Secrets Read online

  It’s as if that Dad has left home and a grumpy stranger has moved into his body.

  ‘What is it now, India?’ said Mrs Gibbs. ‘Come on, try not to be such a baby. I’m not telling you off, I’m just trying to have a little chat with you.’

  ‘I know,’ I mumbled, sniffing.

  ‘Haven’t you got a hanky, dear? India . . . things are all right at home, aren’t they?’

  I jumped.

  ‘You know you can always talk to me, don’t you? Is there anything really worrying you?’

  I clicked on various images in my mind: Dad, Mum, Wanda. I scrolled down each long list of worries. I couldn’t decide which to highlight. The Dad Dilemma was in the boldest font but I didn’t want to tell Mrs Gibbs about him. He’s still the most special person in all the world to me (apart from Anne). It would seem horribly disloyal if I started whining about him.

  I didn’t mind whining about Mum but this is a nonstarter. Mrs Gibbs reveres her. She’s always going on about her success and her stupid, simpering appearances on breakfast television. (Mum was even on Blue Peter once – with Phoebe.) I wondered about telling Mrs Gibbs what Mum’s really like, but it’s hard to put into words, even if you’re ‘extremely articulate, perhaps a little precociously so’. That was Mrs Gibbs’s comment on my school report at Christmas.

  Mum doesn’t do anything bad to me. She doesn’t say anything either. It’s the way she says it. The way she sighs. The way she raises her eyebrows. The way she rushes straight past me, talking over her shoulder. The way she never wants to sit down and talk to me. If I try to grab hold of her and start gabbling she always goes, ‘Oh darling, I’m in such a tearing rush. Can’t you ask Wanda?’

  Wanda’s no use whatever. Especially recently. She just stays in her room most of the time. She doesn’t even go out with Suzi any more. I don’t think they’re friends now. Wanda hasn’t got any other friends. I’d be her friend but she barely takes any notice of me.

  I wondered about having a good moan to Mrs Gibbs about Wanda but I couldn’t be bothered. Besides, Mrs Gibbs might have a word with Mum and then Wanda would get into trouble. Then I’d be for it. Wanda’s got these pointy long nails and it really hurts when she pinches.

  ‘No, everything’s fine at home, really,’ I said, sighing.

  Mrs Gibbs sighed too and told me to perk up then, as if I was a jug of coffee. The cloakroom was empty when I got my coat. Everyone had gone home already. I trailed out across the playground, expecting Wanda to nag at me for keeping her waiting. But Wanda wasn’t there. She wasn’t standing by the gate, leaning on the wall, wandering up and down the pavement. I looked for the car but it wasn’t parked anywhere.

  I wondered if Wanda had nipped along to the corner shop for some chocolate. I went to have a look. She wasn’t there either. I bought myself a Mars bar – king size – and ate it in five gollops while I wondered what to do.

  I could go back to school and tell Mrs Gibbs.

  I could find a phone box and ring home.

  I could ring for a taxi.

  I could stand outside the school waiting and waiting and waiting.

  I could walk home by myself. I thought about it. I knew the way. It wasn’t that far. It would only take twenty minutes, half an hour at the most. So I set off, my school bag bumping on my back. It felt as if I was starting out on an adventure. I enjoyed the feeling. Maybe I wouldn’t go home. Maybe I’d walk off into the wide world and seek my fortune. No, I didn’t want to sound like a fairy tale. I wanted to be part of a stark modern drama. I played a tragic runaway picked up by a wicked man who kept me captive and forced me to submit to his evil intentions . . .

  ‘Wait a minute, little girl!’ A fat man suddenly grabbed hold of me. I gave a little squeak of terror.

  ‘You nearly walked right out into the road!’ he puffed, his sausage fingers still splayed on my shoulders. ‘You could have stepped straight under a lorry. You were in a right old daydream.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered and rushed off – in the wrong direction. I felt such a fool I kept on running. I looked round quickly as I turned the corner, just to make sure he wasn’t following me. He wasn’t the wicked man of my fantasy, just a kind grandad in a too-tight bomber jacket trying to stop me getting run over, but I felt I couldn’t be too careful.

  I couldn’t see him but I didn’t want to retrace my footsteps just in case he bobbed back again. I’d have to trail right into town and go the really long way home – unless of course I took a short cut through the Latimer Estate.

  I did a local history project last year and found out that the Latimer Estate used to be Latimer Woods, and all this woodland belonged to the big manor house, Parkfield. Only all the woods got chopped down and built on in Victorian times, and then in the sixties all the little Victorian back-to-backs got pulled down and they built this vast tower-block council estate. Parkfield Manor got pulled down too and they built all our houses. We don’t get called an estate, we’re a ‘luxury complex’.

  The Latimer Estate is very big, very bleak and very tough. I’d never actually walked through it but we drive past sometimes. Mum always winds up the windows and locks the car door from inside in case any of the Latimer Estate kids charge up at the traffic lights, stick their hands through the window and try to grab her Rolex watch. It’s only an imitation one she got in Hong Kong when she went there on a business trip, but it looks real.

  No-one’s ever tried to steal her watch. The only time anyone’s approached the car it was to wash the windows and even then they backed off quick when Dad flipped his hands and mouthed at them. But Mum and Dad talk about the Latimer Estate as if it’s a suburb of hell itself.

  ‘It’s all feckless single mums on drugs and gangs of yobs,’ says Mum.

  ‘Drunks and drop-outs the lot of them. I don’t know why they don’t round them all up and shove them in jail,’ says Dad.

  Whenever we hear a police siren scream in the distance they sigh and shake their heads and say, ‘The Latimer Estate!’

  I hate it when they talk like that.

  My feet hurt in my hard school shoes and my bag was dragging on my shoulder. I didn’t want to trail all the way into town. I decided to be daring. I’d walk through the Latimer Estate all by myself.

  I set off, feeling like Little Red Riding Hood setting off into deep, dark Latimer Woods. I walked very briskly in spite of my sore feet, almost as if real wolves were after me. Two old ladies hauling shopping trollies and three mums with baby buggies wheeling washing back from the launderette didn’t look too scary, but as I got further into the estate, the stained concrete tower blocks high above my head, I started to feel more wary.

  Something wet spattered on top of my head. It wasn’t raining. I put my hand up gingerly to feel what it was. I heard a faraway giggle from one of the balconies. I was obviously a target in a spitting competition.

  I hurried on, looking up worriedly every so often. It was bad enough being spat at. What if they started chucking things at me? Weren’t they meant to have thrown an old television at a policeman only the other day? My own prissy private-school uniform was reason enough for them to have a go at me.

  I huddled inside my duffel coat and walked on as fast as I could.

  ‘Wibble wobble, jelly bum!’

  It was a sharp-faced little kid about six shouting at me from the dustbin shelter. I tossed my head, ignoring him. He started yelling worse things, swear words I’d never heard said aloud before.

  ‘Wash your mouth out with soap!’ I said. My voice sounded horribly posh and plummy. He screamed with laughter.

  I hurried on to the next block. There were bigger boys there, swooping round and round on skateboards, thundering up a home-made chute, flying through the air and then crashing down on the asphalt. I jumped each time they thumped, scuttling between them as they circled me.

  There was a girl cycling round and round too, doing fantastic wheelie tricks on a BMX. She looked every bit as tough as the boys, her hair tousle