The New Woman by Charity Norman Page B

was laughing at her. The whole world was laughing. She stood wailing in front of the crowd, feeling ugly in her green shorts. She wished she was dead.
    Someone must have gone and got her sister, because she heard Gail’s voice in her ear. ‘You stupid, stupid little bastard.’
    ‘Tell them I’m a girl.’
    ‘Shut up!’ Luke could hear the smack in her voice, and covered her bottom with both hands as Gail dragged her over to join the boys. ‘And turn off the waterworks.’
    Luke couldn’t turn off the waterworks. She cried when Carl showed her a peg with Luke written beside it. She cried when they showed her the shoe locker, which was just a place to put shoes. She cried when she saw the boys’ toilets, with a pool of wee and soggy toilet paper on the floor where some boy had missed. Eventually she stopped crying out loud, but she carried on crying in her stomach. This gave her a stomach ache. She thought she would cry forever, because she’d learned something on her first day at school.
    God had made a mistake.

    ‘Tickets from Cottingwith,’ said the guard, holding out his hand.
    ‘Sorry.’ I fumbled in my wallet to find my season ticket. ‘Miles away.’
    He nodded, flicking this particular passenger no more than a casual glance. No doubt he saw a greying man, utterly unremarkable, wearing cotton trousers and a polo shirt.
    ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. He was already moving on.

Twelve
    Eilish
    I dropped down from the stile and began to walk, feeling the crunch of corn stalks under my feet. Each step sent up a small puff of dust. Day was draining from the sky, but I could still see the whole field, all the way to the footbridge.
    I was looking for Kate. I’d glimpsed her earlier, arriving home from the station. She’d left the car door open and run straight out here. She used to do that when she was a teenager, usually after a fight with Simon; screaming with sisterly rage as she plunged through Gareth’s precious crop. My policy was generally to leave her to simmer down, but if Luke was home he used to go and look for her. He would sit and listen to her troubles. Then they’d walk back to the house together, and I’d feel like the outsider.
    It didn’t take long to spot the slim figure on a cotton-reel bale. She was lying flat on her back, like Snoopy on top of his little doghouse. She didn’t stir as I walked up. I thought perhaps she’d taken Luke’s side and wasn’t speaking to me. It wouldn’t be the first time. I lowered myself onto the stubble, leaning my back against her bale. I felt calmer out here. The evening sky seemed honest and open after the deceitful shadows of the house.
    I heard Kate shift in the straw. ‘You okay?’ she asked.
    ‘Not really. How about you?’
    ‘I’ve been telling myself to get a bloody grip. Be cool. Nobody’s died.’
    ‘True,’ I said. ‘Nobody’s actually died.’
    ‘It feels like somebody has, though.’ Her legs appeared over the edge of the bale as she sat up. ‘Nothing’s what I thought it was. Up’s down. Right’s wrong. Front’s back . . . I mean, he’s my dad. I know him. I know he chews all around his thumbnail when he’s bothered about something. I know he secretly loves babies, goes all smoochy over them. I know what makes him giggle: Baldrick off Blackadder . I know what pisses him off.’
    ‘Holocaust deniers,’ I said. ‘Insurance companies. Traffic wardens. Arctic oil exploration.’
    ‘Bossy check-in chicks.’
    ‘People who kick cats.’ Yet he’s a fraud, I thought; a fraud with silky secrets. When nobody was watching, he put them on.
    ‘We used to play British Bulldogs in this field,’ said Kate.
    ‘How could I forget?’ I smiled at the memory. ‘Every teenager for miles around seemed to congregate at our place.’
    ‘Sophie Baxter and I used to sneak off and smoke under that lime tree.’
    ‘I knew about you and Sophie smoking.’ I looked across at the tree, covered now in pale blooms. Luke and I had stood