Mrs Martin looked confused at first, not quite able to understand what she was seeing. Then her expression changed. And I expected her to be angry. Miss Phillips would have set her face, hands flying out to her hips. Mr Gorton would have gone VESUVIUS. But what Mrs Martin did was worse somehow.
This brilliant teacher we all love did not frown. Or shout. Or get mad. Instead, she just went still and said, ‘Oh …’, like you might if someone you REALLY like was saying you weren’t invited to their birthday party, and you’d already bought their present.
And that’s when I did something I couldn’t quite believe. Mrs Martin stepped back a little. She looked down at us, a sort of not-quite-able-to-believe-it look on her open, worn-in face. Everyone looked away from her, unable to meet her gaze – except for me. When her eyes fell on mine I was suddenly nervous, and unable even to move, because the weirdness of it had crept up on me. Someone putting jelly in her shoes? WHAT? It suddenly seemed so bizarre that instead of a radiator in me there were these weird, frothy bubbles.
And I giggled.
I don’t know why – honestly! It just came out. A stupid, childish, RIDICULOUS giggle that was SO loud! It stopped Mrs Martin. It stopped me. Mrs Martin looked even more upset – and surprised – and I could see her mind ticking over, and the completely WRONG conclusion about to make itself inside her head.
‘No,’ I said, as fast as I possibly could. ‘That doesn’t mean—’
But before I could go on I was interrupted. It was Mr Baker (our new head teacher). He was showing some men round our school, but he turned to Mrs Martin, a curiosity on his face that seemed to snap her away from me. And she turned, bent down and picked up her shoe, along with the other one, which had also been filled with jelly. Then she edged through us all, glancing quickly at me with my face burning, before hurrying off towards the staff room, one hand dangling her shoes, the other held up to her face.
Halfway there she broke into a run.
We were quiet that afternoon. We got on with our work. Or tried to. I couldn’t: the word IDIOT was trampolining in my brain. At last play I didn’t even join in when Billy Lee got his football out, or give my expert opinion on how many goals Jacky Chapman was going to score for Charlton on Saturday. I just looked round the playground as some kids in our class went on as normal while others talked about what had happened.
Lance and Vi Delap were saying how stupid it was, Marcus Breen wondering why anyone would want to waste perfectly good jelly. You should have seen Daisy Blake, though. She LOVES Mrs Martin. When Daisy’s grandpa died last year, Mrs Martin was epic, telling her that crying was fine if she wanted to cry, and not if she didn’t, changing her morning greeting to add a really long hug at the end, holding Daisy’s hand at home time until her mum or dad came. So Daisy was one hundred per cent ANGRY.
‘Oh, come on!’ I said, when I realised that she was glaring at me. ‘I’d never! I wouldn’t!’
Daisy studied me, then put her hands on her hips as she turned to look round the playground.
‘Then who was it?’ she said. ‘Who did it, Cymbeline?’
And she wasn’t the only one who wanted to know that.
Mr Baker held a SPECIAL ASSEMBLY before home time. After we’d all trooped in, he stared down at us from the stage. He went on about respect, and behaviour, and asked for the culprit to come forward. Elizabeth Fisher glanced at me, which made me go bright red again even though I was really trying not to. Did Mrs Martin notice? I kept my head down, hoping she wasn’t looking at me.
‘Well,’ Mr Baker said, when no one owned up. ‘I was told that this school was full of kind, considerate pupils. And honest ones too. It seems that this might not be true.’
We were all given an envelope which we were told to take home to our parents. We filed out, my neck and face burning YET AGAIN when I had to walk past Mrs Martin. She was standing next to the wall bars and I could finally sort of understand how Daisy felt. Mrs Martin was trying to look cheerful, as if it was all just some stupid thing.
But she couldn’t really manage it.
I kept my head down and followed Vi into the playground, where Daisy was sucking on a new stick of rock (which she must have snuck into her schoolbag because there was NO WAY her parents could have allowed her to bring it in). She was glaring at the passing kids.
‘What are you looking at?’ said Billy Lee, when it was his turn.
‘You tell me,’ said Daisy, pointing the stick of rock at him. I thought they might get into an argument actually, but his mum was there to pick him up so he walked off.
There was no one there to pick me up – not yet anyway. I do ICT club after school on Wednesdays because Mum works. I’d rather do football but that costs more and, anyway, Mum says I can use the time to catch up on my homework.
‘Spellings especially,’ she says.
I want to argue – but I can’t really. Spellings! There are just so many letters! And the way they join together, the Is and Es always swapping places like Year 1 kids trying to wind up Mrs Mason. We’ve also started doing these things called apostrophes, which at first I didn’t understand.
‘They show you own something,’ Miss Phillips said. ‘Like “Cymbeline’s football”.’
I nodded but I still didn’t get it. Everyone knows that it’s Billy’s football. As for where you put the apostrophes in the actual words, that’s just not possible to know. You may as well be playing pin the tail on the donkey. I can’t wait until I can use a computer to do my writing because of the wavy red lines that help you out, and it makes me wonder: why has no one invented a pencil which does that?
‘Hi, Cym,’ Mum said later that day, putting her head round the door of the ICT suite. ‘Ready?’
I said I was and when she’d signed me out I put my coat on. I followed her into the playground and through the gate on to the road. There were some men out there with clipboards, staring at the school and making notes. One was even on the roof. The police …? Mr Baker really was taking this jelly thing seriously. I grabbed Mum’s hand and pulled her up the steps towards Blackheath.
Now, if I’ve done something at school which perhaps I shouldn’t have, I would NOT normally want to tell my mum. This time, though, I did want to tell her, because Mum knows Mrs Martin. They’re both in the Friends’ Forum, which raises money for St Saviour’s. They do things like getting everyone to bake cakes to sell to themselves at the school fair and they ask parents to donate back the same bottles of cheap wine they won at the last fair and didn’t drink. Toys as well. In Year 2, Lance’s mum donated his old Buzz Lightyear for the Christmas Fair without telling him. Darren Cross won it in the tombola. Neither of them knew until Darren’s mum donated it back for the Easter Fair without telling him, and who should pull it out of the lucky dip? Lance!
‘Buzz!’ he exclaimed. ‘I thought you’d gone back to Gamma 4!’
When his mum saw it at home later, she said she thought she was going crazy.
The reason I wanted to tell Mum was simple – I had to explain my giggle. I wanted her to tell Mrs Martin that it was just a giggle and that I DID NOT PUT JELLY IN HER SHOES. The idea that she might think it was me was terrible, not least because she’d