30. Parents' Evening

Once a term there is a parents' evening. Parents come to the school to have a meeting with all the teachers, to hear how their daughter is getting on. Well, I assume that’s what it’s about, my parents have never come to a parents evening so I’m not completely sure what they talk about.

It’s parents’ evening tonight and as usual Mummy and Daddy aren’t coming. There are a few of us whose parents aren’t coming. Caz and Kim’s parents live in Germany so it’s a long way to come to talk with the teachers for an hour I suppose.

Our job this evening, those of us whose parents aren't coming, is to act as helpers. We offer tea and coffee and watch as the other girls sit with their parents and the teachers chatting away. I clear away some empty cups and top up the biscuits plate and generally hand about the hall.

My parents don't belong here, in this creaky, old school hall with all these dull, grey people. Mummy and Daddy are beautiful, glamorous people. They go to smart restaurants and dance at parties. This school is not part of their world. What am I doing in this stupid school so far away from home? My parents don't care enough about what happens here to come and speak to the teachers. I suppose my work, what I do at school, how I'm getting on, none of that matters much to them in the ark of their lives. Not that they don't care about me but what I do here just isn't important to them. Daddy travels all the time for his work and he even comes to see me sometimes and takes me out to lunch when he's in England for a meeting, but they won't make the trip just to come for parents’ evening. I think this place is stupid and pointless and everything I am supposedly learning here is stupid and pointless.

My parents at Alfredo's in Rome

“Sophie” Mrs Hollis calls over to me “Fill up this jug of water please and go and tell Miss Carpenter that she can send Mr and Mrs  Farrell over”.

Am I a pupil or a servant?

It’s not fair. Why do the others get to see their parents tonight and I have to fill up the stupid water?

Maybe it’s better. Who knows what some of the teachers would have to say about me. All my end of term reports say the same thing “Could try harder, must stop daydreaming, loses everything, easily distracted, bright but lazy, chatterbox, definitely disobedient, blatantly dishonest…”

Caz says it’s definitely a good thing that our parents aren’t here. She thinks we are lucky. She’s probably right. But I feel sad looking at the other girls with their parents. Nicky’s father has his hand on her shoulder. Maybe it’s nice to have them here, even if the teachers are going to say things about her that she doesn’t really want them to. I hate being on my own watching them all having earnest conversations, girls sitting between their parents. I miss home. I miss just being there, hearing Mummy and Daddy’s voices, sleeping in my bed, eating nice food, feeling safe.

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I never told my parents how I felt about them not coming to parents' evenings. At the time I just knew that it would not be the right thing to do, it was not a good idea to do or say anything that might incite guilt in my mother or challenge my father or to criticise them in any way. After all, they had sent me away, so I had to be very careful not to make myself even less lovable by being difficult or needy.

I have never spoken to them about it as an adult either. I am pretty sure my mother would have come up with some defensive excuse and my father, my father might have acknowledged my experience and shared his regret but fundamentally, at the time, he just didn't care enough. His work, my mother, those were his priorities, that's the simple truth. Like many men of his time, fathering did not involved being involved in the day to day of their children's lives nor attending to their emotional wellbeing.

Go to the next story: 31. The Lost Duvet