Watch Your Step
Karin must tread carefully when her nemesis reappears in her life three
School, the training ground of the barbaric. Some say they have never been bullied, which always makes me think they probably bullied someone else or at least turned a blind eye, refused to see another person’s loneliness, sadness, choosing to only see strangeness and a scapegoat. Relieved they weren’t the ones being teased.
Karin Peterson occasionally turns up in my nightmares if I’m stressed at work, but I’ve moved 200 miles from where I grew up; I hadn’t expected to see her in the flesh again. Yet, here she is, larger than life, at my daughter’s first music concert at her new school.
I recognised her immediately even though we left school 35 years ago. She hasn’t aged well, which is somewhat satisfying: she’s put on weight, her skin is saggy, but she is unmistakably her. Any residual doubt I might have had is eradicated when she whispers to the thin, pale woman sat close by. Her words sneak out from behind her hand then she laughs spitefully and glances disparagingly at another mother. I know that routine. She hasn’t changed.
I can hardly concentrate on Amelia’s performance. A shame, as she’s practised hard; she wants to make a good impression. She thinks being good at something will help her make friends. More than anything Amelia wants friends; joining a school halfway through Year 10 is difficult. My job has meant she’s had to change school four times. I’ve promised her I won’t take any more promotions if they involve a move. I can’t do that to her now she’s tackling GCSES.
The headmistress comes onto the stage, draws the concert to a close. We all clap politely then head to the place where tea and coffee is being served.
“Jenny Inks. Really?” Her voice cuts through the chattering crowd, I freeze. I’d hoped she wouldn’t recognise me, with my caramel low lights, my expensive clothes and jewellery; I may be 53 but I’m more toned and athletic than I was at school. When I look at the few photos I’ve kept, I hardly recognise the sad, scared, little tubster that stares back. But I suppose it’s the scar. She has to remember that.
She leans in and lands kisses left and right. It would be childish to rub them away although I want to.
“Jennifer Clark-burrows now,” I say. Can my husband’s ancient double-barrel name protect me?
“You’ll always be Stinky Inky to me,” she laughs. She turns to her friend who is hovering like an anaemic shadow. I don’t know this woman, but
I do: there was always at least one, bolstering up Karin, confirming her power. “Jenny used to wet her pants, even in junior school, that’s how she got the name.”
Not true. One day I sat on damp grass, making my school dress wet.
Karin put about the rumour that I’d peed myself. It stuck because her lie was funnier than the truth.
“Well, it seems you’ve married well despite being Stinky Inky,” she says dropping her gaze to my ring hand.
I did, in so much as I love my husband enormously and he loves me, but Karin means I must have married someone rich to afford a school like this. In fact, my husband is a poorly paid but very brilliant botanist; I’m a partner in a large management consultancy, responsible for multi-billion-pound budgets of clients who are household names. I’m the high earner. “I have four children,” she says, although I haven’t asked. “You?”
“Just one, Amelia.” I hate myself for saying the word “just”. There is nothing “just” about my lovely girl. Karin draws up her face in a
mock-sympathy smile.“oh dear. A lonely-only. Trouble conceiving or are you one of those career women, who is just too busy for a family?” I don’t reply. Normally, I’m articulate, coherent, even funny, but Karin has taken me back to the girl who couldn’t tell her teacher that when she raised her hand to answer a question, she was stabbed in the leg with a compass; couldn’t say that her homework had been deliberately defaced, rather than just “careless and untidy”; couldn’t say that her gym plimsole, which had gone missing, turned up in the loo cistern, an unwearable embarrassment.
My hand is shaking, the teacup rattles in its saucer. Karin is staring at my scarred, shuddering hand.
It happened on the last day at junior school. As a rite of passage, the older kids were served doughnuts and coffee. Unthinkable now, giving 11-year-olds caffeine and sugar but there you have it.
The monitors served. Again, I doubt 11-year-olds would be allowed access to urns of boiling water now either. Karin was Chief Monitor because the teachers didn’t know her as the pupils did. When I’m in the sun now,
I can still feel the agony of the scalding skin, see it flare angrily, curl to a crisp. The head insisted we call it an accident. He wanted to smooth waters, not to dive into murky, troubled depths. I was in hospital for weeks, missed most of my summer holiday.
It wasn’t an accident.
“Oh, I’ve just placed your daughter. Amelia is in the same class as my daughter, Natalie Gillingmore. She mentioned there was a new girl. Natalie knows everyone. She practically runs this place. She joined aged five. I always think it’s best to get your feet under the table as soon as possible. You missed a trick there. Bad Mummy,” Karin says with a laugh.“was that her playing the piano?”
“Yes,” I mumble.
“She’s very good.” It doesn’t sound like a compliment. “Natalie is on a music scholarship. She’s excellent. Not that we need the money. I put it in an account, so she can buy herself extras. You know what they’re like for labels at this age.”
Not really, Amelia never thinks about what she’s wearing, but I don’t say anything. I mumble an excuse about needing to find Amelia. My mind is whirling. Was Karin threatening me? Is her daughter likely to bully Amelia as Karin bullied me? It would be different now. Not boiling water from kettles but pictures on Snapchat, words on social media insidiously creeping into our home. No rest. No escape.
“It was an accident. An unfortunate accident,” the headmistress explains to the annoying journalist.
She hopes her voice sounds calm, rather than irritated. She’s rather fed up of fielding these questions from the local press, other parents, the governors.“mrs Gillingmore will make an almost perfect recovery. Yes, unfortunately she is withdrawing her children from the school.
“She’s not saying the school is unsafe, it’s just that she feels visiting here every day might be triggering. Mrs Gillingmore arrived at the music concert in four-inch Christian Louboutin shoes, which was hardly sensible. The marble stairs to the concert halls are very grand, imposing to look at, but slippery. Our places are very much in demand. Onwards and upwards.”
The headmistress wanted to end the conversation on a high.“we were very lucky that Mrs Clark-burrows witnessed the fall down the steps and acted so quickly.
“Did I mention her daughter is quite the music protégée? Now, she’s one to watch.” Adele Parks’ new novel One Last Secret, is published Thursday, by Harpercollins (£14.99)