‘And how did you do this, Dorcas?’ he asked, carefully turning my hand over and trying to be careful when he moved my thumb up and down.

I looked at Mum, who made her eyes into little slits as a warning, not that I would have changed my story anyway. I noticed Dr Frayne was looking at Mum’s face though, not at mine.

‘Fell out of a tree,’ said Mum. ‘She’s always climbing trees when I ask her not to.’

‘Is that right, Dorcas?’ he asked me, peering into my face and looking into my eyes as though he could see what really happened like a television movie.

‘Yep, pretty much,’ I said, and looked away.

‘It’s a funny falling-out-of-a-tree injury,’ he said, and looked at Mum again. She just sat there with a blank look on her face.

‘Well, the good news is it’s not broken, but it is very badly sprained, and I think it would be best if you stayed home today and rested it on some high pillows to help the swelling go down.’

‘No!’ I said. ‘I mean, thank you for your concern and everything, Dr Frayne, but I really need to go to school today. I have a very important test and I can’t miss it.’

‘And it’s not as though she can afford to miss school with her grades,’ said Mum. ‘I’m happy for her to go to school if she wants to.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ said Dr Frayne, a bit sternly I thought. ‘I’m sure they will let you sit the test another time, Dorcas. I want you home with that hand up as high as you can, and if it’s not looking a lot better in the morning, I want you back here for me to take another look and maybe take an X-ray.’ He made some scratches on a yellow card with the name Wilson on the top. ‘Was there anything else?’

‘Well, while we’re here,’ said Mum, ‘Dorcas has been nagging me about what she can do about enlarged pores on her nose.’

Now this was a total shock to me, and I had to stop myself quickly from asking what she was talking about.

‘Enlarged pores on your face, Dorcas?’ he asked me. I didn’t know what to say or do, so I said nothing and tried to make my face go expressionless.

‘You know what adolescents are like these days,’ said Mum, ‘always worrying about their appearance. I wondered if there was a good skin treatment for enlarged pores. She must get them from me.’ Mum sighed. ‘Goodness knows I’ve always suffered, but she just nags me about them all the time.’

I think the words that best described what I was thinking were astonished and confused. I had no idea what Mum was talking about. I had never asked her about pores on my face, and I didn’t really know what she meant anyway.

‘Dorcas, are you worried about enlarged pores?’ asked Dr Frayne.

‘Ah,’ I said, looking at Mum, who was doing the narrow-eyes thing again. ‘Ah, yes, Dr Frayne. I worry something fierce about them all the time. And the girls at school tease me about them. They call me crater face and pock skin and other awful names as well as the ones about my ringlets from having my hair tied up at night … And I would be very glad if you had a treatment for them.’ The words ran out of my mouth in a quick kind of river.