Memories are made of this

Her tears couldn't stop
Esther unable to weep away her father’s loss had noticed a huge dollop of strawberry jam on her navy and white anorak. Fortunately she had spotted that mess before going in through the school gates that banged against a stone wall startling the lady in the adjoining stone cottage so that she dropped her embroidery. Esther had such a sweet tooth that she'd been unable to resist going into Mona’s cake shop for a jam doughnut.
“What a mess!” she muttered to herself, with sugar on her fingers and even in her hair. How delightful it would have been to stay in that old shop with its big till and row upon row of freshly baked cakes and buns with crumbs on the glass counter; rather than at a school that by all earlier accounts sounded little better than hell.
Then she was there experiencing her dreams and terrors in the school-yard where Miss Brown looked every bit as stern and scary as she had heard. In her hand was a long cane that swung beside her pretty floral dress a thick black watch-strap circling her wrist.
That morning Esther had stood like a cardboard cut-out in a line out in the school-yard with the other girls. A hand-bell rang and she joined a straggly line, as girls, using strange sounding words such as ‘peps, pop, chops, gel, wunt, dunt, shent, and kent, went into their respective classes. She later sat wedged behind one of the long wooden desks, with an ink pot for every other child. Taking up her sharp-nibbed pen she began to write her name in a clumsy, child-like scrawl on her first blue exercise book. Her school mistress walked slowly and menacingly backwards and forwards, finally sitting on a wooden dais as if to assert her authority absolutely. A good half an hour of that morning was spent learning her tables by rote. She was then caught unawares as Miss Brown screamed for all of the form to stand up and wave their handkerchiefs in the air. She had no handkerchief or rag in the sleeve of her cardigan.
“I will let you off this time, girl…but in future you must have a handkerchief. Esther nodded and glanced out of the window at the Old Maid’s Cottage and, beyond that, the church with the vicar standing near the side entrance smoking a cigarette.
It was no surprise to realize why most girls were petrified of this particular teacher, or why there were so many reluctant girls in her class. One only had to take a look at her to realize that she inspired fear in the class.

“It’s her. Look, it’s her, that strange girl I was just talking about, what a scaredy cat!”
“I hit her real hard with a stick I’d got from the pits. Stupid idiot just told me to hit her again, something about the Bible and turning the other cheek, so I hit her harder and, do you know, silly cow did nothing back? Just ran home to her ma, to tell on me, I expect, and her with her dad dead”.
Esther heard this but said nothing; somehow she was losing her voice as well as her courage as she began to feel sadder.
In came a man, nothing like Esther's dad, who would smash their difficult world apart.

Their mum’s first pen-friend
Some months later, as spring flowers bent in the breeze, Esther’s youngest brother toppled again- falling heavily on his already plaster-covered knee on the playground gravel. Meanwhile Esther’s swing soared higher as the wind made her ears tingle clinging so tightly to the rusty chain that it made marks on her palms and fingers.

“I can see the water tower and the tennis courts and a Weetabix lorry she cried out as her body swung backwards and forwards as the swing took her higher and higher. “I didn’t like the look of him, not a bit like our Daddy. Bad tempered bloke never spoke to us nor smiled. Wanting us to run errands for him then play in the street for fresh air he said!
“But!”
“But what, sis...split. Tell us!”
“I don’t know if I should say. It’s a secret. Mum told me when you were out playing!”
“Come on, sis!” shouted Andrew, as he leaped fearlessly from the still-spinning roundabout, almost falling on the gravel as he landed, standing wobbly and proud.
“Belt up, you two, and let me tell you. Or perhaps you don’t want to know? Anyway,” Esther continued, “Mummy told me as we sat listening to the afternoon play. She said that the posh man didn’t much like kids and, in fact, he hated them so much that we would have to go to boarding school miles away from home. Course she said she wasn’t having that though. Told him to take his posh car and chauffeur and not come back this way again”.