At school we’re doing what-we-want-for-Christmas lists and Bobby Gibbs takes my list while I’m up at the front sharpening my pencil and writes across it in big letters A MOTHER. I know it's him because nobody else in the whole year writes in the shaky, stupid way he does.

As soon as I see it I feel like metal that's so hot it's liquid. Glowing and slowly melting.

Bobby Gibbs is watching me to see how I react. But I don't react. Not straight away. I put down my pencil and then I walk around the back of the room like I'm just going to get a new sheet of paper, but when I get to him I grab the back of his jumper with both hands and I just keep going, pulling him along off his seat and along the floor even though he's kicking and screaming, and I pull him all the way to the bin in the corner of the class and everyone is getting out of my way. It's a little metal bin. Bobby Gibbs is too big to fit inside it, but I grab it and slam it onto his head.

About an hour later, Donald comes to collect me. He speaks to the teachers but he doesn't speak to me. Which suits me fine. I don't want to talk to him or the teachers or anybody.

We don't speak at all on the way home. And as soon as I'm back I run upstairs to my room. Donald just stands there by the door watching me and looking all droopy and helpless. I lie there in the dark. When Maisie gets home they will come and talk to me together, both of them sitting on the edge of my bed. Both of them saying it's not my fault. It's not that I'm a bad kid or bad all the way through. I just have tough days sometimes. Like it was all an accident.

It wasn't an accident. I did it. I did it and they're so soft, all of them, Maisie and Donald and the teachers. They're all so soft.