Daisy felt as if she had been dealt a stomach blow. More, she felt ashamed. Guilty, even. But it simply wasn’t fair! The fight had not been over something small, but very big indeed. A grown-up problem passed like a cold from Peter’s parents to their horrid son and eventually to school and Bobby and then Miss Bailey. No one knew the real cause.
‘Have I your word this won’t happen again?’
Bobby nodded. Daisy forced herself to follow.
Mother folded the letter back into its envelope. ‘Of course, Mr and Mrs Brady will have something to say about their son’s injuries. Scratches on the face can be most painful.’ With a quick glance at Daisy she added, ‘They are also tremendously obvious.’
Daisy raised her eyes carefully and met Mother’s gaze. She quickly looked down again.
‘You’ll both apologise to Peter tomorrow.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Bobby.
‘Yes,’ said Daisy, ’but I don’t see why - ‘
‘We’re sorry,’ Bobby interrupted, pressing his arm hard against hers.
‘Such a pity,’ sighed Mother. ‘We all look forward to the Nativity play. Really, Daisy, has your involvement in something that was never your business in the first place been worth losing your solo?’
Despite the insistent pressure of Bobby’s arm on hers, Daisy had the most enormous urge to defend herself. To reveal that Peter Brady was the architect of their misfortune. It was Peter Brady who was the nastiest, cruellest, slyest bully in all of London.
‘And it won’t happen again?’ asked Mother.
Bobby shook his head firmly. Daisy, asserting a good deal of will power, followed suit.
Their mother’s face was full of suppressed feelings; love and sadness, pride and regret, trust and suspicion. Tears threatened Daisy again at the wrongness of it all.
‘I love you both,’ said Mother. ‘But you must learn that life doesn’t always work in the way we want it to.’
But why should they apologise to Peter when there was nothing to apologise for? Grown-ups, Daisy decided, just as Bobby predicted, inhabited another world altogether.
T he following day Daisy apologised to Peter. He grinned smugly and put out his hand for her to shake. As Miss Bailey was present, she had to take it. He squeezed her fingers so hard she almost cried out in pain. He’d done the same to Bobby too. Oh, how she loathed Peter Brady!
After that, whenever he saw her in school, he drew his finger across his throat. She knew what this meant. She was for it.
‘Take no notice,’ Bobby instructed. ‘Don’t walk home without me. Wait in the girls’ cloakroom until my detention is over. Never let him catch you alone.’
‘You and Bobby can come to my house after school if you like,’ Sally Watson suggested. ‘We live just round the corner. My dad will tear Peter off a strip. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, he says.’
Daisy was horrified at the thought. ’Sally, please don’t tell your parents about this.’
‘Don’t see why not. I’ll bet Peter never gave Miss Bailey’s letter to his dad,’ Sally guessed. ‘Probably said he fell in some bushes. Didn’t want his dad to know he’d lost a fight to a girl.’
Daisy felt an unexpected twinge of guilt. What must it be like to go in fear of your parents, rather than loving and respecting them?
That afternoon, as Daisy took her seat in class, she heard a rumpus outside. The screaming was so loud everyone stood up to look through the window. By the school gates, Peter Brady had managed to get his big head stuck through the railings. Mr Potter was trying to free him.
‘Sit down,’ ordered Mr Gulliver, the English teacher. ‘Don’t leave your seats again. Get on with your work while I go and investigate.’
Freed of supervision, Daisy, and the whole class scrambled back to the window. A tall woman pushing a battered pram arrived on the scene. Two tiny infants accompanied her. Both children had filthy faces and tousled hair. Their clothes looked like rags.
‘That’s Peter’s Mum,’ someone said.
Daisy had a dreadful, sinking feeling. Had Mrs Brady come to lodge a complaint? She imagined being hauled into the headmistress’s room where she would be put through an interrogation.
‘She keeps on thumping him,’ said someone else.
Mr Potter began to protest at the assault on Peter. Miss Bailey and Mr Gulliver joined in. But it was Mrs Brady who made everyone gasp when she pushed Mr Potter to the ground.
‘Peter’s in for it,’ said another boy. ‘His dad will knock seven bells out of him. My mum once saw Mr Brady break a man’s arm. It took six rozzers to arrest him an’ all.’
When Mr Gulliver returned to the classroom his thin fair hair was dishevelled and he looked very pale. ‘Pack up your books,’ he said in a shaky voice as the bell-ringing fire engine arrived to set Peter free. ‘We’ll finish our lesson in the assembly hall where we shan’t be disturbed.’
That evening Daisy told Bobby all that had happened. ‘I thought Mrs Brady had come because of me,’ said Daisy with a shudder. ‘But it was because Peter got his head stuck.’
‘Peter won’t tell on you,’ said Bobby cryptically. ‘But he will get his own back, so watch out.’
As she lay in bed that night, Daisy tried not to think of Peter Brady. Instead, she listened to Mother preparing the spare room at the top of the house for Grandma and Aunt Pat while Pops drove to Wattcombe to collect them. If only Grandpa was coming too!
Daisy tried to recall the big, strong man who she barely remembered before his death when she was young. But instead she fell asleep, only to dream of Peter Brady and Mr Calder, and a man called Hitler and she woke with a cry on her lips.
Climbing out of bed, she stood at the window. The silhouettes of the factories were illuminated by the moon’s silver rays.
