Chapter 16: Family Interventions

When Yarra gets off the bus, she finds she doesn’t want to face home just yet. She walks back the long way, all around the open fields of Cudley Marsh, and fuck her stupid orange skirt. An hour later, she’s cold though - with the days getting shorter, the evenings are starting to lose the heat.

Back at the house, she finds her smug younger brother already knows the news. He’s waiting for her in the porch to the house - the weatherproof glass-and-brick box before the real front door.

“Did you know I picked a really weird phone call up?” he asks, all jolly and preening. “This bloke with this weirdly dull voice, like some nasal AI. I nearly cut him off, thought it was double glazing or some suck-you-in marketing survey. Then he said he was from Headmaster Leezing’s office. D’you know what he said? He asked if he’d come through to Yarra Corkle’s house. He wanted to speak to Dad or Mum. ‘They’re out shopping,’ I told him, which was actually true. ‘I’m her brother though,’ I said. He asked how old I was. So I told him, fifteen. He said, if Mr and Mrs Corkle weren’t in but I promise to tell them ASAP, he could tell he me instead.” Taudren fold his arms as he tells his sister, leaning back, “I’ve already told Dad.” Then he tries to do the bloke’s voice. He makes it nasal, flat and wooden, with a Fisher Coast twang. “‘Miss Yarra Corkle has been awarded an H Punishment.’” Taudren pulls a prim and proper face as he imitates. “‘This award requires her to attend Kennigwort Upper Girls Independent School, tomorrow, Saturday, by nine fifty five. Miss Corkle must travel by foot or public transport with her normal orange uniform fully uncovered.’”

The nasal pronouncement is getting to Yarra - part of her wants to slap Taudren’s smug face, while another part is gummed up by the bureaucratic banality, like her legs are suddenly walking through glue.

“‘Miss Corkle must present at the main school gates before 10 AM. Punishment length will be determined on the day and may rely on Miss Corkle’s attitude. There may be repercussions for the parents of girls who do not arrive at the school on time. These may include fines.’”

Yarra pulls a face at this last. “What?”

“That’s what Mr Boring from the Head’s office said. So don’t think you can bunk off to the coast for the day!”

Yarra has no intention of bunking off. She feels abused, but not ashamed, despite Tund and Eccar’s efforts. It’s them who need shaming, not her, she’s decided. She’s tried to turn it all through Ullerade-style logic, out there on the Marsh.

She walks in past her brother, slips into the downstairs loo for a routine pee, takes a few deep breaths in front of the mirror, then goes straight to the kitchen. She sits, back upright, still in her school clothes. On the surface, she seems to be calm and relaxed. Somewhere inside, she’s boiling still, but it’s not all making sense. She’s angry at being split off from Keet and Farthing - even though she’s glad they’re not involved. The stupid attitudes of arrogant men are an easier target. At all the vile things that are happening at school. And the state of the shitty country she lives in - built on her dad’s constant browsing of the news. At poor Remi Breech being given an H because Yarra was the one who had to led her to the seamstress. Just that - nothing more. Just a casual connection. But why have they split her off from Farthing and Keet?

Yarra’s mum comes in the kitchen, smiles, and starts preparing dinner. All she says is, “Still in those things, are you? Though I suppose they’ll keep you cooler.” Though it’s chilly outside now, the heat’s on in the house.

Molcum doesn’t talk to her when he finally comes out from the room he calls his office. He sits down glumly, rotated ninety degrees to Yarra’s position. She’s put her back against the front-side kitchen wall, at the family’s small but functional dining table. Molcum doesn’t join in when Taudren waltzes casually in, just two minutes later, flicks quick eyes to see if Yarra is watching, then lifts his mother’s skirt up like he’s opening a curtain. He tucks it up into her belt, and tells her, “Just improving the view there, Lazlie. You just carry on making the dinner like you were!”

“Molcum, for God’s sake, please,” says Lazabel.

Yarra’s shoulders dip back - partly at Taudren’s sense of casual entitlement, partly because she’s never heard her mother called Lazlie before.

Molcum has his nose drooped in an under-sized news rag - though whether he’s actually reading is debatable. He mutters, “No point whining, Laz. You know he’s got permission.”

She slips a look over one shoulder at him, coyly. “You can always take it back,” she says.

It takes Yarra a moment to realise. It’s her mum’s basic calmness, her lack of concern. She can’t have been told that Yarra’s got an H. If Taudren just told Molcum, and Molcum had been hiding in his office, then her mum doesn’t know - because Yarra hasn’t told her anything either.

Molcum rumbles, “Just make the dinner like the boy says, Laz.”

Yarra stares at her father, jaw pushed forward. He won’t meet her look. Taudren prowls around behind Lazabel, then asks, “Can I pull up Mum’s knickers?”

Yarra pulls a face, but Molcum doesn’t respond. He’s brooding.

“Can I, Dad? Like, a general permission?”

“Yes!” snaps Molcum. “Yes, pull up her sodding knickers, Tauders. Spank her, pinch her, whatever you want. Just don’t sodding keep on asking my permission!”

“Molcum!” snaps Lazabel.

“Oh, just ... fucking shut up, Laz.”

Yarra can see - she’s actually looking at Lazabel’s face, unlike the head-dipped Molcum - that this last has stung her mother, where the casual probing of her son has not. But Taudren fails to pick up his mother’s shift in mood.

“For proper?” he asks. “Like, the pinching you mean? Like, any time I feel like?”

Molcum shifts his body away.

“Dad?”

Molcum chokes out, “Yes!”

“Brilliant!” says Taudren, then wallops his mum really hard on one arse cheek.

“Fuck,” she says, hands flinching into fists.

Taudren orders, “Don’t swear! Every time you swear, I’m giving you a wedgie!” He half reaches his arm out. Sees his mum’s tense right hand grip a potato masher like it’s a knife. “I’m still your mother,” she says tightly.

Taudren says, “So?” Then he glances at Molcum, who won’t look up. Taudren folds fingers in around Lazabel’s upper panties, just above her arse crack. “Have you let go of the bowl?” he asks her.

Lazabel pushes her bowl away and clatters the potato masher down inside it. Taudren, grinning, works her knickers left then right. Then, slowly, up.

“You little...” Lazabel is gritting her teeth together.

Taudren says, “Dad. Watch!”

And Molcum’s eyes do flick up at that, as Taudren, two-handed, pulls Lazabel’s panties up and back, stepping backwards himself, so she’s forced to stumble up onto her heels.

“God, what a fucking family,” Yarra proclaims.

“Right!” says her dad, and he’s suddenly boiling, his attention all on Yarra. “Taudren told me! You stupid little idiot, how could you, you...”

Lazabel has turned. Her eyes flick from Molcum to Yarra and back.

Molcum orders, “Fuck, just ... get up to your room, Yaz! And bloody well stay there!”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” says Yarra. She pushes up from behind the table. The chair she’d been sitting on scrapes up against the wall, then clatters in down against the table as she steps out to her right.

“Now!” says her dad, when Yarra just stands there. “And don’t even think you’re not going tomorrow!”

“Going where?” asks Lazabel. She’s pushed Taudren away now. “What’s this? What’s happened?”

Molcum doesn’t pay her the slightest attention. He’s ranting at Yarra, “I had to call that number back! To check what the boy said, you stupid little fool! Defying your teachers? Misconduct? Fighting? For fuck’s sake, Yarra! But you’ll be there, and on time!” His voice drops to more of a mumble as he adds, ”And you’ll take whatever they make you bloody take.” The final words are choked right down, as he buries his chin in his neck again.

Lazabel has flipped her own dress back down. “What is this, Molcum? What have you been told?”

But Yarra is replying to her dad, and talks over her. “Don’t you worry,” she shouts, voice cracking, “I’ll go just to get out of this fucking rotten house!”

“She’ll bunk off,” says Taudren, voice rising high. “But I can make sure she gets there, Dad!”

Yarra spits, “No you fucking won’t, you nasty little shit.”

Molcum looks up, furious. His face has turned bright red. He thumps a fist down on the tabletop. “Yes!” He looks back, grim. “Yes, he will!” Then his teeth have locked locked together. “And he can fucking watch as well! For all I care!”

Lazabel sits on the end of Yarra’s bed. She’s told Molcum she’s going upstairs and that’s that. He’s told her no, he forbids it. She’s told him if he wants to give her orders, then fine. But he can take all of Taudren’s new privileges back first. It has just been the two of them downstairs by then - Taudren already having slunk up to his room.

The tension between them you could cut with a knife. But while Lazabel remonstrates, argues passionately, moves her arms, Molcum locks up, static. His puffy face looks slapped from both sides. His frame is slumped into his sofa by the big TV. Lazabel stares at him, standing, seething, baffled by his lack of fire for Yarra’s circumstances. Stunned that he’s not even trying to protect her. Pissed off that he keeps giving in to Taudren’s stupid whims. Gutted at his seeming indifference to their marriage.

“So what am I supposed to do, eh, Laz?” he finally asks in a flat, listless voice.

She narrows her eyes. “Stand up to those sods. Phone up that pathetic excuse for a school and tell them which hole to stick their punishments up.”

“You can’t,” he says weakly. “You don’t understand.”

Through flaring nostrils, Lazabel says, “I don’t understand? Try doing some explaining!”

His eyes flare at her - she never gives him orders like that. Then he seems to deflate, and turns his head away. Slumped like a child in the dreariest of sulks. Like he’s just crawled up inside of himself. Lazabel turns her back on him and stamps up the stairs.

Then, at the top, she tries to calm herself down, counting to twenty, taking deep breaths. Then she tiptoes down to Yarra’s room, to keep Taudren unaware. Knocks gently on the door. “It’s your mum,” she says.

So now she’s in with Yarra, who still hasn’t bothered changing, though every day before, she’s jumped out of her orange kit as quickly as she can. Yarra sits upright with her back to the backboard, crossed legs perched on top of her pillows.

“I was bound to get one some time,” she says. “I thought it would happen every day this week. Last Friday I knew I’d get stitched up last Friday.”

Lazabel has no answer for her.

“You know how everything works now,” Yarra adds. “All those politics programmes that Dad insists on watching.”

Lazabel nods. She’s fully aware of their country’s scummy politics. “Is there no way out?”

Yarra shrugs. “Move house? Send me to the boy’s school? If I don’t show up, they might up and expel me? Seriously though, they’d probably just send me somewhere worse. Bightland Girls Reformatory, I hear they’re talking state school rejects.

Lazabel shudders. “Can’t you talk to your nice Mr Ullerade?”

Her head drops. “I know he’s trying to fight for us. Him and Tanta.”

“Tanta?”

“Miss Maplum,” says Yarra. “But he can’t not follow their orders completely. He had to pick two orange girls. If I didn’t show up, he’d just have to pick some other poor girl. Misra Spinks did that. Now poor Remi Breech got stuck in orange and those bastards just gave her an H tonight, too. If I don’t show up, what’s she going to think?”

Lazabel shakes her head. Then she tries something different. “Have you ever thought, Yarra - this thing tomorrow - have you thought, instead of resisting it - you might, sort of - see if you can go with it? See if you might - even if this may sound completely stupid - see if you can find a trick to let yourself enjoy it? I mean, there are some girls - men as well, some of them - who can. Who do.”

“Rossa Wilmutt,” Yarra says.

Lazabel doesn’t recognise the name.

“This girl I was put with.” Yarra sighs. “Koffa made her beg for an H - with her mouth - and Rossa Wilmutt fucking did it. She meant it, too. Like a piggy in shit. But - sorry - I just don’t work like that. Inside.”

Lazabel compresses her face. “Remind me,” she says. “An H means what?”

Yarra finds herself hesitating. She doesn’t even want to say the word out loud. But she flares her nostrils. “Humiliation, Mum. A full HP, a Humiliation Punishment.”

Lazabel’s eyebrows slowly lift. “Oh dear God. Like that show. That Gratuitous show.”

Yarra sighs. “Yeah, like that. Like the show.” But in her head, she’s thinking, maybe worse. “There’ll be other girls there too though,” Yarra adds. “It won’t just be me. Mendy Clitstrop’s from year twelve - she’ll be in it. She stood up for me today - stuck her neck out. Put it on the chopping block. And Misty. And Carrel, they tried to as well.”

Lazabel attampts a smile for her daughter. “It’s good that you can put a brave face on it,” she says. “I just hope you can tomorrow, too. Oh my god - the state we’re in...”

To Yarra’s surprise, she seems to have slept. She’d climbed into bed, emotionally exhausted, earlier than normal. Her dad hadn’t come up, and Taudren hadn’t come in to gloat over her, or spoken mean words through her closed bedroom door. As she tried to fall asleep, flashes from her 5MH humblers had surfaced and she’d jerked back awake, pulling out of the enclosing nightmare. Head in her pillow, she’d thought, That’s it - I’ll never get to sleep tonight. But her dreams - which she doesn’t even recall - must have backgrounded some of yesterday’s weirdness. She feels actually refreshed.

She’s downstairs, showered, in good time for a normal school day, even though the requirement is 9:55. Lazabel is in the kitchen. She quietly asks how Yarra is feeling. Yarra shrugs. She says, “Fine. I suppose. Yeah,” like she’s still surprised herself.

Molcum and Taudren show up together just a few minutes later to find Yarra eating her breakfast as normal.

“I’m taking you on the bus,” says Taudren. “Molcum says so.”

Molcum’s face flinches at the use of his first name.

“Wow,” says Yarra. “And does Molcum say you’ve got to hold my hand when I cross the road?” She turns to her dad, who’s just taking a seat. “You think I don’t know where my own stupid school is? You think I need this -” and she glares back at Taudren. “- this immature moron holding my leash?”

Molcum grinds out, “You’ve been given this - this punishment. So you’re going to take it. That’s that. End of discussion.”

“Yeah, thanks, I worked that out myself. Or did you think I’d just ride around on buses dressed like this all day?”

“Molcum,” says Lazabel, “Taudren doesn’t need to get involved. I’ll take her on the bus myself.”

“Fuck!” says Yarra. “You too, Mum? I know the stupid bus route!”

Molcum is flaring his nostrils now. “You know I had to call the Headmaster’s office back? ‘You may find it best to escort your daughter!’ That’s what the man said.”

Yarra tips her hands up. “What, you talked to the Head? You know how often we see that squeaky jobsworth? Assemblies. That’s it. He’s about as important as a mascot at a sports game. Mister token gesture. Leezing is a joke.”

Taudren says, “I told you last night, it’s,” and he blocks his nose, “dull Mr Nasal who calls schoolgirls’ houses.” He lets it go. “Anyway, Dad agrees I’ve got to take you.”

“Did he? Did he agree with you?” Larra imitates Taudren as a child, bouncing up and down on his seat in excitement. “Please, please, please, please. Please let me, please let me. Mum, Dad, I’ll just be really, really good! Pleeese!”

This is stinging Taudren. He actually blushes. “Yeah, and you’re so mature,” he says. Then his face locks into angry. “Dad’s letting me take you so I’m taking you! Alright?”

Molcum shouts. “Enough! Enough! Just - shut up!” Then he rounds on his daughter. “You fucking fool Yarra, why did you have to...”

She blinks at him, stalled for a moment by his volume. “What?” she says at last. “Get picked for a skirt by lottery?”

“Defy them all the time!” shouts Molcum.

Lazabel says quietly, “Maybe you could try that too. Defy them a bit. Stand up to them for your daughter’s sake.”

Molcum mumbles, “You know that’s not the way it works, Laz.”

All three of them are staring at him. Then Yarra pushes her cereals away. She gets up, saying, “I’m going to school.”

“Not time yet,” says Taudren.

“Great, you stay here. You can watch me on TV. Wank over me with Molcum in your bedroom - you’ll like that.”

Lazabel snaps out, “Yarra!”

Molcum is stewing, then he’s shouting again. “He’s taking you! And he’ll make sure you go in! For all I care, he can supervise your stupid humbler!”

All Yarra needs is her satchel with a few bits and pieces, but she’s left that in her bedroom. By the time she’s back down, Taudren is ready and waiting in the entrance lobby. Yarra pushes straight past him and out. Behind, in the kitchen, Molcum is shouting, “Just shut up about it, Laza! I told you, shut up!”

The K44 bendy bus comes along in under five minutes. It’s the same time bus that Yarra normally gets. She starts walking to bus’s front doors, but Taudren stands by the middle, saying, “This one!”

She stops. She turns around, both thumbs hooked under her satchel straps. “I use the front door. Safer.”

Taudren frowns. “Safer from what?”

“Safer from creeps like you,” she says. “This skirt screams, ‘Goose me!’”

“Oh yeah? It won’t today. You’re with me.”

Yarra pinches her mouth tight and gets on through the middle doors. She actually thinks he’s right for once. She’s seen it herself. Girls have even said it to her. Men think they can do what they want most of the time. Make lewd comments. Cop a feel, stand too close so you have to squeeze past their pushed-out groins. But not if you’re there with some other man or boy. Then they keep their mouths shut and their sweaty creeping fingers in their pockets.

“It’s like they must think the bloke owns you, Yarra.” Misty Lutyens had said that, three days ago in the playground one break. She’s heard other girls say the same thing too, more or less.

It’s Saturday, so the bus isn’t filling with handsy city boys for the business district in Riddlertown. It’s more early shoppers for Folder Street - women pulling bags on wheels, the odd stressed-out young mum with pre-school children, pensioners sitting in silent couples. Taudren stands by a centre-aisle pole. There are seats to be had, but this is still his pick. Yarra just stands with him. Towards the back are a group of younger lads.

“They’re staring up your skirt,” he says.

“They’d stare up yours if yours was this short.”

“I bet you like it.”

She laughs cynically. “Don’t have much choice, do I? It’s like it or lump it.” She thinks for a minute. Standing at the bus stop has leached away her anger. “Maybe in a world where it doesn’t turn me into a target.” She puts a stupid voice on - a dense Fisher Coast accent. “Hey look, a slut. Short skirts mean sluts.” Then she thinks for a minute. “So, what do you get out of it? Acting as my prison guard?”

“Dunno,” he says. “See which other girls show up?”

“You’re looking to try and get Imenna Scutta’s autograph?”

Her brother’s head clicks to her. “Has she got one?” he asks. “A humbler? Has she got one?”

“Fuck,” says Yarra.

“Has she?”

Yarra shakes her head. “You sad little wanker.”

“Seriously, has she?”

She tilts turns her face away, staring out through a window.

“Tell me.”

“Yes. Yes, Imenna Scutta’s got an H. She was near me when she got it. In gym class, yesterday afternoon.”

“Wicked,” he says, grinning. “Anyone else good?”

“What, to get your wank-list ready early? Yeah, that weird girl Rossa Wilmutt.”

The girl’s name doesn’t mean anything to Taudren. “What’s she like?” he asks.

“You’d like her, Tauds, she’ll be right up your street. Big, dirty tits. Seems like an actual, literal sub slut.”

His brain is slowly crunching. “SX?” asks. “RW turns into SX. Right?”

She shakes her head and shrugs.

“SX from class eleven plus? Like Imenna Scutta is JT from ten plus? On the database, you know - their stupid, obvious one letter up thing?”

“Like I’m ZD, yeah.”

Taudren’s face becomes blank, like he doesn’t know this one.

“Oh, come on, don’t act dumb.”

He’s shaking his head. “Never looked at ZD.”

This, she’s a little bit shocked to find, actually annoys her. He’s made such a fuss when she’s had to wear her school kit at home, going out of his way to comment, telling her he can see right up her skirt. “I don’t believe you.” She says this with a stiff face.

He shakes his head, staring blankly down (since at fifteen, he’s taller than his two-years-older sister). Then his face cracks. “Oh my god I got you! Hey lads,” he says turning to the school-age kids at the back, “this is ZD! ZD from Kennigwort High! I mean, Kennigwort Independent! ZD! ZD!” He pulls her tiny skirt right up. “You might recognise these bum cheeks, right?”

“Just ... Okay,” she says. “Just get off my skirt. You made your point.” She’s blushing, but not at him showing off her bum cheeks. She’s blushing that it hurt her when she thought he’d never trawled for her records. Not that there’ll be many. Yet. Her first gym class maybe, a week last Friday. But still, she’s blushing, which implies her own wiring must be pretty fucked up. She’s blushing that he got her with her own internal logic.

Taudren says, “Hey, I never knew you knew SX as well.”

“Rossa? She’s in my year, dummy.”

“Not your class though.”

“No. She’s in Dickle the Diddler’s.”

Taudren sniggers. “Is he that one who does her all the time?”

“Dunno,” she shrugs. “Probably.”

“I mean, that girl, she’s ... fuck. She does anything he tells her. And -”

“Don’t tell me the gross little details, wank-boy.” Then Yarra sighs. “Yeah, I kind of saw it yesterday. Two feet to my left.”

“What, you had to, like, perform with her or something?”

Yarra’s face turns faintly disgusted. “Fuck off,” she tells him. “You can’t really like her.”

He clears his throat. Taudren won’t meet her eyes, which makes him look embarrassed too. “I don’t like her as much as JT. I mean - Imenna? She’s just...”

“Notorious?” says Yarra.

“I know, but ... you know? JT’s just, kind of gorgeous with it? Like, an innocent notorious?”

Yarra does actually know what he means. And is faintly impressed by her wank-boy brother’s taste. “Well don’t go all gushy, cause she’ll probably be there.”

When they get off at the school’s west-bound bus stop, Taudren starts walking towards his school, not hers. On automatic, Yarra figures. Maybe distracted by some image of Imenna. “Hey, dummy,” she calls. He turns and shakes his head, then walks back towards her.

Yarra’s school’s tall wrought iron gates are not open yet, though. Normally they stand wide, but today it’s just the step-over inside gate in the right hand tall gate that’s been opened up. One of the assistant teachers stands beside it. Vido Cuckles is holding a clip board. He turns to look. Checks Yarra up and down, then glances at her brother. “Corkle,” he says.

It’s Taudren who answers. “Yeah. She’s my sister.”

Cuckles tells them, “Well you’ll just have to wait. It’s ten today, not the normal nine o’clock. She’s not allowed inside till nearer ten.”

He’s said all this to Taudren. It’s that ownership thing that gets Yarra’s goat. She tells Cuckles - no Sir preamble - “You don’t have to talk through him. I’ve got ears and a mouth and a brain, just like you.”

Cuckles stares back with a cynical eye. “And a tongue that’ll get you in a lot more trouble. Stand back there and keep your mouth shut.”

She shakes her head, but does what he tells her. She waits to one side. Her brother, hands in pockets, leans into the railings just beside her.

Early arrivals are Mr Needan - new in this term - and Dickle the Diddler, her opposite class’s year eleven class teacher. Taudren shifts his position more upright. He whispers to Yarra, “That’s him, right? Mr Dickle?”

Yarra can see - she’s close enough - that Cuckles has two sheets attached to his clipboard. The one he’s put on top lists the teachers. The one below - she presumes - lists the girls. He ticks two boxes, for Needan and Dickle, as the first man steps over the internal gate. Dickle peers at Yarra before he goes in. She thinks he’s smirking. Not because it’s literally her, she guesses, but because she’s a girl from Ullerade’s class.

Koffa - another teacher she barely knows, and Fairlaw, an assistant, are next to turn up. Then inside, behind the tall school fence, she catches a glimpse of two of the groundsmen - the older one, Borger and a stocky, chubby young one.

There’s a long, dull wait. Taudren, hands in pockets, watches the clouds. Yarra is glad of a warm morning sun. Then just around half past, Imenna Scutta shows up, in the distance. Taudren is immediately paying attention. Imenna is walking along by the school grounds, on the far side of Cuckles. There’s a seedy-looking man who’s walking with her, with uncombed hair, in an ill-fitting track suit that hangs loose, too baggy on his skinny frame. As they both get closer, Yarra makes out stains on his baggy track suit top. Food stains? She shudders - it looks like it hasn’t been washed for weeks.

The man, arriving, talks to Cuckles in a sneery-sounding voice. “Brought my daughter,” he says.

Cuckles tells him, frowning at his clipboard, “It’s still too early for the girls to go in.”

“Right,” says the man. “Just, that phone call said to get her here - you know - before ten. Bring her, right? Make sure she shows up? Penalties, the bloke said.”

Cuckles is now eyeing Imenna. She looks clean and fresh, hair combed to a shine, in total contrast to the seedy man’s outfit. Her short orange skirt looks like it’s just been ironed. Her hair reflects the sun, caught is a gust around her neo-natal, high, bold forehead.

“Is it you who’ll be doing her?” the man asks Cuckles. His voice and his words drip sleazy, creepy.

Cuckles squints, frowning. He half shakes his head, like he’s not sure how to answer. “She’ll be - punished. That’s the point. But I doubt by me.”

“HP,” says the man, as he turns his eyes to Yarra. “Humiliation punishment.”

Cuckles’ body language has edged towards uncomfortable, wary. “Could you stand over there, please?” He twitches his head towards Yarra and Taudren.

“Oh I don’t need to stay,” says Lankworth Scutta. “Got other things to keep me busy today. Might have a watch, though. But yeah, delivered her, haven’t I? She’ll stay. Won’t sneak off, she always turns up to her punishments does Menna. In’t that right, you slutty little waste of space?”

Yarra can’t believe what she’s hearing - right here. Right outside the school. Taudren’s fantasy girl looks gutted. She turns her head towards nothing and nods. Yarra feels suddenly terrible for her - despite what she’s thought about the girl in the past. Her own dad calls her a slutty waste of space? She even spots Taudren’s mouth dangling open.

Scutta just sneers his face into a wrinkle. “That Needan in yet?” he asks, “her new teacher? Or that Dickle bloke. They’ve both done Imenna.” He sniffs. “Seems what she’s good for, don’t it?” He stares at his apparent daughter. “Int that right?” Then he looks back at Cuckles and says, “Least she’s good for summat though, right?” He lowers his voice, though Yarra is close enough to just make it out. “Bit of money from the slut show if enough people watch, right?”

Cuckles is pretending to stare at his sheets. Ignoring the man, not engaging at all. But Scutta does him the favour of lumpily laughing and slouching more upright. He tells Imenna, “You just make sure to do whatever they tell you.” Then sniffs and adds, “Or on second thoughts, don’t. Might keep you here longer!” He sniffs a sniffed laugh, pushes hands deep into his loose tracksuit pockets. Then he slow-ambles off with an over-swung saunter.

Imenna doesn’t know what to do with her face. She meets Yarra’s wide eyes for a beat, then looks down and to one side. She doesn’t seem to know where to stand.

Taudren leans his moth close to Yarra’s ear. “Did you spot that?” he whispers. “He looks nothing like her.”

No matter how horrible her brother can be, at least he looks shocked by what he’s just seen.