Precious Read Free Page B

Mrs Taylor for the first time, expecting to find Precious Anita and Effua fostered by Mrs Taylor. However, Mrs Taylor and her daughter, Mrs Travis appear to have (to say the least) unorthodox views as to carrying out regulations. Effua had been moved to Mrs Taylor’s daughter, Mrs Travis. We had not in fact been notified of this change. I did feel that it was rather distressing the way these coloured children were passed about from hand to hand like this.
     
    Effua seems to thrive at Aunty Wendy’s and I delight in my life at Nanny’s, savouring the hugs, the gentle words, the unlimited access to Wagon Wheels. An uneasy alliance between Effua and I gradually softens into a friendship. But we continue to delight in getting one another into trouble with the grown-ups.
     
    ‘Guess what, Aunty Wendy.’
    We are upstairs on the double-decker back from Bognor when I begin to tug at the waistband of Aunty Wendy’s maxi-skirt.
    ‘What, love?’
    ‘At the arcade this afternoon, when you weren’t watching,’ I say, ‘Effua said that I was black and that I’ll stay black until the day that I die.’
    Effua, sitting next to me, lowers her guilty eyes to the floor.
    ‘Aren’t you going to tell Effy off for calling me black, Aunty Wendy?’
    ‘What did you call her that for, love?’ says Aunty Wendy. ‘You know black isn’t a nice word. Christ, girls, how many times do I have to tell you both? You’re not black; you’re little coloured girls.’
     
    Bognor is not far from our town, Fernmere, but unlike Bognor we’ve got no beach, no cinema, no arcade and no Kentucky Fried Chicken – we’ve just got loads of antiques shops and building societies.
    Almost everyone in Fernmere is wealthy. But we’re not. Which is why we live on Woodview, the council estate, home to what the rich people call ‘the riff-raff and the gypos’. Some of the posh people are actually afraid to venture ‘up Woodview’ because they think they might not come out alive. Yet to me Woodview is the most magical place in the whole of Fernmere.
    The road to Woodview is short and narrow and bursting with greenness. On either side of the road there are blackberry and rose-hip bushes and patches of wild grass dotted with poppies and dandelion clocks. Today the bushes are shadowy and I can’t see the luscious fruit hanging off them; it has grown dark early because it’s pouring down. Rain slams against the pavement, sounding the way a TV does before it’s been tuned to a channel; making me, Wendy and Effy run as if for our lives. Cars skid into and out of the estate, their headlights dimmed and blurred by the sheets of rain.
    ‘Am I having tea at your house tonight, Aunty Wendy?’ I ask, breathless.
    ‘Course you are, love,’
    ‘Yippee!’
    We jog past the sign that reads Woodview Way, past the little shop that sells Cornettos and Twix bars and past West Walk, where me and Nanny live. Effua skips ahead, as always, stopping every three or four steps to splash her silly foot in a puddle, turn and giggle for no reason.
    The houses we pass are all made of pale peach brick, two storeys high and joined to one another. Everything about them is perfectly square: the windows, the garages, the emerald-green portions of grass on the front lawns.
    Well-to-do people, Nanny says, don’t live in little boxes like these: they live in rambling, asymmetrical and sometimes crumbling big houses with names instead of numbers on the door. Nanny grew up in such a house before she lost everything and moved to Woodview. I can think of nothing more frightening than living in a large, meandering old house that might have mice in it, or worse, ghosts.
     
    Aunty Wendy’s back door opens with a squeak and then bangs shut.
    Uncle Mick walks into the kitchen and over to the fridge. His corduroy flares hang down at the back and there’s a bunch of keys bigger than my whole hand swinging from his belt loop.
    ‘Hello, Presh ,’ he says, smirking.
    Uncle Mick is the only