‘You’re the saddest thing I’ve ever seen,’ Heather said, as she passed me. ‘Trying to get round us with that pathetic attempt at a letter.’
And one by one they stepped past me, stamping my ‘pathetic attempt at a letter’ into the floor along with my cottage pie. I was left alone. Completely alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I stood there like an idiot, cottage pie all over my shoes. When I looked around, there was Wizzie and her gang, grinning at me. I found my voice at last. ‘What are you gawping at?’ I yelled at them.
It was Sonya who answered. Sonya with her stutter.
‘S-s-somebody nobody likes.’
Once I would have snapped back at her, made a fool of her. Now I couldn’t think of anything to say. She was right. I was someone nobody liked. It was so unfair. In a few days I had gone from Hannah, always surrounded by friends, to Driscoll, the girl who was constantly alone.
Zak Riley was at the door of the canteen when I stumbled through, as if him and his mates were waiting for me. ‘I’d hate to be a lassie,’ he said.
‘You’re too much of a wimp. We’d never have you.’ A little of the old Hannah coming through. Why couldn’t it come through when I spoke to Erin?
That night at home, I couldn’t hold back any tears. I cried so much I eventually made myself sick. I had to run from my room and just made it to the bathroom in time. I hung over the toilet, retching. It reminded me of the night of the wedding, and made me cry all the more.
Mum came pounding on the door. ‘Hannah! What’s up with you?’
I came out, my face drained of any colour, beads of sweat dotting my brow. Mum looked almost as bad. Face grey, her eyes wide with alarm. ‘Hannah, what’s wrong with you?’
And finally, it all came pouring out. I told her everything. The only thing I didn’t tell her was Erin’s secret. Loyal to the last.
Mum listened and when I’d finished she slumped against the back of her chair. ‘Oh, Hannah, thank goodness.’
Thank goodness?! I almost yelled at her then, but she added, ‘I thought you were going to tell me you were pregnant.’
The old me would have laughed herself silly at that. Me? No boyfriend, and no interest in any either. I might still have laughed, we might both have, if she hadn’t gone on to say, ‘That would be just my luck. You getting pregnant at your age.’
Suddenly, it was all about Mum again and her hard luck. It made me so angry. ‘Oh well, we can’t have you having any bad luck, can we? We’ll not worry about what’s happening to me.’
She looked taken aback. Then she had the cheek to say, ‘Everything has to be about you, hasn’t it? What did you do to bring this about, eh?’
‘Have you not been listening, Mum? I didn’t do anything.’
‘Have you apologised?’
‘Apologised for what?’ Why didn’t she ever listen? ‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘So how come they’re not talking to you?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I saw this coming. That lot think you’re not good enough for them, eh? That Erin’s mother thinks she’s something. She always thought she was better than me. She’s always been luckier, that’s all. Everything fell into her lap. She married a man with a good job, and what did I get? Your dad. A real loser. Oh well, like attracts like. But that’s how that Erin’s so stuck up. She thinks she’s better than you as well.’
She ranted on and on, and I was forgotten. It was her bad luck. She patted my shoulders and turned down my bed like a good mother, but all the time she only made me feel worse. We were both losers, that was her message. She was like a broken record.
I lay in the dark and tried to sleep, but my mind was too filled with all that had happened today. The humiliation of Erin reading out my letter in front of everyone. It played over and over in my head like a scene from a horror movie.
It was my mum’s raised voice that brought me out of the nightmare. I sat up in bed, wondering who she was shouting at. But there was no other voice. Only hers. She was on the phone, and as I listened, her voice grew louder, her tone more strident.
And suddenly I knew who she was yelling at. Erin’s mother. She was on the phone to Erin’s mother. I felt like being sick again. What did she think she was doing?
I leapt out of bed.
‘So you think your daughter can treat my daughter like that? Well, you can think again.’ She paused and I knew Erin’s mother was talking to her, shouting at her in fact, though I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Whatever it was it was making Mum even more angry. ‘What did you call me? You take that back. Don’t you dare say that about me!’