1953

It was during the morning recess that I saw the little girl sitting on the wooden steps of the main hall, her long hair falling over her down-turned face, embedded in a book on her lap. Her hunched shoulders and closed body posture reeked of social incompetence and, as I was in the upper year and designated as a ‘greeter’ to welcome the younger girls to the school I felt obliged – however much I hated doing the job – to walk over to her and say hello. Or something. I wasn’t very adept at this sort of thing; I had found that people mostly put up with you because they had no one else to put up with.

I walked to her and crouched nearby. She didn’t lift her head.

- Hi there, I said as cheerfully as I could. – What’s your name?

- Mia, she said. Rather quickly. Her eyes were never lifted from the book. – What do you want?

- Oh nothing, Mia. I was just wondering why you were not outside playing with the other children on a lovely sunny day like this.

- I have a book to read and it suits me to be like this.

I felt that this was a much rehearsed sort of answer - it all came out of her in a bit of a torrent. I admit that it took me by surprise.

- Do you read a lot?

- Yes.

- What is it that you’re reading now? Maybe I’ve read it too.

- I imagine that thousands of people will have read the same book so that hardly makes us an exclusive club.

Still her face was never lifted from the book. For a girl of eleven or twelve in the unfamiliar surroundings of being less than a week into a new school she seemed amazingly secure and even more amazingly…well…something. Brash. Honest. Certain of herself.

I tried to sneak a look at the pages of the book but her long dark hair obscured it to a frustrating degree. I saw that it was an old, thick book with small print. In a way I was happy; most girls in this school would never lift a book unless they were threatened with physical torture.

- Is it a good book?

- Yes.

I felt this one slipping away from me already.

- What’s it about?

- Time. Are you actually interested in the book or do you see me as some sort of challenge? Thanks for your interest, but I don’t need your help.

- That’s rude of you, don’t you think?

- No, I don’t. It’s honest.

I had to admit she had a point.

- Don’t you like mixing with the other boys and girls?

- I do not.

- Do they bore you?

She stopped reading for a second and picked up a small hard backed notebook with a blue marbled cover that I hadn’t noticed was sitting on the steps beside her. She opened it at a page and then flicked through it, scanning its content at what seemed to be great speed. The book was crammed with writing, all neat, tiny, obsessive and constant. I thought it looked like the sort of handwriting you saw on Crimewatch after a suicidal mass-murderer’s diary had been found and revealed, showing that he’d always been ‘a bit of a loner’.

- L'enfer, c'est les autres, she said. Then she put the notebook down and carried on with her book.

- Wow.

That’s all I could say. I knew the quote; it was Sartre saying that he thought that Hell was other people. I never expected it to come out the mouth of a little girl like this, far less in the French.

- That’s clever of you, I said. I immediately knew that she would find it patronizing but I carried on regardless. – Do you know much by Sartre?

- Yes.

- Do your parents encourage you to read this?

An almost imperceptible sigh came out of her.

- My father is useless and made off some years ago, although my mother persists in the fiction that he is away on business and is coming back soon. My mother is an idiot who believes in a lot of simplistic hippy nonsense and who has no time for me. I look after myself.

For some reason this alarmed me a little.

- Does your mother feed and clothe you?

- No, I do all that for myself.

- Goodness. How do you manage?

- I steal.

As luck would have had it, the film society we had started the previous year had shown a double-hander at the start of the week. The second film was I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and the line ‘I steal’ is the last line uttered in the film by the defeated anti-hero as he recedes into the darkness, in response to the heroine asking him how he manages to get by in life. To hear the same words coming from a little girl was quite awful.

- Who do you steal from?

- I’m hardly likely to tell you this, am I?

For the first time, she looked away from the book and looked upwards; not looking at me, but some point on the floor about five feet in front of her.

- Do you think this is all necessary?

- What is, I asked.

- This business about deliberately imposing on my privacy so you can feel like you’ve done your job simply because it looks like I don’t fit in. Do you feel that it’s necessary?

- Well from what you tell me it seems like you need someone looking out for you.

- I do not. The fact that you think I do only shows that I am beyond your experience. The fact is that I like being alone. I like reading. I do not like other people and I certainly do not like other people forcing themselves on me like you are doing.

- I’m only trying to be friendly, I said.

- I have no need of friends or anyone else.

- That’s an alarming thing for a young girl to say, don’t you think?

- More alarming than you encouraging me to be dishonest about it? I should say not. Please leave me to get on with this book, will you? I find it interesting and your conversation is quite incredibly inane.

- Now that is rude of you, you horrible little girl.

I stood up beside her. I found myself filled with the wish to slap her right in the face and show her what I thought of her, but I was then struck with revulsion for my own lack of self-control. I also wondered just how often other children had done the same thing to her and what had come into her life to make her this withdrawn.

- You want to hit me now, don’t you?

I was taken aback. Her eyes were back in the book again.

- You want to hit me now and you cannot do it because you feel sorry for me and wonder how long I have been bullied by others and neglected by my parents. The reality of it is that I fly under the radar of nearly everyone around me. Teachers don’t know I am in class until I come top of the year, every year. My mother doesn’t know if I am home half the time and other children keep away from me because I am invisible to them, in nearly the literal sense. I’m sure that, like you, a lot of them have wanted to hit me but have lacked the moral courage to do so. You at least are reticent because of pity; most of the others are unwilling to carry this wish through only because they would get into trouble.

I closed my open mouth. Then opened it again to speak.

- You are very articulate, Mia.

- I am also very invisible. How else do you think I can survive without getting caught? Un'ombra che passa nei fantasmi della pioggia delicata di sera. I’m the shadow that passes in the ghosts of the gentle evening rain.

I didn’t recognise that quotation. I didn’t even ask. She said nothing and carried on reading, with me standing helpless and mumbling like a dolt beside her.

- I’m Carol, I said. I’m in the upper year.

- I’m Mia. I’ve just started here and will get through the four or five years I have to do without friction and with only the minimum contact with other people who come here.

- Well…okay. It’s been nice talking to you, Mia.

- No it hasn’t.

I walked away and left the strange little girl to her book, the title of which I still didn’t know. I left the hall and stood in the darkened corridor, watching her immersed in its pages, only moving to turn them. Sure enough, people came and went past her on the steps and never uttered a word to her or even gave the slightest appearance of knowing that there was anyone there.

Only three weeks later when I was being questioned by the police about her did I have to remember all she had said to me. I can only remember that I felt amazement that they were not after her for stealing anything at all. Dear God, what a life.