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street and went flying in to tell Mum – who couldn’t have been less interested.
    ‘You’ll have to sort it out yourselves,’ she said, barely looking up from her newspaper.
    ‘But she hit me!’
    Mum sighed. ‘What do you want me to do about it?’
    ‘Tell her off!’ It was all I could think of. That’s what she’d do if it were me or Lorraine.
    ‘I’m not telling anyone off,’ she said flatly. ‘There’s no point. You’ll have made up in two minutes.’
    She was always like that. Never wanted to get involved with kids’ business. Nan, on the other hand, was my champion. She must have been out this day, otherwise I would have gone straight to her. Nan didn’t think twice about tearing up the path and grabbing the first child she met by the scruff of their neck. It didn’t matter if it was the right one or not, they were getting a piece of her mind. No one messed with Nan’s little girls.
    There was only one occasion I can think of where Mum really got herself involved in something I’d done. It was cold weather so we were allowed to wear tights at school and somehow I must have snagged the top of them on the underside of my desk. The head of a nail was sticking out from the woodwork and that must have done it. I was lucky it only ripped my tights and not my skin. Mum didn’t see it that way.
    ‘You can’t be trusted with anything!’
    She looked particularly threatening at the time. A few days earlier Lorraine had been too ill to finish her newspaper delivery round so Mum had gone out instead. I don’t know the last time Mum had ever ridden a bike but she only managed a few houses before falling off and spraining her wrist. So now, as she gesticulated angrily at me, all I could think was how much it would hurt if her wrist plaster cast connected with me.
    I explained what had happened and waited for her to say she didn’t believe me, as usual. Weirdly, she just listened, then said, ‘Right, get our coats.’
    Half an hour later we were back at the school and Mum was shouting at my teacher for endangering her daughter’s health by leaving sharp nails sticking out of the furniture. I was so embarrassed. I thought, Nothing good will come of this. I’ll have to pay somehow.
    That’s how it seemed to work with teachers. They didn’t let you get away with anything.
    It wasn’t the only time Mum’s behaviour had consequences. As a result of all the antibiotics pumped into me to combat the double pneumonia when I was born, my teeth had become seriously discoloured. At first Mum told me not to worry because as soon as my baby teeth dropped out, my adult ones would be as white as new. Then she spoke to a dentist and suddenly there was a change of plan. Without immediate action, she was told, there was a good chance that my baby teeth could actually infect the new teeth as they formed. In the 1960s this could be treated in one of two ways. Generally, the dentist would paint the affected teeth with a protective black coating to stop the rot spreading. To me that sounded vile. Who wants to have black teeth?
    I had no idea that the other option available was even worse – but Mum did.
    ‘That’s the coward’s way out,’ she explained. ‘But we’re brave, aren’t we?’
    I nodded, not realising the consequences.
    The alternative to having your teeth blacked out was having them extracted. One by one. That was Mum’s plan. She was going to get to the root of the problem – and have them all out.
    I was fine about it up to the point that my name was called. Then I stepped into the dentist’s room and saw his assistant preparing the tray of gleaming, silver tools. That’s when it dawned on me what was about to happen.
    ‘Mum, I don’t want to do it,’ I said quietly.
    But she wasn’t interested in what I wanted. And she certainly didn’t want to be questioned in front of someone as important as a dentist. That’s not how people behaved then.
    ‘Don’t be such a baby,’ she hissed firmly