One saw me and pointed and they all ran towards me calling out my name, which was a bit unnerving. They marched me to the head’s office. I kept twisting and pulling myself away from them, but they were treating me like an escaped prisoner they’d found, and each of them was hanging on to a handful of my shirt or skirt. I must have started yelling at them and pushing back, because the note that went home to Aunty Jean said I had been violent and abusive, having run away from school. None of this was true of course, but no one believed me. I wasn’t planning on giving Aunty Jean the note, but they were smarter at Grange Primary than at Rostrevor and sent a copy of it home with Maudie.

The headmistress asked me a pile of questions that made it clear she had already made up her mind about what had happened and asked me to turn out my pockets. She took my note with the addresses and phone numbers away. She had tried to ring Aunty Jean, but luckily I knew she had gone to ladies’ Bible class that day, so I thought I would be safe. I didn’t know then about the duplicate note with Maudie.

The very worst thing about this was that Aunty Jean rang my dad and put me on the phone to him. I tried to explain I was just looking for addresses and phone numbers because we had left before I could get them, but this seemed to make Dad cross.

‘So this is all my fault, Dorcas, is it? Because I wouldn’t let you go to your own school after your mum left, you had to misbehave?’

‘No! Dad! I’m not saying it’s your fault. I’m just saying this is why I had to leave school to go to a phone box to get all the details. I wanted to write some letters.’

‘Dorcas, you don’t even write to your brother Daniel, so why did you have to write to everyone else when you’ll see them soon enough?’

‘But I don’t know when I’ll see Maynard and I don’t get pocket money here because Aunty Jean said you didn’t leave any for me and they can’t subsidise me so I can’t ring. But Uncle Paul says he will give me stamps, and I want to make sure Maynard is still my friend next year.’

Nothing changed his mind about my motives or my guilt. Yet another grown-up had made a decision without knowing the facts. I knew my brother Daniel secretly wanted to be a lawyer, even though our church frowned on this and no one so far had become one. I decided I’d urge him on so he could take on cases like mine and sue for justice. Although hearing my dad’s voice was comforting, the fact he was so cross with me was not.

Luckily for me, Uncle Paul was listening to all of this from his little study room, and after the call he summoned me. There was almost no room for me to be in the space with him. It was more a cupboard than a study really, and I think it might have been made from half of the laundry. It had shelves that went from the floor to the ceiling all the way around, with a very small window on one side with his desk pushed up beneath the shelves. There were so many books crammed on the shelves they all sagged in the middle.