Free The ABCs of Love by Sarah Salway Page A

got into an argument as to who had the unhappiest childhood.
    See also Ants; Blood; Captains; Daisies; Questions; Relatives;
Zzzz
oranges
    I knew a girl once who used to say that if you ever wanted to pick anyone up, all you needed to do was to go on a train journey with a copy of Rebecca and a large apple. You would have hardly nibbled through the skin, or even reached Manderley, before a man approached you.
    I tried it with John one evening, but all I had in the fruit bowl was oranges. John was watching football, and he didn’t even look at me, just passed me his hankie so I could mop the juices off my chin. He says it’s a compliment to how relaxed he feels with me that he can spend the little time we have together watching television.
    Besides, it was an important match that he was supposed to be watching down at the pub with his friend Sam.
    See also Endings
    orphans
    I have been an orphan for two years now. It’s difficult to say that without sounding pathetic, but my friends are now my family. Well, John is now my family.
    No, I am completely happy. I miss nothing. I am searching for nothing. Especially not a father figure. Sally is wrong. She is just jealous because although Colin has more money, he does not treat her as well as John looks after me. I can tell John everything. And I do. He says he wants to protect me so carefully that no harm will ever happen to me. This is why I have to do what he says, be what he wants. Everyone needs someone to look after them.
    See also Stepmothers; Teaching; Voices; Zzzz
    outcast
    Until we started on her, Dawn was no different from any other girl at school.
    But then one day in the lunch hall, she dropped her tray. It was full of food, but while embarrassing, even that might have been all right on its own. After all, it was something we worried about doing ourselves. But then, instead of cursing or picking it up or doing anything, Dawn just stood there, blushing. Soon she was completely red.
    Dollops of shepherd’s pie in greasy gravy lay around her feet. Chunks of tinned pineapple, banana, peach left snail trails on the floor where they’d skittered away from the shattered bowl.
    After the initial thud, the dining hall was completely silent. Everyone was watching Dawn. I felt my stomach well up and get stuck in my throat. Why didn’t she do anything? My head seemed to be expanding beyond my skull. I wanted to scream.
    I don’t know who it was who first started to clap, but soon we were all joining in. That slow clap-clap-clap, each one separated by a heartbeat’s silence. Even the teachers seemed frozen, until Dawn spun round and ran out of the hall. She must have kept on running through the school and into the street because the next time we saw her, she was standing next to her father as our form teacher told us all about how we must be kind to everyone, regardless of their background. How we mustn’t ostracize Dawn just because she was not like us.
    We stared at Dawn, trying to work out what was wrong with her background. I honestly don’t think anyone had noticed anything special about her before. It was then that we saw the hole in her cardigan at the elbow, the dirty socks, the smudges on her face not wiped off by a mother’s spit. She was looking down at the ground as if to give us a better view of the scruffy parting of the hair, not painfully sculpted each morning like our mothers did with the sharp end of the comb.
    Then we started on her father. We asked ourselves what was he doing there in school when all our fathers were at work. Why was he in dirty old jeans and a V-necked jumper without a shirt, let alone a tie? We saw him looking at us all, not defiantly, but with eyes full of what we could recognize even then as defeat.
    I can’t remember anyone ever talking about it, but I can’t have been the only one who felt my blood rise at how they could just stand there and take the humiliation. We became pack animals, the rest of us, trying to rid ourselves