Zidra hadn’t enjoyed her first week at school but at last it was over. While Lorna had looked after her to begin with, today she’d been away and that made things seem much worse. And now, to top it off, here was her mother waiting at the school gate again, even though Zidra had especially asked her not to. The only parent in sight, her clothes suddenly appeared odd to Zidra. She’d got on that funny straw hat without the crown and her dress was shouting look-at-me with its red and orange flowers and the hem dipping slightly. This afternoon she’d pretend not to know her, this strange foreign woman.

Zidra attached herself to a group of children who were pushing through the gate, laughing and shoving at one another. She would walk straight down the hill with all the other children, clutching her cardboard school-case that, although so new, had already absorbed the smells of stale lunch and musty classroom. If she went very fast, she’d be able to get rid of the sandwich she’d hidden at lunchtime in her bloomers when no one was looking, and then Mama would never find out. The bloomers had tight elastic round the legs and formed a useful pocket. The sandwich had been there all afternoon, making her hot and flapping against her leg when she moved. She didn’t know how Mama could have put nasturtium leaves on a Vegemite sandwich. ‘You will love it,’ her mother had said. ‘Nasturtium leaf tastes just like watercress. We had it growing in the stream at home when I was a girl, and how your Papa loved it too, darling Zidra.’

Zidra knew that Your Papa, as invoked by her mother, bore no resemblance to the Papa that she’d known, or even to that other Father, Who Art in Heaven. Zidra remembered her Papa as the man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there all day and he wasn’t there at night either. He’d barely exchanged two words each day with her. If it hadn’t been for the trip to the circus, she might almost have been glad that he had gone away. To heaven, Mrs McIntyre had said, and that had confused Zidra for a while, for she knew that Papa was not Thou Father Who Art in Heaven but Thou Papa Who Art in Heaven. There were two of them there now. But Papa had taken her to the circus and the other father had not. The one who had taken her to the circus had enjoyed it almost as much as she had, and had bought her fairy floss afterwards, lovely sticky-sweet stuff that was pinker than anything she’d ever seen before.

Zidra, salivating as she thought of the fairy floss, was brought abruptly back to the present. ‘Zidra!’ Mama called out. ‘Look, darling, I’m over here!’ She stooped to give her two big kisses, one on each cheek, right in front of all the grinning children.

Zidra flushed in anger and in embarrassment. Already she could hear red-haired Roger O’Rourke, with whom she shared a desk, imitating her mother. Look dorlink, I am over here! All the other boys sniggered. To give them time to move away, she bent down and pretended her shoelaces were undone. Then, looking at her mother, she saw that her eyes were swimming with tears. Zidra guessed this was her fault and took a deep breath. Mama should know better than this by now. Surely she should have learnt to hide her feelings. Zidra glanced from her mother to the other children but they were no longer looking this way. Engaged in kicking stones down the road, they’d forgotten all about the wogs.

Still she felt angry. ‘I hate Vegemite and nasturtium sandwiches,’ she cried, pulling at the elastic around the right leg of her bloomers and yanking out the horrid-looking sandwich, only partially wrapped in greaseproof paper. So roughly did she tug at it that the elastic snapped back on her legs and hurt. The sandwich landed on the ground in front of her mother. They both stared at it. Squashed flat, it looked like a piece of cardboard. Mama would surely strike her, her face had become so crimson. Zidra would have to act first. Hurling herself at her mother, she hugged her legs. Although unable to make the tears come, if she hid her face Mama would imagine that she was crying. How she hated school, she blurted out through the stuff of her mother’s skirt. The boys were nasty and the girls all had friends and wouldn’t play with her! Except for Lorna, that is, and she’d been away today. And when Zidra had played with her, the others called her a nigger-lover. That didn’t sound nice, whatever it was.

‘No, that is not nice,’ said Mama, her face now restored to its natural pallor. She fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief, and then cuddled Zidra and kissed her hair. ‘That is not nice at all.’

Zidra let her mother wipe her face, certainly reddened by emotion if not by tears, and submitted to having her hair ribbon retied. Mama, distracted by this, would forget all about the business with the Vegemite sandwich. Maybe she’d even consider letting Zidra stay away from school next week.

Her mama lapsed into Latvian, which normally she spoke only inside their house, to say, ‘You must not care what people say or think. You must do only what you think is right.’

Zidra puzzled over this advice. She did try not to care what people said, but often what they said was unfair. It was surely right to stand up to people when they were unkind, but when she did what she thought was right, she got into fights. And sometimes what she thought was right was not the same as what her mother thought was right. While pondering this, she pulled at one end of her hair ribbon, and absent-mindedly fed it into her mouth.

‘Don’t suck your hair ribbon,’ Mama said at once. Sometimes she seemed to know what Zidra was up to without even looking at her. ‘If you’re feeling better, perhaps we might go home now.’

They were too late. ‘Mrs Talivaldis! Mrs Talivaldis!’ Miss Neville was striding across the school playground. One arm was raised in a wave while the other was weighed down with a large basket of exercise books. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Talivaldis,’ she said, looking quite friendly now she had caught up with them. ‘Glad to see you. Wanted to let you know your daughter’s had a good week.’ She bared her teeth in a grin. ‘And her arithmetic will improve with hard work.’

Hard work; Zidra didn’t like the thought of that. Endless reciting of multiplication tables was not her idea of fun. Even worse was being dragged out to the front of the class by the ear, as had happened to Roger O’Rourke that morning. He’d then been made to recite the seven times table and hadn’t been able to get beyond seven fours without making a mistake. If he hadn’t deserved to be humiliated, she might have felt sorry for him, but only two minutes earlier he’d wiped snot on the wooden pencil box she’d placed in the middle of the desk they shared.

Miss Neville stopped in front of them. Beads of perspiration stood out on her upper lip. She looked at Zidra and said, ‘You must ignore those more obnoxious children, my dear. They’ll be used to you in a week or two. The Jingeroids are always a bit resistant to change.’

Mama laughed but Zidra didn’t. Although she was grateful to the teacher for her kindness, she guessed that what was said to parents differed from what was said to obnoxious children, of whom she must certainly be one. However she quietly mouthed to herself the new words. Obnoxious and Jingeroids. Later she would use Jingeroid. It made such a lovely sound and it had made Mama laugh too.

The three of them walked down the hill together. Her mother and Miss Neville chatted about somewhere called Hungary while Zidra picked flowering soldier grass from the side of the road. She amused herself by looping the stem around the flower and then firing the head by pulling the loop quickly down the stem. Miss Neville left them in the square. Zidra fired a soldier head at her backside. It missed, as she knew it would, and Mama chose not to notice.

There was a large truck parked around the side of the hotel. Mr Bates was standing next to it, taking delivery of beer. He winked at Zidra when he saw her. If she didn’t have Mama with her, she was sure that he would have offered her a rainbow ball.

‘He’s certainly good-looking,’ Mama said after they had gone by. ‘But as my own mama always used to say, never trust a good-looking man.’

She must have got wind of the rainbow balls somehow.

‘His wife is lovely,’ she added. ‘It was so kind of her to bring us that homemade jam yesterday.’

It wasn’t the rainbow balls after all. Zidra started skipping. Some things you just had to keep secret and eating lollies was one of them.