Bad Girls Read online

  ‘I was . . .’ I didn’t like to say the word toilet to her. I just stood there, not finishing my sentence.

  ‘Sit down, then, Mandy. Now. I hear you’ve been having a rather unhappy time at school recently?’

  I sat down and stared hard at my lap. ‘I . . .’ I didn’t know what to say to this either.

  ‘You’ve certainly done very well at your lessons, and you’ve seemed happy and cheerful enough as far as we could see,’ said Mrs Edwards briskly.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, desperate to agree.

  ‘But for a while now there have been some girls who have been upsetting you?’

  I bent lower.

  ‘Some girls in your class?’ Mrs Edwards persisted.

  My head was nearly touching my clasped hands.

  ‘Mandy! Sit up straight. Now, there’s no need to look so worried. We’re going to get this little problem all sorted out. If you’d only told your teacher about it earlier then it would have been so much easier to nip this nasty bullying in the bud. So, why don’t you tell me all about it?’ She waited.

  I waited too. Mrs Edwards took her glasses off and rubbed the purple pinch marks on the bridge of her nose. She was trying to be patient.

  ‘Now look, Mandy, there’s no need to be frightened. You can tell me. I know it all already, but I just want to hear it from your lips.’ She paused. She sighed. She put her glasses back on and peered at me. ‘It’s Kim and Sarah and Melanie, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘So what have they been saying to you, mmm?’

  I couldn’t speak. I opened my mouth but no words came out. I couldn’t gather together all those worrying weeks of teasing and squeeze them out into short sentences. Especially not with Kim and Sarah and Melanie waiting just the other side of the door.

  ‘Your mother says they’ve been tormenting you, is that right?’ Mrs Edwards persisted. ‘And last Wednesday they chased you right out into the road and you were knocked down by a bus? Is that true, Mandy? Because this is very, very serious and it has to be dealt with. Did they chase you, Mandy? Did they?’

  ‘Well. Sort of,’ I mumbled into my lap.

  ‘Aha!’ said Mrs Edwards. ‘So what were they saying to you?’

  ‘I – I can’t remember,’ I said, shaking my head to stop the words echoing in my ears.

  ‘Well, what sort of things do they usually say?’ Mrs Edwards demanded.

  ‘I forget,’ I said.

  Mrs Edwards sighed. She stood up. She suddenly went over to her door, swiftly in her stubby heels, and opened it up. Kim shot backwards, taken by surprise.

  ‘So you’ve been listening, Kim!’ said Mrs Edwards. ‘Well, why don’t you three girls come in here and join us? Perhaps we’ll only start to get somewhere if we all talk this through together.’

  They came crowding into the office. I shrank down into my chair. Mrs Edwards shut the door and sat on the edge of her desk frowning at Kim. Kim was taller than her. She had her head stuck in the air, one hand on her hip, acting like she couldn’t care less. Melanie and Sarah were shuffling and drooping, much more scared.

  ‘As doubtless you heard for yourself, Mandy here is being incredibly loyal to you girls, refusing to say anything against you,’ said Mrs Edwards.

  They all looked at me. Melanie blinked at me gratefully. Sarah sniffed.

  ‘But it’s obvious to me that you three girls have been very unkind to Mandy and this has got to stop, do you hear? I detest bullying. I won’t have it in my school. Now, Kim, Melanie, Sarah, I want you three to say you’re sorry to Mandy, and promise that you won’t call her any nasty names or chase her ever again.’

  They swallowed. Melanie started to say sorry. But Kim interrupted.

  ‘I think Mandy should say sorry to us,’ she said, tossing her head.

  Even Mrs Edwards was taken aback.

  ‘It was just as much Mandy’s fault,’ Kim went on smoothly. ‘That’s what started it. She told us these stories about her mum being a fashion model—’

  Mrs Edwards’ lips twitched. She was obviously thinking about Mum in her too-tight suit.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Kim,’ she said crisply. ‘Don’t make things worse for yourself telling these silly lies.’

  ‘I’m not lying, Mrs Edwards,’ said Kim. ‘You did say that, didn’t you, Mandy?’

  I bent my head further. I knew I was going very red.

  ‘Mandy?’ said Mrs Edwards, her voice wavering.

  ‘It was Mandy who told the lies, Mrs Edwards,’ said Sarah.

  ‘And then when we told her we knew she was lying she got really furious and she shouted at us and then she hit me,’ said Kim.

  ‘Now really, Kim, you can’t expect me to believe that,’ said Mrs Edwards. ‘Mandy’s half your size.’

  ‘But she still hit me. Really hard.’

  ‘She did, Mrs Edwards. She punched Kim straight in the face,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Yes, she did,’ Melanie said, joining in. ‘She hit Kim.’

  ‘And then she ran away and she wasn’t looking where she was going so she got hit by the bus,’ said Kim. ‘It was all Mandy, Mrs Edwards.’

  Mrs Edwards got up and came and stood beside me. She put her arm round the back of the chair, and bent her head towards me so that her pepperminty breath tickled my cheek.

  ‘You didn’t hit Kim, did you, Mandy?’ she said softly.

  I shut my eyes.

  ‘Just tell the truth, dear,’ said Mrs Edwards.

  ‘Yes, I hit her,’ I said, and then I burst into tears.

  Kim was triumphant. Mrs Edwards looked at me as if I’d let her down.

  ‘I still can’t quite believe it of you, Mandy,’ she said. But then she frowned at Kim and the others. ‘However, I know that you three have certainly been ganging up on Mandy recently. It’s got to stop. You’re not to call her names or say anything horrid to her, do you understand?’

  ‘Oh yes, Mrs Edwards, we understand,’ said Kim. ‘We won’t say anything to Mandy.’

  That was the catch. She kept to her word. She didn’t say anything at all to me. Neither did Sarah. Neither did Melanie. Kim marched them off and by lunchtime they had their act perfected. They hovered near me, but they didn’t speak. They looked at me, they nudged each other, they made faces . . . but they didn’t say anything.

  I tried to pretend I was Miranda Rainbow, far too cool to care. It wouldn’t work though, not with them bobbing about in the background.

  Arthur King came over to me, his eyes twitching behind his glasses. He was holding a big old book and he offered it to me like a talisman.

  ‘Here’s that book I was telling you about, Mandy,’ he said, gabbling a little. ‘Do you want to have a look at it?’

  Kim screeched with unkind laughter. Sarah and Melanie giggled.

  ‘Over here. Where we can have a bit of peace,’ said Arthur, steering me away from them.

  The book was King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I flipped through it gratefully, my hands shaking as I turned the pages.

  Kim and Sarah and Melanie followed.

  ‘Look, clear off,’ said Arthur, trying to sound threatening.

  ‘We’ve got a perfect right to be in this playground, same as you,’ said Kim. ‘We’re not doing anything. And we’re not saying anything to her.’

  She thrust her chin at me, smacking her lips together to show they were sealed. Sarah and Melanie copied.

  Mrs Stanley was on playground duty. She walked in our direction. She saw Kim and Sarah and Melanie. But I suppose they looked as if they were smiling at me.

  ‘Let’s get away from those loonies,’ Arthur muttered, and he pulled me right over to the edge of the playground, by the boys’ toilets. Where the girls never go.

  We leaned against the wall and looked at Arthur’s book together. Kim and Sarah and Melanie kept away, maybe because Mrs Stanley kept walking backwards and forwards across the playground keeping an eye on things.

  Arthur kept finding me his favourite bits and reading paragraphs to