Dad rises and strides towards the house with the plates. ‘Will do!’
‘So, what shall we do today?’ she calls after him.
He pauses in the doorway, and turns back, gazing past her into the garden.
‘Dad?’
‘Oh. Well, I’ve got to get some work done this morning. How about a walk later on, then back here for birthday cake?’ He’s frowning.
Sarah follows him into the house. ‘I’ll get baking, then. Victoria sponge?’
‘Naturally,’ he replies, and he leaves her to clear up.
As Sarah weighs the caster sugar and pours it into the mixing bowl, she hears the click of his study door and she knows she won’t see him again until teatime.
Autumn Term
1985
The first Monday of the new term is a bright September day, and Sarah walks to school briskly, looking forward to seeing Kate and Tina after the long summer break. They both live over at Amber Chalks, at the opposite end of town to Sarah, so she never gets to walk in with them in the mornings.
When she arrives, there’s a notice pinned to the wooden door of their hut, advising of a room change. Other girls from 5G stand around in clusters, blinking at each other under the sun’s glare.
‘Wood rot,’ says one of the girls. ‘In the floorboards. Or it might be the heating.’
Sarah scans the courtyard for Kate and Tina. She’s hardly seen them over the holidays, as she spent most of the time working in the chemist’s. Kate popped in to see her once, but Sarah was nervous about chatting for too long when the shop was so busy. Kate had topped up her lipstick at the Outdoor Girl counter and gestured to Sarah’s navy pinafore. ‘Nice,’ she mouthed as she backed slowly out of the shop door, causing the under-mat monitor to go bing-bong more than once.
The group of girls meanders along the corridor towards their temporary form room.
‘Have you seen Kate?’ Sarah asks one of her classmates over the noise.
The girl shakes her head.
When she arrives at Room 121, Sarah finds Kate and Tina huddled comfortably in the pair of back-row window seats.
‘How’d you know we’d be in here?’ she asks, slinging her army bag over the back of the chair in front of them.
‘Got here early,’ says Kate, brushing her hair in long, elaborate strokes.
‘Your hair’s grown,’ says Tina to Kate, barely acknowledging Sarah’s arrival. She scratches at the eczema between her fingers. Sarah notices how pale Tina’s skin appears next to Kate’s golden tan. Kate always looks healthy.
‘Looks nice,’ Sarah adds.
Kate gathers her hair into a bunch and releases it, so that it fans out like a peacock’s tail. ‘Yeah. Gonna get it cut soon – like Siobhan from Bananarama. Not her old style; the new one, short at the sides and long and spiky on top.’
‘That’ll really suit you. And coloured?’ Tina starts fiddling with her own mousy hair.
‘Yeah. I reckon I’ll henna it. Here, Sar, can you get it cheap at the chemist’s? You get a discount, don’t you?’
Mr Settle enters the front of the classroom, looking sallow and depressed. When Sarah had him for English last year, they nicknamed him ‘Doughnut’ because he brought one into class every lesson. Without fail, he’d place it in its bag at the front of his desk, where gradually the grease and softened sugar would seep through and spread across the white paper. Then, exactly ten minutes before the end of class, he’d carefully open the bag and devour the doughnut in three mouthfuls. Always three. Now, he holds up his briefcase, horizontally, where everyone can see it, and lets it drop to the desk with a loud slap, sending chalk dust billowing through the streaks of sunlight. A few of the girls shriek in surprise.
‘Welcome back, 5G!’ he booms. ‘Now, SIT!’
‘Pillock,’ Kate whispers to Tina.
Sarah looks over her shoulder to grin back at them.
‘So,’ Mr Settle starts, as he clears the debris of chalk and drawing pins from his desk. ‘You were all expecting the dishy Mr Gardner as your form teacher this year, weren’t you?’
Some of the girls snigger and nudge each other. Sally Richards wolf-whistles across the classroom. Mr Settle shakes his head despairingly.
He opens his briefcase, and Sarah sees a flash of white paper bag as he removes a faded blue A4 folder. She looks back at Kate and Tina. ‘Doughnut,’ she mouths with a smile. Kate licks her lips suggestively.
He snaps the briefcase shut. ‘Well, Mr Gardner is no longer with us. So, for now, you’ll have to put up with me. Or vice versa. Believe me, I’m no happier about it than you are.’ He pulls out his seat and opens up the register. ‘Zoe Andrews…? Sharon Buller…?’
When he’s finished taking the register, Marianne puts her hand up from the front desk. She still looks the same as she did in the first year: plebby and a bit too heavy for her age.
‘Yes, Mary-Ann,’ says Mr Settle.
She doesn’t correct him on her name. ‘What about our form room?’
‘You’ll be in here for now, while the caretakers sort out the heating in your hut.’
‘Thank God for that!’ Kate says loudly. ‘Last year the heating kept breaking down. We nearly died of hypothermia.’
‘That’s enough!’ Mr Settle shouts towards the back wall. ‘Right, timetables out. You were all given your schedules at the end of last term. Anyone who’s not sure what they’re doing, come to me. The rest of you, make sure you’ve got your books ready for first lesson.’
Seven or eight girls straggle up to his desk to find out where they should be. He gives them each an exasperated look, before running his finger down a large chart to tell them which lessons they have to attend.
‘Have we got Assembly today, sir?’ Tina calls over Sarah’s head. She cradles her bony fingers together and pushes outwards, cracking her knuckle joints.
‘Yes!’ he bellows again, without looking up.
Tina and Kate snigger behind Sarah, and she turns to join in.
‘That big,’ whispers Kate, and she wiggles her little finger, nodding her head towards the teacher. ‘That’s why he has to shout all the time. To make up for it.’ She wiggles the little finger again and sneers.
Sarah turns to look at Mr Settle in his brown suit and crumpled tie. ‘Yeah. Look at his tiny shoes. Teensy weensy feet,’ she squeaks in a little mouse voice.
‘Sarah Ribbons! Where are you for first period?’
‘Oh! English, sir.’
He runs his finger down the sheet. ‘Correct! Alright – Assembly. Off you all go! And NO talking!’
5G streams along the corridor in an untidy line, joining other classes on the stairs, a slow procession of green V-neck jumpers, shuffling towards the hall. Tina looks tiny walking beside Kate, who’s almost a head taller. Kate sashays along with a bored swagger, sucking on a long strand of hair and rolling her eyes.
Sarah counts the months on her fingers. Ten months till July. ‘I’m going to burn my uniform when we get out of this place,’ she whispers to Tina.
‘Yeah, and the school. I’m gonna burn the bloody lot down!’
A teacher shushes them at the open doorway to the Assembly Hall. Row after row files in, until all sixteen classes of the upper school are lined up facing the stage. Mrs Carney, the Head, walks along the side of the hall, past the teachers who flank the passageways on both sides. She ascends the stage in front of the dark red curtains, and positions herself behind the central podium.
‘Good morning, girls,’ she says. Her voice sounds as if she has a mouthful of mashed swede.
‘Good morning, Mrs Carney,’ the pupils chorus.
‘You may sit.’
There’s a scuffle and murmur as the girls try to sit in their lines on the grubby parquet floor without exposing their underwear. Sarah notices that Kate’s wearing a new pencil skirt, long and straight down to her calves, with a slit up to the back of her knees. She has to ease herself down sideways on, or the skirt would rip. Sarah inspects her palms and dusts them off on h
er green jumper.
Mrs Carney pats her short grey hair with the flat of her hand, then gracefully gestures towards the teaching staff. ‘This year we are pleased to welcome two new teachers: Miss Welsh and Mr Morton. Mr Gardner is no longer with us, but the excellent Mr Settle will fill in until we find a suitable replacement.’ She stresses the word suitable, then hurries on as if she regrets the inappropriate inflection.
Sarah leans over her crossed legs, making a quizzical face at her friends. Kate forms a circle with the finger and thumb of one hand and pokes at it with the forefinger of the other. ‘With a sixth former,’ she whispers.
Tina’s mouth drops open, before turning into a mischievous smirk. ‘Dirty git.’
After the school announcements, everyone stands to sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. As always, Kate, Sarah and Tina descend into hysterics at the line, ‘the purple-headed mountains’, and by the time they file out of the hall for their first lessons Sarah’s stomach muscles are bunched up like fists.
‘See you at break?’ she asks the others.
‘Yeah,’ shrugs Kate. ‘I’ll be round the cloakroom, or something.’
The three girls go their separate ways, Tina and Kate arm in arm in one direction, Sarah alone in the other.
Sarah meets Kate and Tina at the cloakroom at lunchtime. Kate’s taking an old Madonna poster down from the inside door of her locker, replacing it with one of the Style Council.
‘Lush,’ she says as she presses the Blu-Tak into place.
Tina is fiddling about in her own locker, stacking her books in size order. She’s still got a magazine cutting of Andrew Ridgeley on the inside door, which frays at the edges with age.
Kate nudges Sarah, pointing at Andrew’s highlighted quiff. ‘Sad,’ she says with a curl of her lip. ‘You’re always about three years behind everyone else, Teen.’
Tina grabs the picture off the door and screws it into a ball, which she drops and kicks along the length of the corridor. ‘There – better?’
Kate raises her eyebrows and turns the key in her lock with an efficient snap. ‘I’m busting for a wee – let’s stop off at the loos on the way.’
They take the stairs through the central foyer, passing through shards of sunshine which break through the ceiling-high glass panels of the lower corridor. Other girls move about, making their way towards the canteen or out on to the field at the back of the school where they’ll eat packed lunches and recline like cats, hitching up their skirts as they take in the last rays of late summer.
Mrs Whiff passes them in the corridor, heading towards the front office. Her real name is Smith, and she gained the nickname not because she smells bad, but because she can sniff out trouble at a hundred paces. She glares at the girls as they go by, pausing at the front office for a quick word, before disappearing through the staff room door with a stiff turn of her sturdy little ankles.
‘Cow,’ says Kate, sticking two fingers up at the closed door as they pass.
As usual, the toilets are filthy. There are six toilets in the block, all choked up with sheets of tracing-grade loo roll and God knows what else.
Tina’s hopping from one foot to the other. ‘I can’t wait,’ she says, dumping her bag by the sinks and slamming a cubicle door behind her.
‘Disgusting,’ says Sarah, pushing the doors open one after the other to inspect the insides. ‘Someone’s done that on purpose. Idiots.’ She finds the least revolting one and enters, closing the door. She holds her breath against the bleachy stench.
‘Hurry up,’ squeals Kate on the other side. ‘I’m busting.’
Sarah hovers above the seat, careful not to touch any of the surfaces. She unzips the inside pocket of her bag and removes a small wad of toilet tissue. She can’t bear the school stuff; it’s so non-absorbent, you might just as well use nothing at all.
Kate growls outside the door. ‘Come on! I am actually going to wet myself!’
Sarah pulls the chain and exits rapidly, letting Kate rush in to take her place. ‘I wouldn’t touch the seat if I were you,’ she warns. ‘You might catch something in this place.’
Tina joins Sarah at the sinks. She washes her hands briskly then moves them in wild little waving motions to shake off the water. ‘Like your shoes,’ she says, indicating Sarah’s new white slip-ons.
‘Yeah, they’re nice, Sar,’ Kate calls out from the cubicle. ‘I had some like that last year. Here, did you see the way old Whiff looked at us in the corridor? Like we’re doing something wrong, just by being there. She’s such a bitch.’
Sarah faces the mirror and pulls down her lower eyelid, lining it with thick black eyeliner. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘She’s got a face like she’s just eaten something foul.’
Kate giggles on the inside of the cubicle. Tina and Sarah frown at each other as they hear the sound of marker pen squeaking across the Formica surface on the other side of Kate’s toilet door. ‘Go and take a look,’ she smirks when she comes out, posing in front of the cloudy mirror to adjust her fringe. She looks really pleased with herself.
Inside the cubicle Sarah pushes the door back and reads Kate’s message, written in large permanent capitals: MRS WHIFF EATS COCK. She screams with laughter. ‘Tina, you should see this! Brilliant!’
She realises that it’s suddenly quiet on the other side of the door. Thinking the other two have gone on without her, she peers out cautiously, to see Mrs Whiff standing in the entrance, hands on her wide tweedy hips, rage in her expression. Kate and Tina stand sheepishly against the basins, staring at the lino floor.
‘And what, may I ask, is so funny, Sarah Ribbons?’
Sarah comes out of the cubicle fully, and looks at the other two. She readjusts her bag strap and rubs her nose, trying not to look guilty. ‘Nothing,’ she says as lightly as possible. ‘Someone just said something funny, and I was laughing – ’
Mrs Whiff looks her over with that nasty-taste look she has, and pushes past her through the toilet door. When she re-emerges her expression is altered, the anger replaced with a look of unsettling serenity.
‘You two – get off to lunch. Now,’ she hisses, pointing towards the corridor with the sharp flick of a Nazi salute.
Tina and Kate scurry off without a backward glance, leaving Sarah and Mrs Whiff alone in the toilets.
‘So, Sarah Ribbons. I don’t want you to think for one moment that I’m shocked. Not in the least bit – do you think I haven’t seen and heard worse in my years at the school? You’re just a silly little girl with a dirty mouth.’
Mrs Whiff marches Sarah down to the library and locks her in the cupboard-sized office beneath the gallery. It’s a tiny room, with a small glass window which looks out across the books from behind the librarian’s desk. If Sarah stands on her chair she can see pupils and teachers passing through the room, in and out of the bookshelves and seats. Apart from Mrs Whiff, no one knows she’s there. There could be a fire – what then?
She sits in her makeshift cell, writing out lines as her stomach grumbles and complains about its missed lunch.
I apologise for writing filthy obscenities.
Bloody Kate. Bloody Whiffer. Bloody school.
The study door is shut when Sarah arrives home from school. She closes the front door quietly and walks through the dim hall and into the kitchen to get herself a snack. Ted follows behind, batting her calves with his scratchy paws.
‘You hungry?’ she asks, passing him a slice of cheese.
He takes it in his teeth and runs through the house and out into the back garden through the open door. Sarah follows him, nibbling on her own slice of cheese as she goes. The dog crumples into a triangle of afternoon sunlight, chomping awkwardly on his treat. At the end of the long, thin garden, the willow tree sways gently, creating a soft murmur. Leylandii stand like sentries along one side of the garden. Sarah hates them, and wishes they could be cut back, to let in more light. But Dad likes it the way it is. She hunches down to stroke Ted. She can see her father through his stu
dy window, bent over his desk in concentration. His white hair flops over his forehead, too long for a man of his age. Today in Biology they were studying the heart, and Sarah wants to ask him about her mother, to learn more about how she died. But she’s tired of asking. ‘She had a weak heart,’ he told her last time with visible irritation. ‘What more is there to know?’
She unpegs the washing from the line, dropping each piece into the laundry basket without folding. Ted follows her back and forth between the line and the basket, hoping for another treat. As she gathers the washing, Sarah keeps watch on the window, wondering when her father will acknowledge her presence. He knows she’s there. She carries the basket towards the house, pausing on the patio close to his window. She drops the basket, and it hits the concrete with a loud crack. Dad sits upright, alarmed, and frowns at her through the glass.
‘Cooeee,’ she waves with a half-smile.
He hesitates, untidily closes the pages of his newspaper, then pushes himself out of his seat, running his fingers through his snowy hair. ‘Want a hand?’ he asks, taking the laundry basket from her as they meet in the hallway.
‘All done,’ she replies. ‘How’s the work going?’
‘Not bad. I’m working on the history of women’s roles in agriculture, for an after-dinner speech next month. For the Country Landowners’ Association. All rather dull, truth be known.’
‘Looked like you were reading the paper to me,’ she says as she walks into the kitchen.
He laughs, putting his hands on his hips. ‘Nothing gets past you, eh? Actually, I was looking at those photos of the Titanic. There’s a super article – you must read it. The pictures are spectacular; like something from the lost city of Atlantis. You know, it’s been down there, undisturbed, for over seventy years, and now they’ve finally found it. Amazing.’
‘Amazing.’
‘Well, you should at least take a look. How was school?’
‘Same as usual.’
‘Mmm.’
Sarah fills the kettle. ‘You need some new trousers, Dad.’
Hurry Up and Wait Page 2
