Day 741

I remember when I was seven my teacher Mrs Brinewight would tell us stories about her old school days, back in the early forties. The ones I remember clearest are the ones about her classmate Maurice Clarkes. He came from one of the older families of the area, the ones that used to be Big Money but were now low as the rest of them in the area.

His family were strange - even for the times. Apparently their rapid decline went further than just finance to the point where Maurice would come in every winter struggling to move, hands and face scrubbed so thoroughly he bled if he tried to smile. His movements would be stiff, like they'd starched his clothes to glass sheets, as Mrs Brinewight would say.

Took almost four years for the police to catch on, nobody told them you see. Back in those days kids were taught to not notice, that what we now know as abuse was just other kids acting oddly and they were to be avoided "for propriety's sake".

I remember her telling us about the day the police came to class to collect Maurice. It was nearly December and like all the December's before Maurice came in every day scrubbed and close to bleeding, his clothes and movements stiff as ice. The first thing they did when they came was gently peel back his cuffs exposing deep ragged stitches over a thick layer of scarring.

It used to be a thing apparently, to sew children into their clothing for the winter to keep them warm enough to last through days or weeks of unheated homes and long walks to school or work. What Maurice's parents had missed was that the clothes were meant to be sewn to each other, not to the child.