By Troy Banyan, Content Team Contributor

Let me start by telling you about my late mother who suffered from chronic anxiety for as long as I could remember, but my introduction to her state of mind was when I was 16.

It was in the sweltering summer of 1976 during the school holidays. I’d taken my O’levels and CSE’s in the months leading up to the holidays and was awaiting the results. This was in the days before they got posted out, so you had to go to the school and collect them. I was not confident of obtaining good grades at either level. It wasn’t that I was dumb, I just struggled to apply myself academically. In my mind there was always something better to do than study.

My secondary school was very old and much of it was wooden in structure. On the Saturday prior to their collection, my mother – who was 46 at the time – had hung out washing on the line in the back garden and had forgotten to bring it in, but as it was one of the hottest summers on record and there was no rain forecast it obviously didn’t cross her mind to go out the back and bring it in, especially as she and my dad always went out to their local pub on a Saturday night.

In the early hours of Sunday August 8th, I was lying in bed, trying to drop off to sleep when I heard the sound of distant crackling and voices outside. I got out of bed, pulled the curtains back and in the distance I could see an orange glow. I opened a window and the crackling noises immediately increased in volume; there was also an acrid smell in the air. There was clearly a fire…but where was it?

I alerted my parents who slept in the back bedroom and who were fast asleep. My dad was snoring and my mum must’ve been zonked too as she wasn’t nudging, sighing heavily or both. I said, “Quick, I think there’s a fire nearby”. I left them to put on their dressing gowns and slippers…and as I went into my bedroom to don mine I could hear multiple sirens in the distance and many more voices outside. In no time the three of us were on the front path, watching hoardes of people going down the road. We joined them: everyone was in nightclothes of some description. It didn’t seem to matter, people just needed to know where the glow was coming from.

By the time we got to the end of my long road, and we had been passed by three or four hurtling fire engines, it was clear that it was my school that was going up in flames. In a matter of hours it was burnt to the ground.

Fast forward to the afternoon. My mum realised she’d left the washing out overnight… and whilst it was bone dry it also smelt faintly of smoke. Although the school was a mile away from my house the smell had clearly travelled in whatever wind there was. It was then that she noticed my jeans were missing off of the line, nothing else…just my jeans.

Click: the anxiety clock in her head started ticking.

Firstly, “how did someone get into the back garden?”. My dad – the force of reason –  answered, “if they want to get in they’ll find a way”.

Secondly, “But, why our back garden? Why not someone else’s?”. My dad, again, “Why not? It was probably just a random act. Or, for all we know, they might have got into other back gardens in the area and stole from someone else’s lines as well”, adding pointedly, “if they’d left their washing overnight that is. We just don’t know”.

Thirdly, “But, why just our Troy’s jeans?”. Sighing, with growing impatience at having been here many times before, “I’m sure it wasn’t in any way personal. They probably didn’t do preparatory research into who lived up the street, in this house”.

With the ‘why questions’ now exhausted, fast forward to tea-time on that Sunday when the local news came on the TV. The headline story was, “Kingsfield School burnt down in the early hours of this morning”, and – as commentary of the school’s long history spoke over images of its charred remains – we all watched on intently.

Then came the words that cranked the anxiety clock up into top gear and which still resonate in my mind even to this day, almost fifty years on.

“Arson has been suspected and there have been reports of a suspicious youth in the area. He was wearing jeans”

We now go from “But, why…’ mode into ‘But, what if…’ mode.

My dad looked across at my mum – now rocking in her armchair whilst gnawing her fingernails – and closed his eyes in resigned anticipation at what was coming next.

“But, what if they think that’s our Troy?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, this boy was seen looking suspicious near the school wearing jeans”

“And?”

“Well, the police are going to think it’s our Troy. It’s just too coincidental”

I then joined in, “Have you any idea how many pairs of jeans there are around at any one given time?”

“Plus…”, she ignored me, “…you don’t think you did very well in your exams, so the results would have gone up in smoke. Oh, he’s going to be arrested and put in prison”.

As she wrung in her hands, with tears welling up in her eyes, I looked askance at my dad and without speaking he conveyed the look of someone who’d been putting up with this for some time…but, until now, it had been a relatively well-kept secret. This was, in his eyes, the start of yet another episode and no amount of trying to make her see reason was going to work.

He knew it was too late, the downward spiral had well and truly started and – in my mum’s case at least – there was no escape from it…no matter how much effort was expended trying to convince or placate her. It was something she would have to deal with, usually with medication, until the next episode came along to start the cycle off again.

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