Dad asked if he could see my sore hand and did a lot of tut-tutting noises because it was still very sore and swollen. He asked Mum if I should stay home again today but she said not on your life; I’m not having her under my feet again today. Hadn’t I caused enough grief yesterday?

Dad asked what grief I had caused and Mum said if I’d done as I was told and had stopped going over to the Johnsons, none of this would have happened. And if I thought deliberately hurting my hand would mean I didn’t have to do the Sunday school exams, I had another think coming.

Dad turned to me and asked if I had deliberately hurt my hand, and for a minute I was quite confused because I didn’t think I had but so much had gone on that I forgot for a minute how my hand got hurt.

And then Caleb said I didn’t do it deliberately because Mum threw the potato masher at me and I didn’t make her do that.

And then Dad asked, ‘Agnes, is this true?’ And Mum said Caleb wasn’t even in the kitchen when that happened so how could he possibly know. And Dad turned to me and said, ‘So she did throw the potato masher at you?’ And I said, ‘No, she didn’t,’ because I was worried that they would change their mind about Sixpence and then Dad told us all to leave for school right away because he had to talk to our mother and off we went.

I was furious with Caleb all the way to school and made him cry, but I didn’t care. I told him he was a stupid little boy who had no idea about how families worked, and because he’d told Dad Mum hit me, I probably wouldn’t get Sixpence, and he wouldn’t get to go to football and Ruthy wouldn’t get to go to the writing class. I called him flat-nosed rude, double bum, snot-nosed six-toes, and further selections from our swearing list. Caleb said, ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me,’ but I told him that was only true in the last century and that the rules had changed along with the introduction of decimal currency in 1966 and now names could actually puncture your lungs and make your poo turn to cement in your bowels and never come out and if you didn’t poo, you died. I told him if it was between Mum and me, Dad would choose Mum and I would probably have to go to live in the children’s home now and they would never see me again. I said Daniel would be very upset when he found out that Caleb was the reason I was now an orphan, and Ruthy said I couldn’t be an orphan if I had parents and to leave him alone.

Caleb said I was just being mean and we had prayed to God and God would make sure we all got a happy thing. He asked Ruthy what she thought, but Ruthy was very quiet and stuck out her chin and walked a bit ahead of us. She usually defended Caleb more, but I think she realised what I was saying was true – Caleb might have queered all of our chances to get what we wanted. And because she wasn’t looking out for him, I didn’t seem to be able to stop. So much angry stuff came out that I really, really wanted to hit him too. Caleb was pretty hysterical by the time we got to the school gate, and Ruthy said she’d take him to his class and tell the teacher he wasn’t feeling well, and I said good riddance to gumbies and spittlebombs and left them to it.