On the day of the alumni reunion, I saw her before she saw me. At first, I couldn’t believe it was her.
Middle-aged and a little plump, she was wearing a flowery summer dress with sandals, and I noticed that her ankles had that telltale swell that some overweight women in their 40s have.
But that’s just my bad intention, I’m still trying to find reasons, after all these years, to finish her off, to take away her power.
I wouldn’t have paid her any attention if we had passed each other on the street. Yet this was the girl, now grown, who had made so much of my school life a misery.
Shona Sibary (centre) at her boarding school in the 1980s
He’d spent 33 years rehearsing what he’d say if he ever saw her again. Now here he was…and he couldn’t find the words. He didn’t know if he could ever forgive her. Can anyone ever truly forgive their stalker?
We went to boarding school together in Sussex. In 1980, aged nine, I joined as a boarder. Before that, my family had been in Fiji for four years, where my father worked as a land developer, and the only education I had known had been fairly unconventional. In the late 1970s, there was no television in Fiji, so I devoured Enid Blyton books and dreamed of boarding school fun with midnight feasts and freezing dormitories.
And when we returned to the UK after a catastrophic flood, my parents were happy to accompany us.
I remember arriving that first Sunday night and my mother unpacking my belongings in the closet next to my single bed and tenderly placing my teddy bear on the pillow. “Just wait a little while,” she said, holding me tightly. “You’ll have to find a way to fit in.”
She was right. Looking back, I realize I hadn’t realized I’d entered a world of unspoken rules and nuances. A world where if the coolest girl in school decided she didn’t like the way you looked, then that was it.
That first morning in the dining room, I wandered in unnoticed and was assigned a seat at a table with… let’s call her Mandy. She was two years older and clearly the boss.
Buttered white toast was brought over and placed on tall plates. I took a warm slice from the top and Mandy narrowed her eyes. “Put it back, new girl,” she ordered. “You take the cold toast from the bottom.”
Startled, I dropped my portion, knocking her glass of juice onto the table and her skirt. She looked at me with such disdain that I shrank back in my seat.
And that was it. My fate was sealed in less than five minutes, over a loaf of Mother’s Pride bread. From that day on, until practically the day she left, Mandy made it her mission to torment me. Her weapons of choice were words and the most ingenious mind games.
Shona, pictured aged eight, was bullied by a girl two years older than her.
To be honest, I made things easy for him. I was a quirky girl with no filters. I hadn’t had any brothers to take that away from me and I assumed everyone would like me. So far, they had, and that had given me the confidence (thankfully) to be myself.
“You’re a weirdo, aren’t you?” Mandy would say every day at breakfast, announcing it as an indisputable fact. Of course, everyone agreed with her.
“Why don’t you do something about your crooked teeth? And what’s wrong with your eye?” (A birthmark I had as a baby left me squinting and blind in one eye.)
It was a daily, relentless dismantling. The other girls found it easier to sit back, say nothing, and let Mandy reign supreme. Why would they stick their heads above the parapet for a slightly annoying new girl who had never met Tiswas?
A more intelligent girl would have cowered and made herself less conspicuous, but I did the opposite, stupidly clinging to the belief that at least I still had my spirit (as I said, I had read a lot of Enid Blyton).
Mandy knew I wanted to be an actress, so one day she casually announced to me that her father was the director of the new West End production of Annie and had asked her to find orphans for the show.
I remember thinking, “I’m sure your dad is in the Navy,” but at the same time I was so desperate for the opportunity that I willingly suspended my disbelief. And anyway, all the other girls, eager for the sport, confirmed that it was indeed true.
Mandy gathered everyone in the gym, where there was a stage. Looking back, I still shudder to think of how I stepped up onto that platform, ignoring the warning voice in my head. I sang Tomorrow and, for good measure, Its The Hard Knock Life. She pretended to take notes while everyone laughed.
When I finished, there was a moment of thrilling anticipation, a bit like when a roller coaster reaches the top of its climb before tipping toward the fall.
“You’re rubbish,” Mandy announced. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” And then everyone burst into hysterical laughter.
When I look back on that moment, possibly one of the most humiliating of my life, I wonder why I never spoke up or asked anyone for help. To a large extent, it was a survival instinct.
Now that I’m an adult, I feel angry for my younger self. I wasn’t a bad girl, writes Shona (file image)
I didn’t see my parents for weeks, and the nuns were distant. We were expected to stand firm and carry on. But now that I’m an adult, I feel angry for my younger self. I wasn’t a bad girl. I was annoying, yes, but I didn’t deserve Mandy’s campaign of cruelty.
That thought was running through my head 33 years later, at our reunion, when suddenly she was standing in front of me, holding her daughter’s hand.
I hated myself for wishing I’d worn something more flattering. Then I realized I needed to touch up her roots. “Stop it,” a voice in my head warned. “You’re a grown woman. You don’t need to do this.” Still, I realized I was rearranging my face, feigning nonchalance, a force of habit as my survival instinct kicked in.
“How are you?” he asked. “Long time no see.” I nodded, still unable to speak. We walked together down a hallway that looked so familiar to both of us, past a place where she had once screamed, holding her nose, telling everyone that I had a very strong body odor.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I think I was a bitch to you in school and I wouldn’t like to think that my daughter could go through the same thing.”
The girl looked at me and smiled. She looked okay. She wasn’t the kind of person who would tell a classmate that their face looked like something Bugs Bunny had thrown up all over.
I took a deep breath. I doubted Mandy had lost any sleep over the years over the way she treated me at school. She just wanted to be let off the hook. Maybe motherhood had softened her.
“Look, Mandy,” I said, “you really hurt me.” She looked immediately distressed, and as she continued to please people, I couldn’t help but want to take back my words.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. We were standing in the same place we’d been so many times before, eons ago. I thought of all the girls in the future who will be there too, not quite women yet, feeling their way.
Mandy was just a teenager, her father was in the military and she probably had a lot of problems of her own to deal with. I took a deep breath and realized that finally, after years of anguish over what had happened, I didn’t care anymore.
“Okay,” I replied with a smile. “Let’s have a cup of tea.”
And yet, everything was okay. I had forgiven her. I think my 11-year-old self would have been proud. She was more resilient than I think she is today.