I Threw a Snowball as a Child, and Have Regretted It Ever Since

Where I live, we don't get much snow, but we used to when I was a kid. Every winter without fail, it seemed, although my memories of it could be warped by nostalgia.

I remember the snowfall of 1984 though. It wasn't the heaviest, or even the worst - not for the rest of the world at least. I was an 11 year old girl, living in the West of England with my mother and the snow changed my life in ways you can't even imagine.

In those days we didn't get text messages from schools about closures: You listened to the local radio when it snowed, and hoped against hope that your school would be on the list. On that occasion mine was, and although I'd planned to spend the entire day in my pyjamas watching shitty daytime TV and drinking hot chocolate, when my friend called round after lunch my mother forced me out of the door.

Over the years, I've tried not to blame my mother for what happened, but it’s hard. I was introverted and bookish, almost reclusive, and she was constantly urging me to get out more - get fresh air, socialise. I was never happy about it, but it had never had such serious repercussions before.

I spent the entire afternoon with Sasha, messing around in the park, making a crappy snowman that wouldn't stay upright. It got dark early, and by that point I was tired, my feet were numb and my gloves soaking, so I used the encroaching night as an excuse to go home.

Sasha walked with me most of the way, making sneak attacks with snowballs, but she had terrible aim and rarely hit me. It was only when got winged by one that I got pissed off enough to retaliate, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pleased when I hit her directly in the face.

She was furious at first, but once the sting and the shock had subsided, she was impressed by my accuracy and insisted it was a fluke. I threw another out of interest, aiming for a pillar box, and it was another dead hit.

After that, she wouldn't stop. I threw snowballs for her till my arm ached, with her telling me what to hit, making a 15 minute walk home stretch into half an hour, and it was full dark by the time I'd had enough. I told Sasha I wasn't going to do anymore, but Sasha was never very good with the word no.

Sasha was the opposite of me, loud and outgoing, and I often thought the only reason she was friends with me was for the joy of having someone around who was easy to bully and manipulate. She kept nagging me until I agreed to one more snowball.

Over the years, I've tried not to blame Sasha for what happened, but it’s even harder than not blaming my mother. At least I love my mother. Sasha was someone I tolerated at best - not really what I'd consider a friend these days.

I gathered up what was to be my last snowball of the day. I remember every moment clearly - it has imprinted itself on my mind like a stain. We were standing by a lamp post, circled by a puddle of yellow light, and I remember taking the snow I was going to use from the bottom of the post, hoping as I pressed it between my hands that there was no dog piss mixed in with it. Sasha was restless, shuffling from foot to foot, and I thought she was trying to keep warm until she told me where she wanted to aim.

There was a row of houses across the road from us, set apart and slightly higher than the other houses on the street. For some reason every child in the neighbourhood was slightly resentful of those houses, but nobody could ever say why. Maybe it was just because they were separate from the rest, like they thought themselves better than everyone else. I don't know. It was child’s logic. No sense to it at all.

Most of the houses were dark, but there was one all lit up, the front window an illuminated rectangle that to Sasha’s mind seemed to beg for a snowball. There were no curtains pulled, and even from where I stood I could see the pattern of the wallpaper clearly. It was dull and outdated, brown fronds like ferns fanning out over it. An old person’s house, I thought. I was a good girl. Always did my homework on time, tidied my room when I was told. I obeyed rules so automatically, in fact, that it was almost physically impossible for me to break one. It went against the grain of everything that I was. I couldn't ignore a “Keep Off the Grass” sign without feeling immensely uncomfortable, like there was a sniper’s gun focused between my shoulder blades, ready to take me down.

Sasha was loud and forceful, and there was no denying her. But I could fool her, I thought.

Aim for that window, she had said, and I made every outward appearance of doing so. She was jiggling up and down with excitement now, anticipation reaching a peak, and I stood there with my hand cocked back over my shoulder, the snowball in my hand transmitting its chill through the wool of my glove, laughing internally at the fact that I was defying her.

I was going to miss, you see. That was the plan. I was going to be a fraction off, and hit the wall beside the window instead, and even if she berated me afterwards I could live with that. I swung my arm, and in the split second before I released and launched the snowball I heard Sasha’s boots in the slush, fleeing the scene prematurely. She was abandoning me, and the feeling of betrayal was so great I miscalculated. The snowball left my hand and flew through the air in a perfectly described arc, little molecules catching the light from the streetlamp and glinting, a little jewel in each particle. I watched it with a feeling of helplessness I haven't felt before or since, the knowledge that it was going to hit the window the most certain thing in my life - more certain than death or taxes, absolutely inexorable.

Sasha was long gone when it made impact, and the fact of that was bad enough, but what was worse - what was much, much worse - was the silhouette that approached the window a millisecond beforehand, the shape of a person growing clearer behind the glass as they approached.

The fateful snowball hit where the person's head would be, exploding out across the pane in a splatter pattern, and I had enough time to see them lurch backwards in surprise before I started to run. My boots slipped on the pavement and I had a moment of feeling weightless before friction kicked in, and even as I windmilled my arms to keep balance I was going forward, escaping.

I expected to hear a door open. Expected angry shouting. But I heard nothing. I kept running anyway. Ran all the way home with my heart in my throat and my breath in my ears, and it's a wonder I never fell, but home was a place of safety. Home was somewhere I could push the real world away, a sanctuary where all problems receded, and once I got there I could erase my deed and pretend it never happened.

I was a good girl: I left my boots in the hallway after kicking the worst of the snow off on the front step. I put my gloves on the radiator in the hallway to dry. If I did good things it would detract from the bad thing I'd done.

I spent the rest of the evening warming up in front of the gas fire, a bowl of my mother's stew on my knee, a mug of hot chocolate on the hearth for when I finished, and by the time I went to bed I'd nearly got over my guilt.

My thoughts were all of Sasha as I lay in my bed, and how she'd deserted me. She'd left me all alone like the cowardly bitch she was to deal with any flack myself, and the anger sustained me, distracted me.

I was falling asleep practising how I would rebuke her when I saw her next when something hit my bedroom window.

It was a soft thud, quiet enough not to disturb someone sleeping but loud enough to startle someone who was still awake.

I got out of bed and pulled my curtain back.

There were clots of snow clinging to the outside of my window, drifting down in lumps, leaving little icy trails behind. Someone had thrown a snowball at my window, I realised, but when I looked down at the driveway below the only footprints there were my own from earlier.

It had to be Sasha, I reasoned. Not content with letting me down earlier, she had to exacerbate things by pulling this stunt, and it only renewed my bitterness at her.

It was ridiculous, of course: Like me she was 11 years old and her parents would have never let her out at this time of night. Plus the fact that she was far too lazy to venture out in the cold for a prank. But it was better to pretend that it was Sasha, and not consider the alternative: That whoever had been in the house I'd hit with my snowball had followed me home to deliver poetic retribution.

The school was closed again the following day, but this time I spent my freedom the way I wanted. When Sasha called around for me at lunchtime, I told her in a whispered but intense conversation on the doorstep to fuck off, and she was so shocked by my mutiny that she did. We didn't discuss the snowball against my window, but I knew she'd only deny it if we did. That night, just as I was on the edge of sleep, I heard the noise again: The soft, wet thump of something hitting my window. I didn't get out of bed this time, assuming it was punishment from Sasha for my rebellion, and before I dropped off I vowed revenge.

I always used to find something a bit sad about melting snow: The snowmen dwindling under the chilly glare of a winter sun; the pathetic little scraps of white clinging tenaciously to grass verges, slowly shrinking as the edges crept inwards. But this time, when the snow began to melt on the third day, I was glad: It would mean an end to my torment.

I confronted Sasha, and got the expected denial, but it was the end for us and she knew it. I made another friend that very day, someone quiet and timid like me, and felt all the better for it.

I got another snowball that night, but this time I expected it, and though it may have made me clench my fists under the shelter of my covers, I didn't stir myself to investigate. Sasha would get bored sooner or later.

It wasn't Sasha, I eventually had to admit to myself, and whoever it was did not get bored. Every night, long after the snow had disappeared, a snowball hit my window. It was always the same: Just as I was drifting off, teetering on the narrow margin between sleep and wakefulness, it would come, jolting me in my bed, jerking me rudely from the sandman’s clutches.

I stayed awake at the weekend, camped out by my window wrapped in blankets, crouching in the dark to catch the perpetrator in the act, but it didn't work. Inevitably, I started to doze off, and the phantom thrower struck in that moment.

For nearly two weeks this went on. I got to the point where I was afraid to sleep, knowing that I'd be disturbed anyway, and even though a snowball hitting my window wasn't the worst thing that could happen, the malice behind it got to me. I couldn't live with the thought that there was someone out there who was willing to take the time and make the effort to upset me like this, not to mention the planning that must have gone into it. They had to have collected snowballs and stowed them in their freezer specifically for this. How many did they have in there? I wondered. How long would this continue?

There had to be a finite number of snowballs, but I couldn't take it any more, and I decided the only thing I could do was to go to the house and apologise to the person whose window I'd hit.

I rehearsed my apology in my head as I walked to the victim’s house. Over the years the books I'd read had proved to me, in my mind at least, that Coming Clean and Apologising was always the right thing to do, and I was looking forward to an end to my nightly disruption. They had to accept my apology, I told myself, and when they did everything would be better.

I never got the chance to say what I'd practised. When I got there, there was a crowd gathered on the pavement, a little cluster of of people huddled together talking in low voices. There was a police car and an ambulance parked nearby, and as I watched two paramedics emerged from the open front door, wheeling a trolley that bore a single passenger, a sheet covering its face.

I wanted to know what had happened, but in those days we didn't question adults, so I hung around on the periphery of the little groups of people, hoping to overhear something that would enlighten me.

I didn't catch much, but what I heard was enough for me to get the gist:

The old man who'd lived in the house was dead. Neighbours had called the police when they'd realised that they hadn't seen him for a while, and the police had forced entry, stepping over a pile of mail that had accumulated on the doormat, following their noses to the living room where they found the man lying in a clotted pool of blood, sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling where the light bulb still burned.

He'd fallen backwards, someone reported. Hit his head on the corner of the coffee table. God knows how long he'd lain there, they said in hushed tones, but God wasn't the only one who knew. I knew too.

I don't imagine it's ever easy coming to terms with the concept that you've accidentally killed someone, but as a child I had no frame of reference.

I thought about telling my mother, but I couldn't bear the thought of her knowing, of seeing me as a murderer, of looking at me through new eyes.

I wrestled with my guilt all day, trying different tacks to understand how I was feeling, and by the time night fell I think I'd nearly found a solution: It was denial.

I hadn't killed him. It was coincidence, that was all. The night I'd thrown the snowball, I'd startled him but that was it. He'd fallen another time. He was old. Old people had unsteady joints, fell over at the drop of a hat. It wasn't my fault he'd hit his head and died there on the floor all alone….

I didn't get a snowball that night, nor any night afterwards, but what I got in the trade off was far worse.

I woke up in the early hours of the morning, my head empty of thoughts of guilt or anything otherwise, and lay there in the dark for a while, staring up at the blank square of my ceiling. I didn't know why I'd woken, and a quick glance at the slice of window visible through the gap in the curtains showed that no snowball had hit it this time.

I was wide awake, for no reason, and the house was silent around me. I sat up. There was a man in the corner of my bedroom, sat on the floor in the gap made by my wardrobe and my desk.

I couldn't make sense of what I was seeing at first because the presence of a man in the house was so alien, but even after I blinked he was still there.

He was an old man. Grey hair stained with something dark at the side. Blue eyes, pale like faded denim. He wore old man clothes: A zip up cardigan; pleated slacks; tartan slippers. His hands were bony with arthritis swollen knuckles, and he held a walking stick in the loose circle of his fingers, standing it upright even as he slouched, knees bent, feet flat on the carpet.

He stared without blinking, a blank gaze that was pointed right at me, and I screamed.

My mother came rushing into the room, of course, but even as I stuttered hysterically and pointed with shaking fingers, the man never moved, never flinched. His eyes were deep sunk, peering out from sagging, mottled flesh, and they remained stalwartly aimed in my direction. He didn't blink as my mother investigated his corner, didn't stir or twitch a single muscle, and I sobbed as my mother turned back to me with the news that there was nobody there.

She told me I'd had a nightmare. It's what we tell children when they report things we can't explain. I've told my children the same thing.

But he was still there, you see - still sitting and staring as my mother said those words, and I had to cover my own eyes with my hands to blot out the accusation in his.

I knew who he was, of course. There was never any doubt. And when my mother told me I could sleep with her I fled the room at a run, dragging my pillow with me.

I spent the night under the covers, just a small gap above my head for air. And I didn't peep out, not once, for fear of seeing him in the doorway.

It took me a long time to get back to sleep.

When I got up the next day, the memory of my scare was faint, just like how a dream fades in the daylight, and a cautious glance in my bedroom confirmed that my visitor was gone. I searched the corner for any clue, feeling silly but doing it nevertheless, and he'd left no evidence behind: No speck of cardigan fluff or smudge of head blood. Almost like he hadn't been there.

I got dressed feeling much happier and went downstairs for breakfast, and there he was again.

There was maybe a foot of space between the fridge and the wall, but he'd managed to jam himself in there sideways, standing cheek to cheek with the ironing board and broom, head turned so he could look at me.

This time I didn't scream, but stood with my eyes closed and counted to ten. When I opened them, he had gone.

I got the milk from the fridge with shaking hands.

I took my bowl of cereal into the living room to eat sat on the sofa as I watched TV, and tried to ignore the staring eyes that peeped at me over the top of the television. He must have been in a half crouch for him to maintain eye contact like that, but I couldn't see the rest of him because the TV cabinet was in the way. Just the top of his head, and those eyes, watching me like I was a TV myself.

He was in the bathroom when I went to clean my teeth, standing in the bathtub looking around the shower curtain. I could see him in the mirror, his reflection motionless behind my shoulder.

When I opened my wardrobe to get my coat, he was there, stooping to fit himself in, peeping between the gaps of my clothes with a neck crooked downwards. He had been a tall man in life, I thought.

He stayed with me the rest of the day, following me to school. When I bent down to tie my shoelace, he was lying on his belly under the parked car next to me. When I stopped to post a letter, I saw the gleam of his eyes in the post box.

I saw him numerous times at school: Crouched awkwardly in my locker when I went to fetch my books; standing behind the gap in the stage curtains at assembly, looking over the headmaster's shoulder. Under my desk during maths when I dropped my pen and reached down to pick it up.

I couldn't feel his presence in the way I'd feel another person standing there, but I knew he was there all the same.

He followed me home, his blank face visible in the windows of passing buses, his still form coming into view in alleyways, a dark outline with eyes that shone in the gloom.

I was tired at that point, assuming he was a manifestation of my guilt, wondering if I was losing my mind. Wondering if that was his intention - to drive me insane.

He was there during dinner, slotted into his place behind the TV, and when I went to bed he was back his corner, sat there with his walking stick, watching. Always watching.

He was there when I got up, and remained with me for days and days afterwards.

I went to his funeral two weeks later. Sneaked in at the back dressed in my school uniform. There were hardly any people there, but nobody noticed my presence. Nobody noticed his either, standing behind the vicar, but I did. I learned his name - Arthur Young - and his age - 85 - and I learned how he was a widower who'd lost contact with his children. It was sad to hear about, but he didn't look sad. He had no expression on his face whatsoever. As usual. I hoped this might be an end to it, that a line had been drawn under his life and death, but when I left church there he was, standing amidst the gravestones motionless, wearing those same clothes, holding that same stick.

I spoke to him that night as he sat in his corner in my room, asked him why he was doing this. Asked him if there was something he wanted from me, but he didn't reply. He never replied. He just Was.

I suppose I accepted him after that - accepted his presence as a constant in my life, but I never got used to it. Not really.

You're probably wondering how I eventually got rid of him.

The fact is, I never have.

I've been married, had children, got divorced, and he's still with me.

He was there in the church when I was pronounced Wife to my Husband, hiding in plain sight beside the altar.

He was there in the delivery room when I gave birth to my children, squatting under the bed, riding under trollies.

He was there when I celebrated my divorce with my friends, reflected in the mirror above the bar at the pub as I downed shots and tried not to cry.

The furthest away I've seen him was about 100 yards away. I was on a train and I spotted him standing in a field amongst a herd of quietly cudding cows. They gave him a wide berth but didn't seem afraid of him. He was back with me within a few minutes, standing outside the window staring in, standing on nothingness as the train whizzed along, not a hair stirred by the rush of air.

The closest he's been is a few inches away, crammed in next to me in a crowded lift. His face was next to mine, close enough that I would have felt him breathing, if he still breathed.

There have been times he's lain in bed with me.

I've tried to get rid of him. Consulted mediums, burned sage, moved house. Moved countries, even, but he's always accompanied me.

I'm 44 years old, my children 15 and 17, and there hasn't been a day in 33 years that I haven't seen him. I'm coming to terms with the fact that when I die his eyes will probably be the last thing I see. A harsh punishment for a silly accident, I've always thought.

There has only been one thing I've never tried, and that's this: Telling you all about it.

I've left this as a last resort, hoping it would work, but even as I write this he's with me, sitting beneath my desk. I don't think he'll ever leave.