Chapter 1

Laying on the sofa with a hot water bottle under a blanket trying to keep warm. Gloves touching the keyboard sticking out from my prized mans dressing gown and cotton pyjama's.



52 years since I entered the world with my head down a toilet, if my mothers tales are true and not just demeaning!
I am the second of 2 daughters.
My parents were young lovers. 
Mums parents disowned her as she ran away from home, lived in a squat and got pregnant.
After my sister was born, in an unmarried mothers home, dad got a licence through the courts, they got married and lived with my dads parents.
My nan disliked my mum for being lazy and laying in bed half the day and my grandfather attempted to rape my mum, when she was pregnant with me, but got caught by my dads brother before the deed was done. They then managed to get a small 2 bedroom flat in a village nearby.

Looking at photographs you see an ordinary happy looking little girl. My sister was very pretty, blond with blue eyes, while I had long dark brown hair that grew into natural ringlets until 3 days before I started school.
I made a fuss about mum washing it in the bath and I cried when she tried to comb it, so she whisked me off to a helpful neighbour and I started school with a crew cut.
I got teased that I looked like a boy and In my first week I got paraded around school with a lock of blond hair that I had cut from the ponytail of the little girl sitting next to me in class.

I didn't feel completely unloved but from the earliest memories mum was never tactile and dad hadn't hugged me since I was sat on his lap one day and gently moved my fingers around his palm "Round and round the garden like a teddy......" He threw me across the room swore at me and sent me to bed with no tea.

It was hard times for mum and dad. Dad would go out shooting and we sat and watched as he skinned rabbits on the kitchen table and mum cleaned other peoples houses. We survived mostly on eggy mountains, mashed potato with an egg on top.
I remember being happy on my 5th birthday. We went to the cinema and watched Chitty chitty bang bang and I had a large colouring book of the film.

Mum and dad made there peace with my grandparents that same year and we started visiting regularly.They had moved to another village and lived in a prefabricated home. It had a green lawn out the front with a plastic pink flamingo on metal spike legs in the middle.

My nan was great except for her greasy cakes we were told to accept and eat so as not to upset her. They were unique, crunchy topped, but you could squeeze oily fat from the paper cases. We loved her brawn though.

I never thought it was sexual when my grandfather sat me on his lap and started to hurt me with his hand between my legs.  I knew it was a secret. He would say if I didn't tell him I liked it he was going to touch harder. If I ever told anyone then something very very bad would happen and I would be taken away. I was scared and didn't tell. I would often be sitting on his hand in the same room as my parents with him talking while touching me, I hated skirts or dresses.
 
When I was 7 years old my brother was born. We went out less and we moved further away to a house on a council estate in a town. 

My grandparents also moved into a bungalow in there same village. We would visit and my parents would be distracted in another room while he would hurt me. In the bathroom, bedroom, green house and the coal shed.... I got in so much trouble for making my clothes dirty.

As I got a little older my grandfather would take me and my sister out walking through the country lanes and across the poppy fields, (I hate poppy's), to the white chalk cross where a plane had once crashed. My sister would be lifted over the fence and would run to the cross to get a piece of the chalk from the top of the hill to draw on the path on the way back. I would be left to his big dirty hands.

I grew to dislike my parents as they never believed anything I said over my sister or brother, She was older so was allowed to go do things I wasn't and he was the precious baby of the family. I would argue fight and bully them at home. I couldn't tell anyone about my grandfather. He had told me no one would believe me anyhow and I believed him.
Dad was working long hours so we didn't see much of him or my grandparents for a while. But both my parents started getting heavy handed with me as I was angry, spiteful and aggressive. Dishing out my punishment at the dinner table. Dads belt or the bamboo stick across my legs and sent to bed with no food. I learnt to be defiant and not cry.

I had friends at school and we played and had fun until that fateful day we played kiss chase. Brian was in my class. He was always untidy and smelly and this day was no exception. He joined in our game and we all ran around excited but he caught me. He had a very green runny nose and I was pushing him away but he kept trying to kiss me. Then I grabbed his arm and swung him away from me. He screamed and cried. His arm broke in two places. I had to stand outside the headmasters office for every break until the end of term.
To the headmaster it was violence, but to me it was an accident. I decided I was being unfairly punished and would make it worthwhile.

My grandfather had got a job maintaining a graveyard.
He took me and my sister with him on several occasions.
My sister was given gloves, a little trowel and seeds or bulbs and told where to plant them while I was led into his work shed. It was new and had a strong smell of pine. (I still hate that smell).
I remember having my lower clothes removed and being lifted onto a shelf. My grandfather hurt me so badly using funnel shaped lids off of canisters. I would bleed and be sore walking after. I hated him, I hated everyone and I hated the world. If I cried I would be in trouble for making a fuss about nothing.
I told no one.

We had visits to my grandparents nearly every weekend when I was 9 and I did everything I could, making out I was ill, faking injuries and even rubbing grit in my knees, grazing them so I wouldn't have to go. I was told I was a nasty selfish child. I did anything to not be alone with my grandfather and was getting into so much trouble at home and school, fighting. At times I convinced myself that everything and everyone in the world was a cardboard cut out on scenery and only animated when I was in the room with just a tape recorder running behind closed doors. I wanted everything to stop.

It was in September 1972. I was going back to school on my 10th birthday after a hot calm summer. Then before school my mum said we would be spending the weekend at my grandparents. We hadn't been since July.
My week was fretful culminating near the end of the week in telling my best friend, through tears, that I was scared to go away for the weekend and why.
She told our teacher, he told the headmaster and I was hauled off to the office.

He asked me if it was true. Said I was causing a lot of trouble and then tried to contact mum and dad, but they were both working so they contacted one of my aunts that had children in my school.
My aunt took me from school to a shop and we got sweets and ice cream and went to her house for the afternoon. She asked me some questions about what had happened and then told me never to talk about it again to anyone, not ever, especially my mum and dad as it was going to be sorted out so not to worry.
She walked me to the bus stop and I went home on the school bus and said nothing.

The weekend came and on Saturday morning we headed to my grandparents. When we got there loads of relatives were milling around and cousins playing tag on the lawn.
We had sandwiches and fizzy drinks like a picnic and then later in the afternoon we were told to form a queue by the front door and they led us to into the bungalow. The adults stood at the door as one by one all the children were going into a bedroom to say goodbye. I was confused about whatever was happening and when I got to the door I froze, saw granddad laying in his bed with his arms out towards me. Dad started pushing me through the door but I had a tantrum refusing to go to his bedside.
My dad lost the plot, grabbed me, took me outside, and slapped at the flesh on top of my leg
until he ran out of steam.

That night my grandfather died and I thought I had killed him.