I was starving because I had missed dinner the night before, and the toast seemed to take forever to make. I used my elbow to hold the pieces down so I could butter them and didn’t hear Dad step up behind me because he still had his slippers on.

‘What on earth have you done to your hand, Dorcas?’ asked Dad.

‘Nothing really, Dad. I just hurt it jumping out of the olive tree yesterday,’ I said.

‘Let me take a look at it,’ he said. ‘Has your mother seen this?’

‘No, I didn’t show her. She was sort of mad about me coming home late. But it’s not really bad, Dad. I think it will be fine once I go to school.’

‘I think you need to see a doctor,’ he said.

‘No! Really, Dad. There’s an important test at school today and I need to go for sure. Really, it’s not as sore as it looks.’

‘Agnes!’ called Dad. ‘Agnes, come and look at this.’

We waited. Mum shuffled in. ‘What?’ she said.

‘Look at Dorcas’s hand. Didn’t you notice this last night? She said she hurt it jumping out of the olive tree.’

‘Well, how many times do I have to ask her not to climb trees?’ said Mum. She looked at me, and then at the hand, and I saw a look run across her face. She realised how it had happened but she didn’t say a thing.

‘Can you take her to the doctor this morning?’ asked Dad.

‘Yes, I suppose so. It will have to be right now though because Alice Johns is coming for a perm at eleven. Get your bag, Dorcas, and I’ll walk you to school straight after. I hope they can see us straight away,’ she said, in an irritated sort of voice.

‘I think this is more important than Alice Johns’s hair,’ said Dad.

‘Well if Bednarski paid you properly I wouldn’t have to turn this kitchen into a hair salon,’ snapped Mum, and walked into her room to get dressed.

‘Are you all right, Dorcas?’ asked Dad.

‘Sure thing, Dad. Never better. It’s no big deal,’ I said, and smiled. With a bit of luck, I would get to school by recess time and could borrow the bus fare from Maynard and get straight into town.

I walked with Mum to see Dr Frayne on the main road. She had rung ahead and said she thought my hand was broken, so they agreed to see me straight away. When I say I walked with Mum, what I mean is that I walked about three steps behind her so she could ignore me and I wouldn’t accidentally look the wrong way at her or hunch my shoulders or look at the ground instead of straight ahead or any of the other things I did all the time that drove her mad.

We waited for half an hour to see our doctor who was a very nice old man and always friendly and quite gentle. I had seen him many times for different things: glass in my knee from falling over while running with a milk bottle, a really big splinter Mum couldn’t dig out with her tweezers, measles, and stuff to put on my head at night when I scratched the scabs too much and made them bleed.