It was two weeks before Lisa and I went back to school. On the first day back, Paul Hilton took me there, while Lisa came with her bodyguard Tracey Christmas. I felt very shy walking through the playground. Everyone was staring at us but no one came up to say anything because they’d been warned not to at school assembly. They weren’t supposed to ask us any questions at all.
I had a brand new school jumper, black trousers with a thin little pinstripe, new shoes with little heels, a black padded jacket and a new schoolbag and lunchbox. I was particularly pleased with the schoolbag, which was an orange inflatable rucksack, and I swung it proudly.
First we had to go to the headmistress’s office and she asked if we were alright, and if we were sure we were ready for this. I said yes, we were, because to be honest I was fed up with all the fuss and bored with sitting around at home. I was sure that as soon as I got into the classroom and sat down at my normal desk, it would be OK.
When we walked in, Mr Okrainetz said, ‘Hello, Lisa. Hello, Charlene. Welcome back.’
We took our seats, Paul and Tracey left, and Mr Okrainetz started a lesson, but I was conscious of people staring and whispering. I hated that. I would much rather they had called out to ask whatever they wanted rather than staring at me and talking behind my back.
I turned to one girl and asked ‘What’s your problem?’ and she blushed and said ‘Nothing.’
Lisa was two desks behind me and I caught her eye. She gave a sympathetic smile. She was going through the same thing herself.
By breaktime I had decided to put on a confident front. I’ve always been good at bravado. Everyone seemed to expect me to be a nervous wreck, constantly breaking down in tears, and that wasn’t how I felt at all. I didn’t want to be treated any differently than the way I’d been before it all happened. I was still the same person deep down, although I suppose I felt more worldly-wise than the rest of my classmates. They were still just kids and I had been through a life-changing experience since the last time I was in that classroom.
Lisa and I stood together in the playground and lots of people crowded round us, chatting about things we had missed at school, who was going out with who, new clothes some girls had bought and so on. They all wanted to be friends with us, even if they weren’t allowed to ask about our ordeal. They probably hoped that we would trust them enough to tell them some details in private. Everyone was bursting with curiosity that day.
Lisa was going off to a different lesson after the break, but she squeezed my hand as we trooped indoors and whispered ‘You OK?’ I grinned and said, ‘Yeah. You?’ She nodded. We were allies in all of this. We would put on a united front.
At lunchtime, all the girls in our class wanted to sit near us. They were jostling just to get close. I began to enjoy the attention. We were being asked to parties and for play-dates, and everyone was admiring my new schoolbag and shoes. By the end of the day when Paul and Tracey came to pick us up, it was clear to Lisa and me that we were suddenly the most popular girls in the whole school. We giggled to each other about it.
‘It’s amazing what being kidnapped can do for your popularity!’ she said.
‘They just want the gory details,’ I commented.
‘Well, they’re not getting them from me.’
‘Me neither.’ I was pushing the experiences with Alan as far back in my head as I could and avoided consciously thinking about it at all, so the last thing I wanted to do was answer questions about it from nosy classmates.
Unfortunately, there were two events soon after my return to school that brought it all to the forefront again.
First of all, a teacher handed me a letter as I was walking along a corridor at school.
‘This arrived at the office for you, Charlene,’ she said.
I knew there had been lots of letters arriving at home from members of the public who wanted to tell me how happy they were I’d been rescued and wish me well in getting my life back to normal. I’d read a few of them and thought they seemed like very nice people, so I assumed this letter the teacher gave me was another of the same.
I ripped open the envelope and started to read. The writing was very messy.
‘Dear Charlene,’ it said, ‘I think it is really good that you were abducted by Alan Hopkinson because you have learned lots of things about sex and you’ve lost your cherry. I’m going to find you and abduct you myself now and we’ll do much more things than Alan ever did to you, just you wait and see.’
I was so shocked, I slumped against a wall feeling breathless. My chest was tight as if I was going to have an asthma attack. I looked up and down the corridor, scared that whoever sent the letter might be there, coming to get me already.
I looked down at the scrawled page again. Underneath there was a picture of a pregnant woman with a big arrow pointing to it, and the words said ‘This is what I am going to do to you.’ There was no signature at the bottom.
For a minute, I couldn’t think what to do, then I ran towards our form classroom where Mr Okrainetz was sitting marking.
‘Look what came for me!’ My voice was trembling as I handed it over.
He read it quickly, then folded it in half. ‘I’m so sorry, Charlene. Who gave this to you?’
I told him the teacher’s name.
‘She’s made a big mistake. We were told that on no account should any letters be passed to you.’
It took me a minute to understand what he meant. ‘Why? Have there been other ones?’
He was flustered. ‘Look, you’ll have to talk to your dad about this. I think they’ve had one or two at your house and that’s why they warned the school. The world is mostly full of good people, but there are a few very sick ones and it’s been your misfortune to come up against one here.’ He tapped the letter.
‘I don’t understand why anyone would write that to me. Are they really going to try and find me?’
‘I doubt it very much. It’s just some sad, crazy guy who wants to make himself feel important by getting in contact with you. No doubt the police are on his trail already and they’ll catch him before long. In the meantime, you’re safe while you’re at school and you’ve got your police protection officer at home. Please try not to worry.’
Another thought occurred to me. ‘Has Lisa had letters as well?’
‘I believe she has,’ he said.
I wondered why she hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe they hadn’t told her about them. I went off and found her in the playground. ‘Have you been getting letters from some sick guy who says he wants to do things to you and make you pregnant?’
‘You what?’
‘I got one just now, sent to the school.’ She looked really shocked.
‘That’s sick! Imagine doing that! Are you OK?’
‘Yeah.’ I shrugged. The letter had upset me, but now it was gone, I was going to shut it out of my mind, just like all the other bad things. After all, a piece of paper couldn’t hurt me and I believed Mr Okrainetz when he said that the police were after whoever had written it.
Mr Okrainetz had phoned my dad and he showed up at school soon afterwards. Lessons had started so I stood out in the corridor to talk to him.
‘I’m sorry you had to find out,’ he said, giving me a hug and looking sad. ‘I was keeping it back from you so that you weren’t worried. It’s just one sick bloke sending his nasty letters and the police are close to arresting him. You mustn’t be frightened. Paul Hilton is going to stay with us until he’s behind bars so you’re not in any danger.’
That was reassuring. Paul was a big, calm, capable man; the kind you would want to find yourself next to if you were trapped in a building on fire. I couldn’t imagine any situation he couldn’t deal with.
‘Are you alright?’ Dad asked.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I said. I meant it. Now I was over the shock of reading the letter, I wasn’t scared at all.
‘Good.’ Dad hugged me again and smiled comfortingly. ‘There are lots of complete prats in the world, Char. This man is one of them. Don’t let him get to you.’
So I didn’t.
A couple of weeks later, Paul told me they’d arrested the man who was sending the letters, who turned out to be a taxi driver. I was glad to know that he’d been found. I wasn’t curious about him but at least I knew now there was no way he could come after me.
All I wanted to do was forget about everything that had happened with Alan, but life seemed to be conspiring to make me remember it. Our story had slipped off the front pages not long after we’d been found; there was a happy ending now and everyone could relax and enjoy the outcome. But at school, I was still the object of curiosity and not a day went past when I wasn’t reminded in some way of what I’d been through.
Then I had to start the counselling.
It was about a fortnight after I was rescued, around the same time that we went back to school, that my dad drove me to a specialist children’s hospital where the sessions would take place. We were taken to a bright, colourful room with comfortable furnishings where there were lots of toys – dolls and teddies and so forth – and a blackboard and coloured chalks. Then my dad said that he would wait for me outside and I was left alone for a few moments, standing in the middle of the room and wondering what would happen next. The door opened and a woman with curly ginger hair and glasses came into the room.
‘Hello, I’m Penny,’ she said. Her skin was tanned and she had loads of little freckles all over so that there was almost more brown skin than white. I liked her smile, which seemed very genuine. ‘Have a seat. How are you feeling today?’
I sat down on one of the soft armchairs. ‘Fine.’
Penny sat down opposite me, with a file open on her lap and a pen in her hand so she could take notes. She looked me straight in the eye. ‘How are you finding it being back at school? Is everyone being nice to you?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. In fact, I was a bit upset that day because I’d heard that some boys had made up a rumour that Lisa and I had been chained in a basement the whole time we were held captive, and they were spreading it round the school. That annoyed me. I just wished they would mind their own business, but it didn’t occur to me to tell Penny about it.
‘You’ve been through a huge trauma,’ she said kindly. ‘You must still be feeling very shocked about it.’
‘No, not really.’
‘It would be only natural if you felt a bit scared and a bit sad about it too.’
I shook my head.
‘Do you mind telling me about it, so I can understand what you went through?’
I shrugged, and answered her questions as briefly as I could without being rude. I just gave her a general outline of what had happened but insisted that I didn’t feel upset or sad about it, because that was the truth – I didn’t. When I thought about it now, I felt nothing at all. What no one seemed to understand was that I didn’t want to think about it if I could possibly help it.
She pointed out some paper and crayons on the table and asked me to draw a picture of Alan’s face. I’m not very good at drawing but I did my best to try and make it look like him, with his long face, combed-over hair and droopy moustache.
Penny seemed surprised when I handed the picture to her. ‘He looks quite ordinary,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t there anything about him that looked as though he wasn’t a very nice person? What about his eyes? Or his mouth?’
I think she wanted me to draw him with evil monster eyes and blackened teeth and a scowl, but that’s not how I remembered him. I just drew what I’d seen: a sad, unsmiling but quite normal-looking man.
‘How do you feel about him now?’ she asked.
‘Nothing, really,’ I said. ‘I’m trying not to think about him.’
‘I can understand why you would want to do that,’ she said, ‘But it’s important not to bury your feelings. Sometimes if we feel angry and we don’t express it, it turns inwards and eats away at us and makes us depressed. I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen to you. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to talk about absolutely everything that happened in there – maybe even things that you feel a bit ashamed or uncomfortable about now – and that way we can make sure that you don’t have any emotions that turn inwards and cause you harm.’
‘Will you tell my dad everything I tell you?’
‘Not about your feelings, no. But if there are any things that might affect the court case against Alan Hopkinson then I would need to tell the police or your dad. Any legal things, or things that might cause harm to you or another person. Is that OK?’
‘When is the court case?’
‘We don’t know yet. I’ll tell you when it’s happening but you don’t need to go. You heard, didn’t you, that he is pleading guilty? That you don’t have to go to court?’ I nodded. ‘How did that make you feel?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t care. I would have gone to court if I had to.’
‘You’re very brave, Charlene,’ she said. ‘Usually it’s a good thing to be brave because it means you are confident in life. But sometimes people pretend to be brave on the outside and inside they’re actually feeling scared and sad.’
She obviously wanted me to break down in tears and admit that I felt scared and sad. She was gazing into my face with a lovely, kind expression, inviting me to tell her anything I wanted. But I wasn’t going to lie just so she got the answers she was expecting.
‘I don’t think I’m being brave,’ I said. ‘The truth is that I feel absolutely fine and I just want to get on with my normal life. I don’t hate Alan; I just want him to go to jail so he can’t hurt any other girls. I’d rather not talk about it any more because I would rather forget about it. It’s not brave, though. It’s just what feels best.’
She nodded and wrote something down in her file. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘That was a great start, Charlene. I’ll see you again same time next week.’
My heart sank. She was obviously a very kind woman but I would rather have had my nails pulled out with pliers than sit there telling her about my ‘feelings’.
‘Do I have to go back?’ I nagged Dad on the way home. ‘I don’t need it, really I don’t.’
‘Yes, you have to go back,’ he said firmly, and I could tell he wasn’t going to budge. Sometimes with my dad there was no point in arguing, and that was one of those times. I’d have been wasting my breath.