Anyone who was ever bullied as a child would be forgiven for allowing themselves to fantasise about what it would be like to bump into their old nemesis again, years later.
Maybe they’d have a little speech prepared, or would stare through them with silent contempt and watch them cringe.
Of course, in every one of these scenarios, time has not been kind to the bully. The person who seemed so intimidating and powerful back in the school playground has been diminished to a sad, lonely failure, begging forgiveness.
Melanie Lally still doesn’t know what drove her to look up Dale, the boy who’d blighted her childhood more than 30 years ago.
More than blighted; it wouldn’t be an understatement to say Dale, and his gang, effectively ruined Melanie’s life.
After all, the unrelenting teasing, name-calling and serious, physical assaults – he’d once pushed her down a flight of concrete steps and also held her under water during a swimming lesson ‘for a laugh’ – meant that Melanie went from a bright little girl, who dreamed of one day being a solicitor or a police inspector, to someone who dropped out of school aged 14.
And yet there she was, back in 2020 – by now in her mid-30s – typing his name into Facebook.
‘I don’t know what I was looking for,’ admits Melanie, now 41. Out of curiosity, mainly, and possibly for closure; she needed to understand why Dale had done what he did, why he’d hated her so much.
Over several months in 2023, Dale and Melanie spoke every day
Five years after Melanie looked up her old childhood bully, they married, walking down the aisle in February this year
No doubt, Freud could unpack a lot from Melanie’s feelings for Dale – but what would he make of the fact they are now husband and wife?
And if she’d chanced upon a snapshot of Dale, now with a receding hairline and beer belly, well, all the better.
‘But I must admit, there was a part of me that still wanted Dale to like me, she says. ‘It made no sense; he’d been so cruel, yet I’d spent so much of my childhood longing to be accepted by him, that it became almost like a crush.’
No doubt, Freud could unpack a lot from Melanie’s feelings for Dale – but what would he make of the fact they are now husband and wife?
That’s right; five years after Melanie looked up her old childhood bully, they married, walking down the aisle in February this year.
No one is more surprised than the ex-bully himself, sitting by his new wife’s side, gazing at her adoringly. They seem like they’ve been together forever – and, in a way, they have. Melanie never forgot what he did to her, although Dale largely blocked out his past behaviour.
‘When Mel first messaged me, I honestly had no idea who she was,’ he admits. ‘But she was quick to remind me of all the awful things I’d done, and I was really embarrassed.
‘I was following the pack. I had good parents who raised me to know better. But at school, when my mates started teasing Melanie, I joined in. It became my identity.
‘Now, all I want to do is make up for it and I often talk to my own children, and I know Mel does with hers, about how to be on high alert for bullies like me.’
How they fell into their roles as bully and victim sounds typical. Melanie came from a family where money was tight. The youngest of four, her dad worked all hours as a forklift truck driver and mechanic, while her mother worked nights as a civil servant.
Dale, meanwhile, lived comfortably, his mother a hygiene technician and his father a plumber.
‘I was the frizzy-haired, free school dinners kid, in cheap trainers,’ says Melanie. ‘Dale always brought in a lovingly prepared packed lunch and on non-uniform days he wore an expensive Manchester United kit. He was one of the ‘cool’ kids; I wasn’t.’
Quiet and studious, Melanie was in all the top sets at their junior school in Slough, whereas Dale, by his own admission, was more interested in being the class clown.
Although he now says he can’t remember specific incidents, Dale mocked her relentlessly. ‘Tramp’ was one of the milder insults, in reference to her cheap, hand-me-down uniform.
‘I was just a horrible kid. I didn’t realise how badly I was hurting her,’ he says. ‘I thought it was a bit of fun.’
The bullying intensified in 1993 when Melanie’s 17-year-old brother was critically injured in a car accident and died months later – a tragedy that ripped her family apart.
Melanie went from a bright little girl, who dreamed of one day being a solicitor or a police inspector, to someone who dropped out of school aged 14
Although he now says he can’t remember specific incidents, Dale, pictured as a child, mocked her relentlessly
‘I was grieving and completely alone. It felt like I had a sign on my head saying ‘pick on me’,’ says Melanie, who was then nine.
One of the most terrifying incidents came during a school swimming lesson – another episode Dale had erased from his memory, and was horrified when Melanie reminded him of it.
‘It was my 11th birthday,’ she recalls. ‘Dale and another boy held me under the water. Just to get a laugh, just because I was an easy target. It was terrifying, I honestly thought I was going to drown.
‘I remember telling the teacher afterwards that I could have died. She just said, ‘Well you didn’t, so stop telling tales.’
‘From that moment on, whenever I was bullied, I didn’t bother telling anyone. No one really did anything about bullying back then, it was just a part of school life.’
When Dale and Melanie started at the local secondary school in 1996, things didn’t improve. If anything, they got worse.
Dale – by then a good-looking lad, with a wide following of friends – found picking on Melanie, and vulnerable children like her, good sport. Even better, Melanie never complained to a teacher, or had a parent storming down to the school making a fuss.
‘The worst occasion, and one I’ll never forget, was when all the classes had just finished. As I came out of my classroom, Dale saw me and shoved me hard. I went flying down a flight of concrete stairs.
‘For a moment I genuinely thought I was paralysed. My back was so sore, but thankfully I hadn’t broken anything.
‘Once again, I kept quiet and told no one. If I limped, or had a few nasty bruises I hid them well and no one noticed.’
Of course, now, Dale can see how dangerous that was. But why did he do it?
‘To impress my friends I suppose, to get a laugh,’ he says. ‘Back then, that was all I cared about. It’s never about hate with bullies, it’s all about status and what your friends think.’
Melanie, meanwhile, had a ‘small tight-knit’ group of friends – but all of them were so afraid of Dale and his friends that no one ever dared to intervene.
By Year 8, Melanie – once a bright child – began skipping school. Her parents – wrapped up either in work or grief following her brother’s death – scarcely noticed.
Desperate to escape her torment, she deliberately got herself excluded. When the school told her it was time to come back, she refused.
Though relieved to be free of the bullying, for a girl who had once loved learning and achieved good grades, her newfound ‘freedom’ was bittersweet.
Astonishingly, given her age, the school seemingly gave up on her until she was 16, when she was invited to sit a few of her GCSEs at an educational unit. Despite all her missed schooling, she still managed to achieve Bs and Cs in maths and English – though sadly these were below the top grades she’d once been predicted.
She started working in retail aged 17, but the pain and humiliation of her school days remained. If she ever saw Dale in town, the old fear would come back and she’d cross the busiest street, just to avoid him.
Dale, meanwhile, left school at 16 and started work as a tiler – thankfully leaving his old friends behind.
Aged 19, Melanie picked a town at random and headed north to Lancashire, a new job in retail and a fresh start – which didn’t exactly go to plan.
Two disastrous relationships later, she found herself a single mother to two girls, now aged 17 and ten. ‘My self-worth was so low that I stayed in unhealthy relationships. If I’d been stronger, maybe I’d have left earlier.’
Dale stayed in Slough and had a 12-year relationship, having two children: a son, who is now 15, and a daughter who is 22.
One evening in 2020, aged 36, Melanie was alone at home, scrolling through Facebook, when she decided to look up Dale while reminiscing about her old school friends.
She recognised him from his photo immediately: the same cocky smile and, disappointingly, still nice looking. She recoiled, but at the same time felt that old longing for acceptance.
Before she could think about it further, she added him as a friend – with him accepting her request that same day.
‘Sorry, do I know you?’ he asked in a message. Dale confessed he didn’t recognise Melanie from her picture at all – something that seemed astonishing to Melanie, given how instrumental his actions had been in her life.
‘Yes, I’m the girl you used to pick on every day at school, remember?’ she typed back.
Over the next few weeks, they exchanged a few messages catching up on each other’s lives.
Melanie told Dale how his actions had caused her to leave their school.
‘He seemed genuinely taken aback when I reminded him of everything he’d done, and actually seemed a really nice guy,’ says Melanie. ‘He said he was really sorry for all of it, that he’d been going along with the other boys, but he shouldn’t have done. He was really remorseful.’
Of course, that Dale now seemed to be a ‘nice’ person was somewhat confusing for Melanie. How had her bully become someone she could now imagine being friends with?
Yet she was relieved to have finally received recognition of what happened, and an apology. With the ghost from her past now excised – although not entirely forgiven – she thought no more of it until 2023, when they picked up the thread of their conversation again on hearing about the death of a mutual friend. This time, they started talking properly, and something ‘clicked’ for both.
Over the next few months, Dale and Melanie spoke every day.
‘We were constantly messaging or on the phone,’ she says. ‘It felt like we’d known each other for ever. We talked about our past, the people we used to know and our lives now. And bit by bit, something started to change.’
Melanie was cautious. After all, this was her childhood tormentor.
‘I kept thinking, ‘Is this the same person who used to make me cry?’ she says. ‘But he made me laugh so much, real belly laughs. And that’s not easy to do with me. It was strange. I hadn’t seen him in decades and yet chatting felt so natural.’
The day before Valentine’s Day in 2024, Melanie told Dale she’d never received anything romantic for the occasion, in any relationship.
‘I said it jokingly and honestly didn’t expect anything,’ she says. ‘When he said he’d send me flowers, I thought he was mocking me again like he used to. I half-expected him to laugh and say, ‘As if anyone would send you flowers!’
But at 6pm the next day, there was a knock at the door – and a huge bunch of flowers. The happiness she felt was overwhelming.
Just five days later, Dale told Melanie he loved her during a phone call. Delighted, though utterly shocked, she didn’t say it back until they spoke again a few days later.
In March 2024, Dale took a train to Lancashire to visit Melanie – the first time they’d met in person since school.
‘He stayed for a few hours,’ she says. ‘We went for a walk, talked and laughed. I told him about my last relationship, which had been turbulent. I wasn’t planning to get involved with anyone again and was content being on my own. But when he left, it felt like something was missing.’
Dale felt it too: ‘My parents had passed away and my relationship hadn’t lasted. I’d felt lonely for a long time, but suddenly I had Mel. It felt like a light had come back into my life.’
By June, Dale was visiting regularly. Until one day, he just didn’t leave.
In July, Dale proposed. ‘I got down on one knee at home and Mel thought I was joking!’ he says. ‘But I meant every word. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.’
It will certainly sound shocking to many, given Dale’s past actions, that Melanie was able to overlook them – let alone enter into a relationship with him. After all, can people really change that much?
‘I took Dale for the person he is now, not who he was then,’ she explains. ‘I’ve seen with my own eyes that he’s changed since being that immature child who should have known better.’
However, she admits she was nervous about how her eldest daughter would react to Dale.
‘I told her everything he did to me at school, and she was surprised and sad to hear what I’d been through. But I also explained that people change. Dale’s not that person any more. And she loves him – they have the same sense of humour and get on so well.’
The couple married in February 2025 at a local registry office.
‘If you’d told me at age ten that I’d end up marrying Dale, I’d have burst into tears or burst out laughing, says Melanie. ‘But here we are, happier than I’ve ever been.’
Dale admits he still feels guilt over the past.
‘I can’t make up for ruining Mel’s childhood,’ he says. ‘But I like to think I’m a better man now. I buy her flowers all the time because I love seeing the smile on her face. I’ll never take her love for granted.’
Melanie isn’t sure she’s forgiven him completely.
‘I can’t say I’ve totally forgiven him. What happened shaped my life. But he now treats me better than anyone ever has. He makes me feel wanted and loved.’
Looking back, Melanie sees how everything led her here.
‘If Dale hadn’t bullied me, I might have stayed in school and never left Slough. In a strange way, I’m thankful. It pushed me onto a different path, one that led back to him.
‘My girls have both been bullied and I won’t let the schools ignore it like they did in my day. I’ve found my confidence and my voice. I refuse to let them suffer like I did.’
How would she feel if one of her daughters later went on to enter into a relationship with their bully?
‘I’d make sure I knew who they were, what they’d done and whether she truly knew what she was getting into,’ Melanie says. ‘While some people deserve a second chance, this isn’t true of everyone.’
Dale is certainly thankful for his second chance.
‘If I could go back and change how I treated Mel, I would in a heartbeat. But I can’t. So now, I’m going to keep proving every day that I’m not that person any more, and I’ll never stop showing her how much she means to me.’
He adds: ‘Some people from our past still don’t know we’re together and the ones who do are shocked. Some don’t believe it’s real.’
But for Melanie, it’s the realest thing of all.
‘They say everything happens for a reason. And I truly believe it now. What happened back then wasn’t nice, but I’m living proof that even the most painful past can have a beautiful ending.’
