Should Old Acquaintance…

Season’s Greetings, Mrs Hillier!

I bet you get loads of Christmas cards from old pupils. I doubt you even remember me. But I remember you, and the impact you had on my life.

They say you never forget a good teacher. Turns out you don’t forget the bad ones, either.

You were my form teacher, Mrs Hillier, first year of secondary school. I’d been a good kid up until then. Wasn’t the brightest in the class, but I did alright. The very first morning I walked into your classroom, you started in on me. Had I got dressed in the dark? You made it sound like a joke. The other kids laughed along, so I did too. Didn’t feel funny though. Didn’t feel funny the next day, either, when you asked if I’d combed my hair with a fork. When you told me my handwriting looked like spider scrawl. Told me to stop talking, even though it was the kid behind me. The kid in front of me. Moved me to the back of the class alone to “help me to behave,” and never saw what the other kids got up to.

For years I thought it was just me, that I’d done something wrong without knowing it. That I’d been as much a problem for you as you were a misery to me. But I was wrong, wasn’t I, Mrs Hillier? You enjoyed it. But not enough to remember me. I was just another kid you could needle for fun. I bet you had one in every class, didn’t you?

You might think you didn’t do much damage beyond making me miserable for an hour every morning. After all, I ended that year with a report card I could take home without being frightened of a belting, even with the D you gave me. But something clicked a gear inside me, and I couldn’t see myself any other way but how you did. Stupid. Worthless. A bad lot. That stuck, like a stain, even for the two glorious years I was in none of your classes.

Then, just when I was starting to shake it off and believe maybe I wasn’t so useless after all, you walked into my science lesson on a Wednesday afternoon near Christmas. You’d pulled a cover, and you were not happy about it. You made that clear to us all. Snarled at us to sit down and shut up, slammed the worksheets on the desk like the clap of doom. Most of us trembled in our chairs. Some kids, though, that sort of thing’s a red rag to a bull.

So, they started.  “Please Miss, what’s the answer to number 12?” “Miss! Miss! I don’t understand this one!” You didn’t have a clue. Science wasn’t your subject, was it? But you hated to look stupid. The questions came faster, the suppressed laughter bubbling up so you could feel it. Now you know what it feels like, I thought. To be me. You couldn’t stand it. You went into the back room to find the lab assistant.

Only we knew what you didn’t – Wednesday was the assistant’s afternoon off. The minute you were in there, someone slammed the heavy wooden door shut, and someone else dragged a bench across it. Then the laughter started for real, so loud it was hard to hear the banging and yelling from behind the door.

There was all hell to pay, of course. The Head master pacing the stage at an emergency assembly, laying down the law. Zero tolerance. No standing for that sort of behaviour at this school. Perpetrators brought to justice. He wanted names.

Someone gave him mine. It’s not hard to imagine who.

Oh, you’ll say it was one of the kids, someone who had a grudge against me. Except the only one with a grudge was you. I knew it then, and I know it now.

Besides, they’d never take a kid’s word with no evidence. And there was no evidence, because I didn’t do anything wrong. But an accusation by the teacher involved?

I got a three-day suspension, a letter home.

Do you know what happens to a kid like me, from a home like mine, if they get suspended from school? Of course you don’t. Would you care, if you did?

Well, I wasn’t stupid, despite what you thought, and I’d learned a few things in the school of hard knocks. I got to the letterbox first, hid the letter somewhere even he wouldn’t find it. Put my uniform on and left the house like usual. Couldn’t go to school though, could I? And it was too cold to be outside.

It doesn’t take long, hanging around the shops in a town like this, to meet other kids who aren’t in school either. The kind of kids who maybe deserve a suspension or two. Guess who I got talking to?

The rest you can probably imagine. It started with a bit of light shoplifting – nothing big, just snacks. Teenagers get hungry, you know, and the shops were full of Christmas sweets. By the second day, the other kids had decided I was alright, so I went home with one of them, whose big brother didn’t give a rat’s arse if he was in school or not, since there were better ways to make money than with a few certificates.

He was right.

I never looked back.

Not until it all went wrong, and that was much, much later.

Funny thing is, I don’t blame any of them. Not the kids at the shops, not the brother with his dodgy connections. Not the real hard men I fell in with afterwards. None of them misjudged me, you see. Not like you did.

I’ve had a long, long time to think about where it all went downhill and it wasn’t with any of them. It was with you, Mrs Hillier. You were the fork in the road that brought me here.

In a minute, Mrs Hillier, you’re going to put this card on the mantlepiece, alongside all the others. It won’t matter if the police do a really good job, if they read every card. They’ll never figure out who I am. How could they? Even you don’t remember my name, even now, do you?

Now put it down, nicely, and turn and look out of the window. I’m here, in the garden, waiting. I’ve got a present for you. I’ve been meaning to give it to you for a long time.