a good education, away from the rough children, children like Pauline Bright. Ian nods, tremendously.

There’s a uniform as well, which he’ll also be buying. It includes a hat and everything, like a girl in a comic. All my life I’ve seen those boys and girls, in their brown blazers with the yellow trim, like banana toffees, the boys in their caps and the girls in their brimmed hats. Matching brown macs if it’s raining, brown socks that never fall down, heavy shoes from before there was fashion. Hill House, Mum has whispered, and I’ve known those boys and girls are better than me because they’re more expensive. And now I’ll be one of them. I can’t work out if this is meant to be a punishment, in which case I’m not supposed to show my pleasure. At least I’m sure I’m expected to demonstrate gratitude. I cushion myself into Ian’s middle and squeeze, me who so recently was cuddling up to Dad’s sparseness. It feels odd.

‘Nothing’s too good for you and your mum,’ Ian says, still tearful.

The socks are brown too, with a cuff ringed in yellow. I wonder if you play all those games in books, hockey and lacrosse, instead of netball and rounders. I know that Lallie goes to a stage school when she’s not working, but I also know she has to wear a uniform nearly as splendid.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s better,’ says Mum.

I’m careful to help Mum with the washing-up after tea. When I’m scraping shepherd’s pie into the pedal bin (which I enjoy operating), I see Ian’s belt in there, too late to stop the slurry of mince and potato fouling its jazzy brightness. I had thought that the strangeness of our thank-you hug was in its comparison to Dad, but I realize now the missing sensation of that metal rectangle that always divides Ian’s top half from his bottom, digging into you when he squeezes.

‘Ian’s belt’s in the bin.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

Mum doesn’t even turn round from the sink.

‘It is!’

‘What belt?’

I point with the fork I’m holding. Mum turns round with rubber gloves aloft, like a surgeon in a medical programme. She peers. Then she calls to Ian round the open-plan.

‘What are you doing, chucking your belt out?’

‘It’s had it.’

‘If the buckle’s gone, I could get it stitched for you. It’s proper leather that.’

‘I’ve had it years, Suzanne. It’s gone.’

It doesn’t look old or broken, winking out from the mince. But Ian’s got a lot of money to spend, on himself as well as Mum and me. Not like Dad. You can’t spend the coins from the garage he gave me. When, at bedtime, I prise them from the album and heap them in a meagre pile on the pillow, it’s impossible not to know they’re actually plastic.

THE WALLPAPER DIDN’T match the paint on the woodwork, on the skirting. Skirting – was that right? How did she know that? Did skirting even exist where she came from? Summoning rooms from all the houses she had lived in, Quentin saw walls that ended without interruption, at the floor. These walls were usually white, the floors, wood. Maybe it was a Brit thing, this skirting? And yet, she knew the term.