Faith - Lesley Pearse [6]
‘Hey, Stinky Wilmslow! Had a wash this year yet?’ Janice yelled out.
It was tempting to run into a neighbour’s house to ask for help, but she knew that if she did Janice and Margaret would be on to her again on Monday at school. ‘Go and boil your head,’ she called back defiantly and doggedly walked on towards them.
‘You still got nits?’ Margaret jeered as she got close to them.
That jibe stung for she’d never had nits. She washed every day too, although that didn’t stop the smells from her home attaching themselves to her clothes. But there was no point in protesting, it would just give them an excuse to hurl more insults at her.
‘Probably – and you’ll catch them if you touch me,’ Laura responded. She had a sinking feeling that the sadistic duo were going to start hitting her, and that would mean she’d have to show them that common girls like her also learned to defend themselves from the cradle.
As she reached them, Janice stuck out her foot to trip her up. Laura kept her nose in the air and pretended she hadn’t seen, but quick as a flash, kicked out at Janice’s other leg and made her topple over on to the pavement.
As Janice cried out in shocked surprise, Margaret jumped forward, her fingers hooked, ready to claw at Laura’s face. Laura kneed her in the stomach and Margaret reeled back, clutching herself.
By anyone’s reckoning it was a formidable display of superior wits, speed and guile, and both girls looked suitably stunned and afraid. Laura put her hands on her hips and looked scathingly at them. ‘Have you had enough?’ she asked. ‘Or do you both want a good kicking so you can run crying home to your mummies?’
They turned tail and fled, their short skirts fluttering up to show their white legs and navy-blue knickers. They weren’t even brave enough to call her more names from a distance.
Laura watched them go. She felt the incident ought to have made her feel powerful and triumphant, but it had quite the reverse effect. What she wanted was for them to like her, so they could spend Saturday afternoons in Woolworth’s listening to the week’s Top Twenty and looking at the makeup. But that was never going to happen now.
She slumped down on the wall of number 12 where she lived, suddenly, blindingly aware that it would take a great deal more than passing her eleven-plus and putting on a striped blazer to overcome the stigma of being a Wilmslow.
She’d been so proud when she got her place at the grammar school, and she thought her older brothers were just jealous when they said she wouldn’t fit in there. Even when it was clear her brothers were right, ever the optimist, she had told herself she’d win everyone around in time.
But she knew now she could never do that. She’d never get invited to one of the other girls’ parties, or home to tea; no one would ever want her around them. She didn’t mind that her parents had no money for the school trip to France, or for ballet lessons, but she didn’t think she could stand another four or more years at school without a single friend.
Until now she had comforted herself when things looked blackest by the fact the teachers said she was clever. She had believed that one day she’d get to be something brilliant like a doctor, a scientist or a lawyer, and then all those who had looked down on her would be ashamed.
But now she could see that Janice and Margaret’s prejudice against her was representative of how the whole world would see her. With a father in and out of prison, two older brothers who showed every sign of going the same