Erimentha is home and dinner is on the go (pumpkin soup and cornbread, aesthetic!) She's annoyed there's no homework, so writes another list and goes on a walk, I really cannot be bothered to go into the intricacies of these. This chapter is mainly an insight into the toxic family dynamic at play: Golden Child/Black Sheep.
Dinner is ready and Erimentha goes upstairs. Nathan is in his room playing Lego and has almost finished making a police station. That's impressive for a 9 year old, I bet he has made a holding cell for his family.
When he comes down, their mum makes a big show of him coming to the table on time, claps and pulls out the chair for him. In years to come, Nathan will recount his story to a therapist and be encouraged to write the letter to his estranged family that he'll never send.
He slurps his soup, which to Erimentha is as disgusteng as Scottish children not flushing the toilet. Erimentha doesn't tell him off though, she doesn't have the heart and 'he's not this rude when we eat out' - except Erimentha, YOU ARE NOT THE PARENT HERE. In her determination to be precocious, she is actually pretty obnoxious.
The soup is a great-grandmother's recipe, and their mum mentions spending her childhood Christmases in Paris, which is nice if soup can do that for you.
Later, she does some research on Cambodia to torment Mr Aldridge. She mentions that other than the fruit, Cambodian delicacies do not look very appetising. [Ed: Waaaait a minute missy, there is some really nasty snobbery going on here and I'm surprised Ruby didn't cut this out when she re-edited the book.] Amok curries, banana flower salad, Khmer curries etc are delicious, complex and memorable.
She looks up the definition of bullying in multiple books, deciding her bullies will never change, because personal growth does not apply to humans.
She will continue to do her extension projects, "even if it means sneaking them to the teachers in the dead of night". Erimentha forgot to look up the definition of 'stalking'.