‘Kotbuller! That’s it.’
‘After we’d spent all lesson moulding that grey meat with our hands, I didn’t fancy them at all. I think I put them in the bin.’
Maddie’s mouth turned down.
‘We weren’t allowed to waste food in our house. Everything I made in that class my mum made us eat for tea.’
Charlotte wrinkled her nose at the thought.
‘What I most remember about the whole experience was those two brothers we were paired up with. Irish boys from the estate next to the school. What were they called?’
‘Keiron, and… Dennis! He was known as Dennis the Menace.’
‘He had lovely green eyes though. They spent the whole lesson giving us tips on how to shoplift. Do you remember?’
‘It’s coming back to me.’
‘It was in the days before plastic packaging. Dennis’s top tip was to shove things in the central well of toilet rolls and cover it over with something else.’
Maddie let out a snort.
‘Yes, I do remember. We just stood there listening, like the good girls from the villages that we were, bussed into the bigtown on a school coach every day. We nodded sagely as if it was something we were planning to rush out and do.’
The laughter in Charlotte’s voice cheered Sofia no end. But she had to say it.
‘But you did have a little go at it, didn’t you, Char?’
Her friend rolled her eyes.
‘I knew you’d bring that up. It was my one and only time, and yes… I got caught red-handed.’
‘It’s because you’ve got such an honest face.’
‘Mmmm. I was with that snotty girl… Camilla, was it?’
‘Yep, that’s her.’
‘I think her parents thought that sending her to a comprehensive was some sort of social experiment. Do you remember we all used to meet in town at the Wimpy on a Saturday afternoon? We’d spend hours in there, nursing a single coffee and waiting for certain boys to come in.’
Maddie’s confused face stared between them both.
‘Surely there wasn’t anything to shoplift in the Wimpy? Unless you had a yearning for those red plastic tomato sauce containers with the moulded leaves on top?’
Charlotte shook her head.
‘No! Although they were very kitsch. We were in that awful department store in town, Fogeys, or something like that.’
Sofia laughed. This was nicely taking her mind off what was about to come.
‘Hardly. I think it was called Fingles.’
‘Well, it was full of people our parents’ age and older.’
‘You mean our age now?’
‘Shut it. Things were different back then. Sixty-year-olds were considered old. Anyway, do you want to hear the story or not, since you’ve brought it up?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
