by Lesley Allen
Naturally, George and Felicity Flemming had assumed the Selina Burton incident had all been a dreadful misunderstanding. A terrible accident. Child’s play gone wrong. Alison heard them discuss it night after night from her secret spot on the stairs. It amused her that the notion of their darling daughter ever deliberately doing anything unsavoury to another child, never mind Selina Burton, her dearest best friend, the daughter of the Burtons, no less – eminent heart surgeon, Edward, and his wife Francesca who had once been a successful model – was, well, too preposterous for words. Alison was not a bad child, she heard them reiterate, time and time again. She was a sweetheart. An angel. A good, innocent girl. How could this have happened?
‘I don’t know which is worse,’ she heard her mother sob one night, after an invitation to play bridge at Joyce Butler’s house had inexplicitly been withdrawn, ‘you being exposed as a philanderer, or the accusation that Alison is, of all things, a bully. A “malicious little bitch”, I overheard Carol Mackey say in the playground the other day. This is your fault, George. Your fault. She must have known something was up. She must have been distracted. Not herself. Well, you owe it to both of us now to make sure she gets to that school. It’s the bloody least you can do.’
For the first time in her life, Alison felt a swelling affinity with her mother, and realised that if she was really to get to Belamore, it was her mother she must focus on, and not her father.
The two Flemming females settled remarkably well into their new lives. Being big fish in a tiny pond suited each of them extremely well. Within their first year in Ballybrock, Felicity had become Chair of the school PTA, Secretary of their church Young Wives group and, as she told Alison and George on several occasions, was expecting an invitation to be Vice Lady Captain of the Golf Club at the next round of nominations. Apparently Charlotte Fox, the outgoing Lady Captain, had indicated so.
‘According to Charlotte,’ she heard her mother tell her father one evening when she was supposed to be doing her homework, ‘no one has ever made it up the Ballybrock Golf Club ladder so quickly before.’
And, obviously, Alison’s own star was shining brightly too. It was obvious for all to see. Her reception at Prospect Park had been astonishing: she was incredibly popular with the pupils and teachers alike, had made many new friends, and was, by all accounts, the brightest girl in the school. ‘Oh, everyone loves Alison,’ she heard her mother coo on the telephone to one of the few friends from the city she actually kept in touch with. ‘She’s even had her photograph in the Ballybrock Chronicle on five occasions’ – a statistic which also delighted Alison.
‘She’s been amazing, George, hasn’t she?’ her mother would often cluck in the evenings, when she thought Alison was tucked up in bed. ‘Such a credit to us. And she’s never complained. Not once.’
In truth, the year since their move had been a doddle for Alison. Everyone at the new school did indeed love her, apart from Biddy Weir, of course, but Alison didn’t really hold that against her, as creating the myth of Bloody Weirdo had merely added to her popularity. She did hate the girl, but not in the way she had hated Selina. Biddy disgusted her, repulsed her, but she was very, very useful.
So, everything was going swimmingly well for both Alison and Felicity. But as the day drew near when the anticipated acceptance letter from Belamore College would pop through the letterbox, it became clear that something was afoot. Alison began to notice that her father was spending more time than usual in his study, and, when the coast was clear and her mother wasn’t around, she would kneel down on the bouncy hall carpet and peek through the keyhole. It wasn’t quite as easy to spy on her parents in this house as it had been at their previous one, and now her father even had a lock on his study door. But Alison was terrifically light on her feet, and managed fairly well. She watched him sit behind his desk, either filling up his glass with whisky, or slumped across it, nursing his hands in his head. She watched him pace the room, fingers held to his temples. She heard him snivel pathetic sentences such as, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry,’ and ‘I don’t deserve you, my sweetheart,’ and ‘you’re such a good girl, such a good, good girl’. To begin with she thought he was referring to her mother, his conscience finally catching up with him, until the night she heard him cry into his whisky, ‘How am I going to tell you, my hunny bunny? My hunny, hunny bunny.’ Those words were like shattering glass to Alison. She was his hunny bunny, not her mother. And the only thing in the world he could be afraid of telling her, the only thing, was that she wasn’t going to Belamore College. When her mother came home from yet another bridge game, she found Alison waiting for her in the kitchen, her eyes red from crying. Without even insisting that Alison go to her room, Felicity turned on her heels and marched to the study. Banging on the door, she screamed at George to let her in; tell her what the fuck was going on. It was the only time in her life that Alison heard her mother say fuck.
An almighty row ensued, and Alison, of course, heard every word. It transpired that her father’s new sales job didn’t even pay half of his previous salary, and that the hefty commissions he’d been banking on hadn’t actually materialised.
‘What about my bungalow, George?’ her mother shrieked. ‘You promised me a sea view and a bungalow within three years!’
‘Screw your bungalow,’ Alison whispered from the padded seat by the telephone table in the hall, having no need to spy from the stairs. ‘What about Belamore?’
At that very same moment the penny dropped with Felicity and she screamed the same words. ‘Belamore, George. Belamore. Don’t you dare tell me . . .’
*
Alison’s sense of shock when she discovered that she would not be going to Belamore College after all was overwhelming. She was truly devastated. She cried for hours and couldn’t even go to school the following day because her eyes were much too swollen. Her mother cried too, and, for the first time in their lives, they sat on the edge of Alison’s bed, arms around each other and wailed together in perfect harmony. It was a poignant, bonding experience, which may have even touched George if he had witnessed the moment. But he was still in his study, slumped over his desk, drunk as a skunk.
Alison could forgive her father his affair – indeed she almost admired him for it. She could forgive his secret drinking, and his long hours at the office, and the weekends spent locked inside his study. She could forgive him bringing them to this dump of a town. She could even forgive him not turning up at prize night when she was presented with the Prospect Park school cup, along with five other awards. But she would never, ever forgive him this.
It took until the end of the summer term for Alison to resign herself to the fact that she would be wearing the boring navy blue uniform of Ballybrock Grammar School and not the charming purple and yellow one she had set her heart on. One day, she resolved, as she tried her new uniform on, I will be rich enough myself to buy Belamore College if I want to.
But the biggest shock of all for Alison came on the very last day of school at Prospect Park. Miss Thornleigh, the headmistress, asked everyone who would be going to Ballybrock Grammar in September to stand at one side of the assembly hall, and all of those going to Mill Street Secondary School to stand on the other side, so that Mr Hendry and Mrs Thompson could talk to them separately about their new schools. Leanne Moore and Kenneth Smith were left standing in the middle, as they were moving to completely new towns to live. Kenneth’s family were actually immigrating to New Zealand, which was a bit of a shame for Alison, as she quite fancied him.
Alison was glancing around the Ballybrock Grammar group. All the members of her ‘gang’ were there. Georgina, Jackie and Julia (who only got into the school as a paying pupil as she hadn’t actually passed the 11-plus), along with other hangers-on like Jill Cleaver, Stephanie Hall, Beverley Brown and Sharon McKimm. Michael Williams, Bryan Murphy and Paul Blundell were there, which was fine as they all fancied her and were fanciable enough themselves, but greasy Johnny Sanders and speccy Richard Fa
rrell she could do without. And there, hovering in the background, head bent, hands tightly clasped behind her back, was bloody Biddy Weir! Alison nearly choked. There must be some mistake: surely the Weirdo hadn’t passed her 11-plus? Nobody had actually asked her, of course, when the results had come out three months before, but then there was no need. After all, she was a thicko, wasn’t she?
Alison nudged Georgina. ‘Look over there,’ she nodded in the direction of where Biddy was standing. Georgina’s eyes widened in amazement. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘she couldn’t. She can’t. Can she? Maybe her dad’s paying for her, like Julia’s.’
‘Doubt it,’ snarled Alison, nodding down towards Biddy’s feet. Her big toe was sticking out of a hole in her sock. Her sandals looked a size too small. ‘If he can’t afford to buy her a pair of socks or sandals that actually fit, he’ll hardly be able to pay for her education, will he?’
Alison sidled over to where Biddy was standing. ‘I think you’re in the wrong place,’ she sniped. Biddy glanced up, saw Alison glaring at her, and quickly put her head down again. ‘I said,’ began Alison in a louder voice, ‘I think . . .’
‘Quiet, everyone, settle down,’ shouted Miss Thornleigh, interrupting her. ‘Those of you going to Mill Street Secondary, follow Mr Hendry to room 7. The Ballybrock Grammar group, please stay in the hall with Mrs Thompson. Leanne and Kenneth, you may wait in Mrs Martin’s office until you are called back to class. Whichever school you are going to in September, I wish you all the very best for your future.’ Coming from Miss Thornleigh, those were remarkably kind words, as she was not prone to sentiment of any description. She nodded at Mr Hendry and Mrs Thompson, and almost marched out of the hall, Leanne and Kenneth scurrying behind her.
Alison was still waiting for Biddy to realise she’d made a mistake, and go with the Mill Street thickos down to Hendry’s room. But Biddy still stood rooted to the spot, head bloody bent as usual, toe poking out of her stinking socks. God, thought Alison, shaking her head in disbelief, how the hell did this happen?
Biddy was thinking exactly the same thing. She hadn’t really paid that much attention to the 11-plus, and had ploughed through the test papers, sometimes getting an average mark, sometimes a poor one, but never a great one. She hovered around the borderline area, more below than above and had simply assumed that she would fail.
Biddy answered all but two questions in the first actual test. In the second, she completed the paper with two or three minutes to spare and spent the final seconds watching a seagull swoop up and down outside the window beside her desk. It landed on the sill and stared at her for a couple of seconds before flying off, just as the lady in charge of the exam said, ‘Time’s up, put your pencils down please.’ When her father asked her after each test how it had gone, she replied: ‘Fine, Papa,’ and pointed to the plate laid out on the kitchen table. ‘May I have a Kimberley biscuit, please?’ That was the extent of their conversation about the 11-plus.
Mr Weir quietly hoped his daughter would pass and go to Ballybrock Grammar, as he himself had done. He also harboured a secret notion that one day she would go to university and live the life he had once hoped to have. But he knew that was just a dream, the only one he really had, and he didn’t dare to share it with Biddy. What was the point? He settled himself with the more realistic expectation that she would be going to Mill Street Secondary, and that was fine.
Biddy’s priority was to get away from Alison, and as she had overheard Alison boast on many occasions that she would be going to someplace called Belamore College, there was really nothing to worry about. And as no one had ever told her that she would pass, could pass, or might pass, she had simply assumed that she would be going to Mill Street Secondary – which was fine, really, since there was less of a chance that Georgina, Jackie and Julia would be going there.
When the letter had come and it had said ‘PASS’, Biddy assumed there had been a mistake. Her father had put on his coat and gone to the bakery to buy two apple turnovers to celebrate. Biddy waited and waited for another letter to tell her about the mistake, but none came. And now here she was, standing in the assembly hall on her last day at Prospect Park. The realisation that she really was going to Ballybrock Grammar finally hit her. And the fact that Alison Flemming was going there too was just too much to bear. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Biddy’s head began to spin, her throat felt as though it was closing over and sweat poured down her back. Mrs Thompson’s voice sounded further and further away, and then the floor rose and smacked Biddy on the face. When she came round, Mrs Thompson was holding out a glass of water, Mrs Martin was dabbing her forehead with a damp cloth, and Alison Flemming was glaring at her with narrowed eyes, just the way an eagle might.
6.
With a brand new fan base at their big new school, Alison flourished and Jackie, Georgina and Julia continued to cherish their roles as her trusted servants. On her first day, Alison was relieved to discover that, despite the influx of new pupils from several different primary schools, she was still, by far, the fairest of them all; which was some consolation at least for not being able to go to Belamore College. And although there were one or two definite oddities amongst the fresh new first formers, none of them came close to the weirdness of Biddy Weir.
And of course, it wasn’t long before news of the bloody weirdo in First Form spread throughout the school. As Alison’s audience increased, her popularity soared and her ego expanded accordingly. Her perfect impersonation of Biddy’s lonesome playground walks was replayed time and time again, to shrieks of delight from her old and new admirers. And her hilarious tales of Biddy’s bare bottom and her first ever ‘period’ might as well have been printed in the school magazine, for almost every pupil in the junior school soon knew the stories. And even if they didn’t find them funny, they laughed. Most of them knew it was better to laugh along than to be laughed at.
Biddy herself quickly realised that everyone at the new school knew about her weirdness. Everywhere she went she was shoved, tripped up or her path was blocked. She could hear the sneers, the sniggers and the murmurs. ‘Whoa. Watch out. It’s Bloody Weirdo.’ ‘Bloody Weirdo Alert. Bloody Weirdo Alert.’ Sometimes she longed for the simplicity of her torment at Prospect Park. At least there she knew what to expect, most of the time, anyway, and she knew where she could hide. This place was just so vast, it terrified her. It was like being in a never-ending maze with no way out; a relentless nightmare she was doomed never to awaken from. There were so many more people here who knew who and what she was. Even the walls seemed to whisper, ‘Bloody Weirdo, Bloody Weirdo, Bloody Weirdo’ as she trudged along the school corridors, head down, shoulders hunched, willing herself to be invisible from the throngs of pupils, waiting for the next big humiliation.
Weeks, months, even, could pass by without any major incident, but they were always there, her tormentors, with their comments and sneers and expressions of utter disgust. And the threat of Alison delivering one of her trademark ‘master plans’ constantly clung to her, gripping her throat like a caught breath.
One sunny Thursday afternoon near the end of her second year at Ballybrock Grammar, Biddy was, as usual, hovering at the back of the bus queue after school. She always waited until the unruly mob started to push and shove their way onto the bus before joining the herd at the last minute, hoping that the driver would let her stand on the middle step. Sometimes, depending on who the driver was, she got her wish. Sometimes the door would swish shut, almost trapping her face as she tried to jump on, and she would have to wait for the next bus, or walk the thirty-minute journey home. She didn’t mind the walk, but it was getting a lot more difficult now that her schoolbag was weighed down with more and more heavy textbooks. And on this particular day, it was much too hot to drag both herself and her bag up the steep Westhill Road.
‘Hey, B.W.!’ Biddy froze as Alison, Jackie, Georgina and Julia sauntered towards her, followed by two or three of the new Alison worshippers. ‘I said, hey, B.W.! Didn’t y
ou hear me? Gone deaf or something, have you?’ Alison spat. The others sniggered. B.W. was Alison’s new abbreviated name for Biddy and they thought it was so cool.
‘So, B.W. . . .’ Alison continued, aware that some of the boys in the bus queue were looking over. Craig Black, the blond hunk from the fourth year whose attention she’d been trying to get for a week now, stood with his hands in his pockets, kicking some loose gravel onto the road. Their eyes met briefly and Alison slowly bit her bottom lip and ran her fingers through her hair before turning her attention back to Biddy. She knew that if she played this well she’d snare him. She might be just a second former, but she was almost fourteen – and knew she looked much older than her age. She also knew she’d go a hell of a lot further than most of the girls in his year would.
