Gordon Reece - Mice

Later the same day, they were interviewed by the police. They took these interviews much more seriously. Each girl was led separately into one of the soundproofed rooms at the local station, where a detective questioned them about the attack.

I could see it all: the three of them denying everything in teary, frightened voices while their parents held their hands and comforted them, convinced that their precious daughters were incapable of doing anything as barbaric as setting another girl’s hair on fire. The three of them telling lie after lie, carefully repeating the alibi they’d worked out together beforehand, while their solicitors sat tensed like jack-in-the-boxes, ready to jump up and object to any question they deemed inappropriate for their vulnerable young clients; demanding absolute fairness for girls who didn’t even know the meaning of the word.

Meanwhile, I lay in Lavender Ward, a twelve-bed women’s ward in the local general hospital. According to the consultant, I’d been very lucky. He tried to explain what had happened, but I hadn’t followed him very well. I’d been saved by the fact that the flames had shot upwards, pulling all my hair up with them. This had been helped somehow by a draught coming in through one of the toilet windows. It meant that the fiercest heat of the fire was above my head rather than on my face. It also seemed that my hair had only been on fire for a short time: it had felt so much longer, he told me, because I’d been in shock and shock slows time down to a snail’s pace.

Miraculously, I’d only sustained second-degree burns to my neck, forehead, right ear and left hand — which I must have put into the flames without realizing what I was doing or feeling any pain. My eyes and hearing were completely unaffected. Not even all of my hair had been burned. One visit to a good hairdresser to trim it into a new short style and, apart from a raw red patch at the back, it would be as if the attack had never happened. There were scars, of course — an ugly red-and-white marbling across my forehead and neck — but he assured me that these would fade in a relatively short period of time.

I was given painkillers and several injections; the burns were smeared in a cold, sweet-smelling cream and lightly dressed. I could have gone home that afternoon, but the consultant said that since I’d gone into shock and passed out, he wanted to keep me in for a few days just to be on the safe side.

It took a long time to get off to sleep that first night with all the unfamiliar noises and activity going on around me. The truth is that a hospital doesn’t really sleep at night; it just rests a little, that’s all. The night nurses passed up and down the ward attending to the patients who’d buzzed them or called out for them in hoarse whispers; patients slopped back and forth to the bathroom in their slippers; a new patient was brought in on a gurney at three o’clock in the morning; screens were wheeled into position around the bed of an elderly woman at the far end of the ward and my consultant briefly appeared, red-eyed and unshaven, to tend to her. Even if the ward had been completely silent, the light from the main corridor that blazed away all night would have made falling asleep difficult.

Yet strangely — in spite of the trauma I’d been through and the uncomfortable freezing sensation on my face, neck and hand — I felt happier lying under those tightly tucked-in sheets than I had for months. Everything was out in the open now. Mum knew. The school knew. The police knew. The hospital knew. It was as if the enormous burden I’d been struggling to carry all on my own had suddenly been lifted by a sea of helping hands. It was other people’s concern now — adults, professionals, experts in this type of thing. I was free from it at last.

I felt wonderfully at peace in the special atmosphere of the hospital. I loved the regularity of the routine ( a cup of tea at three, visiting time at five, dinner at seven ); I loved the nurses in their neat white uniforms who always stopped to have a little chat with me, knowing I was the youngest patient on the ward. I even loved the sharp pine scent of the disinfectant that pervaded everything, and the muzak they played for the elderly ladies in the afternoons — bland, woozy tunes from another time that were somehow strangely comforting. I enjoyed the company of the other women, who fussed over me and made me laugh with their outrageous jokes and bad language. They spoiled me terribly, insisting that I have the sweets and chocolates their relatives had brought in for them and refusing to take no for an answer.

There were plenty of other mice in the ward — maybe that’s why I felt so at home. There was Laura in the bed next to me, a fifty-one-year-old mouse, whose husband had beaten her with a baseball bat because she’d burned his dinner. There was eighteen-year-old Beatrice in the bed opposite, whose joky banter was darkly contradicted by the heavy bandages on her wrists. We all shared the same secret bond, what I called with bitter irony the fellowship of the mouse . I liked to amuse myself by imagining the fellowship’s badge that we’d wear on our breasts: a mouse in a trap with a broken neck, and our motto ‘Nati ad aram’ in a curling scroll — born with the victim gene . Was that Mum’s real legacy to me?

Sitting in my bed flicking through a magazine or idly doodling in my sketchbook, I felt relaxed and optimistic about the future. In their sadistic desire to hurt me, Teresa, Emma and Jane had ended up hurting themselves more. They were likely to be prosecuted for what they’d done to me — they could even end up being sent to prison. At the very least, they’d be expelled from school. Either way, they’d disappear from my life forever. I’d return to school and everything would go back to normal.

Normality! Glorious, dull, mundane normality! I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful!

My optimism began to fade soon after I was discharged and found myself back in the matrimonial home , surrounded by gloomy memories of my parents’ failed marriage and my failed friendships.

Mum and I had a visit from a police inspector who dryly informed us that they weren’t going to press charges against the three girls I’d accused (the word accused made it sound as though they thought I was lying !). There simply wasn’t enough evidence, he explained. No other students had actually witnessed them setting fire to my hair. The parents of the younger girls — who had at least seen them throw me into the door — had made it clear they weren’t going to let their daughters become involved in a criminal trial. Unless one of them confessed to the crime and gave evidence against the other two, there was just no way a successful prosecution could be brought — and I knew hell would freeze over before that ever happened.

A week or so later a letter came from the school’s head teacher. Mum and I read it together at breakfast. He began by wishing me a speedy recovery on behalf of all the staff and students (all the students?) and then he broke more bad news. Following ‘a thorough investigation’, he wrote, he’d found no independent evidence to back up the ‘allegations’ I’d made in my diary. All three girls ‘strenuously denied’ waging a bullying ‘campain’ ( misspelt! ) against me and ‘disclaimed all knowledge’ of the ‘unfortunate incident’ on the twenty-third of October. He said he’d received ‘strong representations’ from the parents of the three girls, ‘forcefully protesting their innocence’ and pointing to the police’s decision not to prosecute as proof that they had no case to answer. In light of this, ‘the school board has decided that no disciplinary action will be taken against Teresa Watson, Emma Townley and Jane Ireson’.