Not Stupid Read Free

the soft tone of his voice, which was surprising coming from such a big chap, who turned out to be a former rugby player – Sean was around six- foot-four tall and weighed around 18 stone.
    After a while I got up to leave. I needed to be at Kirby College to attend a dance class to learn a new routine that I’d never tried before. Sean asked if he could walk me there and, on the way, he asked me for a date. I declined, concerned about what my father would say – even when I was 25 years old, my father strongly disapproved of me dating; the same went for my sister. Dad was so strict that if I was watching a film featuring a scene with a couple kissing I would be told to turn my head away. I was still doing so at 18 years of age because I’d been so conditioned by him. How crazy is that!
    As a child, I hadn’t been allowed to go to friends’ houses to play. I’d been living such a sheltered life. From the ages of 13 to 16, I attended a convent school, where I took GCE O-levels and CSEs (Certificate of Secondary Education, which preceded the General Certificate of Secondary Education, or GCSE, in the UK) in French, English, needlework, domestic science, religious scriptures, maths and Italian. At the time I was incredibly naïve.After leaving school, I had, at the age of 16, my first experience of death and feelings of loss and despair when my friend Karen, who was also 16, died from a brain tumour. I found her death very hard to handle and to come to terms with.
    I never dated at all until I was in my early twenties. When it came to boyfriends I’d had to be sneaky in case Dad found out. I had to pretend I was going to run an errand for my mother in order to get out of the house because Dad had such a controlling influence on us all. I think he was scared that my sister and I would be taken advantage of.
    On leaving school at 16 I had wanted to enrol at Kirby College in order to learn to become an interpreter, but Dad had ripped up my application form. ‘Good girls stay at home,’ he’d insisted. When I was 17 my mother had a word with Dad. She told him I shouldn’t be hanging around at home all day. If I didn’t go to college he should let me go out to work. He reluctantly agreed and, after an interview at the Binns department store, I was taken on in the lingerie department, which necessitated my attending Kirby College one day a week to undertake business studies, so I did get there in the end.
    My only escape from such regimented order came in the form of dance. When I was a young child, my mother had taken me to the Mavis Percival Dance School and it was there that I felt truly free to express myself. In a way, I was like a free bird when I danced – even though Dad tried several times to stop me going. As I’d grown up I’d enjoyed preparing for dance competitions and shows. I loved tap dancing but I also had to do ballet, which, to be honest, I hated. I much preferred fast-tapping jazz routines – ones you had to attack. I’m not asmoothy, floaty person. That’s just not me. But the ballet was a necessity if I was to improve my posture.
    After working at Binns for 18 months I decided to open my own dance school. I’d studied for my teaching qualifications and was pleased to pass with 96 points from a possible 100. After helping my own dance teacher for a while, I began taking classes of my own in a church hall in Middlesbrough. At one time I had a hundred pupils. It was a very satisfying experience but, after I’d worked at Binns all day, dancing in the evenings meant I was always knackered! I had to choose between Binns and dance classes – so I chose the dancing.
    It was only natural, bearing in mind Dad’s strict manner, that, when Sean asked me out for a date, my main concern was of Dad’s reaction, should he find out. But, when I declined Sean’s offer, he refused to give up, even when I explained my reasons why. Sean told me he would meet me in the nearby Debenham’s store and that I could