doorway and watched Bea coming towards us. She had grown taller and wore a dress that I had never seen before. It was checked a little like the tablecloths and had puffed sleeves. She carried a plate of cake in her hand.
‘Would you like some of my birthday cake?’ she said when she reached us and I took the plate and began to cram the yellow sponge into my mouth.
‘Happy birthday, darling,’Mum said and went to hug her.
Bea stiffened. She pulled back and introduced Patricia. Patricia was older than Mum and taller, and was dressed very smartly with lace–up shoes. She watched as I gobbled my cake.
‘So you made it. Just in time,’ she said, resting her hand on Bea’s shoulder. ‘come and join the party.’
Patricia took a plate and loaded it with sandwiches and fruit and biscuits from the table and handed it to me. ‘It’s my birthday soon,’ I told her. ‘Really?’ Her voice was cold and she walked away to lift a boy off the floor who was dragging himself away from the table, using his hands and nothing else.
Bea was on Patricia’s side. They sat together over English tea with milk and sugar and talked about their own private things. They talked as if they had known each other for ever.
‘Why did you run away from Peter’s?’ Mum asked.
Peter was the owner of Mashipots.
Bea looked at her as if it were obvious. ‘He made me
do hours and hours of maths homework and when I
wanted to go to the toilet he said I could only go if I called
it “the shithouse”.’
I started to giggle.
‘But I bet you’ve never had a birthday party like this before,’ Patricia said consolingly.
Bea shook her head. ‘Never.’ And she fixed Mum with her Malteser eyes that were rounder than anyone else’s.
‘Me, neither,’ I said. I wanted to be on Patricia’s side too and have a birthday party like never before.
I asked Mum why Patricia didn’t like me.
‘Don’t worry,‘ she said, ’she can’t stand me, either.’
In the middle of that night, when I crawled into her bed to avoid the chill of my wet sheet, she whispered, ‘We’ll leave before she finds out,‘ and then added with a shiver, ‘she reminds me of my mother.’
Patricia thought of all the polio boys as her children. She was very strict and dressed them in spotless white. She kept their hair so short it bristled. Bea talked to the boys and played with them, complicated games with pebbles and sticks that had to be caught and counted on the back of your hand. I tried to join in, but I was frightened by their twisted and emaciated legs and the boniness of their skulls with so little hair to hide behind.
Bea and I waited at the polio school while Mum looked for somewhere else to live. Patricia had objected to us going because it would mean missing lunch.
I sat with Bea on the steps of her dormitory. ’Don‘t you want to come and sleep in our room with us?’ I asked her.
‘No, I like it here,’ she said. ‘It’s like being at boarding–school.‘
‘Have you ever been at boarding–school?’
‘No, stupid.’
I was losing track of what Bea had and hadn’t done.
‘Do you like Patricia better than Mum then?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Mum’ll be very unhappy.’
‘Really?’ she sounded like Patricia, and she skimmed a stone hard across the concrete.
I tried to think of something else to say. Everything in my head was jumbled and arguing. Bea continued to throw stones that were pieces of concrete that had come loose from the base of the step and I looked at my feet and wondered if I should tell her about the sandals that I left on the train.
‘So tomorrow we’ll move back to the Hotel Moulay Idriss,’ Mum announced. She sat down on the step between us and took a packet out of her bag. She handed it to Bea. ‘Happy birthday.’
Bea unwrapped her present slowly. Inside was a necklace of black and orange beads. Bea lifted up her hair for it to be fastened. It fitted tightly round her neck. She smiled a small smile in spite of herself.
That night Patricia and Mum had an argument. It started after supper when Bea spilt coffee on her checked dress. Patricia said it was ridiculous that a child of her age should be allowed to drink coffee just because she liked it, and then she put her arm around Bea and called her ‘my little orphan’. Mum’s eyes blazed and she cracked her plate down