I was convinced Murdo knew I was responsible. He never smiled at me any more but I found he was watching me, very thoughtfully. When he talked to me he was always brusque.
I didn’t care any more. I had Diane. And she had been right. No one had blamed us. Everybody assumed it had been the vandals and soon everything settled down once again.
Except for Ralph Aird. Diane said he had reverted to type.
He was always missing school and when he was there he was sullen and bad-tempered. Even Murdo couldn’t motivate him.
At moments like that I felt sick with guilt. Had I done that to him? How would he have acted if he’d won the competition? Proud? Confident? A totally different Ralph?
And he would have won. Murdo stormed into the class one day and showed us the entry that did win. A very unimaginative paper tower covered with ‘My Favourite Words from Books’.
Murdo was incensed that such a winner had been chosen. It was banging down the desk time again. ‘Words are nothing!’ he shouted, his Highland burr always more noticeable when he was angry. ‘It’s how they are used that matters. The ideas they convey.’ He spat the words out at us. ‘It’s the characters they create. Ah Ralph! Your entry spoke of characters and ideas and literature.’ He shook his head violently and addressed Ralph’s empty chair as if he was in it. ‘Ah Ralph, surely you would have been the winner instead!’
Later that same afternoon as we passed two of the other teachers in the corridor we heard them discussing Ralph. Diane pulled me back to listen.
‘He’s not at school again. And I heard he’s been running wild at night time all through the town centre. Always said he was a bad lot.’
The other teacher agreed. ‘Well, look at the family he comes from. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d destroyed that collage himself. People like Ralph Aird and his kind can’t handle that kind of responsibility. But don’t tell old Murdo I said that, you know how precious he thinks his pupils are.’
They moved off still talking and I wanted to scream after them, ‘He didn’t destroy it. He didn’t. We did.’
But Diane thought it was amusing. ‘Told you they’d never suspect us,’ she said.
‘But that’s so unfair, Diane. If they start to think he did it himself.’
But she just shrugged that off. ‘Do you think Ralph Aird cares? He’s probably forgotten his old collage already.’
I didn’t think that was true somehow, and as I trudged home it was all I could think about.
I could hear Margo snoring as I let myself in. She was lying on her back in her playpen, sounding like a great navvy. ‘She’s got adenoids,’ Mum keeps insisting. I stood looking at her for a moment. Apart from the awful noise, and her runny nose, she looked so sweet with her chubby cheeks and her rosebud mouth. I warmed all over just watching her.
But where was J.B.? Not far anyway. He’d never leave Margo alone. Yet the house seemed so quiet. Ominously quiet.
He wasn’t in the kitchen. The lunch dishes were stacked on the dresser and the lemon curtains were blowing gently in the breeze from the open window.
Was he having another of his secret phone calls? There was an extension in the bedroom and I tiptoed upstairs, sure I was going to find him out at last. This time, I promised myself, I would tell Mum.
His bedroom door was ajar, the telephone still in its cradle, lying beside the bed. No J.B.
Puzzled, I pushed open the door of my bedroom and there he was, sitting on the bed. His shoulders were slumped and his face was drawn and grey. He looked older than I’d ever seen him. As if he’d had a shock.
Something had happened to Mum! That was my first thought. Until I saw what he was holding in his hands.
My diary.
He had been reading my diary.
He looked up at me slowly, not surprised or shocked to be caught, but very deliberately. He’d been waiting for me. He looked at me as if he was disgusted by what he saw.
‘What kind of girl have you turned into, Lissa?’ He held up the diary. ‘How could you have done such a terrible thing? How could you have been so cruel?’
I shrieked at him, refusing to feel guilty. ‘You had no right to read my diary. That’s private!’ I tried to snatch it from him but he held it high away from me.
‘Maybe so, but I’ll tell you this, Lissa. You are going to school tomorrow and you’re going to confess everything.’
Chapter Ten
All that night I screamed and screamed at him, but he wouldn’t change his mind. ‘You’re going to own up to what you have done, and that’s all there is to say.’
It was no use appealing to Mum. She’d never go against J.B. ‘I don’t know why I find it so hard to believe you could do such a thing,’ she said, clutching a snivelling Margo against her. ‘You did the same thing to little Jonny’s poster. How could you have been so cruel?’