Reggie & Me (2 page)

I was about to tell Mum that she really should let me help when I found her in tears, quickly trying to hide all the things that were scattered across the living room floor. I’d never seen the box or the newspaper cuttings, cards and letters that Mum was desperately trying to grab before.

I did not expect to see his face.

Mum was apologising and saying that she’d clear it up and make us both a cuppa (her answer to everything), but I said I’d help. I avoided picking up the cutting with his face on it, but instead picked up a card with a very cute picture of a cat on it. The cat was reaching for a sunflower on a gorgeous sunny day. I opened the card and it was from someone called Sarah. This is what it said:

Dear Danielle, my name is Sarah; I am sixteen now but two years ago when I was fourteen I was raped too. Like you, I knew the person that did this to me. Unlike you, I didn’t have the courage to tell anyone. I want you to know how brave you are and that you have inspired me to tell someone. I said it out loud for the first time yesterday and already things are getting better. I have support and don’t feel so alone any more. Thank you…If it wasn’t for your bravery I would never have done this. Now I know that I will survive and life will be great again
.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Sarah x

Mum handed me a pile of cards that all had similar messages. Neither of us moved as I sat and read every single card and letter. They were from people of all ages, men and women. Every single one of these people had been raped, and every single one was writing to share their story and tell me that they were thinking of me. Some people had kept it a secret for years, some had been
inspired by my story (like Sarah) to tell someone what had happened to them, and some had reported it immediately, like me.

I had been sent loads of cards and letters. It was incredibly kind of people to take the time to write to me, I felt like there were just so many of them.

So many people who had been raped.

We’re in a small town and because I wasn’t in school for a little while afterwards, and I had a lot of support, we didn’t worry too much about keeping everything a secret. I could have done if I’d wanted to though.

I asked Mum why she hadn’t shown me the cards before. I wasn’t angry; I was just a bit confused as they were such kind messages of support. Mum said that she didn’t want to put any additional pressure on me, and that Jane thought that maybe it would be too much what with the court case and everything – good old Jane.

I spent all night thinking about what I should do now I’d seen the cards. I felt bad that I hadn’t said ‘thank you.’ A lot of people didn’t leave their full names or an address, so I guess that they didn’t want a response, which, in a way, was really kind, but I really want to say thank you.

I went through all of the cards again and it wasn’t any easier reading them a second time. I collected all of the ones who had names and addresses included, and while Mum was packing up the rest of the house, I wrote a reply to each and every person.

This must be how my friends felt when they found out what had happened to me. I didn’t know what to say, but I wanted to say something. I was so grateful that people had taken the time to write to me that in most cases I just said that. I just said ‘thank you’ and told them how grateful I was. It’s always great to get a thank you card, isn’t it?

Mum has been pretty quiet since I found the cards.

She said that she has underestimated how strong I am. I’m not
sure that’s true. It wasn’t easy reading all of those cards, but at the same time, it probably wasn’t easy for all of those people to write the cards. Nothing about this is easy. Seeing his face on the newspaper cuttings has triggered something in my head. He’s been popping up in my thoughts, and last night I had a nightmare about him. That hasn’t happened for a while. I used to have nightmares all the time, but since he’s been caught and locked away they’ve started to ease.

I think that moving house and living with Reggie will help.

‘Happy’ triggers help too.

Little things to make me smile.

This has been a bit challenging now that we’re packing up, so right now, I have two. One is a picture of Reggie; I’ve put it as the screensaver on my phone. This has helped me a lot as Reggie is a sign that things are going to change for the better. I’m scared of all the changes: the new home and the new school. But the excitement about Reggie joining our family is outweighing the fear.

I’m going to look at the picture before I go to sleep tonight. I’d much rather be dreaming of the life I have waiting for me than the life I’m leaving behind. The second happy trigger is a bracelet that Jane gave me before the court case. It’s a really nice black leather bracelet with charms on it. At the moment I only have two charms, but two is enough. One is the letter ‘B’, which she told me stood for the fact that she believes in me 100 per cent. The other is a red glass charm with hearts on it. She bought me this because red is the colour of courage and the hearts are to constantly remind me that I am loved. I thought it was a bit naff at first, but I haven’t taken it off since the day she gave it to me. Throughout the court case and the difficult days, it was really comforting. Just having it with me all the time and being able to look at something that reminded me that I wasn’t on my own. As much as people told me that they were supporting me, it was sometimes difficult to remember. Especially when you’re on your
own and feeling scared.

It’s only two days until we move house now.

I’m having a final day with my friends tomorrow and I have mixed feelings about it. I want to see them, but it will only make it harder to say goodbye. I thought that leaving them would be the hardest part of moving, but I’m actually looking forward to a clean break.

I know that my friends did their best, and I know that if I were staying here I’d be making much more of an effort to see them, which would make things much better much quicker.

When Mum told me about getting a dog my first thought wasn’t to tell my friends, it was whether my new friends would like him and come over to our new house.

I haven’t even met these friends yet.

Writing about Reggie is as exciting as talking to someone about him. I’m not sure if that makes me a bit of a loser or just a realist about the changes that are coming. Maybe I’ve just grown up in a different way because of what’s happened.

I see things differently now and understand that there’s more to life than worrying about who is talking about you, or who fancies who. Two days to go and I’ll be unpacking in my new room. I’ll be making a fresh start and preparing for a whole new adventure.

Today has been full of mixed emotions. I’ve gone from not wanting to leave at all to being ready to pack the car and never come back. Maybe I was naïve to think it would just be like old times. The day started off okay as we went into town. This is something we have done a million times, but sometimes it just felt fake, like we were all having a day out together because we felt we should, not really because we wanted to. We made the most of the morning though. We’d tried on outfits we couldn’t afford and put on ridiculous make up before the shop assistant came over to ask if we needed any help. Her tone of voice didn’t exactly make us think she wanted to really help us at all, and we made a very quick exit. In one shop I actually laughed so hard I cried as we were all trying on clothes that our grandmothers would be too embarrassed to wear, and wondered how I would ever cope with moving away and starting again.I wanted a fresh start when it happened; I wanted to escape. But while I was standing in that shop, laughing with my friends, I couldn’t imagine my life any other way.

That feeling didn’t last long. We decided that we’d go for a pizza and, without the distraction of shops and grumpy assistants, we struggled to find things to talk about. We went through the usual stuff like laughing about things that had happened in school. The only thing was that I didn’t remember most of them happening as I wasn’t told at the time. Apparently the snotty head boy had been caught around the back of the PE store with a girl from Year Nine, and one of two of the girls in our year, who had been voted most likely to be pregnant before the exams (it was an unofficial vote!), had phoned up to be on Jeremy Kyle. It seems that there were lots of funny things happening while I was desperately wishing my friends would just make an effort to talk normally around me. Although, maybe if I wasn’t so busy
wishing they’d act normal and just tried to act normally myself, I would have known what was going on and had a great distraction. I don’t know if knowing someone who has appeared on Jeremy Kyle should count as a claim to fame, but it would definitely have been a distraction. It took so much effort for me to get to school and get through the day that I almost then expected everyone else to make the rest of the effort on my behalf. ‘Normal‘, what is that anyway?

I thought I’d give it a go while we were waiting for our pizza to arrive and just laughed along with them and asked a couple of questions about what happened. It was just too easy. They told me the stories, we laughed and it felt ‘normal‘. It felt good. Then as our food arrived and we got stuck in, someone asked if I was looking forward to moving. All eyes turned to me and as I looked up, it hit me that this would probably be the last time that we would all be sitting around eating pizza together without a care in the world. It also hit me that I didn’t feel too sad about that. It is time for a change.

I told them about Reggie and how excited I was to finally be getting a dog. They looked at me like I was from another planet. Apparently having to go out for walks and picking up poo is not something that they found all that exciting. Their loss, but I was a bit gutted that they just laughed about it when getting a dog is something I’m really excited about. They didn’t even want to see the picture, so I quietly put my phone away and tried to hide behind my pizza as my eyes nearly leaked, it must have been the chili. Their complete lack of interest just showed me that I had changed, and probably grown up a bit, while they were still much more interested in what colour their nails were and how they were going to get the attention of the hot geography teacher. I have bitten my nails since before I can remember – much to the annoyance of Mum who has kept ‘stop and grow’ in business for the last few years – so I couldn’t care less about the colour of nails. I also don’t see the attraction with Mr Geography, who
makes no attempt to hide the photographs of his very pretty wife, so I don’t think he’s worried about the attention of the soon to be Year Elevens.

We ate our pizza and split the bill without any more talk of me moving away. They said that they were going to treat me to a trip to the cinema after we had eaten as a goodbye present, but I’d had enough. I didn’t tell them that, it was a nice thought, but I said I had promised to help Mum pack.

It wasn’t the emotional goodbye I thought it might be.

We all said we’d miss each other and promised to keep in touch, but I knew we wouldn’t. I didn’t believe their words. Never mind
their
words; I didn’t believe my own. I watched them all walk away and they didn’t look back.

I didn’t feel sad, I felt strong. I was no longer relying on other people to make me feel like I fitted in. I didn’t need to fit in. I always thought that ‘fitting in’ would be the best way to be happy and have a lot a lot of friends. Today proved to me that I could be really happy by following my own ideas and not just laughing along for the sake of it. So what if I want to get up and stupid o’clock and walk a dog in the rain. They would never understand that it’s not just about early mornings and poo bags, it’s about wanting to feel safe again. As I walked away, I felt a real sense of freedom. I now have the opportunity to be whoever I want to be. I guess that if I was staying around here I would still have that opportunity and would probably just have made more effort to redevelop the friendships, but this completely clean break feels really good. I won’t have any history or anything that I need to explain. I can create my own history where I’m not just the girl who’s had a rough time. I’m just a girl who is having a fresh start. Now all I need to do is decide exactly who this all new and improved version of me will be.

I think that today has been the first step in finding her as I didn’t feel like I had to pretend any more. I didn’t stay with them and go to the cinema simply because I felt I ‘should’ or to make
them feel better. I wasn’t rude as I certainly don’t want that to be their final memory of me, but I also wasn’t the timid girl who’d been around for the last few months. I was assertive and it felt good. This has gradually been happening more and more over the last few weeks. I couldn’t even decide whether I wanted a cuppa or not when it first happened, but gradually I’ve been able to make decisions again. I didn’t need to make decisions at first. Once I told Mum and we went to the police, everything just kind of happened. At home I was looked after, fed and watered. I didn’t need to decide what to eat as Mum did everything for me, I didn’t need to decide where to go as I wasn’t leaving the house, and I didn’t even need to decide what to watch on TV as Mum was checking every programme to make sure there wouldn’t be anything that would upset me. Before, I wouldn’t have given a trip to the cinema a second thought. If that’s where everyone wanted to go then I’d happily have gone along too. Today felt different. I just didn’t want to go. Actually saying it, not being rude about it and thanking them for the thought, reminded me that I could take back a bit of control over what I wanted to do and that it was okay to do that.

In the book I’m reading about training dogs it says that you should always remain calm and assertive so that the dog knows who is in charge. Turns out that works on humans too!

I am sitting in my new bedroom, surrounded by boxes, and rather than unpacking I thought the most productive thing I could do was write in my journal. It could be that I really need to write or it could be that I’m just brilliant at avoiding the jobs I don’t want to do. Either way, I’m not going to be doing any unpacking in the near future!