Gareth | Lucky Boy Ep1

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Speaker 4 From Blood and Ash launches you into a world where forbidden desire collides with deadly secrets, and every choice could ignite a war.

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Speaker 4 Grab From Blood and Ash, available in print, e-book, and audiobook, and enter a series you'll never want to leave.

Speaker 5 Tortoise.

Speaker 5 Just a heads up before we start, this episode contains strong language and references to sexual abuse.

Speaker 5 Can you just talk for a sec?

Speaker 3 Hello, how are you? My name is Monty

Speaker 3 and I like golf.

Speaker 5 I don't know why he said he's Monty.

Speaker 5 This is actually Mark. He's one of my oldest mates, and he doesn't like golf.

Speaker 3 Again. One, two, one, two, one, two, testing, one team.

Speaker 5 He's always been the funny one in our group of friends. It was the same when we were kids growing up in the 80s.
It's a bit embarrassing now but back then me and Mark were goths.

Speaker 3 No, I mean it wasn't, you know, like we were, you know, it was the mid 80s, late 80s. We had a lot of

Speaker 3 spots, greasy hair, you know, dodgy school shoes, you know, we just...

Speaker 5 You had a crimped fringe.

Speaker 3 I had a crimped fringe, yeah, but I was quite cool. You were quite cool.
Do you know what I mean? Like Arlot were sort of quite cool, but then...

Speaker 5 At least we thought we were.

Speaker 5 For our lot, it was all about going to gigs. Susie and the Banshees, the cure, and some pretty dire stuff too, like Fields of the Neflin.
That still makes me cringe.

Speaker 5 It was easy for teenagers back then because tickets were affordable, only around a tenor.

Speaker 5 And in venues that seemed so edgy and happening, like the Town and Country Club and the Camden Palace, most of them years gone now, Local places, pretty close to home, which for us back then was a little patch of North London.

Speaker 5 Specifically, Finchley.

Speaker 5 But I digress.

Speaker 5 Since those teenage days, I've ended up becoming an investigative journalist and Mark's an actor, but we're still close friends.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 5 So. I've asked Mark to come to the studio at Tortoise because of something that happened to him a while ago.
So basically, tell me how this all started.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 it was

Speaker 3 first lockdown, I'd say

Speaker 3 June or July, and I get a phone call from this unknown number and it's this woman, this sort of Spanish Latin sounding woman, saying

Speaker 3 my husband's asked me to call you.

Speaker 5 She tells Mark he was in the same year as her husband at Christ's College Finchley, a boys' comprehensive school that had a pretty good reputation. I was at the girls' school just up the road.

Speaker 5 This woman asks if Mark remembers her husband, Gareth.

Speaker 5 Actually, that's not his real name. I can't tell you that for reasons that will become clear pretty soon.

Speaker 3 I was like, yeah.

Speaker 3 And then alarm bells started going off because I remember...

Speaker 3 being at school at this time and there being all these rumours and we all kind of knew that something was going on but we didn't know for sure. Mostly because.

Speaker 5 The rumours were about what happened between this guy Gareth and a teacher at the school. His wife is calling Mark because Gareth needs witnesses and he remembers Mark because they were both misfits.

Speaker 3 You either did well in your exams at Christ College or

Speaker 3 they weren't interested. They just wrote you off.
They wrote you off completely. I mean they wrote me off completely completely.
And they wrote him off completely.

Speaker 5 And because Gareth remembers Mark suffered at the school, just like he did, he thinks Mark might be more likely to help him out.

Speaker 5 Mark and Gareth end up having several long conversations, sometimes late into the night. Rewinding to the 1980s and playing out their school days.
Who had a fight with who.

Speaker 5 The fact that caning was still allowed in their first few years. Which teachers would use it and which would just just throw books at you or clip you around the ear.

Speaker 5 About the hours after school spent sitting on buses smoking cigarettes or hanging around Golders Green station trying to look cool and get the attention of girls.

Speaker 5 Memories of that sweet time in the early years when they were still blank slates.

Speaker 5 And then they talk about the real reason they were having this call.

Speaker 5 What happened between Gareth and this teacher at Christ's College?

Speaker 3 And he was saying, look, if I got you to a police station, would you talk? I said, look, if I remembered anything

Speaker 3 that wasn't an embellished memory, then absolutely, but

Speaker 3 I can't guarantee my memories for you.

Speaker 3 But I do know what happened to you was wrong.

Speaker 5 The first time Mark tells me about all this, that this former classmate of his, Gareth, had called him out the blue to talk about how he'd been sexually abused by his teacher at the age of 14.

Speaker 5 I have to admit, I immediately jumped to what I thought was a pretty obvious conclusion: that the teacher carrying out the abuse had been a man.

Speaker 5 It's an easy assumption to make. Most abusers tend to be male.
And recently, I've been hearing more and more of these cases about boys being abused in boarding schools and churches.

Speaker 5 But this is not that story.

Speaker 5 Because in this case, the abuser was a woman

Speaker 3 you know everyone everyone knew it but i you know that the culture at that time was not a problem it's not really a big it's not a big deal were you all like you'd all have fantasies about oh yeah

Speaker 3 oh yeah still do no but it look i was talking to one of our friends who will remain nameless he was saying what's what what good is it it happened so long ago and she was quite fit so the sort of the implication was

Speaker 5 it was his fantasy and he got to fulfill his fantasy. Yeah.
What's he complaining about? Yeah.

Speaker 3 But anyway I think the bottom line is there are two camps. There's the yes it was really wrong that it happened and there's the uh hello

Speaker 3 he got to basically shtub this gorgeous woman.

Speaker 5 All Mark remembers from back then was rumours. But what I want to know is, were there people who saw saw stuff who can give me a better idea of what really happened? So I get him to ask round.

Speaker 5 He tells me there are WhatsApp groups where loads of old boys, now men, still stay in touch, and he's happy to connect me.

Speaker 3 But I think what you'll find if you do interview ex-Christ College boys, ex-teachers, they'll be like, oh, 40 years ago, let it go, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 But, you know, there are

Speaker 3 teachers out there who are probably in their

Speaker 3 late 60s, mid-70s, who you would be able to talk to.

Speaker 3 Whether or not they would want to, you know, I don't know. But I...

Speaker 3 What about Gareth?

Speaker 5 I don't remember him, but Mark's sure I knew him back when we were kids.

Speaker 3 Me, Ricky Tom, Zach, that lot. You know, we'd be out on the streets.
You've met him. You've met him.

Speaker 5 I probably have. I was always with him.

Speaker 3 He used to wear this quite sort of tony soprano leather jacket with up to the elbows, pull the sleeves up to the elbows, hair grease, you know, greased down.

Speaker 5 Like I said, everyone thought they looked cool back then.

Speaker 5 So Mark asks Gareth whether he'll speak to me and...

Speaker 3 Hi, Chloe. How are you doing? Good, how are you? Oh, I'm okay.

Speaker 5 I'm okay. The voice on the other end is a bit rougher than I expected, but it's also thoughtful and intelligent.

Speaker 3 You know, it's also just to put it in perspective for them, even though they're 50-year-old men now as well. What they were part of was an open secret that went around that school.

Speaker 5 Gareth tells me that for a long time, he found it difficult to pin down the harm this relationship caused. He thought of himself as a lucky boy.
But one day, the relationship ended.

Speaker 5 The teacher just walked away. And when she did, his whole life fell apart.

Speaker 5 By the time he was 16, he was homeless. And by 23, he'd tried to kill himself several times.
Much later in life, he realised he needed to process what happened to him.

Speaker 5 As I listen, I can feel the anger sitting just under the surface.

Speaker 3 You know, because I was accused at one point of starting the rumours. From there, it just snowballed.
What are you complaining about? What's the matter with you?

Speaker 3 The male has to get aroused for the act to happen. And that's a huge problem for people.
That's the truth. Everyone did know that you're joking.
I'm the one that protected her for 26 years.

Speaker 5 Various life events brought Gareth to the point where, 10 years ago, he decided to press charges against his teacher.

Speaker 5 Truth be told, he almost instantly regretted his decision. He still had lots of warm feelings towards her, still thought of her as his his first real love.

Speaker 5 It wasn't really revenge he was after, more a general acknowledgement of the harm he'd suffered as a result.

Speaker 5 But then, one after another, the people he'd considered solid witnesses denied being aware of the relationship. And the teacher, she denied ever having any kind of sexual contact with him.

Speaker 5 Gareth knows what happened between him and his teacher. He tells me he's sure of it.
Those events are seared into his memory.

Speaker 5 And the fact that no one wants to talk about it now, well, it's like the entire cast of his childhood all gaslighting him at the same time.

Speaker 5 So now, he's gone from being hesitant to being on a crusade.

Speaker 3 And it makes me really angry that people would even for one moment question my account. This is not a dream for me.

Speaker 5 So what do you want to get out of this?

Speaker 3 How about the truth? How about we do that first and then we work out where we're going to go from there? How about the truth?

Speaker 5 The truth is a good starting point for me too. But also, why are people so reluctant to talk? And why was this teacher allowed to have sex with a child without ever facing any consequences?

Speaker 5 Could it have something to do with the fact that the abuser in this case was an attractive woman?

Speaker 5 I'm Chloe Hajimathayo, and from Tortoise, this is Lucky Boy

Speaker 5 Episode 1:

Speaker 5 Gareth.

Speaker 5 It's 1986. We still get our music news from magazines like Smash Hits and Melody Maker.
And every Thursday evening, we're glued to top of the pops on TV to see who's leading in the charts.

Speaker 5 The nightly comedy offering on the BBC is Benny Hill, chasing big-breasted half-naked women around parks.

Speaker 5 If you arranged to meet someone and they didn't show up, you went back home again and you used your turn-dial land line to call their landline.

Speaker 3 We have on the telephone now Mrs. Thatcher.
Hello, good morning.

Speaker 5 The same kind of landline that Margaret Thatcher used to call into Radio 4's Today programme whenever she heard something that surprised her.

Speaker 5 IRA bombs seemed to be going off every other day, and most kids around the country were fixated by only one North London secondary school, Grange Hill, on Kids TV.

Speaker 3 And you don't believe me either, do you? The best mate.

Speaker 3 See how much heroin you can find among that lot.

Speaker 5 In which every issue under the sun seemed to be playing out all at the same time. Although the writer's imagination didn't stretch as far as an affair between a young boy and his female teacher.

Speaker 5 Back in the real North London, a new term's just started at Christ College and boys in dark blue uniforms are tumbling out of buses, flocking loudly into the school.

Speaker 5 The three-storey red brick building's more than 150 years old and it really stands out because of its huge tower, more like a turret on a castle really, with little arched windows spiralling up in line with a narrow staircase on the inside.

Speaker 5 The tower's where the science labs are and this term there's lots of commotion up there because the school has a a new young chemistry teacher, Sally Ann Bowen.

Speaker 5 This is her first teaching job, not long out of training. She's 27 with long blonde hair, and like loads of the boys, 13-year-old Gareth can't help staring at her.

Speaker 3 Well, yeah, but I mean, like,

Speaker 3 you can speak to any of the boys about this as well, and I'm sure they'll back me up. I mean, everybody knew when Bowen hit Christ College.

Speaker 5 Gareth's birthday is in May, so he's pretty young for his year, but he's a bright kid, athletic with wavy brown hair.

Speaker 3 My mother was an English teacher. My father was an editor.
So I guess you would say that I came from a middle-class family.

Speaker 3 I was the youngest of four. I had two older sisters and a brother.
My early years, yeah, they were very happy.

Speaker 5 He's fiercely proud of his dad being a journalist. He teaches his son never to blindly accept what he's told.
Question everything, he says.

Speaker 5 Of course, that doesn't always go down well with Gareth's teachers. Precocious and lippy is probably what they would have called him.

Speaker 5 But his dad's also an alcoholic, and he can be violent. Sometimes, he beats Gareth with a belt, and when he's drunk, he goes after his mum too.
till she can't take it anymore and leaves.

Speaker 3 I think I was in second year, so I'd have been about

Speaker 3 12, 13, I think.

Speaker 5 Gareth ends up living with his mum. He misses his dad, but he's busy hanging out with his mates.

Speaker 5 They like going into the fields just north of Finchley, looking for golf balls, which they sell back to the golfers and use the money for sweets or comics.

Speaker 3 I was 13 when the conversation on the bus happened.

Speaker 5 Gareth's not in any of Miss Bowen's chemistry classes and so his story with her doesn't really begin until about halfway through that year.

Speaker 5 There's a bus that takes pupils from one part of the school to another. Gareth's only in the third year.
These days we call it year nine in the UK or eighth grade in the US.

Speaker 3 Then they got on the bus, Bowen and McKisak, together as they most of the time were.

Speaker 5 Miss McIsaak's the other young female teacher at the school. She and Miss Bowen are really good friends.

Speaker 3 She would have been beautiful ranked number one and McIsaak would have been beautiful ranked number two. Yeah, I mean it's a boys school and we were kids so I mean that was probably the way

Speaker 3 they thought about it.

Speaker 5 So on this particular day he's sitting on the bus when the two teachers climb up the steps and get on board.

Speaker 3 They sat at the front because the teachers would sit at the front of the bus and the kids would sit at the back.

Speaker 5 So Gareth moves up and sits in the the road just behind them.

Speaker 3 Me being me, I was never shy with teachers. I could always talk to adults.
And he leans forward and says, Do you know when you get on the bus everybody knows you two have got on the bus because

Speaker 3 like they can smell you?

Speaker 5 What he means is they smell good.

Speaker 3 And Bowen made a big thing out of this and started saying, oh, what do we smell of? How do we smell? What are you trying to say? And I sort of said, well, you know, you smell the perfume.

Speaker 3 And she said, she said, I don't believe you. I don't believe that's what you meant.

Speaker 3 and and then she engaged in this game where she said i want you to tell me what you meant but he's too young to play the game he just doesn't get where she's going with all this so miss bowen gives him clues i think you meant something like that we came out of the sea like it's a creature out of the sea you think at one point it did dawn on me you know at 13 even then it did dawn on me what she was trying to get me to refer to But he's really embarrassed.

Speaker 3 And when I eventually said fish, I think I said whale before or whatever, I was trying to be polite. And when I said it, she was like so delighted that her little joke had come to fruition.

Speaker 5 The other member of staff, her friend, Miss McKysak, sitting right there.

Speaker 3 And she just like,

Speaker 3 like, she cringed, like, that's disgusting. Like, I mean, what woman wouldn't?

Speaker 5 Years later, when she's asked to corroborate this event, Heather McKysak will say she doesn't remember anything about what happened on the bus that day, or the inappropriate things Gareth remembers Miss Bowen saying to him.

Speaker 5 At the time, Gareth was confused. He didn't know a teacher could be like that.
She had crossed a boundary at that moment.

Speaker 3 Yep.

Speaker 3 I mean, I'm sure there were other inappropriate things she said to me, but they just haven't stuck out in my mind.

Speaker 5 But that was the first.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

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Speaker 5 Memory is an elusive thing.

Speaker 5 When I look back on my years as a teenager, the images are hazy. Time's sort of taken the sharpness out of it all.
But Gareth says specific moments are extremely vivid for him.

Speaker 5 Events that affected him so much that they're imprinted on his mind indelibly. Everything else, he admits, has faded away.

Speaker 5 So what he doesn't know is what happened around those key moments.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 for me, the next instance is the cafe instance, but I mean, there must have been hellos and nods and whatever else.

Speaker 5 The cafe instance. Yeah, we're coming to that.
But that's a little over a year after that first interaction with Miss Bowen. So let's jump forward to 1988.

Speaker 5 Now Gareth's 14. He's in his fourth year at school.
That's year 10 in the UK these days or ninth grade in the US. And he's doing pretty well.

Speaker 3 I mean, I stopped messing about and I got into all the top groups for the fourth year.

Speaker 5 At some point that spring term, Miss Bowen starts taking the same bus as Gareth to and from school.

Speaker 3 I've got a lot of images of her standing at that bus stop in my head, of me arriving at the bus stop and her standing there.

Speaker 5 And soon the conversation moves onto the bus. They're sitting next to each other, Gareth and Miss Bowen.

Speaker 5 Do you think you'd have been walking to Golders Green station in the morning or waiting at the bus bus stop in the evening after school and thinking, I hope she's there?

Speaker 3 Yeah, obviously. Obviously, they're built up to that.

Speaker 5 They talk about all sorts of stuff, like what they got up to on the weekend. He asks her about the other teachers at Christ College.
Who out of the men does she fancy? And she tells him.

Speaker 5 He doesn't remember whether Miss Bowen asked him if he had a girlfriend. He didn't and hadn't ever.

Speaker 5 At this point, he's briefly kissed a girl once, outside her place on an estate in Hendon, Hendon, but that's it. That's the extent of his experience with the opposite sex.

Speaker 5 Do you think at that time, having her give you that kind of level of attention, which was very kind of specific to you on the bus, you're slowly creating a friendship? Yeah.

Speaker 5 How would that have made you feel, the 14-year-old galaxy?

Speaker 3 Something like Jesus Christ, no.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 of course that made me feel extremely special. Well, she's got 900 kids there, and she selects me.

Speaker 3 So yeah, well that's what that did to me.

Speaker 3 Like I thought I was something special.

Speaker 3 I was, I just didn't know what kind of special they meant.

Speaker 5 Right, so I'm gonna need you guys to come a little bit closer. I can't remember how I thought when I was 14, at what point in my development I was.

Speaker 5 I know I felt very grown up, and although I try, it's really hard to imagine Gareth aged 14. All I see when I look at him is this large, angry man with a deep voice.

Speaker 5 I have two boys, but they're much younger. So I ask a friend of mine if I can talk to her 14-year-old son and his friends.

Speaker 3 Hi, guys.

Speaker 5 We meet in a cafe around the corner from their school. It's 3.30 and they're still in their school uniforms.
and right away I'm surprised by how young they look.

Speaker 5 I'd pictured 14 year olds as halfway to adulthood but actually these guys are still baby faced, not quite through puberty.

Speaker 4 Can I ask you something else?

Speaker 5 Are you all shaving?

Speaker 3 I'm not yet. No.

Speaker 3 Where?

Speaker 5 Are you shaving your faces?

Speaker 7 I've always said Alfie should because he needs to trim that stash of him.

Speaker 3 It's not not that big.

Speaker 7 I haven't got that much space on there, to be honest.

Speaker 3 To be honest.

Speaker 7 I've never, never really seen a boy in this year who shaves.

Speaker 3 No. Tell me, tell me, I mean...

Speaker 5 They do go to the occasional party at friends' houses and there are girls there. But like, so

Speaker 5 is there ever anybody getting together at these parties?

Speaker 7 Like, not us, not me. but basically almost like lots of other people like yeah and what does getting getting together mean, like, kissing and stuff?

Speaker 7 Kissing, not nothing too, you know, big so far, but there were, there has been some incidents where people have went further, you know.

Speaker 7 I knew someone who got to uh second no, uh, I yeah, I knew someone who got to second base in one day, which is fine at our age, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 Are they going forward before the war?

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 5 there have been a few kisses.

Speaker 7 I've had one at the age of my current age

Speaker 7 now, 14, but I've had it

Speaker 7 one, 13.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And me personally, mine was really underwhelming because it wasn't like romantic, it was just on a dare.

Speaker 7 Oh, that don't count then.

Speaker 3 Okay, don't count. Fine.
I'm sorry, Arky, but that don't count.

Speaker 5 A really good weekend for them is usually one where they get to have a sleepover. And once I turned the recorder off, one of them admitted to me he still sometimes plays with Lego.

Speaker 5 It's probably one of the trickiest times in life when you're in such a hurry to grow up, but in reality, you have no experience of the world that qualifies you as being an adult.

Speaker 5 A time when a day of pretending to be grown up is so exhausting that all you really want to do is go home to your Lego.

Speaker 3 Right, anyway, so that day we've been up to Tesco, who's got our pasties, whatever.

Speaker 5 Now Gareth's a bit older. He's in the upper school, which means he and the other boys are allowed out for lunch.

Speaker 5 But actually, roaming up and down the high street, lunch is the least of what they get up to.

Speaker 5 This particular break, Gareth's with a group of mates, including a boy called Ben.

Speaker 3 Ben was fucking crazy anyway. Ben was fucking nuts, man.

Speaker 5 He's one of these these kids who doesn't seem to have any boundaries. On this day, Gareth and a group of other boys follow Ben into the local news agents just up the road from the school.

Speaker 5 They think they're in there to buy a can of Coke and some sweets, but Ben has other things on his mind.

Speaker 3 I saw him do it. Five fucking magazines he's pulled off the top shelf.

Speaker 5 That's where the porno mags always are. You could be as subtle as you liked, but if you were buying one, there was no hiding it.

Speaker 3 When you reached

Speaker 3 the top shelf even the the people on the till would look everyone would look because they'd see this hand going up from all over

Speaker 3 and ben's done it five times yeah he's taken down five porno magazines so it's like hell ben you're not going to get out of the shop with that mate that's not like stealing football stickers mate

Speaker 5 brazen as hell

Speaker 3 and somehow he walks out with these five mags without any trouble so anyway we've trundled down this you know we're going back towards the school and we've trundled down and it's like, oh, are we going to the cafe?

Speaker 5 The cafe was a little Italian deli. Gareth used to go in there with his mates, not to eat, but to hang out.
His lunch money was already spent on a 10-pack of Benson and hedges.

Speaker 5 Miss Bowen was often in there too.

Speaker 5 Did you clock her as soon as you got in?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I did. Well, the thing is I'm having conversations with her on the bus.
She's like my friend at this point.

Speaker 5 So the boys all come in laughing because they've just pulled off this heist in the news agents and Ben's really excited about it.

Speaker 5 He's opening up the porno mags and waving the pictures around for everyone to see and he's trying to get Miss Bowen's attention, sticking the mags under her nose and saying, what's this then miss?

Speaker 5 What's this? And it feels like it's getting all a bit out of hand.

Speaker 3 And if I remember rightly, the way I remember it is like I grabbed one, I think Danny grabbed one, as in like, listen, you're embarrassing us all now you're being a prick um

Speaker 3 she didn't react

Speaker 3 i don't know what she said i can't remember that i mean you've got to remember the next event coming with such a huge event it's hard to remember small memories surrounding that huge memory for me

Speaker 5 what gareth does remember is that the action sort of dissipates and ben and the other boys get bored and leave So Gareth slides into the seat opposite Miss Bowen.

Speaker 5 The porno mag he grabbed off Ben is tucked away somewhere inside his blazer pocket or down the back of his trousers.

Speaker 3 She said, have you still got that magazine? I said, yeah, and she sort of said,

Speaker 3 give me the magazine. And I sort of like, at first, I was like, I think I said no.

Speaker 3 No, I think I questioned why she wanted it. And she just sort of said, give me the magazine.

Speaker 5 Gareth thinks she's going to confiscate it, but instead, she opens it up under the table so it's out of sight and she starts flicking through through the pages.

Speaker 3 She then just came to a page and she pointed it and she said, um,

Speaker 3 that's what mine looks like.

Speaker 3 And I said to her, um,

Speaker 3 what do you mean?

Speaker 3 And she said, that's what my pussy looks like.

Speaker 3 And at that moment, what was going through your mind? Well, you want the truth. Yeah.
I knew I was going to fuck her.

Speaker 3 And that's really bad for me to say that because it's like, oh, well, you had intent.

Speaker 3 Actually, do you know what? I shouldn't actually say that because that's really wrong. No, no, it's really wrong because I shouldn't say that.
It misrepresents me badly.

Speaker 3 I didn't know what I was going to fuck up because I had no idea what fucking was.

Speaker 5 But what it had done was cross a boundary with you.

Speaker 3 It was a new boundary that had been crossed. I knew that.

Speaker 3 That's what I'm trying to say. It's like hindsight I'm saying that.
Oh, I knew I was. No, I didn't.
I had no concept of it. How could I know I was going to do something I had no concept of?

Speaker 3 That's the first thing I'd say about like sort of like putting that in context. But you're quite right.
There was something

Speaker 3 there was something profoundly different about that. Hold on.
Now we're looking at vaginas and we're talking about like which one's yours.

Speaker 3 I mean

Speaker 3 I know you're not having this conversation with no one else.

Speaker 3 So I mean yeah huge huge that was huge.

Speaker 5 Did you say anything?

Speaker 5 Were you shocked?

Speaker 3 Yeah I was fucking shocked. Of course I was shocked.

Speaker 5 And then the curtains of his memory fall on this scene, and it ends there.

Speaker 5 He doesn't remember how, but he knows he and Miss Bowen get back to school. And he knows, however hard it is to keep his mouth shut, he can't tell anyone what happened.

Speaker 5 If all this went down as Gareth remembers, That incident with the porno mag has completely tilted his relationship with Miss Bowen.

Speaker 5 Now she's not just an attractive teacher. She's a woman who's given him explicit permission to think of her in sexual terms.
She's invited him to.

Speaker 5 I'm not an expert, but I imagine this is probably what grooming looks like. And Gareth, he's hooked.

Speaker 5 The next day when they meet up after school, he tells her he loves her.

Speaker 5 And now, he can't bear saying goodbye on the street corner. So one day, he just keeps walking with her towards her place.

Speaker 5 That's when he clocks the other boy.

Speaker 3 There is an Asian guy from Christ College that obviously lived in the vicinity, otherwise he wouldn't have walked down Hamilton Road like that.

Speaker 5 Do you remember his name?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 I don't.

Speaker 5 It seems this Asian boy's been walking her home regularly. Gareth joins them.

Speaker 5 And this one afternoon, when all three of them get to Miss Bowen's house, instead of saying goodbye at the gate, she goes in leaving her front door open.

Speaker 5 So Gareth wanders in, closing the door in the Asian boy's face. And Miss Bowen lets him in for tea and a cigarette.

Speaker 3 And we sat on the sofa in the front room and had a cup of tea.

Speaker 5 The living room's pretty bare and nondescript. No personal touches.
Probably because it's a shared house full of young professionals where Miss Bowen's renting a room.

Speaker 5 None of the other tenants are in.

Speaker 3 I spoke about like, I don't know what we spoke.

Speaker 3 Like, when I say nothing untoward, the whole fucking situation is untoward, right? You don't have to say something that's going to make this worse, but yeah.

Speaker 3 So, then I had my cup of tea and I left. And then the next day.

Speaker 5 The next day, when he walks her home again, they're alone. The Asian boy that was walking with them, Gareth never sees him again.

Speaker 5 And now it seems to be a given that he's going to come inside.

Speaker 5 But this time, halfway through their cup of tea on the sofa, Gareth stands up.

Speaker 3 So I've gone up and used the toilet. She's come upstairs and I've said, which room's yours?

Speaker 3 And I said, I think that room's yours.

Speaker 3 I said, well, surely we can sit here and drink our tea. And she said, I'll go downstairs and get the tea.
And she sat next to me on the bed like that.

Speaker 5 It's a small box room. There's a cupboard and a cool-looking record player on a shelf.
And they sit kind of awkwardly side by side, sipping tea.

Speaker 3 Both facing the wall, sort of like on a single bed,

Speaker 3 sort of like sitting there like it was a sofa.

Speaker 3 And then like

Speaker 3 yeah.

Speaker 3 And then

Speaker 3 I don't know, we were close together. Our heads were close together.
We were looking at each other and then like

Speaker 3 just started kissing.

Speaker 5 That first time they don't go all the way, but when it eventually happens, he has no idea.

Speaker 3 She has to stop and explain to him that they're actually having sex it's just a feeling that i'd never had before in my life i didn't understand how it felt i couldn't recognize that i had actually had sex and then we had this big discussion on whether or not i was a virgin because though though she had sex with me i didn't ejaculate in her

Speaker 3 and uh so i was all this big debate on whether or not i was really still a virgin or i wasn't a virgin anymore so can i just 14 year old gareth after the first time

Speaker 5 you leave her house, close the front door behind you and you're walking home.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 What's going on with that? Cat that got the cream.

Speaker 3 High as a kite.

Speaker 5 Lucky boy, he thinks. I'm a really lucky boy.

Speaker 5 Miss Bowen's clear right from the outset. You can't tell anyone, but she needn't have bothered.
There's no way Gareth's going to risk it, Because he knows what they're doing isn't above board.

Speaker 5 He knows if people find out, there's a good chance they're going to put a stop to it.

Speaker 3 You think a 14-year-old boy's going to blow the whistle on that?

Speaker 5 It must have been so massive for you.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it fucking hardest world. What are you talking about? What the fuck? I'm lying here fucking...

Speaker 3 Like, just mental. Mental.
Absolutely, I didn't like it.

Speaker 3 I mean, you'd have to sit down and speak to a psychologist about, or a psychiatrist about what would come out of that, the thoughts and what that child would think, and the boundaries broken.

Speaker 3 I can't even do it now.

Speaker 5 So he takes this vow of silence. What he could never have guessed is how that silence, which right now feels so sweet, is going to turn so toxic and going to extend to the whole school.

Speaker 5 How he's going to end up desperate for someone to blow the whistle.

Speaker 5 Coming up in episode two.

Speaker 5 So the school would have known the teachers?

Speaker 3 100%.

Speaker 3 100%.

Speaker 3 And that summer, it was me and her, right? Against the world.

Speaker 3 Like, we were powerful, right?

Speaker 5 I could have killed her.

Speaker 3 I could.

Speaker 5 If I met her now, I think I'd strangle her. She's ruined his life.

Speaker 5 In the past, Sally Ann Bowen has denied the incident in the cafe with the Porno Mags ever took place.

Speaker 5 She's also denied that Gareth ever came into her house or that she had any kind of sexual contact with him.

Speaker 5 Lucky Boy is reported by me, Chloe Hajimathayu. The producer is Gary Marshall.
Additional production from Rebecca Moore. Sound design is by Hannah Varrell.
Original music by Tom Kinsella.

Speaker 5 Podcast artwork by Lola Williams and the executive producer is Basha Cummings.

Speaker 5 If you or someone you know has experienced the issues covered in this episode, there are places you can reach out to.

Speaker 5 If you have any concerns about a child, then you can contact the NSPCC's helpline by calling 0808 800 5000 or emailing help at nsppcc.org.uk or visiting their website.

Speaker 5 Children can contact Childline and talk to an impartial counsellor. No concern is too big or small to discuss.
Simply call 0800 1111 or visit their website for a one-to-one chat.

Speaker 5 For general concerns or talk, adults can contact the Samaritans on 116-123 or email jo at samaritans.org. That's jo at samaritans.org.

Speaker 5 Tortoise.

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