4) When you’re bleeding
I’m eight years old. We’re on a school trip at a family farm. We’ve been divided into smaller groups – I’m a Giggly Goat, Tem is a Happy Hen. I catch my hand on a barbed-wire fence and rip an impressive hole from the pad of my thumb all the way across my palm. I try to figure out how to tell the staff member looking after us – Julie – without making too much of a fuss, and end up cradling my hand to my chest for the next twenty minutes until Julie cheerfully asks me what I’m hiding. I show her my hand – now a bloody, fleshy mess – and she screams, backs away and faints.
3) When you need a new pencil
Eleven years old. SATs. We are ten minutes into Maths Paper 1 and the end of my pencil snaps clean off and goes skittering across the floor. I know I am supposed to put my hand up and ask for a spare; I know my teacher, Miss Kapsalis, will give me another if I just ask. But it is not only my mouth that has frozen shut – my limbs have gone rigid, my wrists scratching the splintered ridge of my exam desk, the pencil in my clenched fist. I can’t even move. I sit, panicking, for twenty minutes until Miss Kapsalis, who is walking up and down the aisles of our desks to check for cheating, finally notices. She lets out a noise that is groan, gasp and horror all in one and drops to my side.
‘Steffi!’ she whispers, even though she’s not supposed to talk to us during the exam. ‘You need to answer the questions.’
I uncurl my fingers and the broken pencil drops on to the table. I’m given a new pencil with fifteen minutes to go. Needless to say, I don’t exactly come top of the class.
2) When you look a bit suspicious
Twelve years old. Tem and I are spending a Saturday afternoon together mooching around town. We’re in one of those bit-of-everything shops that sells clothes, twee gifts and cushions. Tem is trying on a vintage prom dress and I am standing in the corner, gazing at a shelf full of candles. The woman who owns the shop is suddenly at my side, asking me in a threateningly gentle voice what I think I am doing. I stare at her, confused and panicked in equal measure. What could have been a polite ‘I’m just browsing, thanks’ exchange turns into her getting increasingly irate and me getting more and more frozen. No amount of ardent head-shaking is enough for me to convince her I’m not stealing anything. She is threatening to call the police when Tem comes parading out of the changing room wearing a black-and-white polka dot dress, announcing, ‘Just tell me how beautiful I am!’ before she sees us both, clocks the situation in less than a second and hurries across the shop floor to smooth things over.
1) When your best friend needs you
Thirteen years old. I am in a stadium, watching Tem run the 800m final of the County Championships. She wins the race and is crackling with electricity and endorphins, leaping all over the track, hugging me, letting go, bouncing, cartwheeling. It’s the first county race she’s ever won. She’s just collected her medal and is standing in the crowd, beaming down at it. And that’s when a woman, the mother of one of Tem’s competitors, says to someone – to this day I don’t know who exactly she was talking to – ‘They shouldn’t let those ones compete; everyone knows their bodies make them faster. It’s not fair on our girls.’
For one clueless moment I don’t even understand what she means, but something about the sudden slackness in Tem’s face makes it clear. There’s no hidden meaning, no nice liberal understanding or context. The woman is being just plain racist about my beloved Tem, right in front of her. And this is it: the most shameful moment of my life. Because I don’t say a word. I just stand there, even as I see the light leave Tem’s eyes, even as she looks at me for just a second, even though she spends most of her days looking after me. No one else says anything either, but I know it is my silence that is the worst. My silence that is unforgiveable.
Later, when I try to apologize – awkward and tongue-tied – she waves me away, tells me she understands that sometimes my words just don’t come, that she knows I would have spoken if I could have.
So here’s the thing: this was the worst time to be mute, but in a way it also saved us both. Because she didn’t have to find out whether I would have been brave enough to stand up for her. And neither did I.