I Won't Forgive What You Did by Faith Scott Page A

– click, click, click – clickedy, clickedy – click, click, click – clickedy, clickedy – click, click, click – on and on, often for hours at a time. I hated her clicking. It made me feel irritable and angry. But I never said anything to her.
    She looked so hopeless, I couldn’t bear to upset her.

C HAPTER 9
     
    Perhaps unsurprisingly, when the time came to leave primary school, I failed my end-of-year exam. Not that I really understood what the exam was about. All I knew was that I had to take a test, that my mind was blank, that I didn’t know the answers, and that I panicked I would get them all wrong.
    As a consequence, I did, and was duly assigned to join the infamous class 1, the dunces’ class at the secondary modern. I could at least walk to this school, though, as it was only a couple of miles distant, up a hill and through the town centre. My mother told my older sister Susan she had to walk to school with me, but as she didn’t want to be seen with me – ever – she and her friends would keep their distance behind, laughing and joking about things I couldn’t share, while I, acutely embarrassed, walked ahead.
    My sister was very naughty throughout school. She was in trouble a great deal, though when chastised she’d laugh openly in teachers’ faces. She’d also, from time to time, hit them. In hindsight, it’s remarkable she was never suspended or expelled, as she’d sometimes have the PE teacher in tears, and the headmaster on the phone to our mother.
    From day one, it seemed, I was tarred with the same brush. ‘Oh, you’re her sister, are you?’ they’d say to me, looking stern. It probably didn’t help that I was placed in class 1, where I had to count oranges and apples and do dunces schoolwork. I hated it. It made me feel sick and headachey. As a consequence, I cried all the time and refused to go to school so, eventually, my mother called them. She told them how unhappy I was, and asked if I could go up a class. The school said that as my primary school test results had been borderline, they’d see if I could cope in class 2.
    Though initially joining class 2 was daunting, the teacher, Mr John, was so kind and welcoming, and quick to silence the other children – who all knew where I’d come from, and taunted me – I felt that at last I could do better. But it was a double-edged sword: Mr John, like Daniel, seemed to really like me, and would single me out for special attention.
    Mr John made me feel anxious whenever he came near me, in exactly the way Daniel had. It took me straight back to childhood – to being bewildered yet quiescent. To being powerless and unable to tell anyone to go away. Every time he approached me I was always on full alert: fearful, without understanding why. Another girl might have told him to back off, but I couldn’t. I experienced the same conflict that happened with Daniel, whose attention and interest I had always craved and needed, despite him making me do such revolting things.
    By now, though Grandpops was still manhandling me regularly, the walks out with Daniel had stopped. At some point between my finishing primary school and going to secondary, Daniel had decided – it was not at my instigation or demand – to stop taking me off for our ‘walks’. Though still confused, and still craving the attention he gave me, I had become increasingly instinctive about avoiding his physical advances. Perhaps he understood better than I did at the time that it would not be safe or prudent to continue. He would still be all over me, bestowing kisses and cuddles, and whispering creepy things to me, and he still had – and would continue to have – power over me. But with hindsight, I believe there was something more too – what Daniel really liked was little girls.
    Mr John’s presence made me panicky in the same way Daniel had; so strong was the sensation whenever he came close to me that I felt if I opened my mouth to say ‘Stop it’, my