Mothers and Daughters by Leah Fleming Read Free Book Online Page B

mixing chemicals over a Bunsen burner while Mr Kopek droned on about safety and not larking about. Joy hated her figure. She was the plumpest girl in her class when they undressed to do PE. They had to wear these bright blue romper suits for gym with knickers attached to a bodice that showed every curve.
    Most of the girls were flat-chested and neat, but Joy had busts that wobbled. It was bad enough having skin a shade darker than anyone else and blacker hair, and, worst of all, having the curse once a month.
    ‘Do your bosoms hurt when you run down stairs?’ she’d asked Connie, who looked blank and then burst out laughing.
    ‘If only … My bosoms aren’t worth a second glance. I have to stuff my bra with socks,’ she confessed. ‘Be grateful you’ve got a figure.’
    Joy was not impressed.
    She had not forgiven Ivy for those cruel words, lashing herself with them inside her head over and over again. She was a big fat dumpling, anyone could see that. Thanks goodness it was Friday afternoon and they’d meet up in Santini’s with Rosa to plan their outfits for the next Silkie gig.
    Every time she looked in the mirror all Joy could see was her bulging tummy and fat chest. Connie was so thin and tall, and Rosa so wiry. Joy felt like a big lump of lard beside them. Mummy liked to cook forthe guests and she was expected to eat the leftovers even when she wasn’t hungry. ‘Eat up, you are a growing girl. A clean plate, please. Think of all those starving orphans in China!’
    There was no escaping food. Every month they all trouped to Auntie Ria’s flat for spaghetti and ice cream after a concert, and Mr Milburn, who was a new permanent and rented the front bedroom while Dr Friedmann was abroad studying, was kind and brought her sweets in boxes from his trips during the week: boxes of fudge that said, ‘A Present from Filey’ or ‘Southport’ or ‘Whitehaven’. He had a small Morris car and gave Joy lifts into town. The back seat was crammed with cases of medical supplies and surgical appliances that were like strange corsets with tubes and straps and funny bulbous ends, harnesses coiled in his case like snakes. The front was a squash and their knees were jammed together when he drove. ‘He gives me the creeps,’ she’d once sniggered to Connie. ‘I’m not his “dusky princess”.’
    She wished it was hometime. There were five floors from the gym and the physics lab in the basement, to the chemistry lab and forms at the top. There was cookery in an outbuilding and separate yards for boys and girls. It was not a bit like Connie’s school and there were boys: spotty and swotty with armpits smelling from their Bri-Nylon shirts.
    Rosa was full of the Catholic College boys, heartthrobs called Julian, Chris, Howard, and especiallyPaul Jerviss, who swaggered around thinking he was James Dean at the bus stop.
    Moor Bank didn’t seem to sport anyone handsome, just a load of lads making jokes about girls’ figures, lads called Eric, Brian and Tom, who treated the girls as if they were simpletons.
    Only last week she’d accidentally bumped into Graham Best, one of the boys in her class on the bus, and he had called her a ‘fat, slit-eyed wog’.
    If only she was as slender as Mummy, who was tiny-boned, with small feet, but Joy was made like the Winstanleys, curvy and awkward. Everyone called her bonny. She hated that word.
    ‘Bonny means I’m fat, not pretty. Why can’t I be like the others?’ she sighed. ‘Tall, skinny and clever.’ If only she was into sports like Connie. Moor Bank had playing fields miles out of town, so their teams were hopeless at cricket and tennis and football. Joy managed to skive off hockey by missing the bus and arriving too late to be picked. She hated exercise, although Latin dancing and jive was fun, but no one ever asked her to practise in the playground with them.
    Only last week she’d made the mistake of complaining to Mr Milburn as he sat at the breakfast table eating