As she turned in at the school gate, Angela breathed deeply to force back the rush of panicky nervousness fluttering her stomach. She felt as though every face was turned towards her, unwelcoming and resentful.
She hadn't wanted to transfer to this school, but her father's political career would have suffered if she had stayed on at her private school, and she had had to join this inner-city, mixed-race comprehensive school, where she didn't know a soul.
The faces turned in her direction were almost all black or brown and she wished, for the first time in her life, that she could be less tall, less blonde, less pretty. She stuck out like a sore thumb β not only because she seemed to be the only one wearing the regulation school uniform of grey blazer, blouse and tie, and long grey skirt.
She tried to smile confidently, but her nervous lips trembled and she achieved only something resembling a sneer. She walked, as slowly and surely as she could, towards the dirty grey stonework of the Victorian school building.
As the milling crowds of girls parted to let her through, it dawned on her that they were girls β only girls. One of the major forebodings about her school transfer had been the fact that, unlike her old one, her new school was co-educational. Looking around, she suddenly realised that, through the high railings to her left, there was another schoolyard, full of boys. Well, at least there was segregation outside school, she thought, with relief.
Because of her cloistered upbringing, Angela had little experience of boys and, while she was beginning to feel a developing interest, she was more than a little frightened of what she had heard about them, from more worldly-wise girls of her acquaintance.
With relief, she pushed open the swing doors to the school building and made her way to the head's office to report her arrival ...
* * * * *
Angela sneaked a glance at her watch. It was twenty to four. In twenty minutes, she would be released. She was still far from happy, but she supposed her first day could have been worse. The initial atmosphere of hostility had been maintained, with various whispered comments behind her back β mainly from the Negro girls, but one little Indian girl in her math class had been quite friendly - and the boys had not troubled her at all.
The major shock to her system had been the communal changing and showering for P.E. At Highfields, the girls had each separate cubicles, with their own showers, but here there was just one huge area with benches and hooks for clothes, and six showers, all together, under which all the girls had clustered, unselfconsciously naked, chattering and laughing. Because it was the last session before the lunch break, Angela had managed to delay her shower until most of the other girls had gone β which meant that she missed lunch, but she hadn't minded that because it meant she didn't have to undergo the embarrassment of having to eat alone in the huge crowded dining-hall.
A shrill bell interrupted her reflections and she realised, with huge relief, that she was free to leave, at last. She gathered up her books from her desk and slipped them into her bag. Again, she hung back to let the first rush of her fellow-pupils push and shove their way out of the classroom door, then walked slowly towards the cloakroom, to pick up her coat.
Once or twice, she was jostled by passing kids. She couldn't be sure they were deliberate shoves and pushes but she thought so, and she was already pretty depressed when an unseen hand snatched her bag and her books were scattered all over the floor. As Angela tried to retrieve them, passing kids made a point of kicking them along a bit and, by the time she had picked them all up, the unhappy girl was close to tears and wanted nothing more than to get her coat and get back to her safe, comfortable home.
Already, she was composing, in her mind, the plea she would mount to her father that night, to take her away from here and back to Highfields.
She pushed the cloakroom door open and, unintentionally, shoved it into the back of a small black girl, Irene.
"Hey, watch it, cunt!" shouted the girl.
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Angela. "I wasn't looking."
"Well, look next time, OK?" said the girl, jabbing a finger at Angela's chest.
"Yes," sighed Angela, turning away to look for her coat. "I will."
"Stuck-up cunt!" said another voice, but Angela, face now burning, managed to ignore it and, putting her bag on the bench, reached up for her coat. Then she stopped, looking at it in horror. It was covered in spittle.
A few muffled sniggers sounded behind her and, as she turned round to confront them, her bag was snatched off the bench and the contents strewn over the floor.
At least a dozen girls clustered round her, in a semi-circle. Most of them were black, but there were a couple of white ones, and a tall slim Indian girl with dreadful acne.
"Please," said Angela. "Please leave me alone."
It was a large, fat West Indian girl β her name was Hannah, Angela recalled from the P.E. class β who repeated, sneeringly β "Please leave me alone!"
"What's wrong?" Hannah went on. "Don't you like it here?"
Angela just shook her head, unable to speak. When she got out of here, there was no way she was coming back, she resolved. Come to that, she wouldn't need those books any more, so she needn't bother picking them up.
Making a decision, Angela pulled her coat off the peg and walked towards the door. With surprising speed, Hannah darted in front of her and put her fat hands on Angela's shoulders.
"Where you goin', bitch?" she demanded.
With a flash of anger, Angela pushed the girl's hands away and snapped β "I'm going home β and I won't be back, so you needn't worry about seeing me again!"
"Oh, yeah?" replied Hannah. "But we'd like to see more of you before you go β wouldn't we, sisters?"
A chorus of laughter greeted this comment and the girls moved closer. A twinge of real fear assailed Angela and, as Hannah reached forward again, she again pushed the girl's hands away, and ran for the door.
But she had to push her way through her assembled schoolmates and she was immediately grabbed by several hands and dragged to a standstill.
"Let me go!" she protested, as her hands and arms were held tight, but there was no let-up and, once again, Hannah was standing in front of her.
"We want to know something," the fat girl said, a leer on her face.
"What?" asked Angela.