Bought and Sold. Megan Stephens

I had been put into the top set was because I was a quick learner. So it didn’t take me long to realise that, as the bullies clearly weren’t going to change their behaviour, if I wanted to fit in, I was going to have to change mine. Within just a few months of starting at the school, I was dressing differently, I had dropped my ‘posh accent’ and adopted all the slang words the other kids used, and I had begun to mess around in lessons.

      That was the first time I put into practice my ability to hide who I really am and pretend to be someone I’m not. I hated myself for doing it, but it worked: I was put down into a lower set at school and the bullies turned their spiteful attention to other targets. What I really hated though was the fact that my teachers were disappointed with me, although not as disappointed as I was with myself, despite my apparent indifference to their concern as they asked me, repeatedly, if there was something wrong.

      Now that I was on the side of the bullies, if only peripherally, I began to make friends, one of whom was a girl called Carly. Like me, Carly had started out in the top set and been moved down when her behaviour deteriorated. She was better at ‘not caring’ than I was though, and one day, when we had skived off school together, she took me to the car park of an office block near where she lived, pointed to a van and said, ‘Let’s see what’s inside.’ The thought of breaking into anything made me feel sick with anxiety. But I sensed that it was a test and if I failed it, it wouldn’t be long before I was right back where I had started.

      It was a stupid thing to do, particularly in a public place in broad daylight. Someone saw us and called the police, who caught us in the act and took us back to school in a police car, and then I was driven home. I was lucky to get off with a warning from the police, but I got into a whole load of trouble from my mum. Anyone who had heard me shouting back at her would never have guessed that I was embarrassed and ashamed of what I had done.

      The second time the police became involved was when I was caught shoplifting make-up in a shopping mall with another friend. This time, they phoned Mum from the police station and told her to come and take me home. She was really upset and angry when she got there, and although I would have died rather than show it, I felt bad.

      The police told Mum to make sure I was in court on time the next morning, and when I said that I wasn’t going to go to court, one of the policemen said, ‘It isn’t a matter of choice. You have to go.’

      ‘Oh yeah?’ The arrogant hostility in my voice sounded convincing. ‘And who’s going to make me?’

      The answer was that they were, by keeping me in a cell overnight and taking me to court the next morning in a police van. I think they had to get Mum’s permission, which I’m sure she gave them willingly, in the hope that being locked in a police cell for the night might shock me into realising how it was all going to end if I didn’t sort myself out pretty quickly.

      By the time they dragged me, literally kicking and screaming, into the cell I really was angry. But I was scared too.

      After I had done something I shouldn’t have done at school one day, Mum and John were asked to come in for a meeting to discuss my behaviour. The head-teacher asked me questions about what life was like at home – as if I was going to say anything with my mum and stepdad sitting there. I don’t think Mum ever understood why I was becoming increasingly unmanageable. I didn’t understand it either, although I realise now that it was at least partly because there wasn’t much stability in our lives at home, and because we felt as though no one really cared what we were doing or what happened to us as long as we didn’t cause any trouble.

      I had started running away from home. On all those occasions when Mum didn’t know where I was, I think she would have been shocked if she had seen the sort of people I had become involved with. When I wasn’t wandering around the estate, I was in houses where people were taking drugs, smoking weed and drinking. In fact, I didn’t drink, not only because I hated the taste of alcohol, but also because of what I had seen it do to other people. I didn’t take drugs either. But I did smoke, and I drove around in cars with boys being generally disruptive. I didn’t do anything else with the boys except sit in their cars: under my tough façade, I was still timid and insecure and never even contemplated having any sort of emotional or sexual relationship.

      Sometimes, Mum would call the police and they would come out looking for us. But they rarely found us. I didn’t like Mum at that time. In fact, I didn’t like anyone in my family except my sister – which anyone who heard our constant arguments might have been surprised to know. One day, when my auntie was at the house and she and Mum started laying into me about something, I just lost it. I picked up a bottle of ketchup and hurled it across the room. As it hit the wall, the bottle seemed to explode, sending shards of broken glass and disgusting red goop spraying out in all directions.

      I don’t know whether it was my auntie or my mum who called the police. Whoever it was, I got hauled off to the police station and kept there for a couple of hours, which made me feel obliged to keep up my act of being angry long after I didn’t feel it anymore. In fact, it was horrible; it was like watching someone I didn’t recognise saying vicious, nasty things. The trouble was that it had gathered its own momentum and I didn’t know how to back down.

      Some of my behaviour was pretty much what you would expect from a teenager going through an angry phase and starting to test the boundaries of authority. But it took on another dimension altogether when I began to self-harm, although, in fact, I only did it a couple of times. I cut myself with a razor. I don’t know why. Maybe it was attention-seeking; maybe all my bad behaviour was really just another way of saying, ‘Look at me! Do something to stop me. Don’t let me get away with this.’

      If I got tired of silently criticising myself, I could always turn my attention to the things I thought were wrong with Mum. I would visit friends’ houses where there were framed family photographs above the fireplace and a nice car in the driveway, and I would ask Mum, ‘Why can’t you be like so-and-so’s mum?’ I think what I really wanted more than anything else was to fit in. Conforming was a big pressure, particularly on the housing estate where we lived, and I was sick of always feeling like the odd one out. I suppose that’s why people hounded and tormented Dean, the boy who lived next door: they thought he was different, so they chose to ignore the fact that he was gentle, funny and clever.

      Mum used to be one of those ‘conforming mums’, in the early days after John first came to live with us. She had a good job and was studying part-time for an NVQ. And when she wasn’t working, at the weekends, she used to take my sister and me out, sometimes for lunch and then to the zoo or the cinema, and we would have really good fun. She wasn’t the sort of mum who offered you her shoulder to cry on. If I ever tried to talk to her about something that was worrying or upsetting me, she would get angry and impatient. Thinking about it now, I suppose it was because she didn’t know what to do about her own problems, so feeling that she had to try to solve other people’s would have seemed overwhelming.

      She was a terrific mum, when she was sober. It was the drink that sent everything wrong. And the drink was always there, in the background. Drinking was just what Mum and John did when they were socialising with family and friends, which was okay, until I was about 12 and it started to affect all our lives. Mum says it was John’s fault, and I certainly don’t think he made things better for her in the end. But I know now, from my own experiences, that you have to take responsibility for what you do and, to some extent, for what happens to you. You can’t just lay all the bad stuff at someone else’s door and absolve yourself of any blame.

      Eventually, when I continued to miss lessons and run away from home, Mum contacted social services and asked for help. I think she hoped it would shock me into realising that life at home wasn’t so bad after all. It was my anger she found particularly difficult to deal with, which I can understand, as I don’t know myself why I was so angry or why I began to establish a pattern of making bad decisions.

      Social services allocated a social worker, who I really liked, to me. He would talk to me and do the sort of fun things Mum and John used to do with us. So, for me, it was quite a good outcome, although the arrangement only lasted until I ran away again. This time, I went to my dad’s.

      I