Marilyn’s friends were drawing closer. Most of them were reputed to be bullies and Tess wished she was taller and stronger – in fact less of a victim, she supposed unhappily. She glanced at the horrible Matilda, who was edging closer, and saw that the fat girl was balling her hands into fists and obviously longing to hit someone, preferably Tess herself.

Tess took a deep breath and pushed her mousy pigtails back over her shoulders. ‘That’s no reason to hate anybody, and I only queried Clackem’s figures once, even though . . . but it was only once. Go on, Marilyn; why do you hate me? There must be a better reason than you’ve given me so far.’

Marilyn sighed. ‘I don’t have to have a reason, and I don’t have to tell you what it is,’ she said loftily. ‘But everyone else what lives around here has been here for ages. We all know each other, and each other’s mams and dads, and we’ve all heard tales about your mam, so we don’t want to get to know you. Understand?’

Tess stared at the older girl in complete bewilderment. ‘What do you know about my mother?’ she enquired. ‘Whatever it is, I don’t know it, so you’d best enlighten me.’

Marilyn’s admittedly pretty face was promptly pulled into a most horrible sneer. ‘Your mam was no better’n she should be, an’ your perishin’ gran must know what her daughter was like . . .’ she began, but that was all she managed to say before she found herself being attacked by a furious Tess, who had dropped her bag and launched herself at Marilyn with such force that she knocked her to the ground. The margarine went one way, the bloater paste another, but Tess neither noticed nor cared. She just wanted to make the older girl eat her words.

In less than a minute there was a melee on the pavement outside Mrs Thomas’s corner shop, for all Marilyn’s friends, seeing their leader punched in the stomach and unable, for a moment, to free herself from her attacker, attacked in their turn. Tess was definitely getting the worst of it, for though Marilyn had disengaged herself and got shakily to her feet her friends continued to thump and kick at any part of Tess which came within range.

As her rage cooled, Tess began to realise that she had best escape before any serious damage was done, but just as she delivered a parting thump on her nearest aggressor, someone seized her collar and she was dragged upright.

‘What the devil’s goin’ on here?’ said a reproving voice. ‘Anyone ‘ud think the third world war had started. What’s goin’ on?’

Tess looked up. Her captor, or perhaps rescuer would be a better word, was a tall, fair-haired boy she vaguely recognised as someone she had seen on the way to his school whilst she was heading for hers. She did not know his name, but he was looking from her to Cynthia, the girl she had been fighting, as if waiting for a reply from one of them. Tess took a deep breath and rubbed her left eye, which was watering and felt suspiciously tender, then opened her mouth to tell him that it was nothing much, but before she could speak he had turned to Marilyn. ‘I know you wouldn’t start a street fight, Marilyn, so what’s it all about?’