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stained sheets in a binbag and dumped that in next door’s garden. Mum might have noticed, but I knew Dad wouldn’t. Blood for blood, as it turned out.

 

Chapter Four
    ‘I was up all night,’ sighed Maggie, clicking sweeteners into her tea.
    Poll shook her head and tutted. ‘Me an’ all. Couldn’t get off. Two o’clock, three o’clock. I kept thinking, What are the Gothic elements in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre ? And to what extent do they help shape the narrative structure?’
    ‘It’s the ending that bothers me,’ said Maggie.
    ‘Oh, me too. Have another biscuit, go on.’ She nodded at the flowered plate.
    ‘Ta, I will thanks. No, it’s the religious parallel with the story of Saul, and the whole redemption angle I’m uncomfortable with. To me, the plot’s too didactic, too bound up in biblical teaching; the emotional force of the novel becomes, ultimately, diluted. A Romantic writer like Brontë should never have confined her artistic scope within the narrow boundaries of Victorian Protestantism. The two elements are, by definition, diametrically opposed.’
    ‘Dickie thinks the same.’ Poll screwed up her face. ‘He reckons it’s like serving custard with bacon.’
    Actually, this never happens.

    *

    When Maggie and Poll do get together they talk about illness or the good old days or crime rates. They like to sit with the local paper divided up between them, picking out the shock horror reports about elderly ladies getting beaten senseless for tuppence. If I’m in the room with them, I’m either part of society’s decadence or, if Poll’s in a good mood, a shining exception. Youth as it should be when it’s been properly brought up. ‘She’s a whizz at Countdown ,’ Poll will often remark. ‘Even the conundrum at th’ end, no problem.’ I keep quiet. It doesn’t do to be too clever round here.
    Sometimes we play Scrabble with a giant board, but even that’s problematical. If I win, it’s, ‘Well, no wonder, you’re studying English. I never had a proper education, me.’ If I lose; ‘Eeh, and you with all your brains, fancy.’ Meanwhile, Dogman cheats for England. FUNT, he puts down. YESKER. NONING. When I challenge this shite, he claims they’re dialect words and Poll tells me to stop picking on him.
    If only life were an exam.
    In real life, for instance, I can never think of anything to say, plus I hate the sound of my own draggy voice. Somebody says, ‘Hiya, cocker, how’s tricks?’ and I panic, even if it’s someone I know; especially if it’s someone I know. I died a thousand deaths last month when Mrs Threlfall asked if I was courting yet.
    I spend a lot of time smirking dumbly at the floor. But on paper I’m as articulate as anyone. ( In a sense, Mrs Threlfall, your question, though innocently meant, is redundant, for you should know that I have decided to shun the twenty-first-century mating rituals in which the majority of my peers are engaged. In today’s Britain, women can lead happily independent lives, unencumbered by the erroneous expectations of a patriarchal society. So put that in your Ty-Phoo and sup it. )
    They’re underrated as a pastime, exams. There’s something about the adrenaline rush, the legitimate isolation, the whole regulated nature of the exam experience that makes me feel the school hall is my natural element. I don’t enjoy exams like, say, I enjoy a box of Maltesers, but I am fantastic at them whereas I seem to be crap at everything else. Ten A-stars, me; you’d never guess it if you didn’t know. Some days I wear them round my brow like a crown, but mostly they form a constellation called the Sad Act.
    When I walked out of that last English module, I felt elated. I’d been pulling Sons and Lovers to bits, brilliantly, because of course I am an expert on Destructive, Stifling Relationships, and Frustration generally.
    Halfway through a wasp landed on the paper. It crawled onto the first question I’d answered, sat for a moment