Worse Than Boys(29)

That’s what my mum would do. Run away. I felt she always ran away from her problems, never faced up to them. And I wasn’t going to be like her.

‘I like my school, Mum,’ I said. ‘Why should I be the one to run away? Let them change schools if they want. I’m not going to.’

I tried to make it sound light-hearted, but my mum didn’t take it that way. She stood up and began pacing the room. ‘That school you like so much has done nothing to help you. You’re going through all this and they just sit on their backsides and do nothing. What about this anti-bullying policy they’re supposed to have?’

‘I’m not being bullied, Mum,’ I tried to tell her, because I wasn’t. I was being frozen out by my friends, and ignored by everyone else. But I wasn’t being bullied. She wouldn’t listen.

‘These things are going on right under their noses and they do nothing to help. Oh yes, they want all the kudos for being teachers, but they don’t want any of the responsibility.’

She was talking rubbish. ‘It’s not the teachers’ fault, Mum.’ But still she wouldn’t listen. She went on and on, as if she was thinking aloud, venting all her pent-up anger on the teachers, on the school. Finally, I couldn’t listen any more. ‘Shut up, please, Mum, just shut up!’

Her face tightened with anger. ‘I’m trying to be on your side. Isn’t that what you want?’

‘Well, think of another way to be on my side, OK!’

She slammed out of the room and I thought I had shut her up. But I was wrong.

She took me at my word. She thought of another way to be on my side. Next day she did the very worst thing she could.

She came to the school.





Chapter Twenty-Six


I was in English when the teacher called me out of the class. Her face was so stern I knew something was wrong. Anne O’Donnell had been called out one day by a teacher wearing this same expression, to be told her father had been killed in an accident. So as I followed her along the corridor, I was expecting the worst. But not this.

My mother was sitting in Mr McGinty’s office. So was Mrs Tasker, standing beside the headmaster, looking as grim as he was.

Mum had been crying. She was blowing her nose and her face was almost hidden by a cloud of tissues. Her eyes, all I could see, were puffy with tears. My heart sank like a stone when I saw her. What was she doing here?

‘Sit down, Hannah,’ Mr McGinty ordered me.

I took the seat beside my mother, but when she stretched out her hand to touch mine I shrank from her.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘Your mother’s very worried about you, it would seem.’ The head’s voice was cold and I knew he wasn’t impressed by my mother’s attitude. ‘She seems to think you’re going through a major trauma and that we are doing nothing to help. Is that true?’

I glared at my mother. She looked back at me innocently. ‘I told them everything, Hannah. The way that crowd are treating you is disgraceful. You’re home every night on your own, crying.’ She looked back at the headmaster. ‘They all turned on her the other day during a fight outside the school.’

Mr McGinty almost leapt out of his chair. ‘Is this true?’

I didn’t know how to answer that. Deny it and make my mother out to be a liar? Or admit it and do the worst thing you can ever do – grass? In the end, I said nothing. I bit my lip and stared at the floor. I didn’t have to say a word anyway. My mother did all the talking. I couldn’t have shut her up with anaesthetic.

‘And now one of the other gangs is threatening her – her with the funny name and everything pierced. She told her they’re going to get her.’

Why couldn’t she ever keep her mouth shut? I bit my lip even harder to keep from screaming.

‘She’s terrified to come to school. And you do nothing to protect her. I’ll go to the authorities. I’ll go to the papers. I’ll do something about it if you won’t.’

My mother’s voice was becoming almost hysterical.

She was making me sound like the world’s biggest wimp. ‘I am not terrified,’ I said at last, trying to keep my voice calm. I didn’t want to sound like my mum. ‘I’ve fallen out with my friends, that’s all.’

‘I tried to help the girls to make up,’ Mrs Tasker said.

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It didn’t last. Doesn’t matter. I’ve got other friends.’

‘She hasn’t!’ my mother shouted. That really made me feel worse. ‘She’s got no one. They’ve all deserted her.’

It took all my willpower not to cry. She was making me sound like the biggest kind of loser.