Authors: Catherine Hunt
Maria tearfully confided all this to Anna one evening when they were babysitting Maria’s four-year-old brother. The following morning at school, in a weak moment, a moment designed to show off how close her friendship with Maria had become, Anna related the details to two other girls. By lunchtime everyone knew.
Maria came up to her, furious: ‘You cow, I can’t believe I ever wanted to be friends with you. Oh, and never forget how much I hate you.’
That was all she said. No shouting, no screaming or recriminations, just an understated fury. She never spoke to Anna again, on that subject or any other. Instead, she said a lot about Anna, behind her back, and the results were soon clear. The bullying came back, big time, worse than it had ever been.
She went to her locker and found pictures stuck all over the front of it; pictures of her with a group of her former friends but with her face cut out. She sat down at lunch and they moved away and threw food at her, taunting her for being fat. They would stare as she came towards them in the corridor and make mooing sounds as she walked past. There was always a laugh, a cough disguising an insult, a whisper or a rude gesture. She found a note left on her desk, which read, ‘leave, like seriously, just die.’
Phone calls at home were never for her. Friday nights and weekends she stayed in watching television or sitting in her room. She was an only child and had no one to confide in. Her mother had problems of her own and she wasn’t close to her father. She got on his nerves, she knew that. He made it clear that all she’d ever been was trouble and he had enough trouble already with his wife. Even if Anna had tried to talk to him, she thought he’d have had no idea how to help. She sank into depression.
It was around that time that she first noticed him. She’d gone shopping – on her own as usual – when she’d seen a crowd of boys, arguing. She stopped to watch, saw that one boy was being picked on by the rest, saw that he was thin and geeky looking, saw that he was crying. He was the one, she thought bitterly, the one they would instinctively target. He may as well have had the word ‘victim’ tattooed on his forehead. She winced with fellow-feeling as he was knocked to the ground.
Then a boy on the edge of the crowd moved forwards, stood in front of the victim waving his arms and pushing away the aggressor. There was a moment when it could have gone either way, when the ‘saviour’, as Anna always thought of him afterwards, could have been challenged and swept aside. She held her breath.
The saviour was yelling and a boy was yelling back and the victim was cringing on the pavement. Then it was over. The boy who had led the attack turned away and the crowd began to shuffle off. The victim shot to his feet and ran off at top speed.
She let out her breath. From across the street she gazed at the boy who had intervened. He had stood up for one of life’s victims, had stood up for someone like her. Fascinated, she followed him home. From that moment on she couldn’t get him out of her mind.
Anna had never had a boyfriend nor ever considered having one. They were one of the things she accepted a girl like her could never have. She belonged to an invisible group, the ignored girls; a group that boys didn’t seem to notice. But now she started to wonder what it must be like to be the sort of girl who was wanted by boys, who was competed for by boys, in particular, by boys like him.
Usually she didn’t have a lot to do with her spare time. That all changed. Every moment was precious because every moment was spent on him. She amassed information, gathering it stealthily, secretly, watching and following him.
He lived three miles away from her and went to the boys’ school on the other side of town. She learned about his friends, his family, his daily routines, discovered his passion for photography and films, and those things she made her passion too.
She didn’t dare speak to him. She was too convinced of her own grossness to do that. She lived in terror of actually meeting him. Instead, she wrote down her feelings in a notebook:
To me he is the perfect man. I adore him, almost like he is a god. If I could only make him notice me, make him like me just a little bit. No, that’s not quite right. If I’m honest I’m scared of him noticing me because if he did he would see all my faults. He certainly wouldn’t want me, or think I’m attractive in any way or even think of me at all for more than two seconds. Much better if he doesn’t notice me. Not yet, anyway, not until I’m ready. Imagine if he knew how they bully me, what they say and do. Then he’d feel sorry for me. Pity me. How awful would that be? I’m happy just to stay near him. To know that he exists, and that I can look at him, is enough for now.
One day she would be ready to meet him, she told herself, but not yet, definitely not yet. Her love for him was no less strong because it was silent. Perhaps it was stronger because he could never fall from his pedestal by making some crass remark. In all her schooldays, she had never spoken a single word to him.
Anna may not have talked to the boy but she talked with him. Imaginary conversations in her head that grew ever more real. They were written down in the notebook, a solid record of their relationship. And if sometimes she needed more, she would call his home, hoping that he answered, hoping for the brief thrill of hearing his voice before she put down the phone.
She had found his phone number in the dustbin along with all sorts of other personal information. There were two bins by the side of his house and some evenings, after dark, she sneaked across the back fence and went through the contents. She knew it was a bit crazy, but what harm did it do?
She aimed for Wednesday nights because the refuse men called on Thursdays. She fished out household bills, junk mail, discarded catalogues. Anything he might have touched, anything addressed to him, she treasured, locking it away in a suitcase under her bed. To have something that he’d owned, even if he didn’t want it, made her feel she was part of his life. One time she struck gold. She pulled out a shirt ruined with ink from a broken biro. She knew it wasn’t his father’s or his brother’s because she recognized it immediately as one of his. It became the centrepiece of the shrine that she built to him.
He loved photography and so she became an expert. She took hundreds of photos of him. She waited for hours with her camera outside his house, outside his friends’ houses, outside anywhere she could track him down. Sometimes she would see him come out of his house, three cameras strung round his neck, heading for the beach or the town centre. She would creep along behind, out of sight, and when he took a picture she would take the same one, studying the light and the composition in the same way she saw him do it. By doing so she felt that she was growing ever closer to him.
It was on one of these days – a blistering hot Saturday afternoon in August – that he spoke to her. Brighton seafront could have doubled for the south of France, were it not for the pebbles and the smell of burgers and onions. Visitors packed the town, sunbathers packed the beach, and in the middle of them, set up between the two piers, was a bungee jumping machine.
It made a good picture taken from the promenade above – rows of bodies lying prone in the sun, others lounging in the ubiquitous striped deckchairs, and then another body plunging down into their midst. He spent a lot of time taking photos and when he finally moved away, Anna took his place. She was leaning on the rail, camera poised, waiting for the next man to jump, when she heard his voice.
‘Great shot eh?’
She froze, terrified, unable even to press down her finger and snap the picture as the man fell towards the crowds below.
‘Did you get him?’ the boy asked.
She could not answer. She stood, the camera clamped to her face, wishing that the burning sun would melt her and she could ooze away unnoticed into the ground.
‘Hey, did you get the picture?’ he asked again, louder this time, thinking that she hadn’t heard him above the noise of the crowd milling around them.
‘I can take one for you if you want. I do a lot of this,’ the boy said.
She could bear it no longer. She squeezed herself under the lower railing, dropped down onto the beach and ran off, scattering shingle as she went.
In her mind, and in her notebook, she endlessly replayed and rewrote the events of that day. And as she did so she came to believe that he liked her. Why else had he spoken to her and offered to take a photo for her? The incident inflamed her feelings and during the next few months, as she thought about it continually and followed him at every possible moment, she became convinced that, not only did he like her, but he wanted her and returned in full the feelings she had for him.
Why else did he go back so often to the beach and stand by the railings looking at the sea? In the hope of seeing her again, of course, in the hope that she would come by with her camera.
Once, on a stormy day in early winter, he went on to the Palace Pier to take pictures. She didn’t like to follow him because the pier was empty and she would be conspicuous so she waited nearby on the beach. White horses rode the water, crashing through the legs of the pier and down on to the shingle. There was a crowd of people watching the wild sea; she stood among them and someone must have had some food, because, all at once, they were buzzed by a squadron of screeching seagulls. To her surprise, and intense delight, she saw the boy turn his camera towards her. He was taking her picture, he must be, what other explanation could there be?
The more disordered her life became, the more isolated she felt, the more she believed that he cared for her. By thinking about when she would next see him, she could endure the bullying. She inhabited a world where he loved her and so she was able to escape from her own dismal existence.
Lisa and Luke Handley were having a birthday party. Lisa would be sixteen on the 13th December 1997, her brother would be seventeen three days later. Their party was on the Saturday at the end of term. The Handleys went to Anna’s school and both of them were popular – it seemed like everyone had been invited. Everyone but Anna. She hadn’t really expected to be, but it still upset her for she had once counted Lisa Handley as a friend. It hurt, especially as Lisa had never taken much part in the bullying, seemed not to enjoy it. Lately, though, Lisa hardly ever troubled to speak to her.
As the party night grew closer, Anna was forced to overhear endless chatter about it. She was forced, too, to endure taunts and mockery because she wasn’t going. Girls who had been discussing it would suddenly stop talking when she came near, then say something like: ‘Shh. She’s coming. Ugh. We’d better shut up or she’ll go and tell her friends what we’ve been saying. Oh hang on, she doesn’t have any!’
It was the last day of term and the morning’s lessons had finished. Students headed for their lockers, and when Anna arrived, there were large groups standing about chatting. She was making her way through them when she spotted the card taped to her locker door. She stood before it, a hard lump in her throat and a sick feeling in her stomach.
Slowly she pulled the card from the door. It had a picture of a hugely fat girl with a doctor in his consulting room. The caption read, ‘It’s partly glandular and partly 8,500 calories per day’.
She opened it.
‘Sweetheart’, it said, ‘I love the way your fat spills over when you wear those tight jeans. Will you come to the party with me? A secret admirer.’
She heard sniggering behind her back. Big, tearing sobs filled her chest and as she tried to stifle them, she let out a strangled howl of pain. The buzz of conversation around her stopped, all eyes turned towards her. In the few moments before she ran from the scene she saw through her tears the smiling, smug face of Maria Burns.
She ran but there was nowhere to hide. She ended up where she had ended up so often before, locked in a cubicle in the girls’ toilets, sobbing her heart out. But this time was different. Something else was mixed in with her distress, something that had been growing in her and was finally raising its head; a determination not to let them win, not to be a victim anymore.
She gritted her teeth. Her enemies had hurt her, yes, they had seen her cry, yes, but she would get up again, they would not keep her down. In the afternoon she was back in class as usual. She said nothing, as usual. The teacher took no notice of her, as usual. A couple of the girls stared at her and she stared back. Maria Burns and her friends would get no more satisfaction from what they’d done.
At last it was over. End of term. She hurried out the door, and then an amazing thing happened: Lisa Handley came up to her, thrust an invitation card into her hand, said, ‘You’re welcome, if you want to come’, and walked off before Anna had time to reply. She couldn’t have replied anyway, she was too choked up to speak.
She knew at once that she would go. No doubt Lisa had witnessed the locker incident and felt sorry for her. But she didn’t need pity. She would show them all, show them that they could not crush her.
She had not forgotten the message in the card and she chose to wear a pair of loose, black trousers. For the first time in a long time she studied herself in the mirror. The spots, which had infested her forehead and chest, were clearing up; she had grown taller, five foot ten at least, and she didn’t look so fat. Her large breasts were now in proportion to the generous swell of her hips, her belly no longer resembled a sack of potatoes. She would still be called ‘a big girl’, but she wasn’t so sure she would still be called ugly.
It was an exciting discovery and maybe the reason her judgement deserted her. She put on a tight, low-cut Lycra top and squeezed her body into it. She thought with a thrill that her large eyes might almost qualify as attractive. She smothered them in heavy make-up, unconsciously ruining their natural charm. She persuaded herself that she looked good. It never occurred to her that she might look like a slut.
Her mother should have told her but her mother was ill. Her mental health was fragile and she felt only relief that her troubled daughter was finally behaving like a normal teenager. Her father dropped her off at the party.