The Angel of Nitshill Road (3 page)

‘What's that peculiar smell?' asked Mr Fairway.

‘Marigold,' sniggered Barry Hunter loudly. Mr Fairway pretended that he hadn't heard, but Celeste looked up anxiously.

‘What on earth are you doing, Celeste?' Mr Fairway demanded.

She pushed her hair back from her face and shrugged.

‘Heaven knows, I'm not a brilliant housekeeper myself,' she admitted. ‘But really, the cleaning in this school is a disgrace! The litter might just as well be a carpet, the way it's all over the floors. And as for the top of this desk, well, I'm afraid that yesterday I could hardly bring myself to rest a tired elbow on it. So I'm polishing it nicely.'

Mr Fairway sat down weakly at his desk. He didn't know what to say. And next morning, when he strolled in the room and
found everybody else (except for Marigold) polishing their desks as well, he was quite lost for words.

Celeste wasn't, though.

‘Ah, there you are!' She beamed at him delightedly. ‘We thought you were never coming! Some of us had quite given up hope.' Then, while he was still reeling from the smell of a dozen different polish sprays, she warned him confidentially: ‘Today I'm going to try and coax you into letting me off arithmetic. You see, I go all of a tremble with sums. I always have. I always will. And this morning I feel weak as a leaf. So mayn't I just loll about at my desk till I feel a little bit stronger?'

‘Now listen here, Celeste –' began Mr Fairway.

Everyone waited.

But there wasn't any more. Once again, he was speechless.

Tracey nudged Penny, who was unwrapping a sweet beneath the desk.

‘She
must
be a real angel,' Tracey explained. ‘A normal person couldn't get away with it. They'd get sent to Mrs Brown.'

Celeste was never sent to Mrs Brown.

She
must
have been a real angel.

Whatever they did in heaven, it wasn't arithmetic. Celeste was awful at maths. Truly awful. She was even worse than Marigold, which was saying something. She was the worst in the class.

By
far
.

Mr Fairway did his best with her.

‘Try it again,' he would coax. ‘One more time. I'm sure you've nearly got it. You're coming along nicely.'

She'd raise her angelic face to him, her sky-blue eyes as round as saucers.

‘You can say to me all the pretty things you want,' she would tell him. ‘But I still won't be able to do arithmetic. Who would have thought a few horrid squiggles on a page could make a poor body so unhappy?
And there's no hope. Granny says baby girls come either with brains or with yellow hair – never with both.'

‘That is the silliest thing I've ever heard!' Mr Fairway cried in a passion.

‘There!' Celeste wailed. ‘Now you're in a pet with me! Now I shall cry.'

She never did, though. Sometimes she got cross.

‘No wonder I can't do it,' she'd scowl at him. ‘This classroom is sheer pandemonium. No one could
think
.'

‘Tracey and Yusef are managing,' Mr Fairway would point out tartly.

Celeste would sulk.

‘And it's so dark in here I can barely see the book!'

Mr Fairway flicked on the light switch.

‘And this pencil must be Mark's. It's chewed down to a
splinter
.'

‘Celeste!' Mr Fairway said sternly.
‘Stop all this complaining. Just try and get on with it,
please
. I have to go round and help other people.'

She glowered at him from under her blazing hair.

‘Very well. Go round and round the class like an old
Beano
! I'll simply sit here and
rust
.'

Relieved, Mr Fairway moved away. He went up and down between the desks, helping people, till he reached Marigold who was turning over a new page.

‘Well done!' he said. ‘On page 27 already! At this rate you'll soon be on to the green book!'

Marigold said something. She spoke so softly he couldn't hear a word. He bent his head closer and told her:

‘Say that again.'

He didn't expect that she would. But Marigold moved her head very near to his, and whispered in his ear:

‘Which page is
she
on?'

He didn't need to be told which
she
Marigold wanted to know about. He simply knew. Normally, he wouldn't answer a question like that (except, of course, to say ‘You mind your own business', or ‘Don't worry about anyone else. Just get on with your own work'). But Marigold had been the slowest in the class for ages and ages and ages.

He couldn't help it. He just whispered back, ‘She's halfway down page 17. And don't tell anybody, but she's stuck
again
.'

Marigold said nothing. But she gripped her pencil and lowered her head determinedly to her work book.

Mr Fairway gave her a little look, then moved forward to the next desk.

Fancy that! he was thinking. Who'd have believed a little thing like Celeste
coming to school here would make such a change in our Marigold? Fancy that!

And it wasn't the only change, either. From the moment Celeste first appeared in the gateway, all sorts of things started to happen. You take the day that Barry Hunter circled Penny with his usual cry of ‘Moving mountain!' and fetched up on the tarmac like a winded ten-ton starfish.

Somehow it seemed as if Celeste had stretched her foot out just as he was passing, and tripped him up.

He rolled over, blood on his hands and knees. Celeste didn't wait for him to get cross with her. She complained first.

‘My granny says you must have been born in a bucket!' she told him. ‘You have no manners and you have no brains. Now stop calling Penny fat!'

Barry Hunter thought he'd got her there.

‘I didn't say “fat”.
You
did.'

Celeste gave him one of her scornful looks.

‘Moving mountain means
fat
,' she told him. ‘Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! But what you don't seem to realise is that if Penny stopped stuffing her face with crisps and sweeties all day long, she wouldn't stay the shape she is now. But you!' She pointed to him as if he were a slug on the ground. ‘You're a bully! And it's harder to change that. If you're not careful, no one will ever really like you!'

Now he was scrambling to his feet, boiling with rage.

‘You'll be sorry!' he snarled. ‘You wait!'

But Celeste had already turned away. The only thing he could have done was throw himself on her for a real fight. But she was dressed, as usual, in pure and perfect white. And she was smaller than he was. And her back was turned.

And everyone except Marigold was watching . . .

‘I'll get you next break!' he yelled at her. ‘You wait and see!'

‘When donkeys fly!' Celeste cat-called back, and strode off with Penny. Penny was crying hard. She couldn't help it. No one had ever called her fat before. Not yelled it out like that, for everyone to hear. Oh, she knew they sometimes whispered the horrible word behind her back, out of her hearing. Even her friends did that, since it was true.

But for Celeste to shout it out like that, all over the playground!

The tears rolled down Penny's cheeks. Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! She heard it ringing in her ears like a bell. Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! So she couldn't understand why she had let Celeste slip a comforting arm around her shoulders. And why the grippy feeling deep
inside had loosened up a bit. Was it because Penny knew that, next break, Barry Hunter wouldn't be bothering to run round the playground being spiteful to her? Was that it? Because she knew that, for the first time in as long as she could remember, she'd probably be safe.

Barry would be after Celeste.

He tried his old trick – the one he usually played on Mark: blocking the lavatories. Barry had never played it on a girl before, but everyone knew what was going on the moment they saw him and his gang lined up across the entrance to the
Girls
.

There was Sean, Wayne, Barry himself and Stephen, who was sent round the back to block the tiny window: the whole gang.

When other girls tried to go in, the boys let them pass. Even Marigold went in without any trouble except for the usual
sniffing and cries of ‘What's that awful smell?' But when Celeste tried to walk past, the boys moved in quickly to push her back.

Celeste tried walking in with Lisa and Penny. All three of them were pushed back.

Lisa tried going in alone. This time, Barry Hunter and his gang didn't stop her. At the top of the steps, Lisa turned and looked back doubtfully.

‘You might as well go in,' Celeste called out cheerfully. ‘It's only sensible.'

So Lisa went in.

When she came out, Celeste tried again, and she was pushed back, hard.

Then Penny tried. Again, the gang stood aside to let Penny pass. Penny, too, looked back towards Celeste, not knowing what to do.

‘Go ahead,' Celeste called out. ‘Before the bell rings and it's too late for you.'