THE GLUCOSE

In the weeks that followed, Rosalind never once badmouthed me directly.

She was smarter than that.

At lunch, whenever anyone brought up the slap, Rosalind would only give a small smile, bow her head.

“It’s fine, that’s in the past, I don’t keep score, everyone loses their temper sometimes.”

That line, rather than putting the drama to rest, only made the students around her feel more sympathy for her — a forgiving victim, without a trace of resentment, while the “bully” had never once apologised publicly.

Gradually, without Rosalind having to do anything at all, the crowd took over acting on her behalf.

Some classmates messaged me directly, calling me “selfish,” “using illness as a shield for a rotten temper.”

A group who used to sit with me at lunch now quietly moved to another table whenever I walked in.

No one said a word to my face — that was exactly the kind of cold violence Loxley Hall, with all its polished English manners, was particularly skilled at practicing: silence, distance, but enough to make someone feel unmistakably isolated.

Amelia couldn’t stand it.

“I genuinely don’t understand how you can stay quiet through this,” she said one evening, both of us sitting over homework in our room, the desk lamp casting light across her scowling face.

“Rosalind’s turning the whole school into her tool. I could go to Miss Whitfield, tell her everything I saw.”

“You already did,” I reminded her, “in the statement you gave Mr. Pemberton. But you see, the truth doesn’t matter as much as who tells the story first, and how they tell it.”

I pulled a small notebook out of my desk drawer, flipping it open for Amelia to see — every date, every time, everything Rosalind had said, who’d been present to witness it, going back to that first PE session.

“I’m not planning to let this end with another slap,” I said.

“Next time, if there is a next time, I’ll let the whole school see it for themselves, without me having to say a single word.”

Amelia looked at the notebook, then at me, and finally nodded, though worry still lingered in her eyes.

“Fine. But this time, I’ll be recording everything too. Not just writing it down — video, texts, whatever evidence I can get my hands on.”