May Contain Nuts (6 page)

I slipped the old padded envelope underneath the duvet and tried to pop the polythene air pockets as gently as possible.

‘For God's sake, how can I get to sleep with that racket? Pop! Rustle, rustle! Pop! Pop!'

Then silence. Then one more pop for defiance's sake and then I just sat there staring into the black nothingness of my daughter's future.

Anxiety had been my default setting ever since the children had been born. I remember when Molly and Jamie were little, there had been a feature on the radio about the risk of asteroids falling to Earth from outer space. The children couldn't understand why I was suddenly calling them in from the garden. In the end I had to force myself to stop being so irrational, though as they ran back out of the kitchen door I still heard myself shout, ‘Be careful!' as I glanced nervously up at the heavens. When David came home he wanted to know why the children were splashing around in the paddling pool wearing their cycle helmets.

Be careful.
That's all I ever seemed to say.

‘Mum, can we go on the slide?'

‘Um, all right, but
be careful
.'

‘Mum, can we jump off the diving board?'

‘Oh, er, OK, but
be careful
.'

Once when Jamie was swinging at the top of the climbing frame in the school playground he even heard his mother's voice booming, ‘Jamie, be careful!' as I happened to drive past. The poor child looked skywards, wondering if he had just
heard the voice of God. All right, I didn't
happen
to drive past their playground. I had taken a detour to check that he was all right. I couldn't help it – the worry was always there, a crippling sensation of permanent panic fluttering inside me, searching for something specific to land on.

The fear has many forms. When I was not worrying about something happening to my children, I worried that nothing would happen to my children. That they would end up as failures or embittered dropouts because we'd neglected to give them the best possible start in life. That by the time he was a teenager Jamie would end up bunking off school and spend his days lurking on the London Underground with other feral street urchins, riding up and down the escalators sticking chewing gum on the nipples of the girls in the bra adverts. And all because we'd mistimed the right moment to start clarinet lessons. So my children had to get the best education possible; they had to get into Chelsea College. The spectre of Big School loomed out of the sky like those approaching asteroids, beginning as a tiny far-off dot but growing ever closer, rapidly blocking out all light and warmth.

I went to nudge David but realized I didn't need to; he was wide awake as well.

‘You know that nursery school running race I told you about the other day?'

‘It doesn't matter that Alfie didn't win it. Gwilym's six months older …'

‘No, it's not that. Anyway, Gwilym didn't win it, Ffion won it; she dangled him over the line.'

‘I thought you all did?'

‘Yeah, but Ffion started it, so she had a head start.'

‘Forget about it. You're only five foot one, you were at a disadvantage.'

‘Five foot two. No, my point is: little Gwilym won because
his mother ran the race for him
.'

‘So?'

I paused for dramatic effect before telling him the idea that had been forming in my head.

‘
I'll
take the exam.'

‘What?'

‘I'll pretend to be Molly and take the exam for her.'

David reached across and turned the light on. The way he screwed his face up in the sudden brightness made him look totally perplexed.

‘You're not serious, are you?'

‘Well, look at me – I'm short, flat-chested, and last year they charged me half price in the cinema. No one at Chelsea College knows what Molly looks like. If I worked on my appearance a bit I could sit there in the hall with all the other boys and girls, put Molly's name at the top of the page, make sure she gets 100 per cent and a guaranteed place at the best school in London.'

It was 4.30am and the first jumbo jet of the morning was shattering the still silence of the night.

‘It would never work. You could pass for twenty-something, my darling, but eleven?'

‘What about Henrietta in Molly's class? She's taller than me
and
she has bigger bosoms. The cow. She'll be in the exam hall, so will hundreds of other kids of all shapes and sizes. With a baseball cap pulled down over my face and wearing kids' clothes, who'd look twice at me?'

He paused for a moment as the plane turned sharply when the pilot realized he wasn't going directly over our bedroom.

‘But what would we tell Molly?'

‘She can sit a test paper at home – we'll tell her there wasn't
enough room in the exam hall or something. That's the least of our problems …'

‘It just feels like a pretty extreme thing to do …'

‘It's no worse than going to church to get into a faith school, or lying about your address to get in on proximity.'

‘Yes, it is.'

‘All right, maybe a bit. But we have to do what we think is best for our children. I mean, it's not as if we'd be defrauding anyone, we're still going to be paying them thousands of pounds in school fees every year.'

The plane was right overhead now; it seemed to change gear or something as the roar shifted to a higher pitch.

‘Well, that's true,' said David thoughtfully. ‘And Molly would be an asset to any school.'

‘A great asset. Lead violinist in the orchestra probably. And she
is
bright …' I insisted.

‘… Very bright.'

‘She just doesn't do well in exams …'

‘Which is something Chelsea College might be able to help her with once she was actually in there …' said David.

The plane noise had begun to fade, but the sonic scream of the next jumbo was already building in the distance.

 

Make Fear Your Friend

By Barney Travers MGSc

Sunrise Books £6.99

Have you met your fears yet? No???? That's strange, you've been living with them for most of your life!!! Isn't it kinda rude to keep ignoring them like that? Maybe you should have gotten to know your fears a little better; find out who they are? ‘Hello, Fear-of-Failure, my name's Barney, how do you do?' ‘Hello, Fear-of-Embarrassment, how come you keep stopping me doing stuff?' Guess what? I nearly didn't write this book because I was kinda frightened it might come across as annoying phoney-baloney, but I MADE THAT FEAR MY FRIEND and now look: you're actually reading it!!!!

It is a Tuesday morning in February at the beginning of the 1980s. I am thirteen years old and I am sitting in the front row in the middle of the classroom. The ancient furniture dates from the era of slates and corporal punishment: a dark wooden bench and back rest connected to a gnarled desk with a worn flip-top lid upon which generations of girls have carved their initials or preserved for ever the names of boys they loved that week. There is still an inkwell but these days the ceramic pot inside is stuffed with old pencil shavings.

This is my worst, worst subject. Miss Torrance, squat and old, clothed in beige tweed, bulky rings on all fingers except the one that matters, has a smouldering temper capable of exploding at the unlikeliest of provocations. I stir the dusty inkwell with my pencil. I need a wee but there is only ten minutes till morning break and I daren't risk the wrath of Terrible Torrance.

‘Tamara, what is nine in binary?'

‘One, zero, zero, one.'

‘Correct.'

‘Susan, what is twelve in binary?'

‘One, one, zero, zero.'

‘Correct.'

Where is this place called Binary? I think. And why is everything there in ones and zeros?

‘Jennifer, what is twenty-four expressed as a binary number?'

‘One, one, zero, zero.'

‘Sheep!'

On hearing the word ‘sheep', Jennifer knows she must stand until she gets an answer right. If she gets her second answer wrong, she becomes a ‘goat' and must stand on her seat; three wrong answers and the offending pupil becomes a ‘billy goat' and must stand on her desk until coaxed down from the mountaintop by a correct answer. Miss Torrance thinks this makes it fun; she thinks this is her being ‘a character'.

Five minutes later I am one of the half-dozen girls standing up for an answer that I knew was wrong, but which I judged as preferable to telling the truth, which was: ‘I have not had the faintest bloody idea what you've been talking about all lesson.' I sway from side to side. My need to wee has increased since I was ordered to stand. It is beginning to crowd out everything else as Miss Torrance fires questions round the room at increasing speed, and there are giggles as girls sit or clamber onto classroom furniture.

‘Jennifer, what is fourteen in binary?'

‘Is it one, one, zero?'

‘Goat!'

Jennifer unhesitatingly stands on her seat; she always makes it to goat, but never billy goat – soon a well-timed easy question will ensure that she is back to the floor.

‘Alice, what is fourteen in binary?'

I am caught off guard. I had been hoping that if I didn't
make eye contact she might not notice me there, standing up right in the middle of the classroom.

‘Er … one, zero, one, zero,' I say, making a random guess in this foreign language in which everyone else seems so fluent.

‘Goat!'

I stand on my seat. I am seriously uncomfortable now. It comes in waves, it aches, and I try not to jiggle too obviously where I stand. Then an unprecedented breach of the unwritten rules from Miss Torrance. She asks me a second question in a row. ‘Billy goat!' shout a couple of her favourite pupils in unison with their teacher and now I am the only one in the room tottering on my desk, towering over my classmates, who one by one answer correctly and return to the dignity of sitting down.

Think of deserts, I tell myself, dry, dry deserts, with no water for miles around, but a mirage appears with a cascading waterfall, which turns into a flushing lavatory, a hallowed private sanctuary, with a door and a lock and a place to sit and let go. Think of dust, think of sand, think of air, think of a big round toilet seat … no, no, put that out of your head.

‘OK, Alice, today's billy goat,' says Miss Torrance finally. ‘An easy one for you, I think …' but I don't even hear the question, it is as much as I can do to present a face of apparent total concentration, to appear to be working out the answer, when what I am really thinking is: I really, really need a wee now, lesson please end, school bell please ring … but the minute hand on the clock is still in the same place it was the last two times I looked. Silence. A room full of faces staring up at me.

‘Please can I go to the toilet?'

‘No, you're not getting out of it that easily, young lady!' she barks.

‘Come on, Alice, you can do it!' whispers a friendly voice.

‘Alice, have you listened to a single thing I have said this lesson?'

‘Yes, miss.' It is hard to appear sincere when I am towering above her, worrying about spraying urine all over her classroom.

‘So what is four expressed in binary code?'

‘Go on, Alice, you know this …' whispers another voice.

All faces are staring up at me, all my classmates willing me to say the right answer. I think hard about the separate words that make up her question, repeating them slowly to myself, but this is a pointless exercise – it is like carefully pondering, ‘What … is … blinky-blonky tum-te-tum?' and then hoping the answer may present itself.

‘Well?' she says.

‘Sorry, could you repeat the question?'

‘It is basic binary. Set two, Alice, remember? What's four in binary?'

I have to say something. All this pressure on me, it is pressing on my bladder, it is squeezing and pushing – any answer, just say something … ‘One, one, one, one.' It seems like an intelligent guess. Four ones are four, I am sure of that. I must be in with a chance.

‘NO!' she booms incredulously. ‘NO, NO, NO, NO! That's fifteen, isn't it?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you understand why one, one, one, one is fifteen?'

‘Er, yes.'

‘So what is four?'

‘Oh, what is four?' I repeat as if she hasn't made herself clear before now.

‘Yes. What is four?'

Silence. Standing on this desk ten feet above the floor, I can see the top of her head, I can see out of the glass partition into the corridor where the salvation of the toilets is just a few yards away. My skinny bare legs are level with the faces of my classmates, white socks and black shoes shuffling nervously on the desktop. It feels like for ever but I suppose it can only be fifteen or twenty seconds that she lets me stand on that desk in silence with the whole class looking at me. The first thing I notice is how warm the liquid feels upon my leg, how quickly it flows down my inner thighs to my calves, then soaks into my socks, a little urine finding its way inside my shoes. The sheer amount of it, too, is surprising: it just keeps coming and coming, forming several fast-flowing streams that run to the edge of the desk, dripping down to bulging pools that spread across the dusty classroom floor, while a few splashes bounce off the desk and onto Miss Torrance's tweed jacket.

It was quite a few moments before she realized what was happening, before she understood why girls around me were shrieking ‘Urgh!' and leaping away from the downpour. She was barking at them to be quiet and sit down, unaware that little flecks of dampness were appearing on her jacket. Miss Torrance never did tell me what four was in binary. She never wore that jacket again either. But at least we didn't do sheep, goat, billy goat again after that.

Most of the girls in my class wore badges on their lapel for outstanding achievements in their particular fields: choir or netball or library monitor. It turned out there was no enamel shield for having pissed on your maths teacher. Of course, I was completely traumatized and was off school for a while, but time passed and the worst thing that could have happened in the whole world was eventually forgotten. I went on to be appointed form captain, to win medals for the debating society
and star in the school play. Life moved on. I peeked at my old school on
Friends Reunited
. Somebody had put: ‘Whatever happened to old Alice Niagara-Knickers?'