‘Don’t let me hear you use that word in my house,’ she said. So if the word sex was so bad, I’d hate to think what happened if you actually did anything.

Maynard and I weren’t in the same class. He was streamed A and I was streamed B, because he was clever and I was classified as ‘has some potential’. He told me if I applied myself, I could be in his class but I wasn’t that interested. As long as we could meet at lunchtime that was fine with me.

My other very good friend was Venita, who was in my class and sat next to me, but she was mad about netball, so often it was just Maynard and me with a sandwich. He had quite interesting ones and let me have a bite if I was of a mind. I’d tried smoked salmon and sardines as a result. In our house you had jam, cheese slices or peanut paste. I quite liked tomato and onion sandwiches, but Mum was right when she said that by lunchtime they were all soggy, so I usually settled for peanut paste.

Maynard’s mother – he didn’t call her Mum – often gave him money to spend at the tuckshop, and he was pretty generous about sharing. I would strongly recommend Kitchener buns to him even though vanilla slices were his favourite, and he would buy a bun quite a lot of the time and break it pretty much in half. He was even good at wiping the cream with his finger so we had about the same amount each, although he usually kept the bit with most of the jam on, which we agreed was fair given it was his bun.

Worrying about Sixpence and whether Mr Johnson would let me see her again – and if he did, whether I’d have to look at the awful magazines – I’d finally tried to confide in Venita. But she just interrupted me and said that a photo of a rudey woman was nothing. Her mum couldn’t wear underpants for some reason and had to be careful her skirts didn’t blow up in the wind. Normally I’d be quite interested in this and ask many questions about what strange disease her mum had, partly to check I didn’t have the symptoms myself, but I was too worried to ask. So I gave up on her.

I decided to tell Maynard about it, even though I was a bit embarrassed to tell a boy about the picture and what Mr Johnson had said. But I shouldn’t have worried. Maynard stayed very calm and listened carefully until I had completely finished. He was probably the next best listener I knew behind Mr Driver. He asked if Mr Johnson had hurt me, or done anything else, and I said no, except that he wanted me to drink his awful tea, but Maynard waved that misdemeanour away. We discussed whom I might tell about this. We agreed there was no point in telling my mum, who would just cut me off from the Johnsons altogether, and probably even think I was making it up to cause trouble.