An exceptional day
Here's the first exceptional day I can remember clearly. I am wearing shorts, t-shirt and black plimsoles with white ankle socks and it is three days before the end of the summer term. It is also three days before the end of my time at Primary School - before I leave for good in fact, although in the end, I never do. And part of me stays arrested in that place, on that day. Part of me perpetually eight.
I must have asked if I could play out but I don't remember it. I remember colours: the sky blue, cloudless and the stark white of Googey's teeth as she played with her yellow train in the sun. Tracey must have been there as well, but memory blurrs her face. It was their yard after all.
My focus was on good deeds, a kind of Brownie Guide lunacy that had invaded my psyche. I can't think of another reason why. Oh, I was a good girl. A really, really good girl - but still, risking life and limb? In truth - that didn't come into it.
Googey - 6 or 7 - in a fit of piqué threw the train onto the greenhouse at the bottom of the yard.
"It's fine," I said, "Don't fret, I'll get it."
It was easy to get up, three simple steps and there I was - plonked on the wall behind the greenhouse surveying the rough ground of acos behind. I remember thinking, why would you put glass on the top of a wall? Made it tricky to find a safe footing, or sit without getting cut.
Still, that was the least of my problems. I could reach the yellow train without any difficulty at all - and throw it back to Googey without killing her although I had a pretty good arm and the sadistic part of me wanted to. I really hadn't given getting down any thought.
That was my mistake.
The next few minutes in my memory is a whirl of red-tomato, blood, blood, tomato, the splatters of each indistinguishable. I didn't fall, rather leaned into the glass but the details don't matter. Looking down there was a cavernous hole on my leg. A crater of blood and flesh, cut through almost to the bone...
Tracey leapt into action. She ran across the road shouting, "Mandy's broke her leg!" which I suppose in the strictest sense, I had. Things were moving fast and slow. My journey back across the road to my own house in interminable, whilst the noise ahead went faster. I could hear my mother laughing in the distance A big raucous laugh-she won't be laughing soon, I thought.
And she wasn't. She said, "Come in" but I knew it was more than my life was worth to get blood on her floor. She ran off, grabbed a towel and then left again.
Was she not thinking straight? I couldn't use this towel - it was the one reserved for guests.
I could hear her talking into the phone. Luckily, we were one of half a dozen families in the street who had one. And then I heard the ambulance off, a ghost.
Around my ankle now the blood congealed like jam, thick and deep red, starved of oxygen. It was hard to believe the state of my leg. Hard to credit I was still standing at all.
The ambulance man ran in, and wound a bandage tightly round the open wound. He kept telling stories, trying to make me smile - but I wasn't fooled. I knew that he didn't want me to fall asleep, even though every part of me screamed to give in to something deep and animal.
I was bundled into the ambulance, and since a crowd had gathered I felt obliged to wave.
Later, as I waited for the effect of sweets to wear off, I told my mother I wanted dad - something I regretted for many years to come. That hurt. That pain in her eyes. She smiled some, but I knew it was just a brave face she'd put on.
The next day, after a few hours in theatre being stitched up and someone else's blood pumping through my veins, I woke up with 84 stitches in my leg. 23 outside and 61 in, and the news that I'd missed the main artery by two millimetres. And a scar that looked like jaws had got peckish over night.
I must have asked if I could play out but I don't remember it. I remember colours: the sky blue, cloudless and the stark white of Googey's teeth as she played with her yellow train in the sun. Tracey must have been there as well, but memory blurrs her face. It was their yard after all.
My focus was on good deeds, a kind of Brownie Guide lunacy that had invaded my psyche. I can't think of another reason why. Oh, I was a good girl. A really, really good girl - but still, risking life and limb? In truth - that didn't come into it.
Googey - 6 or 7 - in a fit of piqué threw the train onto the greenhouse at the bottom of the yard.
"It's fine," I said, "Don't fret, I'll get it."
It was easy to get up, three simple steps and there I was - plonked on the wall behind the greenhouse surveying the rough ground of acos behind. I remember thinking, why would you put glass on the top of a wall? Made it tricky to find a safe footing, or sit without getting cut.
Still, that was the least of my problems. I could reach the yellow train without any difficulty at all - and throw it back to Googey without killing her although I had a pretty good arm and the sadistic part of me wanted to. I really hadn't given getting down any thought.
That was my mistake.
The next few minutes in my memory is a whirl of red-tomato, blood, blood, tomato, the splatters of each indistinguishable. I didn't fall, rather leaned into the glass but the details don't matter. Looking down there was a cavernous hole on my leg. A crater of blood and flesh, cut through almost to the bone...
Tracey leapt into action. She ran across the road shouting, "Mandy's broke her leg!" which I suppose in the strictest sense, I had. Things were moving fast and slow. My journey back across the road to my own house in interminable, whilst the noise ahead went faster. I could hear my mother laughing in the distance A big raucous laugh-she won't be laughing soon, I thought.
And she wasn't. She said, "Come in" but I knew it was more than my life was worth to get blood on her floor. She ran off, grabbed a towel and then left again.
Was she not thinking straight? I couldn't use this towel - it was the one reserved for guests.
I could hear her talking into the phone. Luckily, we were one of half a dozen families in the street who had one. And then I heard the ambulance off, a ghost.
Around my ankle now the blood congealed like jam, thick and deep red, starved of oxygen. It was hard to believe the state of my leg. Hard to credit I was still standing at all.
The ambulance man ran in, and wound a bandage tightly round the open wound. He kept telling stories, trying to make me smile - but I wasn't fooled. I knew that he didn't want me to fall asleep, even though every part of me screamed to give in to something deep and animal.
I was bundled into the ambulance, and since a crowd had gathered I felt obliged to wave.
Later, as I waited for the effect of sweets to wear off, I told my mother I wanted dad - something I regretted for many years to come. That hurt. That pain in her eyes. She smiled some, but I knew it was just a brave face she'd put on.
The next day, after a few hours in theatre being stitched up and someone else's blood pumping through my veins, I woke up with 84 stitches in my leg. 23 outside and 61 in, and the news that I'd missed the main artery by two millimetres. And a scar that looked like jaws had got peckish over night.
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