I was punched on the school bus. Being violently bullied changed me – and affected one of the biggest decisions of my life

I’ve worked hard to leave the intimidation I experienced in the past. But when I met the man I wanted to marry, those childhood memories took me by surprise

The bullying began shortly after my fifth birthday. My family had moved from Dorset to a small village in Buckinghamshire. I started a new school in September, just before my third sister was born. It should have been idyllic. I remember everyone being excited about the new baby on the way. My school was small and set in the heart of the countryside, with playing fields bordered by woodland. It was about a mile from our new home. If the weather was good, my mother tried to encourage me to walk with her. Sometimes she would repurpose my lunchbox as a punnet and fill it with blackberries picked from the hedgerow on the way home. But she was heavily pregnant, and at the time the mother of three (soon to be four) children aged five and under. It made practical sense for me to catch the school bus.

Weird things were already happening at school. Initially I put it down to the shock of the new. The games were boisterous – my sisters and I could be rough with each other, but everything seemed to go a little further and cut a little deeper. I’d been startled by a group of girls who had reached under my skirt and tugged my knickers down to my ankles. Maybe they thought they were being funny? I just wasn’t sure whether I was in on the joke, or whether I was the joke. At first, it felt a little like being in a dream or visiting a foreign country. Almost nothing made sense to me, but I knew I was the only one who couldn’t understand, and it was down to me to work it out.