41

Hiding, Again

I couldn’t face telling Mum what had happened so I asked Matt to.

‘Sure,’ he said, giving me a big hug. I thought The Brothers would be angry with me for embarrassing them in front of the whole school. Or tease me for making a fool of myself. But they didn’t. They were lovely to me. And so was Mum, when she got home. Which all made it even worse – because then I knew how spectacularly badly I’d messed up.

After supper Mum came up to my room and sat down on the bed.

‘Do you want to talk?’ she asked.

‘Not really,’ I said. So she went off and came back with a tub of salted caramel ice cream and two spoons. Then she sat next to me and we worked our way slowly down the tub.

A storm of texts pinged into my phone. I went to answer them, but Mum firmly took the phone off me and turned it off. Then she put it in her back pocket.

‘Are you punishing me?’ I asked.

‘No, I’m protecting you,’ she replied. ‘I think it’s probably a good idea if you lie low for a day or two.’

I slobbed around miserably all weekend, in my PJs, watching stuff on YouTube, endless cartoons and romcoms, trying to cheer myself up. Nothing worked. I kept going over and over what had happened. Not during assembly. I wasn’t bothered about looking stupid in front of everyone. I only cared about what had gone wrong with Nadima. I honestly couldn’t work out why she was so angry with me. I kept seeing her tearful face yelling at me, ‘We not poor. We proud.’ And telling me I’d ‘shamed’ her and her family.

But they are poor. She’d told me so herself. And anyhow, there’s nothing wrong with being poor. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not like it’s their fault. They’re refugees. All refugees are poor – because they have to leave almost everything behind. Didn’t they want the money? I just didn’t get it.

Late on Sunday afternoon Mum came up to dump a pile of clean school uniform on my bed.

‘Have you got any homework?’ she asked.

Fyi, I didn’t know and I didn’t care. But I didn’t think it would be a good idea to say that, so I said, ‘I’ll check,’ and hauled my school bag onto my bed.

She sort of hovered in the doorway. ‘Why don’t you come downstairs for a while? Watch a movie? Play a game?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not in the mood.’ She didn’t push it.

I dug around in my bag for my planner and flicked through to it check for homework. There was some maths – but it didn’t need to be done until Tuesday. Then I remembered I’d meant to redo my family tree – but leaving my dad off it. So I got out my history book. I was just about to rip the page out, but I suddenly couldn’t be bothered to do the whole thing all over again. Maybe I should just leave it with his name crossed out? Or, better still … I grabbed the Tippex out of the top drawer of my desk, and carefully covered over his name. Completely. Mrs B would probably just think it was a mistake. There was no way she’d guess the truth. Not that it mattered if she did.

I stuck my finger on the Tippex to make sure it was dry. It was. Then I scanned the family tree and realised Mum was right. Without my dad’s name it did look like she’d had four kids without even being married! It was a good job she wouldn’t care about that. Besides, bringing us lot up single-handed was something to be proud of – not ashamed.

And then it hit me.

Nadima wasn’t ashamed about her family being poor. She wasn’t ashamed of them at all. She was proud of her family. Proud of how Rasha and Sami were learning English. Proud her mum was such a brilliant cook. Proud that her dad had been a successful businessman. Proud of her family’s sweet shop.

And now, like a complete and utter idiot, I’d gone and told the entire school they were so poor that they needed charity. Like a homeless person or a street beggar. That’s how I’d ‘shamed’ her. I wanted to curl up and die.

There was no way I could undo that. Or put it right. How was I ever going to be able to make it up to Nadima?