Work Text:
Lynda (aged six, on Kenny): "He followed me. He always follows me." (S2, Going Back to Jasper Street.)
*
Mrs Phillips and Mrs Day were both running late that first morning, meeting in the playground with a mixture of relief and flustered embarrassment at finding a fellow culprit.
"Kenny will dawdle," explained Mrs Phillips, as she tugged his coat straight, and did a final check for specks of dirt on his face. "And this morning there was a stray dog – well, probably not even lost at all, but there you are – and he would worry about it."
Mrs Day merely nodded, because if she told Mrs Phillips that she had been held back by Lynda's tantrums over not wanting to go to school, not wanting to wear her uniform (she wanted her old, green dungarees, thank you) and then insisting her doll was going with her, because it was stupider and needed to learn more than she did, and that she'd screamed at her for brushing her hair, and she'd had to virtually drag her down the street, using all her wiles to talk her round as she went, Mrs Phillips would assume she was a bad parent. Mrs Day had a worrying suspicion that she might be. Lynda had changed her mind now, looking forward to showing off how clever she was to the other children, but Mrs Day wasn't reassured. She glanced down at her daughter and found her scowling at Kenny Phillips, who'd made the mistake of smiling at her.
"Well," said Mrs Phillips, as they handed them both over to the teacher, "be good now, Kenny, and look after the nice little girl – what's her name?"
Mrs Day reflected on the fact that she would sound an even worse parent if she told Mrs Phillips that she might be best warning her son away from her daughter if she wanted him back in one piece at the end of the morning. "Lynda."
Still, she thought, school would give her something to occupy her at last, and she would have to be a little less headstrong when she was one of thirty, not her mother's only child. Even if that wasn't quite how it had worked out at playgroup.
"That's a pretty name," said Mrs Phillips, and received a hard stare from the small child owning to it.
However, her daughter had evidently decided it was time to be charming, thought Mrs Day, watching her. Lynda beamed up at the adult. "It's got a y in it, not an i," she confided.
"I'll try and remember that," said Mrs Phillips, amused, and clearly now under the mistaken impression that Lynda was an adorable little girl.
*
Kenny's mum walked him back from school, holding his hand. "Did you have a nice time, Kenny?"
He nodded.
"And you did take care of Lynda, didn't you?"
Kenny paused, because he was very truthful, and he wasn't sure that he had.
He had tried. He'd sat next to her, and followed her about, even after she told him not to, and painted him instead of her picture, and when he still didn't go away, she hit him over the head with her plastic spade in the sandpit. Which was funny, because when Sally Jenkins had thought it was a good joke and tried to do the same, she'd pulled the other girl's pigtails until she'd cried and said sorry. After that Lynda had let him build her a sandcastle, telling him how to do it properly. And she'd stopped calling him stupid when she found out he could already read, just like she could.
In the end, he only nodded again.
"And did you learn anything?" his mum continued.
He smiled, then. "Oh, yes."
*
"Lynda," said Mrs Day. "You did play nicely with the other children, didn't you?"
She wrinkled her nose. "Yes, of course."
"And you weren't unkind to Kenny, were you? Because it looked to me as if you were trying to push him over when I found you."
Lynda looked up. "He tried to hold my hand!"
"Oh, well, yes, I see," said Mrs Day. She was feeling relieved. The teacher had mentioned one little incident, but she hadn't seemed to think it was Lynda's fault, although Mrs Day was worried that was only because she didn't like to label her a little demon on the first day. Maybe, she thought with relief, it was going to turn out better than playgroup. Lynda preferred doing things with a purpose, so school was bound to be an improvement, after all
And she couldn't have been at her worst, she thought, feeling ashamed of herself for being so hard on her daughter. After all, none of the other children at playgroup had ever tried to hold her hand.
She smiled and risked asking, "And did you do anything fun?"
"I painted Kenny green," announced Lynda, falling into giggles.
Mrs Day sighed. "Lynda," she said. "That isn't how you make friends."
This time, as it turned out, Lynda's mother couldn't have been more wrong.