Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,19

veil.

‘You look beautiful.’ Linda was still heaping clothes on to the floor.

‘Yes, beautiful, beautiful,’ I agreed, eager to encourage.

Bea didn’t say anything. Her face was set and worried.

‘And I bought these for you.’ Linda held out a pair of faded black trousers. ‘From the Portobello Road.’

I gasped with excitement as I tried them on. They even had a zip.

‘Do I look like a boy?’

‘Not really.’ Mum was rolling up the legs in thick wedges round my ankles.

‘I thought she’d have grown…’ Linda said.

‘Not even with my hat?’ I looked around for it. In my excitement I had forgotten the horror of my orange hair.

Bea had a striped T-shirt that was long enough to be a dress. It had a hole under one arm.

‘Are you Linda who was going to bring the baby powder?’ I asked.

Bea jumped up. ‘So you did know she was coming. You did know.’ She turned on Mum.

‘I didn’t know exactly when…’

Bea’s face was dark. ‘You should have told me.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Linda looked as if she were going to cry again.

‘Don’t be silly.’ Mum held Bea at arm’s length. ‘Everything will be fine. Linda and Mob can stay here. There’s plenty of room.’

‘There’s plenty of room.’ Bea mimicked, almost under her breath but loud enough to strangle the air in the room. Mob gurgled in Linda’s arms and was sick. Linda mopped it up with toilet roll.

‘In the toilets in Morocco they only have a water tap and sometimes they just have stones,’ I told her.

Bea walked out on to the landing and hung her head over the railings. It was beginning to grow dark and the grey shadows outside, for a moment, exactly matched the half-light in the room. Mum lit a lamp and Bea disappeared into sudden darkness.

She kicked at the door-frame as she came back in. ‘I have to start school,’ she said.

Relief clouded my mother’s face. ‘Of course. Well you can.’

‘How can I?’ Bea was unimpressed. ‘I need a white skirt – which I don’t have. I need a white shirt – which I don’t have. I need a satchel.’ She stood in the middle of the room, victorious. ‘You see. I can’t.’

‘Tomorrow first thing we’ll go to the bank and see if our money has arrived and if it has we’ll buy you a uniform before we do anything else.’

‘And if it hasn’t?’

‘We’ll just have to wait a few days.’

‘And if it still hasn’t?’

‘We’ll think of something,’ Mum promised.

‘Will you think of something for me as well?’ I asked.

‘You don’t want to go to school.’ Her voice was decisive where it concerned me. ‘School is for big girls like Bea and Ayesha next door.’

CHAPTER NINE

A few days turned into a few more days and Mum borrowed some money from Linda. We went to the market to choose material. A large piece of white cotton. We left Bea to bargain for it while we waited at the next stall.

‘How did she learn to speak Arabic like that?’ Linda asked, as Bea haggled over the price.

Mum and I exchanged vague looks. ‘She just seemed to pick it up.’

‘Bea does all the shopping now,’ I told her, ‘because she’s got brown eyes and mine and Mum’s are green.’

‘They think she’s a little Moroccan girl,’ Mum explained. ‘We save a lot of money that way.’

Mum sat at home all that day and into the night sewing a pleated skirt and a white shirt with short sleeves. Ayesha was invited into our room so that Mum could inspect her uniform. She brought her schoolbook with her.

‘It must be my turn to look at it now,’ I whined when it seemed to have gone round the room at least twice. Ayesha watched anxiously as we pored over her book. On the front were two children: a boy and a girl. They were holding hands and about to take a step. The girl had a bright yellow dress against a red background and the boy was red on yellow. They both had short black hair. On the first page there were pictures of animals in different coloured squares.

‘Wasp, bat, ant, crocodile.’ I held my breath for a scorpion.

‘You’re meant to say them in Arabic, stupid.’ Bea started to rattle through the animals. She had a little help from Ayesha. Tortoise, for example. There were pages and pages of animals and objects of every kind. Telephones, syringes, shoes. All in coloured boxes and some of them had black squiggles above.

‘What’s this?’ I pointed to the black.

‘That’s Arabic writing. That,’ Mum