The Little Prisoner. Jane Elliott

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      ‘Can I try your shoes?’ Lucy asked as we sat munching on the cake in a nearby underpass.

      I agreed happily, since my feet were hurting from walking so far in them. We changed socks at the same time, so that I could have her long ones with pictures of the Flintstones up the sides, and then continued on our way.

      I was desperate for the toilet, but there was nowhere else to go other than beside the path. I was just getting down to business when a woman came round the corner with her kids. Unable to run away, I had to answer her questions about where our parents were and whether they knew we were there. I don’t suppose my answers were very convincing. She eventually went away, but I suspect she was planning to ring the police the moment she got to a phone.

      We continued on our journey and by the time we reached open fields it was starting to get dark. Lucy was beginning to talk about the possibility of going home, but then she didn’t have anything to be afraid of when she got there. I knew that my parents would have been told of my disappearance by now and that I was going to be in serious trouble. I wanted to keep walking forever. I didn’t care how dark or cold it got, nothing could be as frightening as stepping through my own front door.

      Some bigger children were coming out of a senior school and we had to walk past a bunch of them. They were all staring. I guess we must have looked like the runaways we were. There wasn’t much chance that we were going to get away with our break for freedom for much longer and in fact the next figures who appeared out of the darkness were a couple of police officers. A terrible fear gripped me when I realized they were going to take me home. I would rather have lived in the woods forever than take another beating. But I could tell Lucy was quite relieved to have been found before night set in.

      The police told us off for all the trouble and worry we had caused everyone and escorted us back to their car.

      ‘Why did you run away?’ one of them asked as we drove towards home.

      ‘Her dad says he’s going to kill her,’ Lucy replied, ‘and he beats her all the time.’

      Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they had.

      ‘Is that true?’ the policeman asked.

      ‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘I was lying when I told her that. It never happened.’

      I looked down at the floor to avoid his eyes and realized we were still wearing the wrong shoes and socks. I would be in even more trouble if I got home without my own stuff.

      ‘Quick,’ I whispered to Lucy, ‘swap back.’

      I was now more frightened about the punishment for this than I was about the punishment for running away. We were practically at my house by this time and only had time to change the shoes. I would have to take my chances with the socks.

      The moment my mother opened the door she was shouting at me. She didn’t seem at all relieved that I was safe, just angry at what I’d done. I was freezing cold and sweating with fear at the same time. When I heard the policeman telling her what Lucy had said about Richard beating me and threatening to kill me, I knew that I was really in trouble.

      ‘Get upstairs to your bedroom,’ she shrieked the moment the police had gone, ‘and wait there until your dad gets home so he can deal with you.’

      He was out, apparently searching for me, and so I got ready for bed with a heavy heart, knowing just what was going to happen once he returned. I couldn’t sleep as I lay there listening for the sound of him coming back into the house.

      Eventually he was there and I could hear him shouting like a lunatic at Mum and then there was the sound of his feet running up the stairs. His voice was so loud and angry I couldn’t make out the words as he ripped the blankets off me and started punching me so hard I thought he was going to kill me. The pain was so bad I actually hoped that this time I would die. In my panic I wet myself and it soaked his arm, making him even angrier and more violent.

      I didn’t go back to school for about a week after that and was bought lots of new clothes and things, so the bruises must have been pretty bad. They always kept me off school if there was any chance the teachers would see what they’d done to me.