But then, if she did she’d be taken to hospital, and that would be good, better than home. Wouldn’t it?
It was nearly dark now.
Dolly released her grip on the hand-holds at the top of the slide and whizzed, flew, cannoned down it and whirled off the end almost laughing, breathless, exhilarated.
‘Dolly!’
She stiffened. Turned. Dad was pacing toward her, coming quick, and there was something angry about every short, bandy-legged line of his body. Suddenly all the magic of the day dropped away as if it had never been.
He bent over, enveloping her in the smell of Old Holborn and gamey unwashed clothes. She thought he might be reaching for the bag she’d tossed on the ground, but he wasn’t. He grabbed her arm, hurting her, and bent and slapped her hard across the legs, twice. It stung like hell and she let out a cry.
‘What the fuck are you doing, worrying your mum like this?’ he shouted. ‘Come on!’ he said, and started dragging her off the field and back to the road, back to home.
For a while, she’d almost felt free.
But it didn’t last long.
It never did.
Dolly hated secondary school. The primary had been nice, tucked in near the church. It was small. But big school was just that: too damned big. She didn’t know anybody there because Lucy and Vera were put in the top stream and to her embarrassment she was put in the bottom, along with all the other no-hopers who had home troubles or who never paid attention in class.
OK, she admitted it; she’d never worked much at primary school. She’d mucked about and enjoyed it; it was a relief to be at school and not at home. Now, she was paying the price. Lucy and Vera had somehow cracked on, worked harder than her; but then, they had good backgrounds, nice parents. She didn’t.
Well, Mum was nice, to be fair. She just couldn’t cope, that was all. Edie was under the doctor now, taking a lot of pills and sometimes she’d be carted away in an ambulance. Dad had gathered the kids together the first time and told them that Mum was getting some treatment for her nerves, that it would help her, make her better.
For a while, it did. It was usually about three months, Dolly reckoned, before the wheels came off the truck in Mum’s brain once again. Then it was just her sitting in the chair all day, crying, and then it was off in the ambulance for another course of ‘treatment’.
‘What do you think they do?’ asked Sandy, the youngest, eyes wide with terror. ‘Do they strap her to a table or something, inject her with stuff…?’
