Free The Perfect Mother by Margaret Leroy Page B

regularly replaced. I didn’t do well: I was always rather hungry and distracted. I went because of the art: because the art rooms were always open at lunchtime. You could mess about with pens and paints and do whatever you wanted and nobody bothered you. It was quiet, in a way that The Poplars never was—just Capital Radio playing, and a few other girls softly talking, and the drumming of the rain on the mezzanine roof: it always seemed to be raining, that’s how it is in my memory, the windows clouded with condensation so no one could see in. And there I discovered this sweet surprising thing—that with a pen or paintbrush in my hand, there was a flow to my life, and I could draw things that pleased me, and theother girls would stop and look as they passed. However tired I was, however hungry, this flow and freedom still happened, till The Poplars faded away, to a smoky blur on the edges of my mind, and I entered a different place, a place of shapes, of colours, viridian and cobalt and burnt sienna, where I felt for a while a secret guarded joy.
    There was a teacher called Miss Jenkins who took an interest in me. She had an ex-hippy air—she wore hoops in her ears and liked embroidered cardigans. She never asked me how I felt or wanted to talk about me. She must have known where I came from, but it didn’t seem to matter. She showed me things—a book of Impressionist paintings; a postcard of a picture by Pisanello that I adored, of a velvety dark wood studded with birds like jewels; a book of botanical drawings she’d bought at Kew. She gave me pictures to copy, to explore; and suggested materials I could try—fine pens, oil paints, acrylics, and plaster to make a 3-D picture—which they only used in class at A-level. I was privileged, I knew, and at moments like these I felt rich. So I went on going to school, for the quiet hours in the art room and the complicated sweet scent of acrylic paint that I could still smell hours afterwards, and Miss Jenkins whose first name I never knew.
    I never got to know the other girls. I kept myself a little apart, not wanting them to find out about me. I saw this as a temporary thing. When things are OK, when this bad bit is over, when I’m back with my mother, I thought—then I will talk to them, make friends, be one of them. Not till then. Aimee at The Poplars was my only friend.
    She was wild, Aimee: a sharp, knowing face, hair like fire, tattoos all down her arm. She had a razor-blade sewn into the hem of her jeans. For emergencies, she said. She never went to school.
    Aimee got picked on a lot by the staff at The Poplars. They told her she was trouble. She wasn’t like me, she wouldn’t just go along with things and bide her time. I’ve always been able to do this—blend into the background, not be conspicuous, not be seen—but Aimee couldn’t or wouldn’t: there was something in her, some flame that wouldn’t be quenched. Brian Meredith hit her more than the others—for nicking stuff and getting into fights and being lippy. She used to call him Megadeath. ‘He’s got it coming,’ she’d say. ‘I’ll do him over. Just you wait. One day.’ Once he kept her for three weeks in Pindown. When she came out she’d ripped all the skin from the sides of her fingernails and sometimes she’d shout in her sleep.
    She ran away often. Sometimes she took me with her. She showed me how to do it, how to travel on a train without a ticket by hiding in the toilet, how to steal. We’d plan it all together in the room we shared, the street light leaking through the thin curtains onto the battered candlewick of our bedspreads. Each time it was like falling in love: each time we thought this was the day, the time, the Real Thing. Usually, we’d head for Brighton, where Aimee had heard you could live in a squat and find some people who’d help you. Brighton was our promised land. We knew how it would be. We’d sell jewellery, those little leather thongs with stones on,