Chapter 3

 I limped around the flat in pj's and dressing gown doing housework to keep warm. Grabbed the duvet off the bed and snuggled on the sofa. Hot water bottle and an extra one for my feet. Aching more today.


During the school holidays we were left to fend for ourselves. My sister and brother would play games excluding me as I would always be bossy and want to be in charge.
I got so wound up arguing with them that I decided I would make them feel bad. I got a sharp knife from the kitchen drawer and cut across a wrist. It was only like a small scratch but I panicked when I saw a few pin pricks of blood seep through. I didn't do it again.

My bedroom window sill was my main sulking place. Though it was covered in dead moths and the remnants of spiders, were I had pulled there legs off to see how they would move with one leg.
Looking down from the open window I was always daring myself to jump, thinking that would make everyone feel as bad and guilty as I did.

A cousin had started her own dancing school in a community hall.
My sister and I were made to attend ballet and tap classes to encourage other pupils to join.
It was a half hour bus ride away. We were warned not to get into my uncles car if he offered us a lift home. He had just been released having raped his younger daughter.
I hated the ballet. "Find a focus point and pirouette across the room". Pink leotards and ribbons yuk. 
I quickly discovered tap shoes were great for kicking kids ankles. So it wasn't too long until I got banned.

In the group of girls that hung around me, for safety, one was tall and broad shouldered. She was more developed than I was. I would think about her while I avoided sleep. I got her to skip lessons with me and one afternoon I took her home. I instigated the kissing. She didn't object. I touched her skin lightly and it tickled. It tickled her more as I worked my way between her legs. Such a precious moment until the bedroom door burst open and mum appeared, stood still for a few seconds and then flew into a rage. My friend was almost kicked down the stairs. She avoided me at school after that.
Mum kept slapping me while she screamed obscenities and drummed it in that I was sick in the head. I had never heard my mum swear before.
When she calmed down she said I had scared her as she thought I was a burglar. I was not to tell my dad about this as it rude and indecent.
Something broke between me and mum that day.
She was cold and could barely look at me and we only had necessary conversation.
I had to go to the bedroom everyday after dinner. No TV or interactions with anyone for what seemed forever at the time.

I hated being alone and sulked. I would think about my grandfather and still blamed him for how my life was.
That was when I started wondering why mum hadn't protected me. She knew my grandfather was a bad man. She let me and my sister go off with him. There had been blood in my underwear.
It made no sense why hadn't she protected me.
  
I was given permission to mix with my friends.
Saturday mornings in town for the cinema and a church youth club after school two days a week.
I would meet my friends in the toilets of the church. Kept the fee for cigarettes and we got changed, put on make up and then ran along by the river and into town.
We all had invisible boyfriends and tall tales of how far we had gone with them. I of course made out that we had gone all the way on several occasions as I was sexier than all of them.

Down by the river we met up with a group of boys a few times and then we all paired off. I sat on a bench kissing one and he suddenly ran to the riverside and was sick. He said he didn't like girls. I got everyone jeering at him for being a poof and we chased him away and threw mud at him.

The nightmares continued. It was like my grandfather lived in my head. Digging away and causing trouble.

As usual we got ready in the toilets and made our way in to town.
When I got home that evening dad was waiting.
Where had I been all evening?
Had I really stayed in the church all evening?
I thought then that someone must of seen me.
I said one of my friends had had no dinner and so that she was safe we walked with her into town to Uncle Sams so she could get a burger.
Did she eat it all???? Of course.
Turns out Uncle Sams burger bar had closed down a month previously.
The belt stung and marked my legs and I was banned from ever going back to the youth club.

My sister finished school and went to secretarial college.
Dad was so proud as no one in his ever increasing side of the family had ever gone to college before.
My brother had turned into a spoilt brat. He could do no wrong and he played on it making out I had hit him just because he couldn't get his own way.

I joined an amateur dramatics group in the theatre in the centre of town, which occupied me in the evenings and some Saturday afternoons.

I spotted dad in town with his arm over the shoulder of a woman. She was laughing loudly as they walked. I followed them until they went into a gentlemen's club.

I took sandwiches to the bus stop when dad was on our route and waited for ages for the bus so I could give them to him. He use to take me on round trips sometimes and would drive round roundabouts several times making us laugh at the reactions of the passengers.
But then that woman was always on the bus chatting to him and he would take the sandwiches and go.

Mum hadn't been to work for a while. She sat in the front room every day smoking and demanding coffee. My sister was home and we argued in the kitchen.
I went to the front room winging about it.
Mum moved out of her chair so quick, shrieking at me she hit me until I fell to the ground, then kicked and kicked me into the door.
Dad came home and forced the door open and grabbed mum. I was bleeding from my nose and lip.
I was sent up stairs with my brother and a doctor came. Mum disappeared for a while and dad bought us toys and cooked and cleaned.
I thought I had caused mums breakdown.
Again in my head  somehow it was my grandfather making my life bad.

Mum came home and I had practised hard for the first show. It was called Autumn Cavalcade. A mixture of comedy skits, dance routines and singing.
The audience was seated and the curtain rose.
As we sang I squinted through the lights and spotted my mum, sat next to my brother, he sat next to my dad and my dad sat next to his lady friend.
It was so weird.
It never got mentioned and I never saw her again.
I spotted Dad with several different lady friends after that.

My sister got a boyfriend and was never home. My brother was out a lot playing with his friends. Mum was back at work and didn't want to know when she was around and dad came home late at night.

My final year in school was good. The new intake of girls meant it was easy for the older girls to ransack the cloakrooms, demanding sweets or money and giving me the biggest cut. I was given a prefect badge but the headmistress took it back in assembly two weeks later.
I had a civics class and for the finals we had to do our own projects on anything political.
Dad had been going through the ranks of the Trade and General Workers Union and Mum had become a Trade Union shop steward at the factory. So it was easy to get any information I wanted on Unions.
It was the best project the school had seen and I got the highest marks in the school.
The rest of my subjects results were average.

My sister chose marriage to be able to move away from my parents.  
The DJ was a scruffy feller with a huge nose and masses of ginger hair. 
Mum and dad showed an instant dislike for him and said he looked like a gypsy. He was older than me and had a car so I asked him to be my boyfriend and he agreed.
He was a bit weird but a great free taxi service.

I wanted to go to art college but mum and dad were against it. Art students were weird and besides it would be good to have another wage coming into the house.
I just sat around sulking for days.
Dad got angry and told me to go out and not come back until I had a job.

I went to my sisters and stayed for a while.
I applied for three different art courses at college and got offered two of them. I chose a 3 year fashion course. I slept on benches in the park when my sister got tired of me and then I got a grant from the government and lived in chaotic and unsanitary student digs and survived on apples and onions, boiled up with lentils.

It was five weeks until I contacted my parents.
They weren't bothered.
Hadn't even looked for me.
So in my mind they really didn't care.
And probably never had.