Not long after Dad and Karen got married, my sister left primary school and started a really good music and arts school in Elm Park called Abbs Cross School and Arts College. She got in because she was brilliant at music – she played the saxophone and piano really well. I was fast discovering that it was hard to be as good as my sister. She wasn’t naturally smart, but she worked really hard in her lessons and got very good results, so when I got home from school, my parents were always saying, ‘Well, we hope you’ve done as well as Jemma.’ Oh my gosh! I was bright, but I hated being compared to her the whole time. It was so annoying.
I really resented that she was so good at everything. I hate you! I’d think. We went to baton-twirling classes together and she was even really good at that, whereas I was the clumsiest clod. I hated that. She was also a real daddy’s girl; she looked like my dad and could wind him round her little finger, whereas I was the spitting image of my mum.
When it was my turn to leave primary school, I was accepted by Abbs Cross because Jemma was there, but I really didn’t want to go. I wanted to go to the normal school around the corner. Still, I had to go because it was such a good school.
OK, I thought, but I’m not going to be like Jemma. I wanted to be the complete opposite of her. If she was good, then I would be bad. In fact, I would be really naughty.
Chapter 2
On my first day at secondary school in September 2001, I sat next to a girl called Louise. We were in assembly when Mr Mayo, the head teacher, came in. ‘Mayo-nnaise!’ I burst out after he’d been introduced. I found it really funny. ‘Egg mayo!’ I shouted. ‘Tuna mayo!’
Louise laughed, but she must have thought, Freak!
Everyone else must have wondered, Who is this idiot? But being an idiot was my way of making friends, and it seemed to work. Me and Louise ended up spending the whole day together and we went on to become really good mates.
I tried to be funny and say funny things because I didn’t know any other way of making friends. As I’ve said, I wasn’t a pretty kid, and I didn’t blossom as I reached my teens either. As well as wearing glasses, I had braces and was a lot broader than I am now. I also had a big Jewish ’fro on my head, since there was no such thing as straighteners in those days. A Jew’fro! It wasn’t attractive.
I remember thinking, Gosh, I’m so ugly that I’ll have to be funny and loud to be socially accepted. I thought I didn’t have anything else to offer; I was a right minger! Even worse, I was ugly and clever; there’s nothing less acceptable at school than that combination. If I hadn’t been funny I wouldn’t have had any friends at all. To be fair, though, at least I wasn’t spotty. Can you imagine that? Braces, glasses and spotty! Now that would have been unfortunate.
I’d wanted to be the funny lovable one from an early age, and I was always loud. My sister wasn’t like me at all. She was much cooler and more reserved. She was never bothered about making friends; it just happened naturally. Whereas having lots of friends was really important for me and I went out of my way to make as many as I could.
‘Why do you feel the need to be friends with everyone?’ my dad used to say. ‘Not everybody is going to love you in life.’
People will always say, ‘You can’t please everyone.’ But I don’t agree. Why can’t you please everyone? If you’re genuinely nice to people, there’s no reason why they won’t all like you. And even if someone isn’t the nicest person, I’ll still like them, because you have to accept that everybody has their good and bad characteristics. Of course, when people are nasty, you don’t necessarily aspire to have them as your friends. I’m talking about befriending people you actually want as friends.
‘Whatever!’ I’d say. ‘You can’t please them all, but I’ll give it a go.’ I was obsessed with making people laugh and making people happy. I liked to please everyone. I’d be naughty to please my friends, but then I’d do my homework to please my parents and teachers.
During my first week at Abbs Cross, all the teachers greeted me delightedly with the words, ‘Ah, Jemma’s sister.’
Yeah, that’s me. I have a name, thanks! I thought.
Secondary school was very different from primary school. Instead of turning up with a tin of beans for Harvest Festival, you had to bring in a ruler and a compass. I forgot my pencil case all the time, which instantly meant trouble. I was really scatty: I was always losing my homework on the way to school and I regularly lost my blazer and bag, too. I remember thinking, Oh well, we won’t be making sarcophaguses out of pasta here!
I got into trouble from the start because I would not be told what to do. When everyone sat down for the register, I would stand up. I found it funny. I gave up trying to please the teachers and focused on making friends instead. No one could say to me, ‘Stacey, do your work now,’ because I’d just say, ‘No, I don’t want to.’ I was awful. It wasn’t long before me and Louise were split up and banned from sitting next to each other in class.
I also refused to wear my uniform properly. According to the rules, you had to have your top button done up and your tie straight. Most people would undo their top button and wear their tie short, but I didn’t wear a tie at all, and I wore all my shirt buttons undone to reveal a vest underneath, with a cheeky slogan printed on it. It was just ridiculous.
You weren’t allowed patterned tights, but I still wore them. You weren’t allowed to wear your hair down, either, so I did. I rebelled in every way. I’d pull my skirt right up and I wore make-up, heels and jewellery – and when I say jewellery, you could have jumped through the hoops I wore in my ears, and they had huge balls hanging off them, too. I wore massive gold rings, as well, and a necklace with a big doll on the end of it.
‘Not only are you not wearing your uniform properly, but you’re wearing the most ridiculous things,’ my mum would say. And she was right. I just wouldn’t wear what I was supposed to wear, so I was always being sent home.
Until then, Mum and Dad had been very strict. When we were little, Mum had never let us play out in the street because it was dangerous. If we wanted to play, we had to go into the back garden. But you can’t invite everyone in off the street to play in your back garden, can you? It was really frustrating. ‘I want to play out!’ I’d say. It felt like everyone was out there except me. But when I went to my friends’ houses I didn’t mention to their parents that I wasn’t allowed out. That way at least I got to play in their streets.
My mum tried to tell me off, but I didn’t listen. ‘Oh, whatever!’ I’d say dismissively. ‘I just don’t care. What are you going to do? Make me go in there with my uniform on properly? No one can force me to do anything.’
I had worked out that I could do whatever I wanted, because my dad wasn’t around to stop me and my mum couldn’t physically force me. After all, I was 5 feet 8 by the time I was twelve. If my dad had been there he could have put me in the car, made me wear my uniform properly and robbed me of my jewellery, but my mum wasn’t physically strong, so all she could do was tell me off until she was blue in the face. I took no notice, though. I just walked out of the door, saying, ‘See ya!’
I remember a teacher I didn’t get on with looking me up and down and saying, ‘You look like a lady of the night. You’ll probably end up as one, too.’
What the heck is that? I thought. You’re really getting on my nerves. I don’t even know what language you’re speaking.
I told my mum. ‘What?’ she said, shocked. He was basically saying that I look like a prostitute!
He used to make comments like that all the time. He was one of those teachers who hates kids. ‘Children!’ he used to say.
You’d think, Gosh, you’re a teacher! How can you hate children?
I got in trouble for being late to school all the time. ‘Solomon!’ My name would echo through the hall. ‘What time do you call this?’
‘Sorry, sir!’
‘You’ve missed reception. Go to your class. Hurry up. You’re late.’
I used to get lots of detenti
ons, but detentions were fun, because all my friends were there. Detention was either after school or in the lunch hour, depending on how bad you’d been. If you were really bad, it would be after school; if it was just because you were late, it was at lunchtime, when you still had ten minutes at the end to get your food, so it didn’t really matter. You just sat there having a laugh with your mates, throwing balls of paper at the teacher.
Everyone was scared of Mr Mayo, our head teacher, apart from me. I didn’t respect authority in any way, and I didn’t foresee the consequences of my bad behaviour, especially as I always got good results. What’s the big deal? I thought. I can do whatever I want. I’m going to pass my exams anyway.
My sister looked down on me for being bad and that made me want to be even worse. The funny thing was that I always got better results than she did in exams. She had to work really hard, whereas for some reason it was less effort for me. You can imagine how much she hated that. ‘How come you don’t have to do any work?’ she’d complain.
We still didn’t get on and we argued about everything, especially clothes and friends. I was constantly asking to borrow her clothes and I’d go mad if she wouldn’t let me. She always had better things than me; she was allowed a mobile phone first, everything. Ugh, I hate you! You’ve got everything! I’d think. She had her reasons for hating me back. For one, I stole her clothes when she wouldn’t lend them to me. And she really didn’t like it when I hung out with people from her year, which was inevitable, because I was only one year below her. We were always arguing about that.
Why couldn’t we just get on? I think it was all about fighting to be your own person. We each had very strong, distinct personalities, and rather than accepting each other’s differences, we both insisted our way was right. It was a huge clash between two very different people. One of the only times we put aside our differences was when we both wanted to be in the school’s Christmas concert. We knew that the only way we’d get a slot was by offering something special, like a sister act, so I sang, ‘From This Moment On’ by Shania Twain, with Jemma accompanying me on the piano.
We didn’t fight all the time, of course. There was another side to our relationship; there always is with sisters. Despite all our arguments, we were fiercely loyal to each other. Jemma was very protective of me. Not physically, because I was the physical one: if anyone was ever horrible to her, I would step in and say, ‘Don’t go near my sister!’ As much as I hated her, there was no way I would allow anyone to threaten her or be mean to her. That was just the way I was.
Jemma was protective in a different way: if she sensed that something was going to upset me, she would try to shield me from it. As much as we argued over clothes and stupid things like that, she would never have said anything to hurt me, because she knew how emotional I was.
She was very aware of what people were saying around me and she always looked out for my feelings. If someone didn’t realize how sensitive I was and said something hurtful, she would tell them how wrong they were. I was aware of what she was doing and, as much as I resented her, I appreciated it.
Jemma was brilliant at music and went to Austria and France with the music department, which may sound good, but I much preferred the idea of being behind the bike shed at school in England! Our mum had taught us all how to play the piano at home and then signed us up for lessons. I’d done my piano exams up to grade six; I was really good at the drums and I’d played violin up to grade three. But I wasn’t interested in hanging out in the music department, like Jemma was.
My best subjects at school were biology, maths and English literature, but strangely I wasn’t so good at the things I loved, like music and drama, even though I really wanted to do well at them. It wasn’t cool to be into music and drama among my friends at Abbs Cross – they were into street culture, so pop was seen as really naff. As a result I stopped going to my piano lessons and dreaming about being a singer, and when people asked me what I wanted to be when I was older, I’d say, ‘I don’t care. I don’t want to be anything.’
I wasn’t very good at French, but I really liked Mr Wheatley, my French teacher, so I behaved well in his class. Funnily enough, if I wasn’t good at a subject, I wanted to improve, so I’d try much harder in those lessons.
One of the big problems with school, for me, was that they would teach us something one day and then go over it the next, by which time I’d already picked it up. ‘I know what you’re talking about. I really don’t need to be here,’ I’d say arrogantly. ‘Why should I bother? I just need to come to my exams and that’s it. I’m going to pass and you know it.’
If I saw a kid with that attitude now, I’d think they were so rude. The teachers were only trying to do their job, and they must have hated the way everyone around me suffered because of my bad behaviour. Nevertheless, I still flew through my exams. They couldn’t stand that, and I ended up making enemies of all my teachers, as well as my mum.
It was around about now that me and my mum started having a really tough time. I couldn’t get on with her. I didn’t want to do the things she wanted me to do and when she told me not to do something, I’d say, ‘Why can’t I do it? You do what you want.’ I couldn’t agree with her about anything and I must have put her through such a terrible time.
I think I was aware of her unhappiness over the divorce from my dad, but I couldn’t admit it, not even to myself. It’s her fault! She divorced him! I’d think. What’s she got to be unhappy about? She told him to go.
When you’re a kid, you don’t want to worry about your mum. You want her to be the one you turn to. After you’ve watched something scary, she’s the one you call out to in the night, the one who makes you feel safe again. As long as I’ve got my mum, I’ll always be all right, you think. Nothing bad will ever happen to me if my mum’s around. It’s only as you grow older that you realize she’s not superwoman, she’s a person like everyone else.
So I hated it when people said, ‘Look at your mum. She’s so thin.’
Shut up! She’s not thin. There’s nothing wrong with her, I’d think. I just dismissed their comments. ‘She’s fine,’ I said. ‘Stop fussing.’
My sister and brother weren’t always very sympathetic to Mum either, and together we probably really ground her down at times. She must have had a terrible time: not only had Dad left without trying to get her back, her children blamed her for the break-up. What makes it worse is that I think she thought it was all her fault: Look what I’ve done! It’s no wonder she didn’t meet anyone else. I think she felt too guilty to go out and meet someone because she felt it was her sole responsibility to look after us. When I look back and think about how much she had to deal with, I feel so sorry for her.
I was less aware of my mum’s feelings then, because I was having the time of my life. It was such a laugh hanging out with all my new friends, and I’d leave the house every morning at 7a.m. to meet them at Elm Park station, which was one stop on the tube from my house. Opposite the station there was an alleyway, where we’d sit on a set of steps for at least an hour before school started, chatting, laughing and eating sweets and bacon rolls. There were loads of us, about twelve or thirteen kids, and it was a really great gang. Even though we met up really early, we’d still stroll into school late most days. I’m not going to lie: I really loved my friends and they came first, before school, family, everything.
We spent most of our time talking complete rubbish, though: ‘Oh yeah, I hate him!’
‘Do you? Do you really?’
‘Who do you fancy?’ We constantly fancied someone new.
‘Who’s going over the park on Friday?’ Friday night was park night.
You never kissed anyone at that age, but you had boyfriends that you’d meet at Harrow Lodge Park, which was one or two stops from me on the District Line. Your boyfriend was always older and you thought you were really cool as you went to meet him. And then, of course, you gave your report on what had happened on the alleyway steps the following Mon
day.
‘I met Dan over the park.’
‘Oh my God! Dan! What happened?’
Of course, nothing ever happened, because we were only little kids, especially in the first year at school. Some people started snogging when we were thirteen and fourteen, but no one did it in the first year, and even when we were older, none of us had the guts to go further than a snog. Still, everyone asked, ‘Then what?’ Since it never amounted to anything, they’d say, ‘Oh, you’re rubbish!’ Then it would be, ‘He doesn’t like you. Dump him! Chuck him!’ It was all about taking the mickey.
We’d write our names in 3D on the walls and doodle pictures for hours. ‘In a hundred years’ time, we’ll be famous because of this wall,’ we’d declare because we thought our doodles were so great. They’ve probably been painted over now, though!
We sometimes spoke in made-up foreign languages when people walked past, for a joke, even though we couldn’t even speak English properly. ‘I bet they think we’re speaking French,’ we’d whisper to one another. What idiots! I have no idea why we did it. We must have looked like a bunch of weirdos.
There weren’t enough things to do to use up all our energy, so we danced on the steps, swung on the poles, drew on the walls and talked about complete rubbish for hours. It was just the best and I loved it. Thinking of it now really makes me smile. I would definitely go back and do it again, even at twenty-one years old, with a kid. I’d love to go back to school.
I had never enjoyed myself as much. My life opened up and everything was a laugh, exactly how it should be. I don’t think anyone should take their life too seriously, because it’s so much better when you’re having fun, when it’s a laugh and everyone’s laughing with you. It’s just great seeing your friends every day. These days, you say to your mates, ‘Yeah, yeah, see you tomorrow’ but you never do, do you? Empty promises. ‘Yes, see you soon.’ But at school you see them all the time. It’s brilliant.
Stacey: My Story So Far Page 3