Page 75

Nothing.
‘Ms Wiley?’
She looks at me. ‘It was that last day, when I saw her – when she came into the kitchen –’
The mayonnaise was solidifying into a sticky, glutinous mass, buzzing with flies. There was glass everywhere, tiny splinters crunching underfoot. When the front door opened five minutes later she was on her hands and knees, collecting the pieces in a piece of kitchen roll.
‘Daisy? Is that you? Come in here at once!’
She got to her feet and reached for a tea towel. There was blood on her hands.
‘You did this, didn’t you?’ she said, gesturing at the mess on the floor. ‘You were the last one in the kitchen this morning. It had to be you.’
Daisy shrugged, her school bag dragging on the floor behind her. ‘It’s just mayonnaise.’
Sharon took a step towards her. ‘I’ve been out all day shopping and sorting things for the party, and now I have to go outagain, because you couldn’t be bothered to tell me what you’d done. And what were you doing with it anyway? No one has mayonnaise for breakfast. Or is that something else your fancy friends do? Something else we’re just too thick to understand?’
Daisy stared at the mayonnaise, and then at her mother. Her chin lifted in a gesture of defiance.
‘You think you’re too good for us, don’t you?’ said Sharon, moving towards her daughter. ‘Don’t think I don’t know why bloody Portia and all your other bloody friends aren’t coming tonight. You’re ashamed of us, aren’t you? You look down yoursnotty little nose at your own family, just like those stuck-up little cows. How dare you – howdareyou –’
Daisy turned to go, but Sharon lurched forward and gripped her by the shoulder, pulling at her cardigan. ‘Don’t you turn your back on me, young lady. I’m your mother – you’ll treat me with respect.’
Daisy twisted out of her mother’s grasp and they stood there for a moment, glaring at each other.
‘Miss Madigan told us,’ said Daisy slowly, her small face white to the lips, ‘that respect is something you have to earn. You get it because of the things you’ve done. You’ve never doneanything. You’re not evenprettyany more. That’s why Daddy’s looking for someone else. He’s going to get a new wife andI’mgoing to get a new mummy.’
It happened before Sharon even knew what she was doing. The hand raised, the stinging slap, the red angry mark. She staggered a moment, horrified. Not just at what she’d done, but at the look on her daughter’s face. The cold, hard, triumphant look.
‘You’re not my mother,’ whispered Daisy. ‘Not any more. I’d ratherdiethan be like you.’
Then she turned, picked up her school bag and walked away.
***
Millie leans forward and touches Portia on the arm. ‘I was just thinking, d’you remember that friendship thing we did that term? Part of all that “sex and relationships” shit?’
‘Maybe,’ says Portia, clearly doubtful.
‘Cos Idefforemember it. Miss Madigan started asking us what made a good friend, and Daisy said that a friend helps you if bad things happen, and you can tell them your secrets.’
‘Right,’ says Megan suddenly. ‘And then she asked Daisy if she had a friend like that and she said yes, but when we asked Daisy later if it was one of us she wouldn’t say.’
‘Right,’ Portia now, ‘and we were all really pissed off.’
Somer feels a tingle in the pit of her stomach; this is new, this feels important.
‘And you never found out who that person was? She never said anything about it after that?’
Millie shakes her head. ‘No, I’m sure she didn’t. I’d have remembered, cos she made such a big thing about it.’ She considers for a moment. ‘If she told anyone, I reckon it would have been Miss Madigan.’
‘Definitely,’ says Portia. ‘Those two werereallytight.’
‘God, yes,’ says Megan, making a face. ‘It wascompletelypuke-making, if you really want to know.’
***
Adam Fawley