Don’t Tell Mummy by Toni Maguire

hold onto the feeling of warmth that they gave, but each day they slipped further and further out of reach.
    A distance had sprung up between my mother and me, a cold space that I could not breach. Gone were the days when for a surprise she would arrange for a neighbour to drive her into town so that she could meet me from school. Gone were the days when she would listen to my chatter with a smile on her face, and gone were the days when she spent hours making me pretty clothes. In the place of my loving, laughing mother a stranger had appeared, gradually invading her body until the mother I’d known was no longer there, a stranger who had little time for me. Not understanding what I’d done wrong, I felt increasingly bewildered, unhappy and alone.
    At the start of the summer holidays I realized that my visits to my grandparents were to come to an end when my mother informed me I was not going back to my junior school in the town. She had enrolled me in the local village school, which was four miles away.
    I couldn’t stop the tears coming to my eyes, but I furiously blinked them away, having already learnt not to show any weakness. Instead of crying in front of her, I took Judyfor a walk and once out of sight let the tears fall. Not to see my best friend again, not to be part of the school I thought I would stay at for years, and never to see my grandparents alone and have the teasing conversations with my relatives that I had been enjoying so much. The prospect was too bleak to be bearable.
    I learnt the meaning of isolation that summer and a feeling I was too young to put a name to entered my head: it was the feeling of betrayal.
    September came and another first day at a new school began, a few days before my seventh birthday. This time there was no excitement in me as I dressed in my old school uniform and prepared myself for the first of many long walks. Not only was there very little public transport in those days, there was no school bus either. I could remember other first days and my mother taking me when it was only a short distance. Now I was to do the daily four-mile walk to school and the walk back alone.
    The first time the road seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance, with only a few scattered cottages breaking up the scenery, which that day gave me no pleasure. As I trudged along for over an hour, I was quite surprised I was able to find the school at all. Other pupils were arriving on bicycles and on foot and for the first time I realized that the school was mixed. Up till then I’d been used to a girls-only school. Squaring my shoulders for the challenges that lay ahead, I walked in and went in search of a teacher.
    The school building was completely unlike the mellow red-bricked one I was used to. It was a low, grey, utilitarian building, divided into two classrooms, one for the under eights and the other for children between eight and eleven. Here, when we had our breaks there was no grass to playon; instead a concrete playground was deemed sufficient for the needs of the hundred or so children who attended.
    At this school, when the breaks came, there was no Jenny to introduce me around, no companionable laughter that drew me in to feel part of their group; instead clusters of children dressed in a different uniform stared at me with open suspicion.
    The pupils, mainly local farm-labourers’ children, sniggered at my English accent and my old private school uniform which, since it was not worn out, my parents had insisted I wore, while the teachers ignored me.
    Lunchtime came and groups or pairs of noisy children ran to the small canteen, everyone busy saving places for their friends. Confused, I looked around for a seat. Spotting one at the end of the table I placed my satchel on the chair before joining the queue for food. Mashed potatoes with corned beef and stewed cabbage was served and as I forced it down in silence I knew I had entered a different world, one where I was no longer