The very next day found me in Mr Capote's cute little office again. This time I had aggravated the German teacher when I was asked to read out the suspense story which we had been asked to write, using specific vocabulary.

I was quite pleased with my story about a teenage repeat offender with a myriad of family problems, which no one ever addressed, no matter how often he was arrested. Our teacher seemed to like the story, too, until my protagonist was arrested once again, this time by Officers Wenker and Kok. Judging by the laughter, the class thought my story had just gotten really good. Even those whose German was so poor that they had most likely not understood a word of my story woke up and joined in the general amusement.

Mr Grim, appropriately named in more ways than one, however, took exception to my choice of names and wasn't even placated when I pointed out to him that these were perfectly normal German surnames. He insisted on me changing the names. I insisted on my artistic freedom and on my artistic aim as a storyteller to be as authentic as possible. It wasn't exactly my fault that the Germans gave people surnames totally disregarding the sensibilities of the English-speaking world.

"Wenker and Kok are totally normal German names, Mr Capote. I can't believe I'm in trouble now for speaking perfectly good German."

Mr Capote sighed.

"Katherine, I don't speak any German myself, so I cannot judge whether those names are rude or not in German. They certainly sound rude in English. Can't you just change them and we'll all carry on happily with our day?"

"Well, seeing that you've asked me so nicely, I'll apologise and change the names."

Mr Capote beamed.

"That's the spirit, Katherine. Off you go, back to class."

"Bye, Mr Kaput."

Capote's face fell a bit, but he let it go.

* * * * *

Back in class, I apologised to the class profusely and assured the teacher that I had seen the errors of my ways and that I would most definitely change the names of those two police officers if I was allowed to finish my story.

"One police officer grabbed the boy and cuffed him. 'Your name, son?' he asked. "Grim, Dick Grim.'" The sound of Mr Grim breathing in was clearly audible, so I hurried on reading.

"'Officer Fuck, I got a Dick Grim here. Yes, Grim, Dick. Check out his details...'" The class erupted in laughter.

I know, I know, it was a childish thing to do. It was unnecessary and uncalled for. Mr Grim was not a bad teacher. He taught me good German. His lessons weren't necessarily Pixar Studios material, but he never turned up unprepared and many of the things he taught us opened up our minds to a new culture, a different way of looking at things.

So, no, I'm not proud of the way I behaved in those days. And, Mr Grim, Mr Capote, Mrs Griff and all the other teachers I abused, if you read this, please forgive me for showing you up and trying to make you feel inadequate. I sincerely hope that I failed miserably. I know a thing or two about being made to feel inadequate, and I cannot believe that I tried to pass this feeling on to innocent bystanders. My only excuse is that I needed to make a drastic change in those days in order to make it to the next day. Sometimes the fog that clouded my perception of reality was so thick back then that half of the time I didn't know what I was doing. Most often, I didn't even realise I was doing it. So, again, I honestly hope that you can forgive me.

But it was obvious that I was in no conciliatory mood then, though. Back I went to the headmaster, encouraging him with my winning and charming personality to phone my parents yet again.

* * * * *

Coming home, the fun continued. My mother had left work early on my account. Yippee! She was lying in wait for me behind the front door. None of my elite soldier skills were good enough to sneak past this ambush, save for scaling the outside wall, and I wasn't about to give the neighbours a free ticket to 'Fat girl on a hot tin roof'.

So, mother dearest and I sat down at the dinner table to a respectful adult problem-solving discussion – not.

In fact, as soon as my mother spotted me, she hit the roof. I didn't really get everything she said, but I'm sure I heard the words 'useless', 'disappointing', 'Emma', 'Emma', 'Emma' and 'adoption' somewhere in her tirade. For some reason, none of what she threw at me registered. My brain had simply disengaged. I am relatively certain that I never opened my mouth, but at some point, it was most probably in the middle of a sentence, I got up and walked up the stairs. I don't know if I slammed the door that time or not. I just grabbed the bag of pills still hidden in my drawer and walked straight past my mother out the front door.

The whole thing felt a lot like what I would imagine sleepwalking must be like. I was already in the woods when I looked at my hands and noticed that I was carrying a bottle of wine. I had no idea how it got there. I must have stopped at the little corner shop where I always had to buy wine for my mother, but I had no recollection of having done that. This incident really frightened me. I sat on my bench for a good hour, playing with the bag of pills and contemplating life after life. Oblivion beckoned me, but something made me stall.

Finally, I got up from the bench and walked back out of the woods towards Henry's house. This was not based on rational thought. I felt more like a robot, operated by some invisible unknown force.

Just as I caught the first glimpse of Henry's place, I spotted a girl – long blond hair, two-meter long legs, thin – at his door. I stopped in my tracks and watched how Henry opened the door, threw his arms around Blondie and dragged her inside before closing the door with what sounded to me like the finality of a maximum-security prison. I just didn't know which side of the prison gates I found myself, but it sure felt like the wrong side.

Well, that was it then, wasn't it? Henry had found the girl of his dreams. I couldn't really blame him. It wasn't like we were together or anything, and Henry was a young, healthy male. What the hell did I expect? How was our friendship going to work now? Was it even going to work at all? Mrs Bleach and Fake Tits – I had only seen her back, to be fair, but I wasn't feeling generous – would not want me in the mix. "I'll be there for you anytime and anywhere." Well, that had lasted about five minutes.

* * * * *

The next two days passed in a haze. I was later informed that I behaved in a particular nasty way during those 48 hours. I was extremely rude to the teachers, but I wasn't much nicer to anybody else, either. Henry later claimed that he tried to approach me and find out what was going on (and I have no reason to doubt him), but to no avail. I myself don't remember much of anything, just a lot of white noise and a sense of being completely removed from the real world.

One thing sticks out to me, though. Mrs Keating. The rest of the school staff had turned on me. I was no longer nice, malleable Katherine, the student you could always count on to know the answer, the student you knew would never cause any trouble. I was now the devil incarnate, worse than the posh, but still white-trash gang who still regularly attacked Henry and two or three other boys they perceived as weaker – or whatever their reason was for kicking the shit out of other people. The teachers tried to effect behaviour modification by punishing and threatening me, not very successfully, I might add.

Mrs Keating used a different approach. She sat me down at her desk and smiled at me.

"Take your time, Katherine. I've got all day. And tomorrow, if you need it. Talk whenever you're ready."

I stared at my shoes. The silence seemed endless. Mrs Keating just sat there with her hands folded in her lap, her facial expression relaxed, an encouraging smile on her lips.

Looking back, it seems like about 20 hours passed like that when, in fact, it was probably less than half an hour.

"I don't know what to say, Mrs Keating," I finally muttered.

"Just say whatever is in your head. No matter what. I'm not here to judge. I'm here to listen."

"I don't think you want to know what is in my head, Mrs Keating."

"Yes, I do. I know it's nothing pleasant. I know it might be hard to hear. But this is about you, not about me or about what is right or wrong. Just empty your mind, purge it of everything that is smothering it."

"I'm dealing with some problems at home. My mother wants me to go to university."

"What about you? What do you want?"

I laughed a joyless laugh.

"Do you know, Mrs Keating, that you are the first person who has ever asked me that? And maybe that is why I don't know what I want. And as long as I don't know what I want, I don't have a leg to stand on where my mother is concerned. And, frankly, I don't even know why I don't want to go to university. Is it because I genuinely want to find out more about the world before I make a decision that will impact my entire future, or is it that I hate my mother so much that I automatically do the opposite of what she wants me to do – even if I hurt myself in the process?"

"When are you the most content? Which activities give you joy and a sense of self-worth?"

I paused. There was nothing. I couldn't think of a single thing in my life that made me content, let alone happy. The closest thing...

"Well, I spend a lot of time sitting on a bench in the woods, just thinking."

I hadn't really wanted to say that, but maybe deep down I had wanted to. I don't know.

"What do you think about when you are sitting on that bench?"

I couldn't believe my ears. I had expected disbelief, recriminations. Sitting on a bench isn't exactly a productive activity and probably well outside the norm for a teenaged girl. A girl who should be writing letters-of-application, who should be out networking, who should be actively engaging in shaping her future. But, just like she had promised, Mrs Keating didn't judge. No judging, only gentle nudging, you might say.

"I think about the meaning of life. I think about what my purpose in life is. Why am I here? Why do we exist?" I blushed. "It's silly, I know."

"That's far from silly, Katherine. These are questions our greatest philosophers and theologians have wrestled with. If you want to go down that path, carve out a career in that area, you need patience and endurance and a high tolerance for frustration. It is no career path that generates fast money and easy success. But it is a career path that offers valuable insight into the human experience, into the very essence of life and death. I'm not saying to go down that road. I'm saying it is as good a place to start looking for your future as any. It's not all about the money. But I'm sure you already know that."

I felt like somebody had hit me on the head with a hammer, but in a good way. In my wildest dreams, I would never have considered my sacred-bench-sessions to be of any use to me. I had always seen them as a waste of time, a waste of resources and, ultimately, one more thing to be ashamed about. But maybe, just maybe, Mrs Keating was onto something here. Maybe I could use this hidden shame to find a way into a future in this life rather than the afterlife.

"Thank you, Mrs Keating, for taking the time to talk to me. Honestly, I know that you probably have a million better things to do."

"Actually, I have nothing better to do. This is exactly where I want to be right now, and you are exactly the person I want to be talking to right now. I want you to know that you can talk to me anytime about anything. You are a very sensitive person, despite the tough-girl persona you have on display at the moment, and a very deep thinker. It is interesting to exchange ideas with you. So, don't ever think that you are not welcome, that I talk to you solely out of a sense of duty."

Thank you, even today, Mrs Keating, for trying to give me a sense of self-worth that day, for trying to make me believe in some sort of future. But, unfortunately, we all know that one swallow does not make a summer.