In fact, her mum was supposed to fill in a form, but even if she hadn’t been in Leeds, Pauline couldn’t imagine approaching Joanne with the daunting sheaf of printed pages the hard-eyed woman had given her after she left the classroom. She’d tried to explain that her mum was away working, and they’d said in that case her dad would do. Dave was the closest in the house to a dad, but he’d just tell her to fuck off if she went anywhere near him with a piece of paper. Anyway, Pauline knew better than to let him or anyone else in the house know about the film, let alone needing permission, even though she had half a mind herself to rip up the typed sheets and dump them before it all went wrong. But somehow she couldn’t. Instead, she kept the form in her bedroom, flat in a drawer, and checked on it from time to time, as though writing might have germinated on the pages in her absence. Gemma wasn’t talking to her. The last day of school, she’d run away from her in the playground and told a teacher when Pauline tried to catch up.
