school building. There would be two of them from now on: Fats and Krystal together. Everyone knew that they were seeing each other. And into Sukhvinder’s mind dropped a vividly coloured picture of herself bleeding on the floor, and Krystal and her gang kicking her, and Fats Wall watching, laughing.
‘Need the loo,’ she told Gaia. ‘Meet you up there.’
She dived into the first girls’ bathroom they passed, locked herself in a cubicle and sat down on the closed seat. If she could have died… if she could have disappeared for ever… but the solid surface of things refused to dissolve around her, and her body, her hateful hermaphrodite’s body, continued, in its stubborn, lumpen way, to live…
She heard the bell for the start of afternoon lessons, jumped up and hurried out of the bathroom. Queues were forming along the corridor. She turned her back on all of them and marched out of the building.
Other people truanted. Krystal did it and so did Fats Wall. If she could only get away and stay away this afternoon, she might be able to think of something to protect her before she had to go back in. Or she could walk in front of a car. She imagined it slamming into her body and her bones shattering. How quickly would she die, broken in the road? She still preferred the thought of drowning, of cool clean water putting her to sleep for ever: a sleep without dreams…
‘Sukhvinder? Sukhvinder!’
Her stomach turned over. Tessa Wall was hurrying towards her across the car park. For one mad moment Sukhvinder considered running, but then the futility of it overwhelmed her, and she stood waiting for Tessa to reach her, hating her, with her stupid plain face and her evil son.
‘Sukhvinder, what are you doing? Where are you going?’
She could not even think of a lie. With a hopeless gesture of her shoulders, she surrendered.
Tessa had no appointments until three. She ought to have taken Sukhvinder to the office and reported her attempted flight; instead, she took Sukhvinder upstairs to the guidance room, with its Nepalese wall-hanging and the posters for ChildLine. Sukhvinder had never been there before.
Tessa spoke, and left inviting little pauses, then spoke again, and Sukhvinder sat with sweaty palms, her gaze fixed on her shoes. Tessa knew her mother — Tessa would tell Parminder that she had tried to truant — but if she explained why? Would Tessa, could Tessa, intercede? Not with her son; she could not control Fats, that was common knowledge. But with Krystal? Krystal came to guidance…
How bad would the beating be, if she told? But there would be a beating even if she did not tell. Krystal had been ready to set her whole gang on her…
‘…anything happened, Sukhvinder?’
She nodded. Tessa said encouragingly, ‘Can you tell me what it was?’
So Sukhvinder told.
She was sure she could read, in the minute contraction of Tessa’s brow as she listened, something other than sympathy for herself. Perhaps Tessa was thinking about how Parminder might react to the news that her treatment of Mrs Catherine Weedon was being screamed about in the street. Sukhvinder had not forgotten to worry about that as she had sat in the bathroom cubicle, wishing for death. Or perhaps Tessa’s look of unease was reluctance to tackle Krystal Weedon; doubtless Krystal was her favourite too, as she had been Mr Fairbrother’s.
A fierce, stinging sense of injustice burst through Sukhvinder’s misery, her fear and her self-loathing; it swept aside that tangle of worries and terrors that encased her daily; she thought of Krystal and her mates, waiting to charge; she thought of Fats, whispering poisonous words from behind her in every maths lesson, and of the message that she had wiped off her Facebook page the previous evening:
Les-bian-ism n. Sexual orientation of women to women. Also called Sapphism. A native or inhabitant of Lesbos.
‘I don’t know how she knows,’ said Sukhvinder, with the blood thrumming in her ears.
‘Knows…?’ asked Tessa, her expression still troubled.
‘That there’s been a complaint about Mum and her great-gran. Krystal and her mum don’t talk to the rest of the family. Maybe,’ said Sukhvinder, ‘Fats told her?’
‘Fats?’ Tessa repeated uncomprehendingly.
‘You know, because they’re seeing each other,’ said Sukhvinder. ‘Him and Krystal? Going out together? So maybe he told her.’
It gave her some bitter satisfaction to see every vestige of professional calm drain from Tessa’s face.
IX
Kay Bawden never wanted to set foot in Miles and Samantha’s house again. She could not forgive them for witnessing Gavin’s parade