y the time I get home, I’m crying so hard it sounds like somebody sawing wood.

I’m not really a crier, though, and there’s a good chance my parents won’t understand what I’m doing, so I scoot into the bush outside my house until I can be absolutely certain – without a shadow of a doubt – that I can breathe without either hiccuping or a bubble of snot coming out of my nose. Then I sit in the bush in the hole that Toby’s made for himself in four years of stalking and sob quietly into the sleeve of my school jumper.

I’m not sure how long I cry for: it’s like a never-ending circle of tears because every time I calm down and look up, I catch sight of the red letters on my satchel and it sets me off again. It even feels like they’re getting bigger and bigger, although rationally I know they must be staying the same size.

GEEK
GEEK
GEEK
GEEK
GEEK

And I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter any more because it does. Because they just won’t leave me alone.

I’m so tired of it all. I’m tired of not fitting in; of being left out; of being hated. I’m tired of having everything I am ripped up and strewn around the room the way a puppy wrecks an abandoned toilet roll. I’m tired of never doing anything right; of constantly being humiliated; of feeling like I’m just not good enough, no matter what I do.

I’m tired of feeling like this. And most of all, I’m tired of being a polar bear, wandering around the rainforest on my own.

When the letters are two metres high and flashing, I finally lose it completely. I give a little scream of frustration and attack the word with my belt buckle until the material’s so ripped you can’t read anything. And then – finally calmer – I curl out of a ball, climb out of the bush, wipe the mud off my uniform and try to pretend that I’m behaving in a totally rational way for 4pm on a Friday afternoon.

I sniff my way to the front door.

“Dad?” I say quietly as I open it, wiping my nose on my sleeve. “Annabel?” Then I stop, startled. Because Annabel, Dad and Hugo are all standing in the hallway.

And they all appear to be waiting for me.