Chapter 471 Big Girls Don't Cry:>2

• This became my routine now, leave the house early, early, see Lena in school and avoid her, go back as late as I could, do my homework and go to bed. I think the family got used to not having me at dinner; mum would knock and call me, but I never answered, so she probably assumed I was asleep, and sometimes Lena would knock too, calling out to me. Dad would come and knock for me too, I pointedly ignored all of them; I had nothing more to do with them, and I was rapidly losing contact with them. I'd find some dinner on a tray outside my room in the morning, and I'd step over it, or take it down and leave it on the counter, take some fruit and go to school. Weekends, I'd leave early in the morning, go to the cricket nets at Bower Ashton and work on my batting form; then stay there 'til it got too dark to see the ball, and I got too tired to swing that 2 ½ lb bat any more, and then go home, let myself in, go to bed, and sleep like a stone.
• I hardly ever felt hungry, either, but I did get tired more easily, I slept like a stone most of the evening and all night, and I had a lot of really bad headaches. This went on for weeks; I was in no mood or suitable frame of mind to spend time with any of my family, and other than quick glimpses of Lena at school, I never saw or spoke to any of them.
• The last weeks of school-term before the summer holidays, I managed to avoid all contact with my family. I usually came in late enough that they were already engrossed in the TV, so they never heard me come in. They'd stopped calling me for dinner, or leaving me any, I never answered or ate any of it, and I'd developed the habit of moving around so quietly in my room I'm not even sure they knew I was in there. All I knew was, I'd been told they didn't want me near them anymore, and I certainly didn't want to see any of them again. I had no more homework, my GCSE examinations were all over, and where I'd once planned on going into the 6th Form to study for my A-Level examinations, I thought that would be pointless now.