The halfway house was on Glasshouse Walk, that’s where Emily stayed, she was in my class and they were calling her a fleabag. All her brothers and sisters had white hair and grubby faces. There were lots of them. They came in the summer and someone said they were gypsies. I couldn’t go near because she wasn’t one of us and they stuck together. In class she spoke in a mumble and didn’t really have a voice. No one spoke to her, just about her to say they weren’t sitting next to her or on a chair she’d sat on. She didn’t say anything and it stung me she didn’t feel it was wrong, or didn’t say it was. I wasn’t sure what it was you were catching, if it was only fleas. She wasn’t dirty, only her clothes were, they were old, and to me she just looked sleepy. I could see she was different from us, the way her face was covered in a white cloud and her eyes were far off, but I couldn’t see why people didn’t like her. She wasn’t saying she was better than us, she just wasn’t joining in saying she was worse.

Sonia grabbed her hair in the playground and swung her round by it, trying to make her hair come out. A circle of people crowded round to watch and they were on Sonia’s side. It was mostly girls, but some boys too, shouting ‘Fleabag’ and I could see there were tears in Emily’s eyes. Her younger brother and her sisters were watching. She wasn’t fighting back, she was being dragged and trying to get her hair back from where she was bent forward and being swung. She had one hand on Sonia’s wrist and the other trying to keep her balance on the ground and stop Sonia pulling her over. It was a girls’ fight so I couldn’t get in and get Sonia’s hands off even though I could feel them hurt. I had to go in close and use my voice to put her off, ‘If she’s a fleabag, why you touching her?’ There was a moment when it was Sonia or me who was gonna come off worse, but she let go the clumps of hair and looked at her own hands like they were greasy and people laughed at her and moved away so she couldn’t touch them, so she was it. I could feel people looking at me so I didn’t get away with it completely, but I didn’t care who found out I was on Emily’s side. I was only worried she heard me call her a fleabag.