My Secret Diary Read Online Free PDF Page B

you
hear me?'
    Doreen couldn't help hearing her, she was
bellowing in her face. But she didn't flinch.
    We all wondered what would happen tomorrow.
We knew Doreen didn't have any indoor shoes, and
she didn't come from the sort of family where her
mum could brandish a full purse and say, 'No
problem, sweetheart, we'll trot down to Clarks
shoeshop and buy you a pair.'
    Doreen walked into school assembly the next
morning in grubby blue bedroom slippers with
holes in the toes. I'm certain this was all she had.
She didn't look as if she was being deliberately
defiant. There was a flush of pink across her pale
face. She didn't want to show off the state of her
slippers to all of us. Miss Haslett didn't understand.
She flushed too.
    'How dare you be so insolent as to wear your
slippers in school!' she shrieked. 'Go and stand
outside my study in disgrace.'
    Doreen stood there all day long, shuffling from
one slippered foot to the other. She didn't come
into school the next day. The following Monday she
wore regulation rubber-soled school sandals. They
were old and scuffed and had obviously belonged
to somebody else. Maybe someone gave them to
her, or maybe her mum bought them for sixpence
at a jumble sale.
    'At last you've seen sense, Doreen,' said Miss
Haslett in assembly. 'I hope this has taught you all
a lesson, girls.'
    I hadn't seen sense. I'd seen crass stupidity
and insensitivity on Miss Haslett's part. It
taught me the lesson that some teachers were
appallingly unfair, so caught up in petty rules and
regulations that they lost all compassion and
common sense.
    A couple of years later I ended up standing in
disgrace outside Miss Haslett's study door. She'd
seen me walking to the bus stop without my school
beret and – shock horror! – I was sucking a Sherbet
Fountain. I'd committed not one but two criminal
offences in her eyes: eating in school uniform and
not wearing my silly hat.
    Miss Haslett sent for me and started telling me
off. 'Why were you eating that childish rubbish,
Jacqueline?' she asked.
    The obvious answer was that I was hungry,
and I needed something to keep me going for the
long walk home. (I'd stopped taking the bus after
the dramatic accident.) However, I sensed Miss
Haslett would consider an honest answer insolent,
so I kept quiet.
    'And why weren't you wearing your school
beret?' she continued.
    This was easier. 'I've lost it, Miss Haslett,' I
said truthfully.
    It had been there on my coat hook that morning.
Someone had obviously snatched it for themselves
when their own beret had gone missing.
    'That's just like you, Jacqueline Aitken,' said
Miss Haslett. 'Stand outside!'
    I stood there. My legs started aching after
a while so I leaned against the wall. I didn't feel
cast down. I was utterly jubilant because I was
missing a maths lesson. I gazed into space and
started imagining inside my head, continuing
a serial – a magic island story. Pupils squeaked
past in their sandals every now and then, good
girls trusted to take important messages to Miss
Haslett. The odd teacher strode past too, several
frowning at me to emphasize my disgrace. But then
dear Mr Jeziewski, one of the art teachers, came
sloping along in his suede shoes. He raised
his eyebrows at me in mock horror, felt in his
pocket, put two squares of chocolate on the window
ledge beside me and winked before he went on
his way.
    I smiled at Mr Jeziewski and savoured my
chocolate. I couldn't resist writing a similar scene
in my book Love Lessons , in which my main girl,
Prue, falls passionately in love with her art teacher,
Mr Raxbury. I promise I didn't fall for Mr
Jeziewski, who was very much a family man and
rather plain, with straight floppy hair and baggy
cords – but he was certainly my favourite teacher
when I was at Coombe.
    Having Chris for a friend was an enormous help
in settling into secondary school life. She wasn't
quite as hopeless as me at PE, but pretty nearly,
so we puffed along the sports track together and
lurked at the very