FIVE
I woke to the sound of shots. At least, that’s what I thought they were until I realised it was actually just a car backfiring. This was London not Boston. A city without guns. Safe, we thought.
It was a Sunday morning in early fall. Autumn, I corrected myself.
‘We’re in England now,’ my mother kept reminding me, as if I could forget. ‘You’ll never feel at home here if you keep talking like an American.’
‘It’s not home,’ I told her. ‘And my tummy hurts. I think I’m sick.’
‘Oh, it’s your stomach today, is it?’
I’d been feigning maladies ever since starting Hampstead Hall School. (Hampstead Hell, I called it.) I’d even tried biting my nails in an attempt to get a tapeworm but, contrary to my grandmother’s dark prophesies, my endeavours were as unsuccessful as my efforts to get out of class.
Being the new girl sucked. One of these things is not like the others. . .
The kids made fun of my accent. Nicknamed me Yankee Doodle. Asked if my mother was married to Ronald McDonald.
‘For your information she’s not married to anyone.’
Yankee Doodle became ‘Seppo bastard’.
Cockney rhyming slang. Septic tank, Yank. ‘Bastard’ was rather more obvious.
‘Take it back,’ I snarled, hands curling into fists.
‘Why? You just admitted you don’t have a daddy.’
In those days, in that part of the world, being from a single parent household wasn’t as common as it is now. Plus, like all children, the blazer wearers had a nose for weakness. The tiniest spot of blood would get them circling.
‘Did you see the way she was watching me and my dad at drop-off this morning?’
‘She had to give her Father’s Day card to her grandpa.’
‘What a loser.’
‘You’re the losers. You and your bunch of idiot dads.’
I used my fists to ram home the message, but there were more of them and, unlike me, they’d learned words were more powerful than punches. Plus they left fewer bruises, a.k.a. ‘proof’. Nanna G would have been impressed.
I was sent to the Head’s office and given a letter to take home to my mother. Two days later, I was sent home with another.
My teacher– all angles and elbows with the ill-fitting name of Miss Bacon– had called us up to her desk in turn to collect our homework assignments.
‘Very good, Allegra.’
‘Lovely descriptive language, Eugenie.’
I was at the back of the line. She handed me a sheet graffitied in red pen corrections. No smile.
‘Colour has a “u” in it. So does “neighbour”. There’s no “z” in “apologise”, and two “l”s in “travelled”.’
She shook her head, made the sort of sniffing noise I associated with my grandmother.
‘You’re in Upper Trans, Sophie. You shouldn’t be making mistakes like this.’
I explained politely that I’d got a medal in the spelling bee at my old school and had been reading since I was three.
‘They’re not mistakes,’ I concluded.