mask-like face, her courage failed her completely.
Parminder acknowledged Jaswant and Rajpal with a slight wave of her hand, but she pointed at Sukhvinder and then towards a kitchen chair, indicating that she was to sit down and wait for the call to end.
Jaswant and Rajpal drifted back upstairs. Sukhvinder waited beneath the wall of photographs, in which her relative inadequacy was displayed for the world to see, pinned to her chair by her mother's silent command. On and on went the call, until at long last Parminder said goodbye and cut the connection.
When she turned to look at her daughter Sukhvinder knew, instantly, before a word was spoken, that she had been wrong to hope.
'So,' said Parminder. 'I had a call from Tessa while I was at work. I expect you know what it was about.'
Sukhvinder nodded. Her mouth seemed to be full of cotton wool.
Parminder's rage crashed over her like a tidal wave, dragging Sukhvinder with it, so that she was unable to find her feet or right herself.
'Why? Why? Is this copying the London girl, again - are you trying to impress her? Jaz and Raj never behave like this, never - why do you? What's wrong with you? Are you proud of being lazy and sloppy? Do you think it's cool to act like a delinquent? How do you think I felt when Tessa told me? Called at work - I've never been so ashamed - I'm disgusted by you, do you hear me? Do we not give you enough? Do we not help you enough? What is wrong with you, Sukhvinder?'
In desperation, Sukhvinder tried to break through her mother's tirade, and mentioned the name Krystal Weedon -
'Krystal Weedon!' shouted Parminder. 'That stupid girl! Why are you paying attention to anything she says? Did you tell her I tried to keep her damn great-grandmother alive? Did you tell her that?'
'I - no - '
'If you're going to care about what the likes of Krystal Weedon says, there's no hope for you! Perhaps that's your natural level, is it, Sukhvinder? You want to play truant and work in a cafe and waste all your opportunities for education, because that's easier? Is that what being in a team with Krystal Weedon taught you - to sink to her level?'
Sukhvinder thought of Krystal and her gang, raring to go on the opposite kerb, waiting for a break in the cars. What would it take to make her mother understand? An hour ago she had had the tiniest fantasy that she might confide in her mother, at last, about Fats Wall ...
'Get out of my sight! Go! I'll speak to your father when he comes in - go!'
Sukhvinder walked upstairs. Jaswant called from her bedroom: 'What was all that shouting about?'
Sukhvinder did not answer. She proceeded to her own room, where she closed the door and sat down on the edge of her bed.
What's wrong with you, Sukhvinder?
You disgust me.
Are you proud of being lazy and sloppy?
What had she expected? Warm encircling arms and comfort? When had she ever been hugged and held by Parminder? There was more comfort to be had from the razor blade hidden in her stuffed rabbit; but the desire, mounting to a need, to cut and bleed, could not be satisfied by daylight, with the family awake and her father on his way.
The dark lake of desperation and pain that lived in Sukhvinder and yearned for release was in flames, as if it had been fuel all along.
Let her see how it feels.
She got up, crossed her bedroom in a few strides, and dropping into the chair by her desk, pounded at the keyboard of her computer.
Sukhvinder had been just as interested as Andrew Price when that stupid supply teacher had tried to impress them with his cool in computing. Unlike Andrew and a couple of the other boys, Sukhvinder had not plied the teacher with questions about the hacking; she had merely gone home quietly and looked it all up online. Nearly every modern website was proof against a classic SQL injection, but when Sukhvinder had heard her mother discussing the anonymous attack on the Pagford Parish Council website, it had occurred to Sukhvinder that the security on that feeble old site was probably minimal.
Sukhvinder always found it much easier to type than to write, and computer code easier to read than long strings of words. It did not take very long for her to retrieve a site that gave explicit instructions for the