18.

Biddy folded the letter and slid it back under the neat pile of grey school knickers in the top drawer of her dresser. There was no chance of her father finding it there, as he would never venture into her underwear drawer. As far as she knew, he never actually came into her room at all, but just in case, she’d needed a good hiding place. She kept her little round box of pins and needles inside a pair of old socks at the back of the drawer, and he’d never found that, so she reckoned her underwear drawer was a safe haven for secrets, even when she wasn’t there.

Biddy had read Miss Jordan’s letter every single day for the past three months. Apart from her drawing, it was the one shred of solace she had had since the nightmare of the disco. The summer was normally her favourite time of the year: long days and clear bright nights to spend on the beach drawing. But the memory of what had happened darkened everything around her, and the thought of the impending school trip made her ill with fear. She ate even less than normal, she barely slept, and on the days when she did have the energy to go to the beach, she often found herself fantasising about walking into the sea and not stopping.

But then she would think of Miss Jordan, and all the things she had said in her letter, and she’d think about her papa and her heart would lurch. She knew she would never leave him.

The letter arrived one Saturday morning a couple of weeks after the disco. Biddy just happened to be in the hall doing her weekend hoovering when it fell through the letterbox, along with the electricity bill and an official looking letter for her father. The pale blue square envelope with the neat handwriting on the front had her name on it. Biddy shook as she picked it up. She’d never had a letter before. She’d never had anything addressed purely to her in her life. Was this a joke? she thought. A trick? What was Alison up to now? It had to be her – no one else would send her a letter. Well, she wouldn’t read it. She wouldn’t give Alison the pleasure of hurting her again: not this time anyway. She’d put it straight into the bin and never think of it again. But then her papa had shouted from the kitchen, ‘Was that the post, lass?’ and as she heard him make his way towards the hall, she quickly shoved the letter down the back of her trousers.

As soon as she could, she hid it under her pillow, still determined not to read it, but not quite sure why she had chosen not to put it in the bin. Every so often throughout the day she went into her room, slipped it out from under her pillow and turned it over in her shaking hands. It wasn’t until her clock read 3.10 a.m. that she finally, carefully, tore back the seal and slowly pulled the matching blue paper from the envelope.

Since that day, the letter had become her most treasured possession, and whilst she didn’t know how she would manage the next few days without it, she also knew, with absolute certainty, that she couldn’t bring it with her. The prospect of Alison Flemming getting her hands on it was just not worth the risk.

She had woken up that morning feeling sick and exhausted. Her dreams, when she had managed to sleep, were haunted by Alison and the others, her hours of wakeful tossing and turning dominated by thoughts of escape. But she knew there wasn’t one.

She lifted the socks containing the tin of pins and sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at the battered old brown suitcase which was lying open on the floor, awaiting the last couple of items she needed to pack for the trip.

‘It was my grandfather’s,’ her father had said when he handed it to her a few days earlier. ‘Glad it’s getting an airing again. Don’t think it’s been used since before you were born. Long before,’ he nodded to himself. Biddy caught a brief glimpse of something in his eyes. Sadness? Regret? A wistful memory? She wasn’t sure, but she knew she couldn’t object. ‘Anyways, no point forking out for something new when we’ve a family heirloom that’ll do the job rightly, eh, lass?’

Biddy nodded. ‘Thank you, Papa. I’ll just go and pack now.’

Her father had nodded and left the room, quietly closing the door behind him. Biddy knew that he was standing still outside her door as the wonky landing floorboard hadn’t creaked. She waited, hoping that he would come back into her room, willing him to open the door, wanting him to tell her she didn’t have to go. But then she heard the creak, and the slow, uneven sound of her father going down the stairs.

Her father had never talked to her about what had happened with Miss Jordan. But he must be curious. Surely he wanted to hear her side of the story? And she had wanted to talk to him about it. She still did. She wanted to tell him all about Miss Jordan and how kind she was and how much she missed having a friend, and how unhappy she was, and how Alison and the others made her want to be dead sometimes. But for some reason, neither of them said a word about it to each other. Three months had passed since the disco and Miss Jordan’s departure. The summer had come and gone, and Biddy still wondered what Mr Duncan had said to her father that awful Monday morning in June.

She had sat outside the headmaster’s office while her father and Mr Duncan spoke for a few minutes, terrified that something else really bad was about to happen, convinced that, after years of ignoring her, Mr Duncan was finally going to punish her for being a bloody weirdo. He had spoken to her kindly before her father arrived, told her that if she was having problems at school, she could talk to him. She would have liked to have said something about how nice Miss Jordan was to her, how kind she was and how she had helped her with clothes and things. She would have liked to have told him about Alison and Georgina and Julia and Jackie, and how much they frightened her and made her feel sick every single day. She had wanted to say that she didn’t fully understand what had happened on Friday night at the disco and to ask him if she could see Miss Jordan. Please. And she had wanted to say she was sorry that she was a bloody weirdo and she really didn’t mean to be one and she didn’t like being one, and she would really like to stop sticking pins into herself, but she didn’t know how. She would have liked to have said all these things, but the lump was there, of course, and it was really, really big that day. So she had said nothing. Nothing at all.

Biddy didn’t know what had happened inside that office, what was said, but when the two men emerged, her father’s pale face was unusually flushed, his expression strained. A flash of the memory of her father coming into Mrs Martin’s room at Prospect Park made her shudder. Here they were again. Nothing had changed. All these long, agonising years later, Alison was still controlling her life.

‘All right, Biddy,’ Mr Duncan had smiled, ‘your father and I have had a chat and we feel it’s best if you take the rest of the day off. I know the misunderstanding at the disco was a bit stressful for you, and you do look a little bit tired, so I think perhaps a day of rest would be a good idea. And we’ll see you back tomorrow morning, fresh as a daisy. OK?’

Biddy had nodded, wishing she could leave school forever and never come back.

‘Let’s go, lass,’ her father had croaked, nodding at Mr Duncan before donning his cap and lifting Biddy’s string bag from the floor. They had walked to the bus stop in silence. They rode the six-stop journey home in silence. They walked from the stop to their house in silence. The only time her father had spoken on the twenty-minute journey home was to ask Mrs Henderson at the corner shop for a packet of Kimberley biscuits and a sherbet dip.

 

Biddy placed an art pad, a couple of pencils and a battered packet of broken charcoal sticks on top of the small pile of neatly folded items she had packed for the field trip, then tucked the socks into the bottom corner of the case. At least she could smuggle a needle into a toilet cubicle without anyone seeing. All that was left to pack now was the blue nylon dressing gown she was wearing, and her toothbrush.

‘Biddy!’ her father called from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Porridge is on the table.’

Biddy smoothed out the blankets on her bed and went downstairs to sit staring at the porridge she knew she couldn’t eat.