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here?’
    ‘No one.’ The small girl was near to tears. She hardly looked old enough to be going to a senior school, her baby blue eyes, pink cheeks and blonde pigtails looking out of place amongst the hard-faced bigger girls they’d seen strutting by.
    ‘Neither do I, I’m Georgia Anderson. What’s your name?’
    ‘Christine Fellows,’ the blonde girl whispered back. ‘Do you think we’ll be able to sit together?’
    By morning break Georgia had tried to memorize every face. Christine had been given the desk next to her and although they hadn’t been able to talk yet, at least she seemed friendly.
    ‘Do you think we’ll ever find our way round this place?’ Christine sighed as they filed out of the form room for break. ‘Every lesson’s in a different room. What if we get lost?’
    ‘We’d better stick together then,’ Georgia giggled. ‘I shouldn’t think they’d punish us for getting lost in the first week!’
    As they came down the last flight of stairs the number of girls converging into a large hallway had reached hundreds. Everyone was talking at once, a heaving mass of navy-blue striving to reach the doors leading out to the playground.
    Christine clung on to Georgia’s blazer as they reached the hall. Surrounded by taller girls pushing and shoving, they inched their way forward blindly.
    The crowd cleared suddenly as they stepped outside into bright sunlight. Both girls paused, looking around for the milk.
    ‘Another nigger in the first year!’
    The remark was said loudly, with malice. Georgia’s head swivelled round to see a group of girls, all around fourteen, standing by the milk crates.
    Thinking the insult was intended for her she blushed scarlet, stopping in her tracks. Christine didn’t appear to have heard as she walked towards the girls and lifted two bottles out of the crate.
    ‘What’s up?’ she asked as she came back, giving Georgia hers.
    Georgia barely heard her as she watched a small West Indian girl being pushed away from the crates by a sullen-faced big girl.
    ‘Niggers get theirs round the corner,’ she snarled at the frightened first-year. ‘This is for whites only.’
    The girl was brassy looking, with untidy bleached-blonde hair and her tie pulled down. Although she was actually wearing the uniform, she had done as much as was humanly possible to disguise it. Her skirt was short and tight, a wide ‘waspy’ belt holding it up. The sleeves of her shirt were rolled up, a heavy bust stretching the material to its limits. She wore nylons and casual shoes instead of the strong lace-ups and grey socks Georgia wore. A lovebite on her neck and a spotty, pasty face all added to her slovenly appearance.
    ‘Do you think that’s true?’ Georgia whispered to Christine.
    ‘What?’
    ‘That coloured girls have their milk somewhere else?’ She was torn between moving away into the crowd before someone noticed her colour, or joining the black girl in her defence.
    ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Christine looked puzzled. ‘My sister came here. She never said.’
    ‘They’ll have to put a separate crate for me if it is,’ Georgia tried to smile. ‘Halfway between the two, a greyish colour.’
    By the time Georgia and Christine had gone round the corner to investigate, the West Indian girl had vanished amongst hundreds of other girls, but there were no more crates and it was obvious the big girl was playing a cruel joke.
    ‘Don’t get upset about it,’ Christine said. ‘My sister told me all sorts of things they do to first-years. She said they held one girl’s head down the toilet and flushed it.’
    The day passed in a blur of new experiences. Books handed out, timetables which seemed formidable, so many new faces and names to be put to them, that Georgia forgot the incident at morning break.
    Georgia parted from Christine at the school gates after arranging to meet her there the next day. Then joining a minority of girls going towards Blackheath, she turned left and