“Cheer up, love,” said the driver, as I dragged myself onto the bus after school. “It may never happen.”
“It’s happening already,” I muttered.
I sat down near the front of the bus. Nobody sat with me. The Enemy’s gang went past me, laughing and pushing. One of them swung her bag and hit me on the shoulder. She giggled.
We stopped at the Senior School and I looked longingly for Tom. But when he got on, he hardly even said hello. He was talking to another boy. They sat behind me discussing Chelsea and Man United all the way back to Brilby.
It wasn’t fair. Tom seemed to have found a friend already; I had only found an enemy. The whole day had been a disaster.
To begin with, there was the teacher, Mrs Bell. She was short and plump, with grey hair and a worried expression. She reminded me of Gran – elderly, rather fussy and easily flustered.
That morning, she stood me by her desk for everyone to stare at. I looked around. Oh no, the gang from the bus were all there: one, two, three, four.
“This is the new girl I told you about last week,” she said. (Exactly what had she told them?) “Her name is Emily Smith. Yes. Another one!”
That made the red-haired girl jump to attention. She stared at me as if I was something nasty she’d just trodden in.
“Now Emily, where shall I put you? I know. You can be on the same table as Emily – I mean, our own Emily. As you share the same name, you ought to get on like a house on fire.”
The other Emily smiled a sickly smile, a yes-miss, keep-well-in-with-teacher smile. I felt I would rather share a table with Count Dracula on a night of full moon.
Everyone shuffled up to make room for me. Seven faces stared at me; none looked particularly friendly.
“Now then, our main topic this term is the Roman Empire. How much do you know about the Romans, Emily?”
She was looking at me. My mind was a blank.
“Er… they lived in Rome?”
Everyone sniggered. Mrs Bell gave me a look that said: NO COMEDIANS IN MY CLASSROOM. “I can see you may have some catching up to do, Emily.”
The other Emily put her hand up. She said in a smarmy voice, “Please, Mrs Bell, don’t you think we could get a bit confused, two of us with the same name? How will we know who you’re talking to?”
Mrs Bell frowned at me through her glasses.
“Perhaps we could call you by your middle name, if you have one.” I shook my head frantically, but she was already looking in the register, where my name had been pencilled in. “Emily Maud Smith. Yes, let’s call you Maud, shall we?”
One or two people giggled. I could feel my face getting red. “Please, Miss…”
“Yes, Maud? And by the way, I am not ‘Miss’. My name is Mrs Bell.”
“Er… it’s just that I don’t like my middle name much.”
“You don’t like the name Maud? I think it’s a beautiful name. It’s even in a famous poem: ‘Come into the garden, Maud, for the black bat Night has flown…’”
How could I explain? Maud was not a beautiful name; it was silly and old and out of date. It was Gran’s name. “I just don’t like that name. I like my own name.”
Mrs Bell looked put out. She asked the class for ideas, and got lots of suggestions.
“They could be Emily I and Emily II.”
“No, that’s daft; it sounds like a film title.”
“We could say old Emily and new Emily.”
“Thin Emily and fat Emily,” said one of the girls from the bus. That was unfair. The other Emily was certainly thin – skinny even – but I’m not fat.
“Our Emily could use her middle name,” said another girl.
Mrs Bell said, “I don’t think there’s any point in trying to change our Emily’s name. We would never remember. We’ve all known her for too long. As for you…” she looked at me with active dislike, “…as you’re only here on a temporary basis, I think you should choose a different name. Any name you like. After all it will only be for a few weeks.”
I stared at the floor.
“Come on, choose a name for yourself. Otherwise we’ll have to call you Maud.”
“Denise,” I said quickly. Denise was my best friend in London.
“Very well, Denise it shall be. Now then, we must get on; we’ve wasted enough time this morning.”
She gave me some writing books. I wrote EMILY SMITH in big letters, then crossed out Emily as faintly as I could and wrote “Denise” in tiny writing.
At break time I asked someone where the toilets were. She sent me in the wrong direction, probably on purpose. Another girl rescued me. I vaguely recognised her from my new class.
She told me her name was Jenny. She seemed quite friendly and we went out to the playground together. But there, lying in wait, was Emily’s gang.
“Oh look, it’s Maud,” one of them shouted.
“Maud, Maud! Come into the garden, the bats have flown away.”
“She’s batty, if you ask me. She’s mad! Mad Maud!”
They gathered around in a tight little ring. I looked around for help, but there wasn’t any. Jenny had walked away as soon as the gang came along.
“We don’t want you here. Why did you come?”
“Yeah, go back where you came from.”
“I didn’t ask to come here,” I said. “Do you think I’d choose to come to a rubbish school in a dead-end town like this? I’m going back to London the moment I can.”
“Listen to her! She thinks she’s so posh.”
“Say something else, Maud.”
“Mad Maud! Mad Maud!”
I tried to keep my voice steady, although I was shaking with fury. “My name is not Maud. It’s Emily Smith.”
“No it isn’t. I’m Emily Smith,” said the other Emily. “I was here first.”
We stared at each other. If it came to a fight I would probably win – she was smaller and skinnier than me – but I couldn’t beat all of them.
The weather saved me – for just then it started to rain. Brilliant rain! Excellent rain! We spent the rest of break indoors, and the lunch hour too. Nothing much could happen indoors; the dinner ladies kept an eye on things.
I said a silent thank you. But then I thought: why doesn’t God stop the bullying in the first place? Why doesn’t he make it so that people have to be nice to each other?
No answer came. I sat in the book corner all by myself, pretending to read.