Her mother’s reaction shocked me: she looked over and smirked. At that moment my father was outside, in the churchyard, in his usual spot under the cherry trees; I could see him with his pouch of tobacco in one hand and the cigarette paper in the other, he didn’t bother to disguise these things from me any longer. But there was not a world in which I could make a cruel comment to another child and have my father—or mother—smirk, or side with me in any way. It struck me that Tracey and her mother were on the same side, and I thought there was something unnatural about this and that they seemed
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