Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah Read Free Book Online

for the sake of convention and to please the bigot contingent? She detained me for nearly fifteen minutes with a full explanation that veered into gender-role-redefining manifesto towards the end, even though I’d been polite enough not to ask her why her son resembled a sheepskin rug.
    Before she decided I was beyond the pale and not worth talking to, I learned a lot about what it means to be a parent from listening to OCB. It seems fairly straightforward: if you have a child that behaves like a savage, deflect attention from his shortcomings by accusing the teachers of ‘pathologising’ him and failing to meet his individual needs, especially if these include the need to poke other children in the eye with a fork. If your son fails a test, accuse the school of being too outcome-focused; if he is lazy and says everything is boring, blame the teacher for not stretching or stimulating him in the right way; if your child is not particularly bright, couch the problem in terms of the school failing to identify and plug a ‘skills gap’; crucially, ostracise anyone who dares to suggest that some gaps – those belonging to clever children, specifically – are easier to fill with skills than others, and that, hypothetically, a teacher might try endlessly to lob into the chasm some fairly basic proficiencies and fail to lodge them there, owing to an inherently unsympathetic micro-climate of massive stupidity.
    I probably shouldn’t have said that, but it had been a long day, and my freedom went to my head – the freedom of being a guardian and not a parent. I can see exactly how Dinah and Nonie make life harder for themselves, their classmates and their teachers, just as I can see their talents and their strong points, the personal and intellectual qualities that are going to make life easier for them. I feel no urge to feign modesty about the good or pretend the bad doesn’t exist, not having made the girls myself, and so I don’t need to enter into any reciprocal delusion-bolstering deals of the sort that many of the parents rely on: ‘It doesn’t surprise me at all that Mr Maskell hasn’t spotted that Jerome’s gifted, Susan – he hasn’t noticed that Rhiannon is either.’
    Dinah and Nonie are first off the bus when it arrives, as they usually are. I hang back behind the mothers, as per Dinah’s instructions. In the very early days, she told me that I wasn’t allowed to run forward and give her a hug or a kiss, that Sharon hadn’t been allowed to either – any display of affection in a public place is embarrassing and therefore forbidden. I am, however, allowed to smile enthusiastically, and this I do as the girls walk towards me with quick neat steps, like purposeful businesswomen on their way to an important meeting. I can see from Dinah’s face that she has something significant to say to me. She always does, every day. Nonie is worried about how I will react to whatever it is, and how Dinah will react to my reaction, as she always is. I can feel myself mentally limbering up as they approach, knowing that whatever’s about to pass between us will seem to fly by at a million miles an hour, and I’m going to need to be on my toes, mentally. Luke has the knack of relaxing with the girls; he can coax them into winding down in a way that I’ve never been able to. My conversations with them often feel like super-fast games of verbal ping-pong, in which I’m desperate to let them win, but never quite sure how to.
    ‘Are you and Luke ever going to have a baby?’ Dinah asks, handing me her and Nonie’s book bags; it is my job to carry them to the house.
    ‘No. Why, what makes you ask that?’
    ‘Someone on the bus asked us, because you’re not our mum and dad. This girl, Venetia, said that if you had a baby of your own, you’d love it more than you love us, and Nonie got upset.’
    ‘If we did have a baby, we wouldn’t love it any more than we love you,’ I say to Nonie, making sure to look only at