I seemed to get into trouble even more than usual at school, and I don’t really know why because I was trying very hard. Every morning I would wake up and say to myself, ‘Today you have to be perfect at everything’. And I would start out quite cheerful with that thought in mind, but in no time flat, as Mr Driver used to say, I’d queer my pitch. My bright, shiny intentions to be like a saint weren’t strong enough to make me behave like a good child.

I whispered in class so much I was sent to the headmistress three times in one week, and they sent a letter home to Mum, which of course I didn’t give her, and which Maynard signed for me instead. Rufus kept calling me Scabhead so I went into his classroom in the lunch break and took all his pencils to the electric sharpener on his teacher’s desk and sharpened them until they were just little stubs his fat fingers wouldn’t be able to manage. Unfortunately I didn’t do a good job of cleaning up all the curly wooden shavings, and some of them got in my hair and all over my clothes, so Maynard had to sign another note that was meant for Mum.

In weekly assembly I was at the top of a marching line and was meant to take all the babies behind me to the left towards the flag, but I decided to take them to the right, which meant the whole pattern of marching got messed up and there were children everywhere. When the teachers started to shout, I couldn’t help laughing and that meant another long sit outside the headmistress’s rooms to be told off.

On another day, when we were chanting the words for the flag – ‘I love my county. I salute her flag. I honour her queen. I promise to obey her laws.’ – I changed all the hand signals that are meant to go with the words, and some other children got confused and copied me. The neat pattern the teachers liked was all wrecked again and Mr Foster grabbed me by the plait and dragged me out the front and told me off in front of everyone.

Ruthy went all quiet and spent more time than usual in our room cross-legged on the bed writing in her journals. She was quickly filling the latest one up. She was what she called ‘in the throes of an enthusiasm’. She had several throes in the past. One had been to try to classify all the faces in the world into twenty types. She would watch someone and make notes of their features and decide which category to put them in. She had a page for each of the types and would add their name and a description of them to explain her choice. She said she was developing a typology. Every now and again when we were at the shops for Mum or at the meeting, she would point to someone and say, ‘That’s type thirteen – pointy,’ or ‘That’s type seventeen – fleshy.’