45. Before

‘Will you please just leave me alone?'

The look on Miss Smith's face when I snap at her makes my stomach turn. Why do I have to be like this? Why can't I just get in the car, be nice and take what's offered to me? She only wants to help.

I walk on, trying not to stomp, trying not to let my bottom lip jut out like a baby.

The sun is too hot and the bright yellow rapeseed in the field by the road smells too sweet. I need to sneeze. The dry grass scratches my ankles.

Miss Smith rolls on beside me, window open. She stays with me for a good minute then sighs and drives away and I have to clench every muscle in my body, dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands, to stop myself from running after her.

Nothing good can come of me meeting Princess in the clearing in the woods.

But Baa Baa Barbra does what she's told. Baa Baa Barbra follows orders.

Princess must really want to apologise. There's no one she talks to like me. I'm the only one who knows how fucked up things are with her family, and even now, even through all of this, I haven't told anybody. If this was the test, I've passed it.

I come to the rickety stile and scratch my hand as I climb over like I always do. I suck the blood as I walk down the hill, close to the hedge, trying not to draw the attention of the cows, and then climb over the fence at the bottom, into the forest.

I can't help but feel more hopeful in the dappled light. When I come to the stream, I remember crouching in it with Princess, before she was even called that, studying the brine shrimp living among the rocks when we were barely teenagers.

Upstream, the trees thin, and then it opens out into a sunny grass circle about twenty metres across, split by the line of water. We once saw a vixen and her cubs here and we've called it the fox field ever since.

And then I see him.

Don sits on a tree stump by the fire pit, reading something. He looks up and waves, smiling. ‘Hey!'

I start walking again, towards him, but slowly.

‘Princess forgot she had to go for her one-to-one with Miss Smith, so she sent me.' He flicks his hair out of his eyes. ‘She said she'd come right after. She didn't want you to think she'd stood you up or something.'

I come to a halt a metre away from him.

‘Look, come here,' he says, and pulls another stump upright and closer to him.

I stay standing.

‘Right. Yeah.' He rubs his hand over his hair and it falls back into his eyes like an advertisement for something sweet and addictive. ‘Look, I'm sorry. I don't know what happened between you two. She wouldn't tell me. But she's my sister and I've got to have her back.' He holds a hand up. ‘But I'm glad it's over.'

I don't move as relief floods over me. This means no more baaing as I walk down the corridor. No more half-sucked boiled sweets found in my hair at the end of the day. No more sheep porn.

And they only started spreading rumours about Miss Smith when they started bullying me. Does it also mean that in these one-to-ones, nothing bad has to happen? It won't come out the next day that Miss Smith christened all the desks in the room with Don?

‘I'm sorry,' he says again, holding my gaze.

I sit on the stump and he digs in his pocket and hands me a caramel Freddo. I unwrap the chocolate frog – half-melted already but I eat it anyway. We always used to get these at the beach.

‘How are you?' he asks.

I shrug. Absolutely fucking awful, thanks. Until you showed up and I started eating chocolate from your hand.

‘Yeah.' He nods then twists his head away as if he's seen something in the treeline.

I can't see anything.

‘You've handled all this so well. It's pretty impressive.'

I'm shocked at the glow this lights inside me. Don is praising me for dealing with the absolute torture he and Princess unleashed on me, and that makes me happy? What's wrong with me?

He goes on, ‘So, while Princess was mad at you, she kind of showed me something.'

My heart sinks, because he doesn't have to say anything else; I know exactly what it was. Even though she wasn't even meant to know about it.

‘I guess it was, kind of, a love letter?'

Am I not a mistress that is passing fair?

Shall I promise thou canst put it anywhere?

My face sets on fire. I wish I were dead.

‘Do you… like me?' he says.

I cover my face with my hands and try not to rock back and forth like a child trapped in a terrible nightmare but I am what I am. I whisper, ‘No, no, no.'

But then his hand is on my knee. ‘It's just, I like you too. I've always liked you, actually.'

I stop rocking, the heat from his hand working up my leg.

This is it. This is what I always dreamed of. He said the exact words.

‘I mean, you're like, very hot, you know?'

I keep my hands on my face.

He's so, so, gorgeous. Like, he's a real man already, with his face all tanned and chiselled and his shoulders so solid, and those hazel-green eyes and his pink lips that always look like he's been sucking a lollipop.

One time I watched him winning a cricket match almost single-handedly, his arms whirling before he bowled out two batsmen, one after the other, straight into the wicket before they'd even thought of swinging; and then batting so hard and fast I'm sure he almost split the bat; and the runs, his hair flicking into his face then slicking back with sweat; and afterwards, the arms of his whites rolled up high on his shoulders. Princess ran out on the field and he lifted her and one of his teammates, one in each arm, clear up into the sky and spun them round like they were nothing.

He leans towards me like he always does, always did, in my dreams.

But then I remember him chewing on his cheek behind Whip as she taunted me. ‘Get a life, Barb. We've forgotten you already.' And I remember the thing I always craved – the gold necklace with the red gem – and how he handed one to Miss Smith and glanced back at the class with that cruel smile everyone else saw as cheeky. And then I see the common room, plastered with sheep-women with their legs splayed open.

He hasn't always liked me. We hung out because I was friends with his sister and his parents became friends with mine. He barely noticed me. And even if he did like me…

I put my hand on his but I can't quite push it away. ‘I do – I did like you,' I stutter, and finally brush him off.

‘The sun shines bright, but the wind blows cold,' he says, his hand finding its way back onto my knee and creeping further up. It's like his fingers are electric and they send tingles upwards towards the part of me that only wants him to keep going.

But I don't want that. Not now.

‘You really like me?' I say, trying to figure out how I can get myself to let this happen, so I can have what I've always wanted – not miss this opportunity.

He presses closer and his hand slides higher to the inside of my thigh, fingers drawing circles. ‘I like you,' he says.

‘I-I'm not saying I don't like you. I just – you have all been really, really…' Evil. You have made my life pure fucking misery. You put pictures of lesbian sheep orgies up on the walls, pretending they were me.

But maybe it could be like it was, and then, and then…

‘Just not now.' I start to cry as his fingers reach the elastic edge of my underwear and I push his hand again, harder this time, but he doesn't move it.

‘You aren't saying you don't like me,' he says, smiling, sliding one finger under the band and a cold thrill of want and fear and lust and hate and shame slices through me.

‘Please, I can't.' I push again, and as I do I realise he's not going to stop. He's not listening. Panic rises into my chest. I kick so I fall backwards off the stump and it tumbles over and I try to scrabble up from the ground but he climbs on top of me and clamps his hands on my arms.

‘If we both like each other…' He's smiling like we're both enjoying this. He hauls me up and I try to twist away but he puts me back down on his stump and kneels between my legs and reaches for his flies and then I'm being knocked over.

Princess is here, and Spanish and Whip are right behind her, and someone tugs at my hair, someone kicks my ribs, and then I'm up in the air, being carried, my shoe has fallen off, I reach for the grass as it flies beneath me, and then I'm falling, face-first, into the stream and my face explodes with pain as it hits the rocks.