It wasn't how I expected it to be. It was thicker. Darker. Like paint. Someone had spilled paint across the scuffed once-white tiles of the shower area and out into the changing room. Maybe they had started redecorating while we were playing five-a-side. Four-a-side now for my team, of course. It wasn't blood. Blood didn't creep like that. Blood didn't edge towards me, forming fingers read to grab my ankle.

Saying that, nor did paint.

And they weren't decorating. Even at 12 years old, I knew you didn't paint white tiles in a school shower room. You didn't even, often, clean them.

Hands were shaking me. Voices all around, shouting, worried, laughing.

I opened my eyes and stopped screaming. My throat was sore as if a hand had reached in with a knife and scraped out the skin. I hadn't realised I'd been screaming until I stopped and the sudden silence of everyone else shutting up too hit me like a fist to my face.

I opened my eyes again. I hadn't known, either time, that I'd closed them. My mother was crouched in front of me, a worried look wrinkling her face. I was lying on the bed in the school nurse's office.

"Baby! What's wrong? Are you ok? What happened? They said you fell and hit your head? Are you ok? Baby?"

Her hands were on me, stroking me. I was a baby kitten with everyone around wanting to stroke me. I wasn't a baby. I was twelve. I pushed her hands away.

"I'm fine mum," I said. I wasn't a 'baby' and I didn't want to be called one either. Stop fussing, I thought, thinking better of saying it out loud. My head didn't hurt, so I didn't think I'd banged it. I couldn't really remember anything after the ball connecting with my groin.

"I'm taking you home, baby."

Grrrr.

I was fine, really. I couldn't remember anything untoward from the changing room and put down the fact that (I was told) I'd fainted down to the pain of a football treating my special place like a goal. It was embarrassing. Word had clearly whirled around the school, eager to spread word of my humiliation, leaping from lips to lips like Torvill and Dean on ice, its blades cutting and the faces and jeers chilling. I was pleased to be going home. A few days off, my mother told me. That suited me. Let the fuss die down.

At least it got me out of PE.

I managed to milk the situation for three days. My mother fussed much more than I liked, but at least I could watch what I wanted and I didn't have to face my friends.

The first day I was a little shaken up, but I didn't really know why. My mum was checking on me every five minutes, which was overbearing, but at least she cared. I knew some of my friends' mums would have left them at school or shoved them upstairs out of the way so they could watch daytime TV over a can of Carlsberg and a cigarette. I didn't exactly feel lucky, but it was comforting in an overpowering sort of way.

I slept well that night.

The second day, she managed to extend her appearances to ten to fifteen minute intervals, though she did insist on feeding me soup for my lunch. I've never been a fan of soup. I preferred to have something I could chew on for a meal. Soup was more of a drink than a meal. Where was the meat? The potatoes? Even the vegetables (but don't tell anyone I asked that).

I didn't sleep as well that night. I dreamed of being caught in a river which flowed red. I was caught in the current, pulled towards a waterfall I couldn't see but could feel was looming closer. I woke up to my mother holding me. Apparently I'd been crying in my sleep. She should call a doctor, she said. Take me to hospital.

"It's just a bad dream," I told her. I was fine. Really I was.

Wasn't I?

The third day, she returned to her five minute visits. I tried to insist I didn't need it and she was missing her episodes of Crossroads or Neighbours or whatever she watched during the day. None of that mattered, she told me. Not as long as her baby was ok.

On the third night, I woke up more than once. Luckily, I didn't cry or shout out or anything like that. I was sweating. I was panting. I felt as if I'd run the school's cross country route about a dozen times.

I'd wet my bed.

Luckily, I had clean sheets in the cupboard in my room. It was once the airing cupboard containing the hot water tank. That had, not long ago, been taken out and radiators put in. It was a wasted effort, as my parents thought central heating would cost 'an arm and a leg', so the whole house was still heated by the single gas fire in the living room. At least I had an extra place to put my clothes and toys.

And bed linen.

I changed my bed and stretched my wet sheets over the cold radiator. My dad would put it on for half an hour before he'd go to work. That was all we were allowed apart from, occasionally, another half hour on an evening just so our teeth wouldn't be chattering when we came out of the bath. I hoped they'd be dry before I went to back school in the morning so I could hide the evidence.

What woke me? What was it that so invaded my dreams and chased me back to the waking world? What had made my urine flee my body as sleep had? Were they arm in arm, running for their lives, dragging my breath along with them for company? Was my sweat chasing after, not wanting to be left alone in whatever nightmare ravaged my night-time imaginings?

I didn't know. I couldn't remember. Perhaps it was the resilience of being 12 years old. Perhaps it was simply too frightening and the memories had fled along with everything else. Or sleep and urine alike had absconded with the wayward dream to protect the innocent boy they had left behind.

Perhaps, I'd simply wet the bed.

It was time to return to school. The sheets had dried, partly due to the meagre offerings of heat my father allowed and partly the hours between being stripped and morning. At least I could quickly remake my bed then mess it up to appear it had been slept in. I folded away the not-quite-clean sheets and hoped my mother wouldn't notice.

The trip to school seemed to take all day. I could imagine getting there just in time to turn around and go back home. Unfortunately, the minutes were just taking their time, spacing out the seconds in between like a trail of sweets, with me as Hansel following politely and hungrily along. I arrived at the school gates with just enough time to spare for my friends to semi-playfully make fun of my fainting episode. I took the brunt of the jibes and jokes with a facade of smiles. I'd do the same if I were them. Cracking jokes, poking ribs. It was part of being at school.

Of course, when I saw the blood dripping off my desk in English later that morning, not quite coagulating but thick enough to look like crimson snot dangling off the edge of the desk lid, the teasing ceased. I didn't scream. I didn't faint. I stopped. My feet no longer worked. My eyes no longer blinked. I suppose my lungs alternatively inflated and deflated and my heart continued to pump, though maybe a little faster, but I couldn't tell. I couldn't hear the teacher or the pupils talking to me nor could I feel them pulling at me to make me move.

My world had disappeared and all I could see was the blood.

Then, I think, I did faint.

At least it would give my friends something more to take the Mickey out of me for.