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straight. And Garry calling to my father, telling him to warm up, and my excitement at the prospect – even then, my father didn’t bowl much. And I still remember my father’s off-cutter – it was in either his first or second over – and the burly batsman’s wild swish, the ball looping ever so high (to my eight-year-old eyes) in my direction, Garry’s call of ‘Catch it, mate!’, the fear that gripped me, my legs suddenly unsteady, and the ball arching down towards me. The sting of leather hitting my palms, the ball rebounding, and my desperate lunge to grasp it before it hit the floor. I’d made the simplest of catches look difficult, but that didn’t matter. It seemed that the whole team was as happy as I was – they were shaking my hand just as they did when adults took a good catch. Even my father offered his hand, gripping mine harder than any of the others, so that I had to massage my palm when no one was looking. I fell asleep reliving the moment for weeks afterwards.
    Perhaps I am looking back on my life through rose-tinted glasses, for school also seemed to have gone well. My mother tells me I was a sweet child, content to stay silent when left alone, but ready to break out of my reverie with a wide smile whenever someone talked to me. I found the first few days of school difficult, but I never locked myself in the toilets at home the way my brother did, and I don’t remember any problems with the other students until the third grade, when Andrew joined our class.
    To the teacher, he was a bright, jovial child with a penchant for practical jokes. To me, he was a selfish brat who wanted to be the centre of everyone’s attention. When he walked in one day and, taking on a deep voice, pretended to be the principal, I didn’t laugh the way my teacher did. I’m not sure why, but I decided that what he was doing was wrong, and that he needed to be punished. With Jeffrey, I chased him across our primary school’s courtyard, caught him, pinned him down and spat in his face. It was a fitting lesson, I thought.
    My mother had other ideas: never have I seen her so angry as she listened to my teacher over the phone. She hung up, walked over to where I was sitting, and slapped me. The pain shocked me; the shame had me in tears. She pointed at my room, and in a tone that expected no argument, told me to go and wait for her.
    During the hour it took her before she came and spoke to me, I stayed glued to my bed and cried into my pillow. Whenever I tried to stoke my anger, to tell myself that I’d done nothing wrong and she was very mean to slap me, I remembered the paleness of her face and started crying again, feeling as though I deserved the shame. I’d almost exhausted my tears when she knocked on the door. She walked in with a solemn expression and sat next to me. Wanting to avoid her, I once again dug my head into my pillow. The smell of my tears on the cloth had me sobbing once again. I told myself that was a good thing, for it would make her feel guilty. But she didn’t seem aware of my pain as she spoke.
    â€˜Do you know that Andrew lost his dad last year?’ she asked me. Her voice that evening, as she carefully explained what it meant, and her tender gestures – stroking my hair, or holding my hand, which to me implied that I was as much a victim as Andrew – left a lasting impression. For many years, whenever I didn’t like someone, I recalled a shadow of the Andrew episode and repressed my feelings. After my mother’s intervention, I sought Andrew out, invited him to my house, and set out to make him my friend. I remember thinking hard about what present to get him for his birthday, and settling on the very one I wanted most: a gold and black football that had been used at the previous European Championships.
    Andrew left Hornsbury the following year, but he was an exception. Most of the people who started primary