Kersteen One Saturday Morning 1993.

Kersteen was glad her mother had gone out shopping and taken her baby with her; it gave her time to throw up in the toilet without having to worry in case her mother heard her and the row and slap that would follow. I won’t have you making yourself sick, her mother would say as she whacked her one. One more week at school and she was free from the beady eyes of the teachers who often never allowed her from the classroom to go puke. The only one at school whom she liked was the school nurse who understood her and for whom she had a crush. But the nurse had left under a cloud a year before and she seldom saw her anymore, except for one brief visit to her home where she lived alone. She entered the toilet and kneeling by the toilet bowl and putting two fingers down her throat, threw up the breakfast her mother insisted she ate.  She knelt there and wiped her lip with tissue. Her mouth felt foul; her teeth seemed to be rotting. She sighed. Her father was away at sea and as seldom home, and when he was he was often drunk. After washing out her mouth she brushed her teeth and rinsed out with the mouthwash to keep at bay the scent of vomit from her mother nose and keen eye and ear for the outlandish lie.