No One Listened by Isobel Kerr

Author:Isobel Kerr [Isobel and Alex Kerr]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007287697
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Alex

When our foster parents first told us they would give us twenty pounds a week pocket money each from whatever they were being paid by social services to look after us, it sounded like loads of money compared with what Mum had been able to give us. We soon realised, however, that it wasn’t that generous because we were expected to buy all our clothes out of it. We also had to pay any bus fares in and out of town if we wanted to see our friends, which meant the money hardly lasted at all. We could only afford to socialise once a week at the most.

We were never quite sure how Cathy and Pete had made their money in the first place, but they talked a lot about stocks and shares they had bought or sold, and property too. He stayed at home all the time but she had an office job in London, which she would disappear off to on the train every day. I think it was something to do with a housing association. Even though they seemed to have a fair bit of money they were always on the lookout for a bargain, buying knock-off trainers and things like that.

Isobel took her GCSEs in May 2002, just four months after Mum’s murder, and managed to get all A’s and A stars, apparently putting her amongst the top two or three per cent in the country. Whatever foundations Mum had laid in her when it came to working and not allowing anything to distract her had paid off. She revised like a demon in the final month before the exams to make up for all the distractions we had had over the previous months. When the results came through, she went very quiet and I know that she was missing Mum terribly and feeling desperately sad that she wasn’t there, because she would have been so proud.

I was doing okay too; the teachers certainly didn’t seem to have any worries or complaints about my work. I liked doing schoolwork because it gave my life some continuity and structure when everything else seemed to be uncertain and up in the air. By keeping our eyes on the goals that Mum had set so firmly for us in the early years we were able to shut out the things that were more difficult to deal with, like emotions, for most of the day. I still seemed to give people the impression that I was messing around a bit in class, so even Isobel was surprised when it came to my turn to sit GCSEs and I did much better than predicted. They’d thought I would only get E’s but I managed mostly A’s and B’s with one C.

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