Did You Ever Love Me? by Toni Maguire

Author:Toni Maguire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

I tried to put that terrible day when I had sought help from Miss Tomlin behind me. I was still in one of her classes but I never attempted to speak to her again. She in turn did her best to avoid eye contact and on the odd occasion when we passed each other in the corridors, she managed to look at a spot just above my head.

The memory of her reaction was still clear in my head and I was certain she had not forgotten what I told her. She had, however, put it in a compartment labelled ‘not to be believed’. I wonder now, with so many stories on the news and in the newspapers, where men, once public idols, have been charged with heinous offences against children, if she ever feels a wave of unease. Does the memory of the day she dismissed my story travel from her subconscious brain into her conscious one and start to raise doubts?

I hope so.

Not being able to see into the future where I would learn that I was not the only child whose father crept into her bedroom, I just said to myself, ‘Don’t think about it, Cassie. Soon you won’t have to see her again.’ A little sentence I used to comfort myself each time I had to go into her class.

I started counting the days until the end of term. Only a few more weeks turned into just 20 days and then ten until finally we were in the last week. Then it was my last lesson with Miss Tomlin and all through her class I kept saying to myself, ‘This is the last time I will see her.’ In fact, it was my dislike of having to be in her class that had given me the one reason why I was looking forward to changing schools.

Those last few days in the run-up to the end of term I was thinking of the fun Sophia and I would have over the holidays. There had been no mention of her visiting her cousins or them visiting her and the thought of visiting her family even more than I did during term time made me so happy, especially having her to myself.

It was just two days before we broke up. As I was coming out of school, I saw Miss Tomlin talking to Mrs Pearson. I remember the sky was clear and blue and no clouds marred its perfection. Behind her dark lenses Sophia’s eyes were turned up to me as we chattered about the plans we had made for the first week of the holidays. Her face, I noticed, glistened slightly. I had waited for her as she went to the cloakroom and smeared on some sun cream before she ventured going through the doors. She was just telling me that her mother would take both of us swimming and I was saying I had not learnt how to, when the axis of my world froze. And just for a moment my legs refused to move.

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