I am ordinary and have lived an ordinary life. Yet sometimes the extraordinary has happened and so I am going to write the stories of my life.

Fly on the wall...fly. Zoom into the chanting that thrums like a jungle prayer and is repeated by a chorus of voices over and over again.

     'Who let the dogs out, uh-uh-uh-uh, who let the dogs out?' echoes incessantly around the girls' cloakroom. The latest ear worm is now an insistent, threatening war cry. There she is surrounded by six fifteen year old girls, suspended and pinned to the wall like a collector's butterfly. Fat Grace has her hands around her throat.

     'Keep away from Terry, he's mine, understand slag?' spits Grace, her face as near to Alana's as she can get it.

      There are adult footsteps approaching, high heels clacking efficiently across the cold tiles of the cloakroom. The girls let their prey fall and they melt away. When they are gone Alana stumbles sobbing into the toilet cubicle. Her bravery is all used up and the consequences will stay with us forever.

     My daughter has been bullied for a long time by these girls, once her friends. Things have turned sour because she spends a lot of time with our neighbour, Terry. A friendship formed when they were both in nappies, Terry would squeeze through his garden fence, toddling to our back door, calling her name. They are, though, just friends. Some girls in the group are intimidated by Grace, so acquiesce, shooting Ali apologetic looks after each round of torment, not daring to stand up for her. Others revel in the ringleader's permission to be awful. These are her foot soldiers, following orders, taking no blame. I am not there, I cannot help.

     At first the bullying had been a mild form of provocation...a bag of sweets passed around the classroom missing Ali out, invitations to parties and sleepovers excluding her. Taunts escalated as they lobbed food at her in the canteen and cut the ends off ink cartridges in ordr to squirt them onto her platinum hair. her purple blazer carried these stains like blood; the adults in her life didn't seem to notice. She did all the sensible things, looking for advice on anti bullying websites, pretending to ignore the girls and eventually writing a letter to her Headmaster explaining that, should she lose her temper and hit out, this would be the result of extreme provocation. She eventually confided in us. We also believed that we were doing the 'right thing.' We sought advice from websites, we were under the illusion that we listened. We told her how much we loved her. Eventually, at a loss, although she begged us not to, we went to the school. The teachers followed their extensive anti-bullying policy...they had such faith in the theory of it all. The protagonists were summoned to a meeting to discuss the situation. How we adults underestimate the duplicity of young teenagers. The girls said what they knew we wanted to hear, wore conciliatory expressions and promised a cease-fire if not a reconciliation. Their war was forced underground, the tactics now careful, even more malicious. Alana was moved to another Form group and the six stayed together, standing united and undivided.

     On that 'dog day',' Alana later told me, she was unable to stop crying. making her way to her lesson, she passed a friend, Michael, who had been sent out of his classroom for some misdemeanour. He chased after her.

     'I can't stay here. I need to get Mum and Dad to move me. I hate this school,' she sobbed.

     "OK, look we'll go to your house now and I'll talk to them,' Michael pulled her back, 'I will make them understand how bad it is for you.'

     'They worry about my GCSE's and say that it's too late to move me.' She obviously had no faith in his plan.

     No one saw them walk out of the school gates. No one was interested in them bunking off school as they walked up the road towards the shops. When Michael took a detour into the chip shop, Alana went into the Co-op to get a drink. She says that whilst she was reaching for the Cola, the paracetamol caught her eye, that as she reached out for two packets she thought only that these were painkillers. She needed to stop the pain.

     Up the road, in the woods, Michael shouted at her when she showed him the packets.

     'Don't be stupid Ali. If you take them I'll walk away and leave you here on your own.' He watched her take the prescribed dosage, two tablets. Then she took a third.

     He broke into a run. 'You stupid idiot. I'm going to tell the teachers.' Left alone Alana took more tablets...she took them all.

     Fly on the wall...fly. I am not there, I cannot see. Fly now to a children's home i Essex. Joanne, eight years old, as tiny and pointed as a Jack Russell, hair as fine as spiders' silk, stands on the roof of the garden shed. She will be in trouble for climbing but she is always in trouble. She is proclaiming to her audience. The other children peer up at her, revelling in the knowledge that she is going to be in for it when the adults spot her. If Jo is in for it then they can relax with the pressure off them. Go Joanne!

     'Only three days to go now and I will be with my forever family. They've got  a big dog you know and they are going to buy me whatever I want and I've even got a purple princess bedroom at their house.'

     Oh Joanne, already she has been at the children' home for a year longer than is usual. We are trying to adopt her and the process has been a complicated struggle. We are considered to be her last chance to live a family life. Abused and neglected from birth, taken into care when she was three, she is considered by some to be unacceptable. Moved from foster family to foster family at speedy intervals until no one else will have her, she has been placed at the home. Although bright she has never been to school as she is deemed to be disruptive. One of the  stipulations for the adoption to go forward is that we find her a school place. We have seen may Heads who, although sympathetic, explain after reading her notes, that they have a duty of care to their present pupils. They cannot, will not take the risk.

     We have jumped through so many  hoops on the road to this adoption, attending endless family counselling sessions. We have promised to attend many more sessions when Jo moves in. Over the last three years we have attended meetings, panels and courses. we have had weekly visits from Social Workers. They have dissected our lives. Worst and most painful of all, we have been required to meet Jo's mother face to face and make our promises to do our very best for the daughter that she will never be allowed to keep.

     The weekend before Jo is to move in with us for good she tumbles out of the Home's bus, so proud in front of her peers and clutching all of her worldly goods in a plastic bag. We all walk the dog the next morning, through the bluebell woods and then around the oilseed rape field as yellow as splashed sunshine. Jo and the dog don't go around the field though. They jump all the way across it and emerge at the far end wet with dew from head to toe. That night, before she returns to the Home for the last time, Jo has an almighty tantrum. This is a good sign: she is no longer on her best behaviour which means that she is beginning to trust us. We cuddle her and promise that we will always be there for her no matter how badly she behaves.

     Alana is in the hospital. We do not find out that she has overdosed for five hours and so she is critical. We are due at a meeting to finalise Jo's move to us. We cancel and have to tell them why.

     A week later the three of us sit around our dining room table with three Social Workers, ours, Jo's and their senior. We know what they are going to say but we cling onto hope. I stare at the table and notice every notch in the wood. We have psychiatrist's reports that tell us that there is no connection between Ali's overdose and the upcoming adoption. We promise to jump through all of their hoops again if necessary. Ali is not going back to that school, we resolve to listen more carefully and we know that we will be fine.     'We cannot let you adopt Jo,' There, they have said it. They glance at each other, waiting for our storm, 'don't worry, she is used to being let down.'

     Ali cries, her arm outstretched 'But she's my sister.' We look like one of those melodramatic Victorian tableaus.

     They get up quickly. Our Social Worker turns as they walk towards the door.

     'When this has all settled down, phone me,' she says 'we can findyou another little girl.'

Daisy Chains

 Two diminutive figures circled the broken mass that lay dying, smashing and ripping it to pieces with their bare hands. It groaned a deep bass then wheezed as they, grunting with effort, left clouds of gasping breath waltzing through dust motes in the low golden sunlight. The smallest one, a reluctant recruit but just as strong as her accomplice, kicked at the entrails, rejoicing slyly in the organ's shattered sighs, disregarding stubbed toes and scratched ankles. It was the bigger one that was in command, shouting out orders to 'pull this bit' and to 'look under there.' They kept on until dusk crept in to steal their light and there was nothing left but a splintered jigsaw of mute, dead wood. Then, lifting their heads, ears cocked, they listened as a familiar voice reached out to them through the hush of the evening...Mummy!

      'It's time to come in. I've made treacle toast for your tea.'

     Hungry from their exertions they sprang over the last ray of sunlight; it pinpointed their work, a spotlight on destruction. The big one wiped a grubby hand over her sweaty brow.

      'Let's go' she muttered 'There's no treasure in it anyway.'

      Ever since we had broken into the witch's cottage and destroyed the organ I had had a sick stiffening in the pit of my stomach. It was as if I were slowly turning to stone like Tumnus the faun in my favourite book. Now I watched the black sheen of the police car flickering through the hedge as it glided past the field that we were playing in and I felt the knot turning so swiftly to jelly that I thought I might vomit.

      We had waited a forever for this moment and it had taken all of my power to stop my sister blabbing. At night I had whispered menacingly across the divide between our beds, trying out words that I had heard the grownups use.

     'Keep quiet Bitch.'

      That word had been biding its time in my head, waiting to come out after Daddy had spat it at Mummy over breakfast one morning. I had kept my eyes on my Weetabix then, too scared to look up as it dissolved into a mush on my dish. Now "Bitch-bitch-bitch-bitch' exploded in murmured pops over my lips like muffled machine gun fire. Once I had allowed it to escape I had wanted to hear it over and over "Bitch, bitch,bitch.'

     I drew ghosts on the bedroom blackboard that stretched right across one wall in our bedroom.

      'They will get you when you are asleep if you tell.'

      I grimaced as my sister lay curled up in a ball, the sheet tight over her eyes and ears, shrouded and safe from seeing or hearing that might appear in the dark of night.

       Now, at last, we heard our mother's voice crying up the lane, spanning the distance,

      "Sue, Jaynie come home NOW.' We were going to be arrested, I knew it. As Jaynie moved to stand beside me I shoved herb hard up against the the wizened trunk of a crab apple tree hissing in close to her face,

      'Don't you tell them anything. We were never near that house.' I dug my fingers into Jaynie's soft stomach 'you tell them and they will take you away and throw you into a deep, damp dungeon forever.'

      We held hands as we stumbled towards home, our legs fighting against the forward motion. As we passed the small kitchen window, the tall shadow of a policeman loomed behind the glass. I felt my throat dry out, making my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. I could not swallow. The world was becoming too big to fit into my eyes, I could not take the whole of it in and I found myself focussing on small segments as if I were looking through a microscope.

      Days ago we had returned from school to find our mother unusually talkative.

      'I've been to look inside the cottage up the lane today,' clatter cutlery sang in her hands as she busied herself with our tea. 'The old lady that lived there has passed away,' now she laid plates reverently on the table as if they might waken the dead.

      'Passed away where?' I wanted to ask. I wondered how witches 'passed away.' Did they just swirl away into a thin tornado-like mist? Surely they had to be shoved into hot ovens like in the fairytales that Mummy read to us at bedtime. 'The furniture is going to be auctioned at the weekend,' Mummy seemed excited, her cheeks flushed as she blurted her revelation 'and guess what, the old dear had an organ. I'll take you to see it. Maybe you could try to play it.

      The cottage was the nearest habitation to ours. It stood between us and everywhere else in that direction so that we were forced to pass it every day. Although we had never seen her, we reasoned that this elderly neighbour must be a witch because she was old and lived on her own. Her presence was there in the shadows, behind the windows when we pounded past the garden gate, when we flew along the narrow banked lane peering out of the corners of our eyes and when we careered towards home fearing to be proved right.

     "She's in there casting spells' I informed my sister and we dropped daisy chains over the mossy wall in appeasement. Jaynie, pale as junket and wide -eyed, heard but never dared answer. She didn't know what to say. Sometimes she would crouch down before we got as far as the cottage so that she could not be moved on by. A fly caught in a web, motionless in the spider's hypnotic glare. I would be torn between leaving her or choosing my own safety...I always chose myself.

We stood, still holding hands in front of the policeman. He had made himself comfortable in Daddy's chair and his hat lay beside him on the arm. His finger tips were touching; making a fleshy dome in front of his mouth...it echoed the shape of his hat. Before he could say anything I blurted,

      'We didn't touch anything. We just wanted to see the organ.' Jayne screwed up her whole face in puzzlement. I thought that she looked like a nasty troll.

      'WE did touch,' she was almost too faint to hear.

      'Just the organ, that's all,' I spoke through gritted teeth. I mouthed towards Jayne 'Bitch.'

      'We looked in all the cupboards,too.' Jaynie babbled on.

      My cheeks flared, rose to crimson.

      'How did you get in?' he turned to our mother, 'The locks were intact.'

      'Susan broke the window with her foot. She just stood on the sill and kicked and kicked until it broke. She made me crawl in through the hole. I had to clear the broken glass out of the way so that she wouldn't cut herself.' It was all pouring out of Jaynie's mouth in torrents. Bitch.

      'We wondered,' mused the policeman looking towards their mother, 'the hole was very small so we knew that it must be a child. They left daisy chains in the garden.'

      'We made those for the witch.' I mouthed the bad word again...'Bitch,' would Jaynie never shut up? There was no other option now but to cry. I squeezed out a trace of tears.

      The policeman stood up now and moved towards the door. He turned back to look at us again. Such pretty little things, not like the local children who had grown up around here. We were fragile flowers whereas the farmers' children were all brash and brawn.

      'What will happen now?' Mummy followed him out.

      'Well, nothing was taken but we are looking at Breaking and Entering with Criminal Damage. We will be obliged to talk to the school and Mrs Tregorren's family, then put in a statement. As it's the first offence...' He was almost through the door now, followed by our mother. 'They were the last ones we came to.' He sounded surprised, 'your little girls are so well brought up...polite. We didn't think...'his voice trailed off as he stepped outside.

      I wailed loudly, pushing myself to hysteria. I watched for the effect on the grown ups through the window. The policeman was bending towards my mother...he seemed to take her in his arms and ... he kissed her! My tears were real now. I raged as I punched out hard at Jaynie,

      'BITCH...BITCH...BITCH!