Good Mummy and the HEADMASTER: A Story of Blackmail, Exploitation, & Exquisite Revenge by Janey Pilsbury

Author:Janey Pilsbury [Pilsbury, Janey]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Tantalus-Press
Published: 2016-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

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With a rapt concentration and hope never sustained by experience, Debbie began the recitation as soon as she waved her mother goodbye. It wasn’t really that far to school, not far enough she often thought. Today it was God’s last chance; if he messed this up, he’d be history. ‘Please God don’t let Heather Landis, Robina Hills or Sally Southern be at school today…Please God, don’t let…’

All the way through the back streets of the estate she would repeat it, down the towpath by the canal, and across the allotments, she would repeat it. She would cling to it and intensify it as she neared the brick-built pre-war school building. Up the long drive, she would beg God with an intensity known only to the desperate…she would beg and beg and beg right up to the time of her arrival, when she would see that, inevitably, God hadn’t listened again.

She was a pretty girl, pale and pretty and above-average height for sixteen. She had the timing down to a fine art, always arriving just as the bell went to sound the entry into school. Another spotlight avoided.

She knew it wouldn’t be for long. She knew that no matter what she did, wherever she went, however, she behaved they would find her. She knew that if they didn’t come across her in the course of school, they would seek her out, wait for her, and get her. One way or another they would have their pound of flesh. God never came to her rescue.

She had already seen them that day; their hulking form in the playground was easy to spot at a distance. She knew what today would hold; the same as yesterday and the day before that. She knew. But today was special.

And spot her they did; lunch time she heard the foghorn voice of Heather. ‘Come here…’ It was the usual shout; her usual call to punishment. And yesterday, and the day before that and for as long as she could remember she had heeded that call. She woke up dreading it, hoped God would silence it for that day, but it always came, and she would turn and go to them, passively, knowing what was to come.

And when it came it was always the same. It would start the same and end the same.

They would stand her against a wall and take turns hitting her. Slow to start with slaps and taps they would build to punches, hard punches anywhere they could land them. And they wouldn’t stop or tire or get bored until she broke. They would target her in the stomach, around her face, her arms, knee her in her thighs. They would be laughing and joking, her their single point of attention. And sooner or later she would break, not just start to cry, that was an early point from the pain, but she would well up inside and at some point break down, into wild sobbing when she would beg them to stop.

And eventually they would, they would laugh and drift off.

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