Array Girl A: Girl A: My Story

My life at home began to change, my attitude not helped as teenage hormones began to flood my still boyish frame: as well as the physical effects that took place, a lot of emotional ones did, too. I started to rebel and kick back against Mum and Dad. They’d always been quite strict when I was a kid, but it hadn’t seemed to matter then. They’d probably tell you there’s always been a rebellious streak in me and now, living in a tough town on the edge of the Pennines, that streak was coming to the fore.

Mum and Dad, especially Dad, had found their drop in social status a catastrophe that they struggled to cope with. They struggled with me, too, and, as the family’s money ran out, and they headed into debt, every little row suddenly seemed to go to a whole new level. A simple, ‘Can you help with the washing up, please?’ would turn into a full-scale war of shouting, stomping and screaming. And I wouldn’t be the only one screaming.

‘What is wrong with you?’ Mum would screech after me, as I shook the whole house with one of my epic door slams. ‘You’re grounded!’

Maybe like a lot of parents, they were fine dealing with their kids when they were little, but couldn’t make the switch to dealing with those same kids when they hit adolescence. Especially when they hit it as hard as I did.

Gradually, Mum and Dad began to get wind of my antics outside the house. As it dawned on them that I was, after all, ‘mixing with the wrong crowd’, the arguments would get even worse and it would be the front door I’d be slamming as I tried to escape them. Home felt like the last place I wanted to be when I could be hanging out, having a laugh with my new friends. They probably were the wrong crowd, but to me they were cool and I wanted to be with them, wanted to be like them, and just to fit in. The shyness of childhood was still very much with me, but somehow I’d managed to make these friends and I was going to do everything I could to keep them.

At school, my mates and I would be the first to head off to the top gate to have a smoke, and in the evenings and at weekends we’d hang around together. At our old home, I used to go shopping and to the pictures (though by the time we left I didn’t really have the money to do that); here, the kids didn’t do those things because they were usually broke, too. They’d just go around the estates or to other people’s houses and chill. It was a big difference, but it made me feel that bit happier, like I fitted in.

We used to drink together and listen to a lot of rave music. We’d make up CDs on the computer and dance around, mostly at the weekends. When I got home, I’d try to sneak in without my parents noticing. I’d tell Lizzie what went on – she was my sister, after all, and it was good to tell her what a laugh I’d been having. I couldn’t have told Mum and Dad. Well, you can’t, can you?

It was the Lucozade bottles that got me into trouble, eventually. Mum thought I really liked it, but of course I didn’t: it was just good for putting cider in once my sisters had drunk the pop. I’d just turned fourteen the night we got caught by the police. Not really caught, but my dad got a letter about it.

‘Hannah!’ Dad shouted, one morning. When I got to the kitchen he was clutching a piece of white paper with the letterhead for the local police constabulary at the top. His face was almost purple with rage.

‘What the hell is this?’ he raged, waving the paper around. My stomach dropped as I realised what it must be. I was in big trouble.

One night, we’d been going through Heywood as usual when a marked car had pulled up and a couple of policemen had got out. They could see we all had bottles, and that most of them said ‘Lucozade’ on the label. A bit obvious, really. Anyway, they started asking us what was in the bottles and we said, ‘Well, like, Lucozade…?’ – that sort of thing. A few of us, Courtney, Elouise, Milly and I, had thrown our bottles into the hedge, but not the others. The police sniffed them and smelled the cider, which didn’t exactly surprise them.

‘Doesn’t smell like Lucozade to me,’ one said, raising an eyebrow, while another went through the bush and found the rest of the bottles. All the cider went into the gutter. They gave us a lecture and took all our names.

That’s why Dad got the letter, and why I was grounded for a week. Plus, I got a caution.

But, often, not even grounding me worked – I would stay home for a few days, but then slip away when I felt like it. Maybe it was around then that my parents began to lose the fight to control me and make me behave the way they wanted me to. Things certainly got worse at home, and I felt I was gradually growing apart from them and, anyway, they had the younger ones to look after.

That, too, was something that rankled. As I got older, it felt as though I was expected to help look after my younger siblings all of the time. Mum and Dad say they were just trying to get me to do my share, but the rebel in me didn’t see it that way. The worst it ever got was after the twins were born. While Mum looked after them, it was down to me to get the others up in the morning, make breakfast and wash up the pots from the night before. To the teenage me, it felt so unfair.

I came to resent it more and more as I got older, and it made me want to wind Mum and Dad up more and more, so I could get even with them. They just didn’t seem to want me to have my own free time, and they certainly didn’t want me going out and getting drunk with my mates. They seemed to just want me to live a life of homework and drudgery around the house. Whenever I went out, they’d say things like, ‘Don’t forget, you’ve got to be home by 11 p.m.’ And then, ‘You’ll be in trouble if you aren’t.’

Yeah, whatever , I’d think.

The stricter they tried to be, the more rebellious I grew. Was it all part of growing up? Was it my surroundings or their parenting? Or was it all my fault? I guess everyone will have an opinion. But I didn’t have time to stop and think at that age: I was too busy doing what I wanted to do. And that was being a teenage girl, without a care in the world. Nobody was going to stop me having fun.

Courtney was my best mate by now: funny, mad Courtney, who was really bubbly and had a wicked sense of humour. I was a bit crazy myself, but shyer, more reserved, at least in school. In classes Courtney would have us in stitches, flicking bits of rubber at teachers with her ruler, and then putting on a dead-straight face when they’d turn around. She did it time and time again and always got away with it. Well, usually.

I started wagging school when I was still fourteen – only just fourteen, really, in the spring of 2007. Courtney, Hayley and I would sneak away from classes we didn’t like – PE and English, usually – and head off to the railway tracks near school. Hayley took us the first time, mostly because she fancied a lad called Wayne and he’d usually be there: him and Ricky, a lad the same age as me who was so rarely at school you could almost imagine he didn’t go there. We’d all sit together on the bank, drinking, smoking, chatting, playing music on our phones as the trains rumbled by. In the evenings, the same gang would often head off into the town centre together, walking, talking, sitting on benches while we drank cider, or else generally milling around as teenagers do.

Mum and Dad would get mad at me when I came home drunk. They seemed to accept that I was drinking with mates, but they hated the idea of me getting drunk out of my skull. They said it wasn’t safe, that something bad might happen to me. I just laughed it off.

I was having fun.

The first time I stormed off and stayed out overnight without telling my parents was around June that year. There’d been an argument about me coming home drunk, so I had just gone upstairs, climbed out of my window and gone to Shauna’s house. Mum and Dad gave me a roasting when I came home the next morning, but it didn’t seem to do any good. Their words were like water off a duck’s back.