A Catholic Latin school logo on a navy blue V-neck jumper, Deo duce, worn outside its school chapel of foldable blue chairs and candles. They never taught its translation at school, but Nan’s multilingual friend, my granddad, shared it over after-school restaurant table conversation. He would worry over the enormity and heaviness of the official school rucksack that could fit every apparatus for every subject all at once, from maths sets of protractors and a compass to PE kits. He would be baffled as I sat with blank A4 sheets of paper, measuring borders and lines with rulers. He would promise to help us source a computer to save time and save me from this task. Although not my single-parent mum’s first choice of school for me, an Abbey Vale school was. And Cherry Orchard, a small shell and stone’s throw from our outwardly neat home on a main road in a still sought-after area, was offered by school panels and appeals and rejected. St Mary’s stepped in with its resolve and compromise for milestones including baptism, first confession, First Holy Communion, and confirmation. One art and design teacher there reprimanded me for appearing to smirk as she ordered the whole class to repeatedly file in and out of the classroom, following her instructions exactly each time, until they finally got it right. I felt I had let her down when I broke the eye of a needle in textiles. After school, that evening, I barely conversed with my mum, avoiding her questions about my day over our fish and chips at the kitchen table. I should have articulated how I had been reminded by the teacher to apologise to her afterwards, how the other students’ whispers and negative comments about the teacher’s stern approach had slipped away in my ear immediately beforehand, unnoticed by her. It was me she had been infuriated with.
