Sanctuary lasted only as long as it took me to open my eyes, momentarily closed in relief as I shut the back door behind me. Through the inner door of the kitchen, across the narrow hall and through my open bedroom door, I saw that he had followed and was watching me, grey-jacketed elbows akimbo, blue striped shirt exposed, red face close to the glass as, eyes shaded, he peered in. Instinctively I ran and pulled the door shut to blot him out, then a silent shriek at my stupidity sent me back to turn the key in the door, by which time he’d moved to the adjoining window.
As he ran round the outside of the bungalow I closed the inner doors, my brother’s bedroom, the bathroom whose dimpled glass I knew he wouldn’t be able to see through (but was unprepared for the shock of my own open-mouthed, tear and mucus-stained face in the mirror), the lounge and my parents’ bedroom until I stood in the dark hall, hearing his raised voice at the back door above the blood-rushing heartbeat in my head.
He shouted to me for several minutes but what I presume was shame at my eventual capitulation has blotted out what exactly he said, how he eventually persuaded me to return to the kitchen, to unlock the door, to go back across the road with him to the place which, having reached the end of my endurance, I had run from, probably less than half an hour previously. Neither is the precise timescale of what happened next very clear, but as well as the awe with which I was greeted I remember that after delivering a lecture about the unacceptability of bullying he made the entire school, including me and the sharp-fingered tormentor behind me, sit in silence with hands on heads for a five full minutes.
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