Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

He’d actually laughed.

‘Poor Mia’s getting blamed for this as well now, is she?’

This. This . As if it was nothing.

She looked at Beckie.

What was going on in that little head?

Beckie didn’t seem in the least bit worried about the ‘mediation discussion’ Mrs Jenner had arranged for Monday after school, when Beckie and Edith and their respective parents were going to ‘sit down and talk through the issues and agree on resolutions’. This apparently was going to involve an ‘acknowledgement of wrongdoing and harm’ by Beckie and ‘restorative gestures’. In other words, she would have to say she was sorry.

But was she sorry?

‘Mum?’

‘What?’

Beckie bit her lip.

Flora made herself smile. ‘Sorry, darling, I was miles away. What is it?’

‘Is it time yet?’

‘Almost. Go and put on a fleece or a jumper. It’s not that warm out of the sun.’

Beckie ran off back inside and Flora followed her, looking up at the elegant sandstone façade of their own house. Or rather, the house they were living in. Despite all her efforts to make it theirs – the kitchen extension to make a ‘family room’, the frantic redecorating, the fact that they’d taken every single stick of furniture with them, even the things that really could do with replacing – it still didn’t feel like home.

It felt like somewhere they had washed up, the three of them: a strange shore.

Gardens Terrace was, of course, a wonderful place to live. It was one of the nicest streets in one of the nicest cities in the world: a single row of big Victorian and Edwardian houses looking across a quiet road to the Botanic Gardens and backing onto their own huge gardens, and beyond them the huge gardens of the street behind. The houses all had relatively generous front gardens too, most with mature hedges and trees.

They were very lucky to live here.

At certain times of day when there wasn’t much traffic, it was almost like being in the country. You heard bird song, and the wind in the trees, and squirrels chattering. Sometimes, to Beckie’s delight, ducks from the pond in the Botanic Gardens flew over the house.

They had only been able to afford Number 17 thanks to their inheritances, thanks to both sets of parents being dead. They had paid an obscene price for a semidetached house. But it had been worth it, she kept telling herself, for the location and the garden and the beautifully proportioned Victorian rooms with shutters on the windows and deep skirting boards and cornices, and a working fireplace to sit round on a winter evening watching Strictly or an old film or, when Beckie was in bed, a Scandi noir box set.

They were very lucky to live here.

Did Beckie think so?

Was she happy?

Or did she still secretly miss Arden, and their old lives, as much as ever?

The problem was that Beckie was always so eager to please, so concerned about ‘bothering’ them, that trying to get her to reveal her true feelings was always a challenge. ‘Yeah, it’s great here,’ she’d say, whatever she felt about it.

The leaves were coming out on the little silver birch tree by the gate, and there was a smell of new shoots and cut grass and freshly turned soil: the promise of summer.

She took a deep breath of it.

Surely Beckie was happy?

She seemed happy, didn’t she?

This problem at school – it was probably just a blip, as Neil said. Beckie had always been such a good child that any bad behaviour was always going to be magnified, to seem a much bigger deal than it would have been in any other child.

No one was perfect, as Neil kept saying.

But it was just so hard to believe that she’d done it.

Beckie?

Their Beckie? Their sweet little girl, their popular, easy, laid-back little girl who made friends effortlessly wherever she went, who had so many invitations to birthday parties it was getting to be a logistical nightmare? Their Beckie, held up by other parents as an example to their own kids?

When Flora had arrived in the playground yesterday afternoon, the headmistress, Mrs Jenner, had come over and asked if she could have ‘a quick word’. Flora had gone with her quite happily to the little office overlooking the playing field at the back of the school. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that Beckie could be in any sort of trouble.

Mrs Jenner had sat down at her desk and waved Flora to one of the comfortable chairs in front of it. Flora had still been relaxed, reflecting that there was something not right about a headmistress who looked younger, rather than older, than her actual age. Mrs Jenner, who was in her early sixties according to one of the other mums, wore a bright cerise blouse under her fitted jacket, which was low enough to show cleavage. Her hair was a tumble of honey curls on her shoulders.

She looked Flora straight in the eye, as she’d presumably been instructed to do on some training course or other, and said, ‘I’m afraid it seems Beckie has been bullying another girl.’

Flora had repeated, stupidly, ‘Bullying another girl?’

‘I’m afraid so. I witnessed her hitting Edith myself. Beckie has denied it, but I saw her with my own eyes.’ She gestured at the window, from which there was a view of the playing field with its miniature goal posts.

‘Edith?’ Flora couldn’t remember an Edith.

‘When I spoke to her, Edith at first refused to admit there was a problem but then broke down and revealed that Beckie has been bullying her for some time. Physically, and in other ways. Beckie has told the other girls not to play with Edith. She makes fun of her and encourages the others to do so too. She has instigated a particularly cruel ruse which involves getting two or three other girls to pretend to Edith that they now want to be her friends, not Beckie’s, and are going to play with her, and then, at a signal from Beckie, they run away at top speed. Poor Edith falls for it every time. She tries to run after them, and then they all turn and shout insults at her and laugh. Some of the name-calling has been disablist, although Edith isn’t technically disabled, just… a bit uncoordinated. Spastic, mong, et cetera.’ She said the awful words in a brisk, businesslike tone that somehow made them all the worse.

Flora felt the room recede and fade.

Mrs Jenner’s voice was very faint, and then suddenly very loud.

‘Mrs Parry?’

There were grey spots in front of her eyes.

And then Mrs Jenner was round the desk and pushing Flora’s head down past her knees, pushing a plastic cup of water into her hand.

Flora found herself repeating weakly: ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

She brought the cup to her lips and gulped at the lukewarm, synthetic-tasting water.

‘Now, Mrs Parry,’ Mrs Jenner said briskly, like a nurse would speak to a difficult patient. ‘There’s no need to work yourself up.’ How pathetic , she was probably thinking. No wonder Beckie’s out of control . ‘It’s really nothing to worry about – children can be very cruel to each other, you know, and this sort of thing will happen from time to time. I’ve known far worse, believe me. I’m sure we can nip it in the bud.’ And Flora felt a quick pat on her back. A little rub between her shoulder blades.

‘But…’ She sat up and looked into the other woman’s bright blue, heavily mascara-ed eyes. There was a big clump of mascara sticking together several of the upper lashes of her right eye, like the lashes were melting, like this was a face in some surreal dream, melting away as soon as you got up close. ‘Are you sure?’

This wasn’t Beckie. It just wasn’t.

Beckie was so good with children with problems; so kind. At break and lunchtime, she and her friends always passed by the Buddy Bench, where children could sit to indicate they needed a ‘buddy’, and asked whoever was there if they wanted to join them.