We always knew it was coming. There were signs we’d learned to read: a change in atmosphere, the sound of the fridge door opening, wine glugging into a glass. And then it would arrive. My stepfather’s anger filled the house, even the rooms he wasn’t in. We breathed it in and out silently, waiting for the storm to pass, waiting to see if we would all make it out OK. As a young girl growing up in that house, I was used to feeling that dark, threatening clouds were constantly looming on the horizon. And I learned that anger – even the smell of it on the air – was terrifying.
And then I met Miss Smith*. Miss Smith was my A-level drama teacher at my brilliant secondary school in the home counties. She was full of ideas and passion and, I suspect, had an ambition to open the eyes of her overwhelmingly sheltered pupils. One Wednesday morning, she asked us to work on our improv skills, while exploring the topic of homelessness. She played a TV reporter asking members of a homeless community (us) how we felt. If you can bear the problematic notion of middle-class teens attempting to articulate a reality they knew nothing of, it was a worthwhile exercise, at least because of the extent to which it awakened something in me.
