Girl A(48)

We moved to Hollowfield and to Moor Woods Road when I was ten, and in Miss Glade’s class. Gabriel needed a bed; Ethan had started to lobby for his own room; Father had lost interest in the Gatehouse and had found a site to establish his own congregation. He would call it the Lifehouse. Whenever he talked about it, he built the pulpit with his fists, and etched the aisle with his fingers.

Delilah and I were the only ones to protest. ‘I have friends,’ Delilah said. ‘Don’t make me leave my friends, Papa.’

‘Can’t we at least wait until summer?’ I asked. ‘When school’s over?’

Of all of the teachers at Jasper Street, I liked Miss Glade the most. She didn’t encourage me to read in class, and she didn’t praise me in public. Early on in the year, in October, she asked me to pop to the staffroom at lunch, and said that she had been impressed with my weekly book reports. Would I like to be assigned some extra reading – under the radar, no pressure, et cetera – just in case I was getting bored? On Friday lunchtimes, we sat in the windowless meeting room next to the school office and discussed whatever she had recommended. Miss Glade usually produced some kind of snack and asked that I helped her to eat it as we talked: a whole platter of fruit, for example, or a tray of flapjacks which she had baked. It always looked like far too much for one person, and I wondered how she had ever expected to finish it on her own.

The trouble came when Miss Glade spoke to Mother. Mother was collecting Delilah and Evie, standing in the playground with Gabriel and book bags and her jaundiced white dress, and Miss Glade asked if she could spare a moment. The others came in, too, and Gabriel roamed between the chairs and tables. He lifted crayons from their pots and took books from the shelves, giggling. He had a sharp, puckish face and a gappy smile. He would take items from strangers’ supermarket trolleys and they would laugh, and forgive him.

‘Isn’t he lovely,’ Miss Glade said. Mother nodded, shifting from foot to foot.

‘It really does need to be a minute,’ she said. ‘We have to get back.’

‘It’s good news,’ Miss Glade said, ‘so it won’t take long. I just wanted to comment on how well Alexandra’s doing this year. Really top work, across the board. English, maths, science – the first tasters of some of the other subjects, too. It’s been an excellent year, so far.’

Delilah rolled her eyes. Evie shot me a smile. Mother nodded away the praise, expectant, waiting for the great reveal.

‘My recommendation,’ Miss Glade said, ‘is that you and Mr Gracie explore the idea of scholarships to some of the better secondary schools in the area. It’s still a year and a half off, I know, but it never hurts to start thinking. A lot of these scholarships are dependent on family finances – and obviously I can’t comment on that – but I can put together a prospective list, or talk you and your husband through some of the options. Whatever works.’

‘Right,’ Mother said. She looked at me, as though there was something I knew and was refusing to disclose. ‘You’re talking about Alexandra?’ she said, to Miss Glade.

‘That’s right.’

‘OK. Well. Thank you.’

‘Should we put in an appointment,’ Miss Glade asked, ‘at a more convenient time?’

‘I don’t know if that’s going to be possible,’ Mother said. ‘We’re relocating in the next few months. Up to Hollowfield.’

‘Oh,’ Miss Glade said. ‘I wasn’t aware of that.’

She, too, looked at me.

‘If it helps,’ she said, ‘some of the options would still be—’

Gabriel had spun the globe on Miss Glade’s desk so fast that the Earth crashed onto the classroom floor. He froze, a cartoon culprit, and when the adults approached him, he cowered.

‘It’s no bother,’ Miss Glade said, but Mother had already crossed the room. She rapped Gabriel on the hand and gathered him in her arms.

‘See,’ she said. ‘It really isn’t a good time.’

We walked home together. It was early December, but some of the houses had decorations up. Delilah and Evie ran ahead, pointing out their favourite Christmas trees. My breath muddled with Mother’s in the air. ‘As you know,’ she said, ‘I didn’t go to the grammar school. And things worked out fine in the end.’ I looked at the brown tape on the pram, and Mother’s hair beneath the streetlamps, a brittle white and wrenched back from her face. Less of the light landing in it, now.

‘I wouldn’t mention this to your father, if I were you,’ Mother said. ‘He has other plans. Much grander plans, Alexandra.’

‘But it wouldn’t cost anything,’ I said. ‘To try.’

Delilah and Evie had stopped outside the biggest home on the street. In the window, there was an ornate doll’s house, and in that house it was Christmas Day. Miniature children raced to the presents beneath the tree. The father reclined in his armchair. I looked for the mother in the bedrooms and in the kitchen, but that miniature was missing.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Evie said. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Come on,’ Mother said. She was beyond us, drumming her fist on the handle of the pram. I caught up with her before she could move on, so that she had no choice but to look at me.

‘At least let me try,’ I said.