An audio book.
2019: There's a serious incident in a school. After this prelude the 2 time-lines alternate.
1999; A girl's father is drunkenly abusive. The father has a heart attack and moves out. Barry moves in. He abuses her. She stabs him. He moves out.
1999: A girl gets bullied at school by a group of girls at school that includes a quiet girl who does nothing.
A young girl is pregnant
2019: Stella is a teacher living with Wade. 3 months before, he'd briefly moved out and she had a one-night stand with Glen. She's been getting threatening letters. She and Astrid (a school colleague) go to Glen's house and confront him - apparently he's innocent. Her car is vandalised in the school car-park. Because her past (which at first we don't know about - something to do with bullying? With her alcoholic mother?) she doesn't want to invoke the police. Her house is defaced - "Freak". "Bitch". Is Barry the culprit? But it's been 20 years. Why now? Or is it a pupil? She meets the bully from her school days in the street who suggests that they should meet up again.
2019: a new first person voice appears - someone who talks to her, hates her, knows her secrets, enjoyed vandalising her car and looks forward to hurting her.
Damien, 14, forces her at knife-point from her classroom to a storage unit. He's usually quiet and erudite. His mother, Monica, had been bullied at school (it wasn't Stella who'd been bullied, as we'd rather been led to believe). At a parents evening Monica had recognised Stella as the girl who did nothing to help her. She's tried suicide. Damien has had 5 foster parents. She's knifed, loses 4 pints of blood, and survives.
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