It was the last day of the summer holidays and Daisy’s mum had promised her a special treat. They were going for a picnic. Tomorrow Daisy would start at her new school; big school. She was eleven now. Her old school had not been a success. Well, at least not for her. She was pretty enough, with beautiful long, dark hair; clever enough, but not too clever; didn’t wear glasses or braces on her teeth. But it wasn’t enough to keep her camouflaged. She saw the world through a slightly different lens from other children; nothing too obvious, just a fraction out of kilter. The faintest fontanelle in her character. But Baylee-Ashlyanne Johnson and her posse of apprentice bitches soon sniffed it out. They pulled her plaits, spat in her lunch, urinated in her school bag, and ripped her blazer. It wasn’t what they did that upset her the most; it was how they made her feel. Useless, weak, scared, pathetic. Worthless.
Her mum had gone mad when she had found out. Daisy had kept quiet for as long as she could, but when the bed-wetting started she had to come clean. But it only proved how pathetic she was; a big girl of eleven wetting the bed. Her mum went straight to the headmistress and scared her half to death. After that, the school did what they could, which wasn’t much, and Daisy set her sights on the end of term with gritted teeth and hair cut short. She had chopped the plaits herself with the kitchen scissors, and when her mum saw her she had cried. But over the summer her hair had grown again; not long enough for plaits, but just about for ponytails. And today she had new hair bobbles for her newly grown ponytails. They were bright green and shaped like flowers. “Daisies for Daisy,” her mother had said. As she sat admiring them in the mirror her stomach lurched like the gears slipping on a bicycle. What if tomorrow her new classmates looked at the face of the girl in the mirror and didn’t like what they saw?
Annie zipped the cool bag closed, satisfied that she had included all her daughter’s favorites in their picnic; cheese and pineapple sandwiches (brown bread with seeds), salt and vinegar crisps, custard donuts, Japanese rice crackers, and ginger beer to drink. She could still feel the need for physical violence smoldering inside her, stoked rather than soothed by the reaction of that idiot fairy-fart of a headmistress who could barely control a basket of sleeping kittens, let alone a school full of chip-fed, benefits-bred kids, most of whom already believed that the world owed them a Council flat, a baby, and the latest pair of Nike trainers. After Daisy’s dad had left, Annie had worked bloody hard as a single mother to bring Daisy up. She had two part-time jobs, and the flat they lived in might not be in the best area, but it was clean and homely and it was theirs. And Daisy was a good kid. But good was bad. In the world of school where Daisy had to survive, the things that Annie had taught her were not enough. Common decency, good manners, kindness, and hard work were treated as peculiarities at best, but in gentle Daisy they were seen as weaknesses; faults for which she was cruelly punished. So Annie had one more lesson to teach her daughter.
The sun was already high and hot by the time they reached the park, and the grass was littered with groups of young women accessorized with pushchairs, wailing toddlers, cans of cider, and Marlboro Lights. Daisy’s mother took her hand and they walked straight across the grass playing field toward the woods at the back of the park. They weren’t just strolling, they were striding; going somewhere specific. Daisy didn’t know where, but she could feel her mother’s sense of purpose. The woods were another world; cool and quiet and empty, save for the birds and the squirrels.
“I used to come here with your dad.”
Daisy looked up at her mother with innocent eyes.
“Why?”
Her mother smiled, remembering. She put down the cool bag and looked up toward the sky.
“We’re here,” she said.
The cool bag was at the foot of a huge oak tree; bent and twisted like an old man racked with arthritis. Daisy looked up through its branches, glimpsing flecks and flashes of blue through the flickering canopy of leaves.
Twenty minutes later she was sitting in the canopy looking down at the cool bag.
When her mother announced that they were going to climb the tree, Daisy thought she must be joking. In the absence of a punch line or a laugh, Daisy took refuge in fear.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Can’t or won’t?”
Daisy’s eyes filled with tears, but her mother was resolute.
“You don’t know you can’t until you try.”
The silence and the stillness that followed seemed eternal. Eventually her mother spoke.
“In this world, Daisy, we are tiny. We can’t always win and we can’t always be happy. But the one thing that we can always do is try. There will always be Baylee-Trashcan Johnsons”—a twitch of a smile crossed Daisy’s face—“and you can’t change that. But you can change how she makes you feel.”
Daisy wasn’t convinced.
“How?”
“By climbing this tree with me.”