Perhaps I should have been disappointed in myself. I hated school and it was a good way to have a couple of days off. None of the kids I knew saw an exclusion as a punishment – quite the opposite.
Of course, Mum wasn’t too happy when she picked me up, but she wasn’t as mad as I thought she’d be. I’d always been a nice girl and this was pretty out of character, so I think she knew something was up.
‘Sarah, are you being picked on at school?’ she asked me that evening.
‘No,’ I snapped back. ‘Just leave it, Mum.’
And that was that. I just didn’t want to talk about it. Luckily, I had made one new friend since I’d come back to Psalters Lane. Her name was Lynsey and she lived on our road. She went to another primary school a few streets away and she didn’t know anyone who bullied me. She was around the same age as me and she was a laugh. We’d muck about together on the street and it was so lovely to have a friend. One day she asked me to come and help her babysit for a family friend.
‘Her name is Elaine,’ she explained. ‘She’s nice.’
Elaine lived around fifteen minutes away from Ferham and, as we walked there, Lynsey told me that she had two children, aged three and one.
‘They’re dead cute,’ she went on. ‘I help watch them most nights, though. Elaine’s always out.’
I thought that was a bit strange: why did Elaine go out every night and leave her kids with a girl who was still at primary school? I figured that maybe she worked in a pub like Mum, but it still seemed a weird thing to do when her children were so young.
But the second I walked into Elaine’s house I could tell she was nothing like Mum. It was absolutely filthy and no place for kids. It wasn’t just the fact that the floors were littered with junk and the pots were piled high in the kitchen sink – after all, everyone leaves things lying around from time to time – it just looked like it hadn’t had a proper clean in years. There was mould growing on the walls and all of the surfaces were grimy and dirty. It smelt damp and horrible.
Elaine must have been in her late teens, early twenties at most, but to me she looked ancient. She was standing in the living room smoking when we walked in, wearing a creased vest top and faded blue jeans. Her face was lined with tiredness, as if she hadn’t slept in days. Her limp brown hair was scraped back into a harsh ponytail and there were huge dark circles under her eyes.
‘All right, Lynsey,’ she said casually. The youngest child – Josh, I discovered – was screaming in the background, while his older sister Kylie was stamping her feet loudly. Elaine didn’t take much notice. ‘You still okay to babysit tonight?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ said Lynsey, over the noise of the kids. ‘This is Sarah.’
‘All right?’ Elaine said, but I could tell she wasn’t really in the mood to make conversation.
Kylie and Josh were still shouting in the background, crying out for attention, but it was like Elaine couldn’t hear them. Eventually, Lynsey picked Josh up and tried to comfort him, but I wasn’t paying attention to them any more. Instead, I watched transfixed as Elaine took a crumpled tenner and a bag of white powder from her pocket. She emptied the white powder onto her grubby coffee table, which was already littered with fag ends that no one had bothered to clean up. Then she rolled up the tenner and started to snort the powder through it. I genuinely had no idea what was going on, but it looked a bit ridiculous so I had to stifle a giggle.
I left Elaine’s early that night, but the next evening Lynsey invited me back and I asked Mum if I could stay out a bit later. Elaine’s house was horrible and dirty, but something made me want to go back. At last I had a friend, and it was really nice to be able to hang out with someone my own age who seemed to like me. As we walked back up the hill the next night, I asked Lynsey what the white powder was.
She looked uncomfortable. ‘I think it’s a drug,’ she replied.
‘A drug?’ I echoed.
‘Yeah, cocaine,’ Lynsey said. ‘But she only takes it sometimes.’
When we got to the house Elaine was getting ready to go out, and she looked a lot different from the dishevelled woman I’d met the day before. Gone were the creased vest top and faded jeans; now she was wearing a tight black dress and high-heeled boots which came all the way up to her knee. Her hair was down and it looked like she’d washed it. She’d also put on some bright-red lipstick.
‘I’m off,’ she said. ‘See you later.’
I soon discovered that Lynsey often wasn’t alone when Elaine was out. Elaine had a little cousin called David, who was fourteen. He used to come round too, and he’d bring all his mates. I quickly realised that Elaine’s was a bit of a dosshouse. Now, as a mother myself, I’m horrified that young children – babies, even – were allowed anywhere near a place like that, but at the time I wasn’t thinking about it; I was just fascinated at how totally different it was from my own home, my own way of life.
There were around six teenage boys sitting cross-legged on the floor when I walked into the living room – Elaine only had one couch and it was totally falling apart, with holes where the stuffing oozed out – and there were lots of strange-looking green leaves on the table. One of David’s mates was sucking on a big, gold thing that looked like a pipe.
‘Ever tried a bong?’ he asked me, without introducing himself. ‘Have a shot. You’ll love it.’
‘A what?’ I said.
‘It’s weed,’ Lynsey whispered.
I’d heard people talking about weed before, but I had no idea what it would do to my body if I took it. But David’s friend handed the bong to Lynsey and she inhaled deeply, giggling a little nervously. Then, she passed it to me. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. What would Mum do if she found out I’d taken drugs – me, a nine-year-old girl? She’d go absolutely spare, of course. But as I’d always been an outcast at school, the idea of having cool, older friends appealed to me. I wanted to fit in so, although I was too young to even know what I was doing, I took the bong from Lynsey and, palms sweaty, I breathed in.
I spluttered as the fumes entered my lungs, and the older boys started to laugh, but I kept going as I didn’t want to lose face. After I’d taken a few puffs, I passed the bong back but my brain was already starting to feel a bit fuzzy. A few minutes later, the room was spinning and I started to retch. Bile was rising in my throat, as if I was going to be sick, but nothing else would come.
‘Lynsey,’ I said, tugging on the sleeve of her hoodie. ‘Lynsey, I feel really weird.’
‘Relax,’ she replied. ‘It’s just ’cause it’s your first time.’
‘No,’ I said, making no attempt to hide the desperation in my voice. ‘No, you don’t get it. I think there’s something wrong with me.’
Overhearing us, David asked what was wrong.
‘What have you just given me?’ I asked. By now, I was almost in tears. ‘I feel really sick.’
I couldn’t understand why David and his mates were laughing, and it only made me more scared. The tears which had been threatening to fall now began to spill down my face, but still the boys didn’t take any notice.
‘What’s going on?’ I sobbed. ‘What are you going to do to me?’
‘Now you’ve tried weed, you’ll not be allowed to go home,’ David said.
My throat tightened with panic. ‘What?’ I stammered.
‘You