mirror and noticed that my foundation looked a bit orange and I’d missed a couple of black hairs on my upper lip with the tweezers. Great. I couldn’t wait to be known as Whiskers.
‘Wind the window up, Harley. Stop shouting.’
‘Mum, there’s a Porsche Boxster. Jeremy Clarkson says you only buy one of those if you can’t afford a 911,’ said Harley, twisting around in his seat and pushing Bronte onto the gear stick.
‘Ouch. Get off,’ said Bronte. She shoved Harley back.
‘Stop pushing her, Harley. Close the window, now.’ I tried not to shout in case I couldn’t stop.
‘This is brill, Mum,’ said Harley, ignoring me and pointing out an open-topped BMW.
I gave up and turned my attention to Bronte. ‘Hey, Bronte, look at those lawns. They look like somewhere the queen might have a tea party. I bet they play rounders there in the summer. What do you think? Doesn’t it look amazing?’ I said, hoping to get a small glimmer of reassurance from her. She shook her head.
I tried again. ‘Come on, love. Let’s try and get off to a good start. Everyone feels a bit shy on their first day, isn’t that right, Harley? You’ll soon make friends.’
Harley tried to help out. ‘Yeah, come on, Bront, it’ll be okay. Anyway, Dad says we can go back to Morlands if we don’t like it here.’
Bronte turned her mouth down so far at the corners, it almost made me laugh. ‘Dad said Stirling Hall was for tossers, anyway. Though he thought I looked really pretty in my uniform.’
Good old Dad. Colin had wandered about the kitchen in his boxers, eating toast without a plate, sounding like he was sucking up his tea through a straw. He made no attempt to help as I double-checked the football socks with named garter, the ‘laces, no Velcro’ rugby boots, the navy ‘no logo’ PE shorts, and every other bloody bit of sports equipment an Olympian in the making could need. I had refused to let myself mourn the days of any T-shirt and a tracksuit, out loud anyway.
I tried to reverse into the one tiny slither of space I could find that wasn’t blocked by a monster 4x4. The Mitsubishi woman, ‘Jen1’, leant on the horn as I had a second go. She was obviously in a hurry to get somewhere. Her plastic surgeon probably, judging by her ugly mush. I wished her a flat tyre as I finally managed to park up.
We got out of the van. I adjusted Bronte’s hat and looked away from the hands I could see waving behind the Mitsubishi’s shiny windscreen. I was never going to beat a Stirling Hall mother in a spelling bee but I’d fancy my chances in a slanging match. I’d get Jen1 back another day.
‘Why was that lady waving at you, Mum?’ said Harley.
‘I’ve no idea.’ I shuffled him forward.
‘She was trying to talk to you. Won’t she think you’re rude? You told us to be polite to everyone we met today.’
Just when the toothpick holding my patience together looked about to snap, Bronte threw her new rucksack down and ground to a halt like a fat old Labrador that’s decided it’s not walking one step further.
‘Mum, I’m not going. I want to go back to Morlands. We should’ve started in September. January’s too late. Everyone will have made friends and I won’t have anyone to play with.’
I dug deep. Ferreted about for a kind word. Beamed myself into my other world as Julie Andrews, dancing about in The Sound of Music singing ‘Do-Re-Mi’, like I did at work when people who were too lazy to pick their pants off the floor started having a go at me. The voice in my head was screaming, ‘You ungrateful cow. Here I am making sure you get a fantastic education and all you can do is whine your arse off.’
I managed a reasonably calm, ‘It’s too late for that. Don’t worry. It’s going to be fine. I spoke to your teacher and she seemed really nice.’ In fact, all I could remember was how I’d nodded blankly at Bronte’s teacher as she talked about ‘prep’ for a good fifteen minutes until I realised she was on about homework.
I stood on the edge of the sea of green blazers belonging to the prep school kids. A steady stream of older children, dressed in grey, dodged around the little ones and headed over to the senior school building on the far side of the cricket pitch. It had towers. Towers! I would be so proud if Harley and Bronte ended up there. However, the odds weren’t looking too hot if I couldn’t even get Bronte through the doors of the prep school today.
Harley stood beside me, relaxed, as though we were queuing for the cinema, happily gawping round at the cars. The other kids were swarming through the stone arch into the playground beyond. In my hurry to get away from Colin and his repetitions of ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain’ in stupid voices, I’d forgotten to re-read the letter and find out where I needed to take them. I glanced around for a mum I liked the look of. Which was more difficult than it first appeared. Not the woman with a long, grey plait down her back. Bloody lentil-eater, for sure. She looked like she knitted her own knickers. Maybe the one next to her. No, she had a briefcase. And stilettos. Obviously rushing off to some mega job in the City. No time for her to be a traffic warden for me when there was a bonus to be had. God, this was hopeless. I felt homesick for the mothers at Morlands with their flip-flops, dark roots and Marlboros, shoving packets of crisps at chubby children and talking about EastEnders as though it was real life.
Bronte looked up at me. ‘I’m not bloody going,’ she said, her eyes darting around for an escape route. That got me moving. I walked straight up to the nearest person, a young woman with peroxide blonde hair and skintight jeans, holding a spaniel on a lead.
‘Excuse me, do you know where 4H or 5R children need to go?’
‘Excuse?’ she said, untangling herself from the spaniel’s lead. ‘My English very bad.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said, waving her away. Of course. No nice Morlands grannies with a fag in their mouths and a toffee in their handbags here. Stirling Hall’s nannies came with a paid-for car and a foreign accent. Bronte was beginning to cry. Just as I was thinking up my most horrible threat for her, a blonde woman, no Penelope Pitstop hairdo, no red lipstick, no handbag with big gold clasp, came over to me. She was wearing jodhpurs. And if they were really only boobs under her sweatshirt, she had an exceptionally large pair of knockers.
‘Hi, are you okay? I heard you asking about 4H and 5R? Is this your first day? It’s always mayhem on the first day of term. I’m Clover, by the way.’ She sounded so like Joanna Lumley in Absolutely Fabulous that I thought she might be taking the piss. She thrust out a hand with nails that looked like they spent time in an allotment. My scabby old mitts looked quite refined by comparison.
She turned to Bronte. ‘Listen, my twins are in 4H.’ She called over two identical girls with curly white blonde hair trapped into scruffy ponytails. ‘This is Saffy and this is Sorrel. Just remember that Sorrel has the mole above her left eye. Even I can’t tell the difference sometimes.’
Bronte made no attempt to say her name, so I filled in the blank. Clover bent right down to Bronte’s level, hauling a bra strap against gravity as she went. ‘Do you know what, Bronte? Your teacher is really lovely. Do you like art? Mrs Harper does the best pictures of horses. She’s taught Sorrel to draw a really amazing pony. Will you let the twins take you to class? Look, hold Sorrel’s hand, she’ll show you where to go.’
Miraculously, Bronte’s snivelling puttered to a halt. She glanced down at Sorrel’s hand, which looked as though it was fresh from digging about in a guinea pig cage. I thought I might have a rebellion to deal with, but Bronte put out a stiff little paw for Sorrel to hang on to while Clover kept up her running commentary. ‘Bye bye, darlings, be good, Saffy, remember not to imitate Mme Blanchard’s accent. And do try and eat your apple at break. Sorrel, did you put your fountain pen in your bag? And tell Mrs Baines that you’re not doing drama next term.’
‘Fucking hell, Mum,’ Saffy said. ‘Shu’ up.’
Bronte looked the most animated I’d seen her