There was always loads of banter, and running jokes that continued all term. So if someone did something embarrassing, like farting in class, they would never live it down: ‘All right, love? Farting again, are you?’ No one forgot it. We constantly took the mickey.
My best friends were Jade and Joely. We were together in every class, because the register goes in alphabetical order and their surnames also began with ‘S’ – we got on really well from the start. Jade was well advanced. She knew how to smoke and wear make-up and everything. She had a chest infection before anyone else, that chesty cough that you only associate with adults. How did she get that cough? you’d think. In the mornings before school, Jade was the one who bought the fags, because she looked the oldest. She’d buy ten Sovereign, which were only something like £1.50 at the time.
At school, we hung out in the girls’ toilets, messing around for hours. While me and Joely sat by the taps, wetting paper towels and throwing them everywhere, Jade sat on the toilet having a fag, taking rapid drags and fanning the smoke away. I’ve never seen anyone smoke a cigarette so quickly; somehow she managed to inhale smoke and breathe it out of her nose simultaneously. I still don’t know how she did it.
I tried smoking, but I wasn’t very good at it, not like Jade. I really wanted to be cool, but I’d take a drag and think, This is just disgusting! Whereas it was like an accessory to Jade; she wore it so well. I didn’t know how to hold a cigarette properly or light it in the right way; I just don’t think I was born for it. I’d have one if everyone else was having one, though. ‘Yeah, OK, me, please! Don’t forget about me!’ I’d say, even though they all knew I didn’t really smoke.
They probably thought, Poor thing, trying to fit in.
Joely was a big tomboy. She’s now a hairdresser and the girliest girl you’ve ever seen, but at school she was the total opposite. She would never, ever roll her skirt up, made no effort to look pretty and scraped her hair back so she looked like a boy. She played football with the boys and walked around in shin pads even when she wasn’t playing. All the boys loved Joely, because she wasn’t like the other girls. ‘Come on, Jo,’ they’d call to her, ‘come and play football.’
Why do they love her? I thought. She’s like a boy.
Jade, on the other hand, liked to make herself look pretty and always wore foundation and mascara. There was usually an orange ring of foundation around her collar, which fascinated me, because I only ever experimented with eyeliner and mascara at that age. Jade was quite tall and broad and she looked good. She protected us, because she was hard and people were in awe of her. ‘Yeah, whatever. Don’t care about no one. No one can tell me nothing,’ she’d say. Everyone was a little bit scared of Jade, so they were really nice to her and sucked up to her all the time. She had two older sisters, who were in the top years, so she was someone you just wouldn’t mess with. She had that kind of reputation.
She lived in a flat opposite the station and I thought that was really cool: she lives in Elm Park! Even though I only lived one stop away, I still had to get on the train to go there. It felt like a right journey to me, really far away, whereas Jade and Joely could walk to see each other, because they lived across the road from one another. I was really jealous of that.
I used to spend loads of time at Jade’s flat. The block was really cool: every flat had a balcony, where people kept all their stuff, and everyone was always outside. ‘All right, love? How you doing? Want a cup of tea?’ It was as friendly as the street where I live, but in a more enclosed area, with everyone talking to everyone else and all the flats joined together, so that you could climb through a window from one person’s house to the next.
Everything about it seemed really cool to me, from the metal stairs leading up to the flats to the view of the train tracks from the windows. And Jade’s dad was so cool. He let us do whatever we wanted. There were shops underneath, so you could go and get your bacon roll, your fizzy drink or crackling candy, which we loved. You could shout at people down below from the flat and no one cared, whereas for some reason it just didn’t feel right to do that from a house.
Me and Joely often used to sit outside Jade’s flat, waiting for her to get ready. She took ages, because she used to put on all that blusher and mascara, even though no one else cared much about make-up. While we were waiting, we’d chew some gum, take it out of our mouths, throw it on the floor and watch the people walk past and step on it. We found it so funny. We’d scream with laughter as people looked back at us as if to say, ‘What the heck are you laughing at?’ little knowing that they were walking away with chewing gum stretching between the pavement and the sole of their shoe. Every time I see Joely, I say, ‘Do you remember the chewing gum … ?’ It was such a laugh that I think I’d go back and do it now if I could put on a morph suit, so that no one could see who I was.
I was somewhere between Jade and Joely; I wanted to be a bit of both. They were like my other half; they were the best of me. I was the one who made us all laugh: ‘Let’s go somewhere!’ I’d suggest out of the blue. ‘Let’s walk out of school now. Let’s go to the park. Let’s go!’
‘Come on, then!’ they’d shout and we’d all run out of school, maybe ten or twenty of us, and head for the first place we could think of. It was 20p to go on the bus then, so we’d get our 20p pieces together and yell, ‘Let’s all go to Romford!’ It was just so good. We’d be wetting ourselves, sitting on top of the bus at the back, playing music; Jade would spark up another fag and she’d usually get away with it. We had such a good time. We didn’t go far, only to Romford, Hornchurch or maybe Rainham. Rainham was a bit of a hotspot. When we were thirteen and fourteen we’d go to the Cherry Tree pub, which was the only pub that would let us in.
My first kiss was when I was thirteen with a boy called Michael, the geekiest, cutest little guy. The teachers used to take the mickey out of him because he had the same name as a notorious murderer. He lived in Elm Park and was the first boy to have Dance Mat on PlayStation. Dance Mat is the game where you put a mat on the floor, place your feet on the arrows and dance along to the directions on screen. It’s so good. Arrows come up on the screen: right, left, up and down. If the arrow goes up, you put your feet forward; if it goes down, you put them back. It’s a bit like aerobics, and perhaps not the most attractive thing to do in front of someone you really fancy!
One Friday after school, me, Joely and our friend Cally went over to Michael’s house before we went over the park. We played Dance Mat while he was changing his clothes and getting ready. You had to put your good clothes on before you went over the park – you couldn’t go to Harrow Lodge Park in your school uniform. That would have been embarrassing.
So first you went home and put your tracksuit bottoms on – your best Adidas ones, with the least number of fagburn holes in them. For some reason people found it hilariously funny to come up and burn your clothes with a fag, hence the holes. My tracksuit bottoms were blue with white stripes down the side. Then you wore your best Nike trainers or Reebok Workouts, which had to be crystal white. You couldn’t have dirty trainers. Again, that would have been embarrassing. You wore some sort of vest top and a tracksuit jacket to complete the look, and then you looked really good. You also had to pull your socks over the bottom of your tracksuit, right the way up.
Flares came in, and jeans, but we never wore them. We cringed at flared jeans. It wasn’t cool to wear a dress, either. If you saw someone in a dress, you’d think, What a slag!
I’d even wear a tracksuit when we went to see my grandma. My parents would be like, ‘You look nice, but you’d look really lovely in a skirt …’
‘I don’t care! I love my clothes,’ I’d say.
My mum would have done anything to get me in a pair of jeans and a nice top from Adams, and my nana would have loved to see me in a nice flowery dress, but she never did. Me and my brother and sister always attracted loads of attention when we went to see Mum’s parents in the Forest of Dean, dressed in our tracksuits.
The Forest of Dean is the opposite to Dagenham; it’s full of trees, rivers and lakes, and everyone there is beautiful and posh. People would look at us as if to say, ‘Who’s that bunch of ragamuffins?’
You wore your jogging bottoms on your hips, rolled over at the top, with your label out, so you could prove they were real. If they were fake Adidas, it was really embarrassing. If someone only had two lines down the side, people would say, ‘Oh dear, they’ve only got two lines! Horrendous!’ So you couldn’t buy any old pair. They had to be Adidas or Reebok, which were expensive, something like £30. It had to be Christmas or my birthday for my mum to buy me a pair of Adidas bottoms and I’d wear them for months and months before I got a new pair.
The idea of saying, ‘We’re going over the park with a bottle of Lambrini,’ has become a teen cliché. People say it to take the mickey. But when I hear those words, I think, Shut up! Those were my best years. I had the time of my life.
You’d have about £2.50 on you for the night and you’d all go in £1 on a few bottles of White Lightning. You’d spend £1 on a chip butty and then you’d have 50p left over to spend on sweets or go in on another bottle. I don’t remember getting drunk, though. It was more a case of getting hyper and being loud. ‘Come on, everyone! Wheeee!’
We’d walk around in a gang and you’d always try to walk next to the boy you fancied. Sometimes you’d get to walk off with him and when you came back, everyone would ask, ‘What did you say? What happened?’
Again, there was never anything to report. ‘Well, we er … walked.’
Sometimes you’d dare your friends to snog a boy. ‘Go on!’ you’d say. ‘I dare you. Snog him.’
‘Eurgh, no!’
Or you’d point someone out as you were walking around and say, ‘See if you can get with him tonight.’
‘OK!’
Usually we’d stay there for hours, until ten or eleven o’clock at night, when our parents would ring us saying, ‘Where are you?’ My mum hated me going to the park, because she knew exactly what me and my mates got up to there, so I usually pretended I was at a friend’s house. Once my dad caught me out, though, when he rang my friend’s mum to see if I was there. ‘Er, she’s just popped to the park,’ she said. Furious, he came and got me. It was so embarrassing in front of all my friends.
I listened to what everyone else was listening to, which was garage mainly, and a bit of drum and bass. I still love that music now as it reminds me of being a kid. My friends were always doing MC battles against a backing track. They used to get really into it. It was so good.
Back to my first proper kiss: when Michael was dressed and ready, we left his house for the park. He was my boyfriend, so obviously I had to kiss him. I think it was his first kiss as well. It happened as we were sitting on the grass, and afterwards I stood up and said, ‘OK, see you later.’ I don’t think either of us really knew what we were doing. It was more like, ‘OK, cool, see ya.’ I went out with him for a few weeks, not very long. Relationships didn’t last long at school.
‘Yeah, we’re going out now, everyone!’ you’d announce. Then the next minute you’d be saying, ‘We’re just friends now, everyone. It’s all over.’ It was never serious for us until we were older. In our early teens it was just a bit of fun.
I had several boyfriends at Abbs Cross, but my favourite was a boy called Ross, who was in the same year as me. He came well after Michael and I really liked him. We were good friends for a long time and then finally he became my boyfriend, which lasted about two weeks!
I’d fancied him for ages and used to hang out where all his friends were. ‘All right. What you doing? Where’s everyone going?’
They must have thought, Go away!
But boys didn’t matter all that much. They were mainly just something to talk about with your mates. My best times were with my friends, either at the park or wandering around the streets, doing stupid things. We’d go to a petrol station and buy a bunch of sweets or some coal. What did we need coal for? We threw it in the lake or at each other. ‘Yeah, this is good!’ We were silly, really.
Life was so sweet, so perfect. I had it all worked out: I could do what I wanted and I got on with everyone. Whereas some of my friends often had people from other schools squaring up to them, I was friends with everyone. No one hated me. Everything was just how I wanted it to be and I absolutely loved my life.
Then one day my mum came home from a parents’ evening looking very unhappy. The teachers hadn’t had a good word to say about me. What’s more, some people’s parents had complained about me because I was disruptive in class and their children couldn’t concentrate. ‘This is really serious,’ Mum said. ‘It’s got to stop. From now on, things are going to be different.’
‘Whatever!’ I said, knowing that she couldn’t physically prevent me from doing what I wanted.
I didn’t realize that she meant it this time, though, and I had no idea how much things were about to change.
Chapter 3
Sitting alone in my room, I stared miserably out of the window at the street below. It was six o’clock on a Friday evening and all my friends were out at the park. While they were messing around, having a laugh and flirting with people they fancied, I was stuck at home with nothing to do and no one to do it with. I wasn’t allowed to go out; I wasn’t allowed to do anything. I couldn’t even text my mates because my dad had taken my phone away. It was so annoying. I hated it.
My life was completely different now. I couldn’t do any of the things I loved doing. I wasn’t allowed to meet my friends at Elm Park station early in the morning, because my mum had started driving me to school to make sure I got in on time. That meant I lost out on at least an hour of fun a day, if not more, and it drove me mad. I really, really missed having a laugh with my mates.
They just took the mick. ‘See you tomorrow, yeah? At nine,’ they’d say. ‘Will your mum be driving you in again?’
Everything had changed the moment my dad stepped in. Until then he hadn’t been involved. I think my parents had decided that if my mum was telling me off, I didn’t need my dad telling me off as well. Also, Dad was busy moving house to Hornchurch, so he left everything to mum. But when the situation became too much for her to cope with, what with me disobeying her all the time and the teachers and parents complaining about me, Dad finally had to do something.
‘Give me your phone,’ he said to me one day when I was over at his house.
‘What? Why?’ I asked him.
‘I’m taking it away,’ he replied. ‘Your mother and I don’t want you using it any more and we don’t want you seeing your friends outside of school.’
‘What? No, Dad!’ I yelled. But he ignored my pleas and confiscated it anyway.
He had a right go at me. ‘You’re going to behave from now on,’ he told me. I was gutted. This was serious. Whereas I had no problem ignoring my mum, I didn’t dare disobey my dad.
I was grounded for three months. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere after school; instead, I was picked up and taken home. I never got to see my friends, apart from at school, which meant I was totally behind on all the latest gossip. I had no idea what was going on or what the jokes were, and it made me feel completely left out.
I did everything I could to spend time with my mates during school hours, so instead of going to lessons, I’d say, ‘Come on, let’s go to the toilets!’
Until then, if I didn’t turn up to lessons I was sent home. I didn’t care, though, because instead of actually going home, I’d just walk out of the gate, go to the park and meet up with whoever was there. Now when I didn’t turn up to a lesson, the teacher would report me to the head, who would ring my mum. Then my mum would come and pick me up and take me home. There was no escape.
I couldn’t stand school any more. It was boring beyond belief to have to sit in lessons listening to someone repeat something they’d already told me three days in a row, especially as I couldn’t let off steam with my mates before or after school. T
he upshot was I became more disruptive than ever. I was constantly being sent out of class and given detention. My sister was appalled and didn’t want anything to do with me. The teachers were always complaining about how naughty I was and she felt really awkward about it. It was a difficult time for her at home, too, because I was getting all the attention – even if it was negative – and of course Matthew suffered as well.
I didn’t think about how I was affecting my brother and sister. I just needed to find a way to catch up on all the things I was missing out on with my mates, so I pleaded with Mum to let me go to the park after school. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’ve been naughty at school. You’ve been in detention. You are not going to the park.’
Jade thought of a way round it. ‘Say you’re staying round at mine and we’ll do an all-nighter round the park,’ she suggested.
My heart leapt at the thought – ‘Yeah, let’s do that!’ I said – but my mum wouldn’t let me stay at any of my friends’ houses.
I started bunking off as often as I could. When Mum dropped me at school, I’d walk through the gate and wait for her to drive away before running out again and heading to the park. It was the only way I could have any freedom.
Mum stopped giving me dinner money and started making packed lunches for me to take to school, so I didn’t have money for sweets or bacon rolls. ‘What are you doing?’ I screamed at her. ‘I was having such a good time. Now I can’t buy anything when I’m with my friends.’ She interfered in every little thing.
It seemed really unfair, because, amazingly, I was still getting good results at school and wasn’t failing anything. It didn’t matter to me that I was disturbing other people’s learning and being disrespectful to the teachers. I didn’t understand that my parents were trying to lay down boundaries because I had none. I just felt that all these restrictions had been imposed on me for no reason and I really resented Mum and Dad for it, especially Mum.
Stacey: My Story So Far Page 4