Owen turned the sheet towards me, and I put my handbag on top of it.
“Sorry,” I said. I moved the bag to the floor. There was my signature, the uneven capital C I had practised on the covers of my exercise books.
Above it: I took the sealed exam packet. I am sorry.
I had come to discuss helping children read. My daughter attended my old primary school now. I had filled in the forms, listed my available mornings, even worried about whether my shoes would squeak in the library.
“Where did you get that?”
“Your retained incident file,” Owen said. “When the connection to your pupil record came up, I needed to clarify it. Your application is on hold, not refused.”
“I was eleven.”
“I know.”
“And I didn’t take it.”
He left his pen on the desk. I had expected him to ask why I had signed. I was already preparing the explanation, making it sound smaller and more reasonable than it had been.
My mother had kept my supper in the oven that night. Whenever I reached for the plate, she pointed to the paper. When hunger stopped working, she said children who stole and lied couldn’t expect to keep living in her house.
So I signed. Then I ate the dried edges of a shepherd’s pie while she folded my confession into an envelope.
“I won’t apologise again,” I told Owen. “I want that looked at properly.”
He pulled a fresh sheet towards him. “Then let’s record that you dispute it.”
That afternoon, Mother was cutting the labels out of a new cardigan when I put my copy of the confession on her kitchen table.
“Owen found this.”
She laid down the scissors. “You should have said you were sorry and left it alone.”
“For something I didn’t do?”
“Clara. Your name’s on it.”
“Because you made me sign.”
She brushed a scrap of label off the table. “Ruth identified you. I didn’t invent the problem.”
Ruth had been the school secretary. Mother had volunteered in her office, sorting letters and answering the telephone. For years, I had avoided looking at Ruth whenever I saw her in town.
“I was sick in that office,” I said. “I remember sitting beside her desk with a bowl.”
“You were in and out of rooms all day.”
“Do you know anything that could clear this up?”
“No. And what would it change? You signed it yourself.”
I took the paper before she could fold it. At the door, she told me not to embarrass myself. I nearly promised I wouldn’t.
Instead, I asked Owen whether he could pass my number to Ruth.
She rang two days later and invited me over. I sat on the edge of her sofa while she moved a sewing basket to make room for a tray.
“Why did you tell my mother I took those papers?” I asked.
Ruth kept hold of the teapot. “I didn’t.”
“She said you identified me.”
“I never accused you of taking that packet.”
I wanted to believe her immediately. That frightened me. I had spent years believing Mother just as quickly.
