Mrs Flack snaps round, outraged.
‘Alexa Bradshaw!’
Her voice is shrill and angry. Alexa sees the glaring face, the body briefly lit up with fury, the transformation of Mrs Flack from one thing into another. It is Alexa who has transformed her. The class is silent.
‘Alexa Bradshaw, will you be quiet!’
The sound of her own name is a kind of death. Then, unexpectedly, Mrs Flack is herself again. She picks up her marker; she returns to the lesson. She does not appear surprised, or disappointed. She does not say that Alexa has let her down. She does not comment on Alexa’s violated goodness, on the white record of her conduct that has now been stained. It is Mrs Flack, in a way, who has stained it. She has treated Alexa as she treats everyone. She does not love Alexa; she has never, Alexa sees, loved her. Yet Alexa feels guilty, as though Mrs Flack’s indifference, too, were her own fault.
She sits rigid and silent until the bell goes. She does not hand in her worksheet. Instead she folds it up tightly and puts it in her pocket. It has become possible to deceive Mrs Flack. The stain has made it possible. At break time she tears it into pieces and hides them under the rubbish in the bin.
On Saturday her mother is taking her to the city museum. Alexa stands in the kitchen in her coat while her mother puts things into her handbag.
Her father says, ‘Shall I come along and keep you company?’
There is a little underwater silence, a kind of blank.
Tonie says, ‘Don’t you have stuff you need to do?’
‘Not really.’
Alexa listens. The way her parents speak has changed. Their conversations used to travel towards agreement, the way in snap the cards keep turning until two identical ones come up. But now it is the differences Alexa notices. It is as though their talks stop before the end: the identical card is never found. They walk away unresolved, two people who don’t match.
‘I thought it would be nice to go together, that’s all,’ her father says.
Tonie purses her lips, forages about in her bag.
‘Really, I’m happy to take her,’ she says. ‘I’ve hardly seen her this week.’
Alexa doesn’t hear the end of that conversation, if it had an end. The scene in the kitchen has a ragged edge. The next thing she knows, she’s out on the pavement with her mother, walking downhill. She is holding her mother’s hand. They are flying over the cracks between the paving stones, over the dead leaves and empty sweet wrappers, flying away from the house, where her father remains.
‘Isn’t Daddy coming?’ she says.
‘No.’ Her mother sounds surprised. ‘Did you want him to come?’
She doesn’t know the answer to that question. Her mother squeezes her fingers.
‘I wanted it to be just us,’ she says.
‘Me too,’ says Alexa. Instantly she feels unhappy. She touches a lamp-post, for luck. ‘Can we have hot chocolate in the café?’
‘If you want.’
‘Can we have it first? Before we go in?’
Her mother is silent. They pass a lady standing on the pavement. She is talking on her phone, laughing. She is wearing a black coat. She is laughing and laughing, standing there.
‘Can we?’
‘No. We’ll have it afterwards.’
‘Why can’t we have it before?’
‘Because I say so.’
‘But why?’
‘Hey. Stop asking for things.’
Her mother has stopped and is looking around, to right and left. For a moment Alexa thinks she is looking for someone to tell, about Alexa’s behaviour. But they are only crossing the road.
‘Stop asking for things,’ she repeats, when they reach the other side. ‘We’ve only just left the house and you’re already asking for things.’
‘Sorry,’ Alexa says.
Her mother halts again. She bends down and puts her arms around Alexa, so that the street disappears and Alexa is lost in her hair and the folds of her clothes.
‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry,’ she says, into her ear. ‘I’m just tired. I need to get used to you again.’
Alexa wonders what this means. It gives her the feeling that she is in some way extraordinary. She wonders whether it means they will have hot chocolate first. They reach the main road and wait at the bus stop. Her mother seems smaller here, in the noise and the traffic. She is wearing a red jacket.
‘Where’s the bus?’ Tonie says. ‘Can you see it? Your eyes are better than mine.’
Alexa looks down the milling grey stretch. She looks for the form of the bus. She knows what she is looking for, yet she is anxious. It seems possible that she might not recognise the bus, or that it might not come. She looks at the shapes of cars and vans and lorries, wondering each time whether they are the bus.
‘I think I see it,’ she says. There is something big and blue in the distance. Are buses blue? She thinks they might be.
Tonie peers. ‘That’s not a bus,’ she says, laughing.
Alexa frowns, looks at her shoes. She looks at the grimy pavement.
‘Here it is,’ Tonie says. ‘This is it.’
The bus is coming towards them, a double-decker, dark red and cream. Alexa recognises it, the cartoon face with round headlight eyes, the tall flat front winking in the sun, the people looking out of the dusty upper-storey windows. It surges out of nothingness, all colourful and alive. She feels relieved. It comes in its certainty, its reality, and her doubt disappears.
‘Can we sit at the top?’ she says.
There is a man up there with a little dog. The dog sits on the man’s lap, looking at Alexa. Alexa looks back through the gap in the seats. It has a twitching little nose and funny brown eyes. She looks at the man and then back at the dog.
‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘She won’t hurt you.’
‘What’s she called?’ Alexa says.
‘She’s called Jill,’ says the man.
Alexa puts her hand through the gap and strokes Jill’s coarse little head. The head moves eagerly beneath her fingers. The stubby tail wags. The brown eyes are willing.
‘She likes that,’ the man says.
Alexa turns to her mother.
‘Look, she likes me,’ she says.
‘I can see that,’ her mother says. She is smiling. Alexa imagines her feeling glad, that the dog likes Alexa. Yet her eyes are not as willing as Jill’s. Her smile has something secret in it, something private and sealed.
‘Can we get a dog?’ Alexa says. ‘Can we?’
Her mother’s face closes shut. She turns and looks out of the window.
The museum is big inside, like a church. It glimmers brownly, as detailed as a forest, little scenes everywhere behind glass. People’s footsteps echo when they walk. They go upstairs, to Alexa’s favourite room. The room is full of gemstones, crystals, rocks, all lying on their black plinths. Each one is lit up. The light is white and limited, precious in the surrounding blackness. It glitters like frost on the crystals and the rubies, the aconite, the amethyst. The crystals are strange, slightly frightening. They seem to have a mind and purpose of their own. They look like things that could take over the world, with their startling thrust-like growths. Alexa imagines a crystal world, growing and advancing out of the dark earth, obliterating language. Her favourite stone is the purple amethyst. It is like a flower. Its ladylike colour pleases her.