Mice Read online

  I sat dazed on the floor for what seemed like a very long time. I dabbed at my nose, which had started to bleed, and felt a strange prickling sensation creeping over my scalp. I was getting unsteadily to my feet when one of the juniors came in and saw me. She let out a piercing horror-movie scream, then turned and ran out again.

  Managing to stand upright, I walked slowly, shakily, towards the mirror to clean myself up before the next class. But when I looked for my reflection, I wasn’t there. There was a girl my shape and size wearing the blouse and skirt I’d put on that morning – but she had no face. Instead of a face there was a swirling ball of orange flame.

  I still hadn’t recognized the horror in the mirror when Mr Morrison burst in. He came running towards me (I saw it all in slow motion), roaring like a soldier charging into battle (but I couldn’t hear anything), and tearing off his jacket (that’s when I knew the girl in the mirror was me), he held it up like a blanket (I called out for Mum) and threw it over my burning head (but no sound came).

  And then everything went black.

  While I was in hospital, Mum found my diary. She was looking for my favourite baby-blue pyjamas when she stumbled on it. She broke the lock open and read everything. Appalled and horrified, she took it straight to my school and showed it to the head teacher.

  Mum told me later that the head had ordered the three girls to his office, insisting that Mum stay while he conducted the interview (I could just imagine how she must have squirmed, as reluctant to confront them as I had been). Apparently Teresa, Emma and Jane weren’t the slightest bit intimidated by his summons; to them the head was little more than a joke, an obese, bumbling clown straight out of a third-rate sitcom. Nor were they fazed when they saw Mum. She said they slouched, sniggering and grinning, in their chairs, eyeing her with contempt, all memories of her past hospitality and kindness to them forgotten.

  The head read out some of the most damning extracts from my diary and then demanded, ‘Well? What do you have to say about this?’

  And they had a lot to say, according to Mum. All shouting out at the same time, they angrily denied bullying me and protested that they’d been nowhere near the girls’ toilets when I was attacked. I could hear their three voices entwining like a cat’s cradle into one: She’s just trying to get us into trouble! She’s a freaking weirdo! It’s all a pack of lies!

  This was the only time Mum said she spoke. It pained me to imagine how much it would have cost her. How with red face and trembling lips she’d managed to say: Shelley doesn’t lie.

  Emma immediately snapped back at her, ‘If it’s all true, then how come she never told you?’ And Mum had fallen silent again.

  Leaning forward in her chair towards Mum, Teresa said with a barely concealed smirk, ‘Maybe Shelley went into the girls’ loos to have a smoke and had some sort of accident with her lighter. Maybe she’d gone into the toilet to light up, Mrs Rivers.’ Emma and Jane had to cross their legs and bite their cheeks so as not to burst out laughing at her wicked joke.

  Later the same day, they were interviewed by the police. They took these interviews much more seriously. Each girl was led separately into one of the soundproofed rooms at the local station, where a detective questioned them about the attack.

  I could see it all: the three of them denying everything in teary, frightened voices while their parents held their hands and comforted them, convinced that their precious daughters were incapable of doing anything as barbaric as setting another girl’s hair on fire. The three of them telling lie after lie, carefully repeating the alibi they’d worked out together beforehand, while their solicitors sat tensed like jack-in-the-boxes, ready to jump up and object to any question they deemed inappropriate for their vulnerable young clients; demanding absolute fairness for girls who didn’t even know the meaning of the word.

  Meanwhile, I lay in Lavender Ward, a twelve-bed women’s ward in the local general hospital. According to the consultant, I’d been very lucky. He tried to explain what had happened, but I hadn’t followed him very well. I’d been saved by the fact that the flames had shot upwards, pulling all my hair up with them. This had been helped somehow by a draught coming in through one of the toilet windows. It meant that the fiercest heat of the fire was above my head rather than on my face. It also seemed that my hair had only been on fire for a short time: it had felt so much longer, he told me, because I’d been in shock and shock slows time down to a snail’s pace.

  Miraculously, I’d only sustained second-degree burns to my neck, forehead, right ear and left hand – which I must have put into the flames without realizing what I was doing or feeling any pain. My eyes and hearing were completely unaffected. Not even all of my hair had been burned. One visit to a good hairdresser to trim it into a new short style and, apart from a raw red patch at the back, it would be as if the attack had never happened. There were scars, of course – an ugly red-and-white marbling across my forehead and neck – but he assured me that these would fade in a relatively short period of time.

  I was given painkillers and several injections; the burns were smeared in a cold, sweet-smelling cream and lightly dressed. I could have gone home that afternoon, but the consultant said that since I’d gone into shock and passed out, he wanted to keep me in for a few days just to be on the safe side.

  It took a long time to get off to sleep that first night with all the unfamiliar noises and activity going on around me. The truth is that a hospital doesn’t really sleep at night; it just rests a little, that’s all. The night nurses passed up and down the ward attending to the patients who’d buzzed them or called out for them in hoarse whispers; patients slopped back and forth to the bathroom in their slippers; a new patient was brought in on a gurney at three o’clock in the morning; screens were wheeled into position around the bed of an elderly woman at the far end of the ward and my consultant briefly appeared, red-eyed and unshaven, to tend to her. Even if the ward had been completely silent, the light from the main corridor that blazed away all night would have made falling asleep difficult.

  Yet strangely – in spite of the trauma I’d been through and the uncomfortable freezing sensation on my face, neck and hand – I felt happier lying under those tightly tucked-in sheets than I had for months. Everything was out in the open now. Mum knew. The school knew. The police knew. The hospital knew. It was as if the enormous burden I’d been struggling to carry all on my own had suddenly been lifted by a sea of helping hands. It was other people’s concern now – adults, professionals, experts in this type of thing. I was free from it at last.

  I felt wonderfully at peace in the special atmosphere of the hospital. I loved the regularity of the routine (a cup of tea at three, visiting time at five, dinner at seven); I loved the nurses in their neat white uniforms who always stopped to have a little chat with me, knowing I was the youngest patient on the ward. I even loved the sharp pine scent of the disinfectant that pervaded everything, and the muzak they played for the elderly ladies in the afternoons – bland, woozy tunes from another time that were somehow strangely comforting. I enjoyed the company of the other women, who fussed over me and made me laugh with their outrageous jokes and bad language. They spoiled me terribly, insisting that I have the sweets and chocolates their relatives had brought in for them and refusing to take no for an answer.

  There were plenty of other mice in the ward – maybe that’s why I felt so at home. There was Laura in the bed next to me, a fifty-one-year-old mouse, whose husband had beaten her with a baseball bat because she’d burned his dinner. There was eighteen-year-old Beatrice in the bed opposite, whose joky banter was darkly contradicted by the heavy bandages on her wrists. We all shared the same secret bond, what I called with bitter irony the fellowship of the mouse. I liked to amuse myself by imagining the fellowship’s badge that we’d wear on our breasts: a mouse in a trap with a broken neck, and our motto ‘Nati ad aram’ in a curling scroll – born with the victim gene. Was that Mum’s real legacy to me?

  Sitting i
n my bed flicking through a magazine or idly doodling in my sketchbook, I felt relaxed and optimistic about the future. In their sadistic desire to hurt me, Teresa, Emma and Jane had ended up hurting themselves more. They were likely to be prosecuted for what they’d done to me – they could even end up being sent to prison. At the very least, they’d be expelled from school. Either way, they’d disappear from my life forever. I’d return to school and everything would go back to normal.

  Normality! Glorious, dull, mundane normality! I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful!

  8

  My optimism began to fade soon after I was discharged and found myself back in the matrimonial home, surrounded by gloomy memories of my parents’ failed marriage and my failed friendships.

  Mum and I had a visit from a police inspector who dryly informed us that they weren’t going to press charges against the three girls I’d accused (the word accused made it sound as though they thought I was lying!). There simply wasn’t enough evidence, he explained. No other students had actually witnessed them setting fire to my hair. The parents of the younger girls – who had at least seen them throw me into the door – had made it clear they weren’t going to let their daughters become involved in a criminal trial. Unless one of them confessed to the crime and gave evidence against the other two, there was just no way a successful prosecution could be brought – and I knew hell would freeze over before that ever happened.

  A week or so later a letter came from the school’s head teacher. Mum and I read it together at breakfast. He began by wishing me a speedy recovery on behalf of all the staff and students (all the students?) and then he broke more bad news. Following ‘a thorough investigation’, he wrote, he’d found no independent evidence to back up the ‘allegations’ I’d made in my diary. All three girls ‘strenuously denied’ waging a bullying ‘campain’ (misspelt!) against me and ‘disclaimed all knowledge’ of the ‘unfortunate incident’ on the twenty-third of October. He said he’d received ‘strong representations’ from the parents of the three girls, ‘forcefully protesting their innocence’ and pointing to the police’s decision not to prosecute as proof that they had no case to answer. In light of this, ‘the school board has decided that no disciplinary action will be taken against Teresa Watson, Emma Townley and Jane Ireson’.

  The letter went on to say that the school had in place some of the toughest anti-bullying policies in the country, and took great pride in its exemplary anti-bullying record. He hoped Mum was not considering bringing any legal action against the school – but if she was, he ‘advised’ her that it would be ‘robustly defended’. The final paragraph read:

  We look forward to welcoming Shelley back into our community at the earliest opportunity. We don’t need to remind you, of course, that this is a vitally important year for Shelley, with her GCSEs due to take place next June, and therefore every effort should be made to ensure that her absence from the classroom is kept as brief as possible.

  So not only was there to be no criminal prosecution, but they weren’t even going to be expelled for what they’d done to me – they weren’t going to be disciplined in any way at all!

  There are people who would have roared up to the school and torn that letter to pieces in the head’s face; there are people who would have got on the phone to the national press and denounced the school and its lilylivered head in banner headlines; there are people who would have got the local TV station down to their house to film the scars on their face and neck. There are people who would have done anything to ensure that those girls were punished for what they’d done and that their viciousness was publicized the length and breadth of the country . . .

  But we weren’t that sort of people. We were mice. Meekly, we thanked the police inspector for his time and accepted that there could be no prosecution. Meekly, we accepted the head’s decision not to discipline the three girls. Meekly, we accepted, we submitted, we said nothing, we did nothing, because weak submission is all that mice know.

  By the second week of November I was no longer in any pain or discomfort. There was really nothing to stop me from returning to school. Except that I knew Teresa, Emma and Jane were waiting for me. And when the three of them got me alone next time . . . what then?

  While Mum was at work, I moped about the matrimonial home. I sat in front of my dressing-table mirror futilely trying to do something with my cropped hair. It didn’t suit me at all – it made my face look mannish, my head too big for my shoulders, and showed my ears, which I’d always hated. With squeamish disgust, I examined my forehead and neck, the burns stretching their cobwebby brown fingers over my pale skin like some foul alien membrane. (Why weren’t they fading? He said that they’d fade!)

  And my thoughts began to return to the beam in the garage, the towelling belt of my dressing gown . . .

  Then I received the best news imaginable. The head, mistaking our pathetic silence for defiance and terrified of bad publicity, wrote us another letter. This time it contained a proposal: if Mum would agree not to bring any court action against the school and not to discuss ‘the incident of the twenty-third’ with any ‘news media (including newspapers, television, radio and Internet)’, I wouldn’t have to return to school. Instead the school would arrange for the local authority to provide tutors to teach me at home right up to my exams in the summer – which I would also be allowed to sit at home. In addition, they’d strongly recommend to the exam board that the coursework I’d already submitted should receive a ten per cent ‘uplift’ in light of ‘the difficult circumstances under which it was prepared (but for which the school makes no admission of liability) . . .’

  Mum signed the agreement there and then, while I whooped and danced for joy around her, and sent it back to the school by return post. I was delirious with happiness. I didn’t have to go back to school! I didn’t have to face my tormentors! With tutors coming to the house five hours a day five days a week, I was sure I’d do really well in my exams. I’d go back to school liberated from the girls concerned and begin studying for university. I’d make a whole new set of friends. My life would start all over again . . .

  To celebrate, Mum made my favourite dinner that night: duck in orange sauce with roast potatoes, peas and broccoli, followed by apple pie and ice-cream. To my surprise, she placed a bottle of red wine on the kitchen table along with two large glasses.

  ‘You know you’re breaking the law, Mum?’ I teased as she poured the wine into my glass and it glugged and splashed deliciously. ‘I’m not legally allowed to drink for another two years. And you’re a lawyer!’

  ‘I think you deserve it.’ She smiled.

  I noticed how tired she looked – the lines under her eyes etched a little deeper, more strands of grey in her dark frizzy hair – and I realized how hard all this had been for her, too. That’s the curse of mothers, I thought, doomed to feel their children’s pain as sharply as if it were their own.

  ‘You do too, Mum.’ I smiled, and we clinked glasses.

  ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘you’re sixteen in – what is it – four months? If sixteen’s old enough to get married, it’s old enough to have a glass of wine.’

  Halfway through the meal the phone on the breakfast bench rang, and Mum hurried to swallow the food in her mouth before answering. She made pained, comical faces as she stood chewing by the phone, moving her head from side to side, rolling her eyes, chewing and chewing and chewing but still unable to swallow. I giggled uncontrollably at her antics, no doubt helped by the wine, which had gone straight to my head. At last she was able to pick up the receiver. It was Henry Lovell, her lawyer. He told her that the couple who’d expressed an interest in buying the matrimonial home had now made a formal offer, which ‘the other side’ (meaning her husband, my dad) had accepted.

  ‘So . . . how’s the house-hunting going?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not,’ Mum said. ‘We’ve not even started!’

  ‘Well, you’d better get your skates on,’ he warned her. ‘
I understand these people are desperate to move in as soon as possible.’

  We drank the whole bottle of red wine as befitted a double celebration, and the next morning I woke up with my very first hangover. But even the gimlet pain in my temples couldn’t dampen my spirits. No more school. No more Teresa, Emma and Jane. No more humiliation. No more suffering in silence. No more pain. And, to top it all, the matrimonial home had been sold. We were getting out of that house of horrors, that museum dedicated to a failed marriage, at last!

  Six weeks later I was standing in the front garden of Honeysuckle Cottage contemplating the funereal mound of the oval rose bed.

  9

  Our life in Honeysuckle Cottage quickly settled down into a pleasant routine.

  We had breakfast together every morning at the pine table in the kitchen. I’d prepare everything (taking no little pride in getting it all just so) while Mum flew around in her usual morning panic, speed-ironing a clean blouse, sending last-minute emails or searching high and low for something she’d lost. We had a rota – toast one morning, cereal the next – which we kept to religiously even at weekends.

  Mum would leave at around a quarter past eight, as she had a much longer commute to work now. We’d say goodbye exactly the same way every day like an old married couple – I’d give her two glancing kisses in the hallway, remind her to drive carefully, and then stand at the door to wave her goodbye as the ancient Ford Escort crunched its way slowly down the gravel drive. She’d always glance back and give me a final little wave, her fingers pressed together like a glove puppet taking a bow. When she’d gone, I’d do the washing-up from breakfast and the night before, listening to the news on the radio, and then I’d go up to my room and get dressed.