Laura didn’t know anybody here. She didn’t want to be here. She drifted towards the gate. But the gate was padlocked shut, like a prison door.
Some of the older kids gathered by the gate. Ciggie smoke hung around their heads like helmets. Laura saw a girl from her class snogging a boy, or a young man, through the railings. He wore a scruffy parka with an immense hood and a Union Jack sewn to the back.
“Look at them.” Lu-chh at th’m. “Like monkeys in a zoo. Pathetic.”
Laura turned. It was Bernadette, hanging around by the railings with the rest. She had her uniform skirt rucked up in her belt so you could see her knees—laddered tights—and her blouse was open low enough to show a bit of cleavage. She was taller than Laura, tall for her age, and she might have passed for eighteen or twenty. But her fingers were stained by Quink ink, like every other schoolkid’s.
And she had a friend on the other side of the railing, a tall, pale boy in a frock coat, with his black hair piled on his head in a vast quiff. Teddy Boy, Laura thought straight away, though she had never seen a Ted in her life.
He pranced around, showing Laura his drainpipe trousers. “Hello, gorgeous. Do you like me kecks?”
He made Laura laugh.
Bernadette prodded her arm. “What you looking at?” This was in Bernadette’s thick Scouse, that Laura had had trouble understanding all morning. Wot chew luckin’ atts?
“I’m sorry.”
That set them off. “Oh, Ai’m saw-rry, Ai’m saw-rry, look et mee, Ai’m the Quee-een…”
Laura just put up with this until they ran down.
Bernadette said, “You can never miss Nick. Always done up like a pox-doctor’s clerk. Nick, this is the Posh Judy I told you about.”
“I’m not posh. And my name’s not Judy.”
That set them off laughing again.
The boy, Nick, looked her up and down. She didn’t like it when boys, or men, did that, but there was something cool about Nick’s inspection. “So what is your name?”
“Laura.”
He shrugged. “That’ll do.” It was hard to tell his age: twenty, maybe. He wasn’t that bad-looking if you got past the quiff. “So where you from, Posh Laura? London?”
“No. High Wycombe. About thirty miles west of London.”
“That’s where Strike Command is. The air force control centre.” The black boy from class, Joel, came up to them. He was limping. He wore a huge floppy hat knitted in bright scarlet and white stripes. “Americans too.”
“My dad’s in the air force,” Laura admitted.
But she was staring at Joel, and he stared back. She looked away, embarrassed.
Joel snapped, “If you want to know I had polio. The epidemic in 1956. I wasn’t vaccinated in time. That’s where the limp comes from. The hard cases here call me the Hunchback of Knotty Ash. Ha ha.” He ran a finger down his face. “And no, the black doesn’t wash off.”
Laura said, “Actually I was looking at your hat.”
Joel stared back at her for a tense second. Then he laughed. “My grandmother knitted it for me to wear on the Kop. Liverpool Football Club. My name’s Joel.”
“I know. I heard at registration.”
“Isn’t this nice,” Bernadette snapped. “All the class outcasts together. Per-heps we should h-eve a naice cup of tee-ee, Posh Laura.”
Beyond the railings, Nick blew cigarette smoke out of his nose. “Ignore Bern. She’s just got a cob-on because we’re not all looking at her.”
Bernadette jabbed him through the railings with her elbow. “Shut your gob, skiver.”
“I’m no skiver. I’m working for Her Majesty.”
“On the dole,” translated Bernadette.
“Resting between career opportunities, while I develop my music.” He said to Laura, “Maybe you’ve heard of my group.”
“Group?”
“You know, beat group.”
“One of only about four hundred and eight in Liverpool,” said Joel dryly.
“Nick O’Teen and the Woodbines. We’re playing Sunday. You should come.”
“His real name’s Ciaran,” Bernadette told Laura. “He went to this school. They let him out a couple of years ago, didn’t they, Ciaran? He’s got two A-levels.”
“Aside from Joel, here, I can’t say I’m impressed by the company you’re keeping, Miss Mann.” Miss Wells had come up behind them, cold and severe in her overcoat.
Even though he was beyond the railings, Nick threw down his ciggie and stubbed it out quickly.
“Hello, Miss Wells,” Bernadette said innocently.
“Don’t push it, O’Brien,” Miss Wells said. Her accent was neutral Home Counties.
Laura didn’t like what she had said about the company she kept. She had hardly made a friend of tall, too-adult Bernadette, but at least she’d made contact. She said, “It was you who put me with Bernadette, Miss.”
“Hmm. Maybe I’ll have to sort that out.” Miss Wells glanced around the playground. “Look at all those kids, swarming like rats. So many of them—of you. Every school in the country is as crowded as this. There’s been nothing but more and more babies, ever since the war. One day they’ll call you ‘baby boomers.’” Ignoring the others, Miss Wells stepped close to Laura and stared into her face. Laura looked into those eyes so like Mum’s, and she had a strange swimming feeling.
Then Miss Wells turned away, breaking the moment. “I hope you remembered your plimsolls for PE, Miss Mann. And you, O’Brien, button yourself up. Marilyn Monroe has sadly departed this mortal coil, but we don’t want any tributes from you.” She walked back towards the school.
Once she had gone Nick sneered. “Yes, auntie, no, auntie.”
Laura was confused. “What do you mean, auntie?”
Bernadette said, “Come on, Posh Judy. You’ve got to admit that weird old witch looks like you. Or the way you’ll look in thirty or forty years.”
Nick laughed. “In the year 2000, when we’ll all be living on the Moon and wearing silver suits.”
“I’m not related to Miss Wells. I never met her before yesterday.”
“Then why’s she so interested in you?” Bernadette asked. “Maybe she fancies you.”
That shocked Laura. “I’m a girl!”
Bernadette and Nick both laughed. Nick said, “You really haven’t lived much, Posh Judy, have you?” “Ave yer?”
Bernadette said,
