Truly Scrumptious

My daughter definitely had a talent for making cupcakes

THE front door banged shut and I sighed. I had hoped that September, and a new class, would improve things, but it had obviously been another bad day at school.

“I’m in the kitchen, Mandy,” I called, and the next moment my eleven year-old daughter appeared in the doorway.

“Had a good day, love?” I asked brightly.

“No.” Mandy threw down her school bag and slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. “I was rubbish in Maths, and I hate that new teacher, Mr Jones.”

“Oh, but you used to really enjoy Maths.”

“Yeah, well, some of the boys teased me about my new brace. Darren said it makes me talk like a baby.”

“Nonsense. Anyway, you won’t have it on for ever,” I reminded her as I set a glass of milk and some oatmeal biscuits in front of her. “You’ve always been so good about cleaning your teeth, and they’re lovely – not a filling in sight.”

I looked at the downcast little face and felt my heart immediately constrict with angry pain. Mandy had always been Daddy’s little girl, and when he’d walked out on us with a woman in his office whom I hadn’t even known existed, her world had collapsed around her.

Now she was punishing that world in the only way she knew.

From being a bright, eager child in the classroom (I remember one of the infants teachers saying Mandy was the sort of child who made her job worthwhile), now each school report was worse than the one before, and the test results at the end of the summer term were so bad that I’d shed tears over them.

Oh, Clyde, I thought suddenly, if only you could see her.