Daphne became my friend. She had a skin disease that made her hands look like snakeskin gloves. One day we hid from the teacher in a cement pipe; pretended we were moths in a cocoon, rabbits in a burrow. Daphne scratched her hands, made a storm of snow-flakes; she told me her father killed chickens, and the dead skin merged to feathers and I smelt blood.

I was amoral, secretive, devious: stole a milk-jug cover of net and beads; picked up other people’s hankies and gave them to Reece to boil.

A girl showed me a Mickey Mouse book, and the buttoned books weren’t as good. I thought of it all day. At last I crept to the cloakroom where it was — hid myself behind the rain-coats, sat cross-legged with the Wellingtons. I only thought of Mickey; the teacher who parted the coats gave me a fright.

One day I thought of my mother and longed to see her. A bird was in my chest, stones choked my throat, needles pricked my eyes. I was hurt with wanting her. I had to go home.

I walked down the drive and up the asphalt. I didn’t see the advertisement for Ipana Toothpaste. I crossed George Street by myself. I went past the gas-works and the priest’s house and the grandfathers. Down the lane. And got excited up the path and in at the door and only Nan was there. I was still crying when frizzy-hair Miss Trembath came to get me — discuss me in the kitchen.

The days passed.

Suddenly it was December. I made my mother a present: stencilled a lamb all blurry onto card; stuck below it a calendar, dated 1945.

We got ready for the Christmas play. I was the tallest so I was the Angel. I wore a sheet, crêpe paper wings, and waved a star. Mary was a show-off in royal-blue.

On the last day there was a Fête with lucky dips, toffee apples, and a flute band. My grandmother and the mothers made dolls for the Christmas tree; I chose the one Joan Stott’s mother made and Nan was hurt and wouldn’t speak. There was a concert, and I watched a girl with curls like Shirley Temple do the tap-dance.

I had to say goodbye to the Norfolk pines, the lavatory, the black and white Pierrot; to Miss Trembath and the headmistress. Even to some of the children, for not everyone was going to the Infant School at the end of Rose Street.

For some there is the convent beside the Queen of Angels’ Church and a blazer with badges and a lily on the pocket.

I envy them.

SEVEN

I was afraid of the dark.

(The journey up the passage is a long one. I get frightened: think I’ll never reach the switch. I make it better by flapping arms and calling songs. But still the panic gets me. There could be ghosts. Sometimes I do it slower — cut a path through darkness room by room. For each room has its switch.)