On Tuesdays I have to wear a sleeveless uniform and visit a school and a residential home. I have circlets of black, blue and yellow bruises around each wrist, and multicoloured arms. For some reason these bruises are worse this week, whereas the marks on my face and neck have faded.
Everyone notices - it's impossible not to. I'm grateful to those who suspect: you know who they are because they don't ask. My boss, the girls who do hydro with me, they know stories from last year. Strangely two male care workers just seem to guess, as does the head of the school. Their eyes slide over the evidence then return to my face. They are probably grateful too - that I'm not making a scene or crying on their shoulders.
The younger care workers are the problem. It's just part of their chat as we work, 'bloody hell, what have you done to yourself?' I tell them I fell down the stairs whilst drunk. Better to be a lush than to be thought utterly stupid. How we laugh.
Worst of all is the earnest interrogation from the pastoral worker at the school. Everything else I can deal with, but sympathy makes me cry.
