Chapter 2

Another evening laying on the sofa. Jeans and sweatshirt under the blanket with my hot water bottle taking off the edge. I have allowed myself some heat from an oil radiator. Such luxury this near to Christmas.


No children were allowed at my grandfathers funeral.
I still remember the fuss mum and dad made of going through the photo tin to find the most recent pic of him to place in the coffin. It was one of him with his hand on my shoulder standing by a gate.
I don't know to this day if that was the photo used but the thought of it has stayed buried inside me.

I was upset, I am sure, I must of been. But the absolute horror was in going upstairs to have a bath. Must of been a Sunday, the family bath day. The first one in always got the clean hot water. Unlike the murky luke warm stew at the end of the queue.
Taps running I turned around and looked in the mirror and my grandfather stared back at me.
I screamed and cried and was 'uncontrolable'.
I was sent to bed, no bath and no dinner, for making such a fuss.

I went to France for a weekend with my class. We slept in dormitories, walked around never ending white tomb stones and concrete bunkers and ate strange food. We did country dancing on a flat roof with a 1ft brick wall around the edge. It was great to get away from everything.

My grandfather chased me in my dreams which would usually end with me waking up in a panic, drift half way back to sleep and feel a presence in the room. Or I would fall down stairs, off of the mountainous edge of a pavement or going sideways and then crashing down in a lift shaft. The worst were the nightmares where I couldn't scream, couldn't wake up, paralysed on the bed. I tried not to go to sleep at night it was too scary.

My mum got work in a factory and my dad was a driver on the local buses.
Some weekends we would all get in the car and go to a beach with buckets and spades and have fish and chips or KFC in the car coming home, singing songs.
We had great fun days out and even dad would join in throwing the beach ball. It would go over my head and into the sea and I would paddle in after it.
Once a big wave took it and I followed and suddenly there was no sand under my feet. No one in the family could swim. I had hated the school lessons and could never keep afloat. But something took over and I managed to put my arms out and kick my legs like mad and made it to the shore.
I achieved several swimming awards at the swimming baths after.

My bad behaviour in junior school had escalated as had playing truant.
One lunch time I was at the end of the school field in the bushes with my friends lighting cigarettes and pretending to take the smoke into our lungs. Then someone noticed the bell must of rung. We legged it as fast as we could to class via the back of the senior school science rooms and they had their furry lab pets on the grass. Something lumpy squealed under my foot but I kept running.
The next day in school assembly all classes were made to sit in silence for 3 hours until the child that had cruelly stamped on and killed an innocent creature admitted it and faced up to there punishment.
I was guilty but there was no way I was going to say it was me. My threatening looks worked on my friends too. They knew I would make them pay if they said anything.

There was a tall metal fence and a large rusty gate separating the junior school playground from the senior girls school.
Word seemed to of spread that I was a little hard nut and my sister in the senior school was such a cry baby, weak and asthmatic and constantly picked on.
Her friends would gather by the fence and call me to help her. I would go in and fight her wars and be dragged back to the junior school by the teachers.
One junior school teacher really disliked me.
I was never in her class.
She would shout at me when she was on playground duty and when ever our paths crossed.
Then she caught me coming back to the junior school and to stop me from just running away and laughing at her she held my arms and stood on my toes. She wanted me to cry I am sure, but I wouldn't, so she put all her weight on my toes. I just looked up and sneered at her. She was so angry and said if I told on her everyone knew I was naughty so they wouldn't believe me over a teacher. I didn't tell.
My toes went black and bruised, but I got away without having to do detention.

As my mum was working long hours she paid one of my aunts to do her housework through the summer holidays. My aunt had a better idea. My sister and I would do it except my sister had asthma so couldn't cope with dust so I had to do it. I can remember gagging as I ironed my dads work shirts as they seemed to hold his sweat in them even though they were clean. They just smelt like my grandfather.

I was still aggressive, mainly with my sister at home. We would have to do the washing up and we would argue over which one of us would wash or dry. I inevitably won as I would grab her by the hair swing her round and round and she would end up in a crying heap on the dinning room floor.
She could be sly though with little things like when we could have a treat from the ice cream van. She would be given the money. Buy ice cream for everyone but me and by the time anyone realised her mistake the van would be gone and I would go without.

I went to my friends house. The back garden ended at a large park with a lake and woodlands that neither of us was allowed to go in to.
I broke through the fence and we sat on a grass hill talking and laughing. Then I felt a pain in my hand, turned it over from the grass and it was covered in wasps. We ran back to my friends house with wasps flying round us. Her mum pulled off some wasps that were stuck and held my hand under a running cold tap. There were nine visible puncture marks. It was very sore.
When I went home I said I felt to tired for dinner and went to bed with my secretly swollen hand, as I just knew I would get a good hiding if they knew where I had been.
In my head I blamed my grandfather.

I started badly in the senior school as the teachers all knew my name and most had witnessed my aggression.
Being older and more sensible my sister was allowed to go out with her friends after school. I begrudgingly had to pick my brother up from a neighbour and take him home and cook the evening meal.
One day my mum had prepared a casserole so I only had to peel potatoes as the oven timer would start before I got in from school.
My dad had been home on a split shift from work for a late lunch.
The casserole started cooking but the gas ran out so dad fed the meter before he went back out.
The gas went to the cooker but the electric ignition didn't relight the oven.
I was late picking my brother up and I peeled the potatoes as soon as I got in and put them on the hob. I pressed the ignition button to light the burner and the oven door blew open and a fireball went up to the ceiling.
I panicked and ran around screaming as mum came through the front door.
My panic stopped as she slapped me hard around the face. My eyebrows and my fringe burnt off and my nylon school skirt had melted into hard rimmed holes. 
The wall behind the cooker and the ceiling were black.
The fact I hadn't smelt the gas and caused the explosion meant it was my fault and I was sent to bed.
In my head it was my grandfather that did it.

School was still great even though I could see the stares and laughter until my front tufts and eyebrows grew back.
Then a new girl started.
It was common knowledge that she had been expelled from 3 other schools.
She joined my class and was more disruptive than I had ever been.
I was always in trouble for not doing my homework especially maths I found it hard.
The maths teacher was running late so I decided to do my homework before he got there.
First she picked up my ruler and then she started nudging me while I tried to work and then grabbed my homework. We argued and the teacher walked in as I was laying into her, kicking her in the stomach under the tables at the back of the room and the class cheered me on "Bundle bundle". An ambulance was called they took her away and she never returned.
My punishment was that I would never be allowed in the maths class again, which they stuck to for the rest of my years in the school. But from then on it was MY school. People would do as I said as my reputation had intensified.

My brother started school and as mum was working I had to play mum and I despised him.
Nightmares kept me awake at night and dealing with him every morning, getting breakfast and getting him ready I just got angry and I would slap him when he didn't behave.
This also meant me being late everyday and creeping out of school early, not doing detention and lots of letters being sent home that I simply tore up. I walked to the other side of the estate and picked him up from school every day and cooked dinner before mum and dad got home.

Dad bought a 4 man tent and we had a  weekend holiday on a pebbly beach right next to a nuclear power station.
Funny how exciting it seemed.
Hurting our feet getting to the sea.
Sleeping bags on pebbles.
We lowered smelly fish portions on hooks down the beach drains and caught eels that I named and held alive in a bucket all the way home. Dad chopped their heads off and cooked them. I was devastated.

Apart from the usual trouble from fighting at school I do remember the headmistress calling my name out in assembly accusing me of something I hadn't actually done.
I felt so offended I shouted and swore at her and at the four teachers that carried me out of the hall, fighting with a limb each.  
Then I stood in her office as she prodded her middle finger on her desk telling me in her hoity toity voice that I was a "naughty naughty gurrrrl", before slapping me with her slipper.
I had been in her office several times.
It was dark wood everywhere with a fug of stale smoke from the butts in her overflowing ashtray.
I noticed that there was a phone box down the road in the view of her window.
Many times while I was in trouble an allegedly angry parent called from that phone and she would leave me in her office and go to the secretary's phone for privacy while I stole her cigarettes.

The first time I ran away from home was after I tried to get my parents to understand I was in trouble at school for being late and always having to look after my brother and I was fed up with it. I felt put upon and used.  It wasn't fair. My bloody sister was still swanning around going to friends houses and enough was enough. 
Dad got so angry and used his belt. I ran out the back door, holding back tears, all the way to the park and sat by the lake.
In my head my grandfather had caused that.
Can't remember what time I ran home but it was dark and I was afraid.

My brother walked to and from school with a friends mum after that.
He was still the favourite.
Mum and dad were always telling people they were proud of my sister getting good grades at school and what the teachers had said about her perfect behaviour.
They all said it was a pity I couldn't be more like her.

It was decided that I should spend time with my dad. So he took me with him to fish off of the sea breakwaters. It was great as we had one to one time and home made pasties and pop.
Dad taught me to bash the fishes heads on the wall to kill them and then gut them.
We would go home with 2 or more bin bags full of mackerel and then try to find people that wanted them. 

We went to the bus depot social club with mum and dad. It was horrible. Drunk, loud and sweaty men being crude and flirting with giggling teenage girls at the bar. We had to sit still and not speak unless we were spoken to and drink our lemonade.
Dad was the drivers union rep and they treated him like he was special telling us that we were lucky to have him as our father.
They had adult only evenings sometimes and mum and dad would make go to bed and then leave us for the evening.
It was dark and I was laying in bed awake when I heard footsteps creaking on the stairs. They got closer and closer and the bedroom door started to open. I tried to scream but couldn't make a sound. I was paralysed with fear.
My dad switched the light on and I got hysterical. I woke up my sister and brother and
dad grabbed me from my bed and dragged me downstairs and used his belt assuming I had been caught out doing something bad.
In my mind it was my grandfather.

My 13th birthday was on a Saturday. Not at school for a change. I got up excited expecting cards and a present. There was nothing.
No one even said happy birthday.
I decided they were playing a game and would suddenly surprise me so I played along.
It was a very long day.
9 o'clock in the evening we were told to go to bed.
"But it's my birthday". 
Mum and dad just argued over the date as no one had realised. 
It was decided mum would take me to town next weekend to buy something as she would be working all week.

In my mind my grandfather was always there manipulating and getting his revenge.