Thrown Away Child

by Louise Allen

  After this incident I felt like I was enveloped in an invisible cloak. I had finally seen exactly what the situation was that I was in: Ian would never help me, and Barbara would always twist everything so I was in the wrong. Even the police would do nothing to her, no matter what she did. There was nothing I could do about it. All I could do was protect myself. I had to survive. I had to create a new self. I had to create a me that could go out into the world and get on. I realised that I would have to leave as soon as I possibly, humanly could. I was living in hell and I no longer wanted to be there. I had to be clever. I needed a campaign to save my own life. I had to find some way out.

  For years I had been taking my little red suitcase round the landing, pretending I was going on a journey. Today I had actually wanted to go on my bike and instead I’d been stopped maliciously for no reason. My explosion helped me to begin to find myself. I found something inside me that was ready to say, ‘ENOUGH’ and ‘NO’ and ‘SHUT UP’.

  I was surprised at the level of anger I’d felt, and how much destruction I’d caused, but it was also a good feeling. (Of course, I had to clear up my mess and be punished as usual.) However, I realised I would have to put all my attention on preparing myself for the real world – the world of white paper lampshades and people in offices, of putting on work clothes and earning money. I would have to be big enough to be that person. I had never wanted anything so much in my whole life and I was going to do everything in my power to make it happen. I would have to create my new self and leave as soon as I was able. And that was that. Little did I know, things would get even worse before they got better.

  16

  Broken Promises

  The doorbell rang one afternoon. Barbara answered and I listened from the safety of the banisters, vigilant as ever. I couldn’t see who it was and then I heard Barbara say, ‘Well, you’d better come in.’

  Straining to see, I was amazed to witness Julie, of all people, walk into the hall followed by two smallish children. They all followed Barbara out to the kitchen and the door closed. I had been confined to my room for yet another punishment but my curiosity was burning. Why on earth was she here? I tiptoed halfway downstairs to my usual listening place. Ian and Kevin were both at work. I was supposed to be at school, but was home ‘sick’ as usual and actually about to clean out the chicken run.

  We had yet another new dog, Sissy, a small crossbreed terrier that Barbara was training up. She heard me creeping down the stairs and yapped at the kitchen door, signalling to Barbara and Julie that I was around. Barbara whipped open the door, stony-faced. I looked past her to Julie, who was sitting at the table dabbing her eyes with tissues. The two children were out in the garden, playing with a ball. Barbara controlled herself in front of Julie. I could see it was an effort and she hissed through tight lips, ‘Yes?’

  I just stood gawping at Julie. Why was she here? Barbara answered my unspoken question: ‘Julie will be staying. You will have to sleep in our room on the spare bed and Kevin will sleep on the sofa. You can go and change the sheets.’

  I dutifully trotted off to do my household chores. Julie hadn’t noticed me, or even looked up or smiled; apparently she was too deep in her grief. I had no idea what had happened, but I knew better than to question Barbara and make a scene in front of Julie.

  Since the day we’d gatecrashed what had been Julie’s husband’s birthday party, I had heard nothing from her. I had written her letters – without Barbara knowing (she would have killed me) – begging her to come and get me. Although I didn’t know Julie, her husband had actually been kind to me that day (even though he had later rejected me through social services). Their house looked nice, with pretty clothes and toys, and there was food – lots of it! The children also had looked clean and happy. But I had had no answer, and as the days and weeks developed into months I assumed I would never hear from her again. Now, a year later, as I ripped off the old sheets from Kevin’s horrible stained bed and put on clean ones with crisp hospital corners, I was struck how strange it was that I was in the house with my two mothers. Two mothers! One, my adopted, grizzled grey witch of a mother who didn’t love me (actively hated me, rather) and punished me at every turn; the other, a pink, fluffy floozy of a mother who didn’t know me, had given me away, and didn’t seem that interested in me at all – yet. What a situation! How was I to deal with this while going to a school I hated and being kept home to do housework most of the time?

  After a day or two, I found out that Julie had left her husband. This was her second marriage, she said. She cried and cried, dabbed at her eyes with Kleenex and drank gallons of tea.

  ‘Why are men so mean to me?’ she sobbed. ‘What have I ever done to deserve this?’

  The two children, Diana, who was eight, and John, six, were complete strangers to me. We were all shy and awkward with each other. Nevertheless, I showed them the chickens, telling them they were all named after the Osmonds, my favourite group from my younger childhood. They liked playing with Sissy, who was still a pup. Then I took them to the orchard and they were fascinated by the caravans. We waved to Sean and the Polish people, who waved back. They thought it was really strange to have these people living there.

  Meanwhile, I had to sleep in the main bedroom with Ian and Barbara, which made me feel so scared that I hardly slept at all. The single bed in their room had all Barbara’s dolls on it. The day Julie arrived I had to go and get permission from Barbara to move them so I could make up the bed. Julie was so distressed she didn’t notice this.

  Barbara snapped, ‘Don’t break anything,’ so I was ultra-careful transferring them one by one to the top of a chest of drawers in their bedroom. There were two teddy bears, Edward and Duncan; a blonde doll with a china face in a lacy christening dress, and loads of others, plastic and rubber ones, with dark hair, orange curls, blonde plaits, knitted clothes and fancy outfits. Barbara adored her dolls and I sometimes peeped through the door and saw her playing with them on the spare bed. She would talk to them and then rock one in her arms like a baby, whispering that she loved them. I saw her singing lullabies to them and calling them ‘mummy’s little angels’. It made me shiver to think about it, especially as she was so nasty to me. One time she caught me spying on her and shouted: ‘What are you looking at, you nosy little bitch?’

  Julie stayed for quite a while. At first I thought, Yippee, I can get to know my real mum. But I soon found this was a very difficult task. She talked about herself all the time, but it was a strange kind of talk. She constantly looked in the mirror, or put on lipstick, fluffed her hair or changed her clothes. She would go out to the shops and come back with loads of bags of new stuff, then put it on and twirl around the hall and living room, doing a fashion show, giggling in her high-pitched, breathy voice. Short mini-skirts, way too short for her; frilly blouses, very low cut. She would get her hair bleached and permed and come back with lots of new shoes and jewellery. I watched all this, amazed.

  I had imagined we would sit down and talk about things. She might ask me about school or be interested in who I was. Not at all. I wanted to show her my favourite drawings, but didn’t know how. I wanted to ask her questions – especially about my father – but never found the words. Barbara was being less aggressive with me, and even Kevin was behaving himself a bit more. Having Julie there, in the daytime at least, meant they were not so openly bullying towards me.

  After a while, Julie started going out every night. She was supposed to be looking for somewhere to move to. She’d also have to find some kind of job (the mention of which made her cry). Apparently she and Brian had fallen out over how much money she spent and she said, ‘This time it’s really over,’ hinting they’d fallen out before. This was her second marriage (did that include my dad? I wondered). She’d come to us, she said, as she had nowhere else to go.

  When she sat and talked about this, she would sometimes look at me and say, ‘Of course, you can come and stay with us when things are sorted.’ My heart would leap. But
then she would go back to talking about her problems and nothing more would be said about it. I wanted to ask her when but I didn’t know how. She never mentioned it again, either. Her children seemed quite sweet, but they were close to each other, and only really spoke to one another. I was a stranger, although I was a half-sibling, and, I guess, I looked dirty and not very nice, so they kept their distance from me.

  I snuck out whenever I could to talk to Sean about it, and he would feed me milk and biscuits and shake his head. Then he’d put on some Irish music and we’d have a little sing together, or we’d put some seeds in his tiny garden round the caravan and water them with a silver watering can. Or I’d draw something with him while he drank a mug of tea. Then I’d come back to the house with my two strange mothers, but feeling quite a bit better.

  Then the rows began. Julie was going out every night now, and coming back very late. She was visiting a local pub and had hooked up with someone – a taxi driver called Vernon. I saw her dress up and go out every night in a different outfit, and then I would hear the commotion when she came back and stomped up the stairs.

  Barbara would leap out of bed and shout, ‘What time of night do you call this? This isn’t a hotel, you know!’ Barbara would slam back into the bedroom, fizzing like a firework.

  I was also more and more spooked by sleeping in the same room as Ian and Barbara. She refused to have the curtains closed, as she liked the light. This meant it was hard to sleep. They slept far apart in bed, one on either side, facing away from each other. They never touched. It was such an odd atmosphere. I would lie there in the gloomy room, hearing him snore, and watch the dolls sitting on the cupboard with their waxy faces and shiny, spooky eyes staring right back at me. I lay there at night thinking about the fact that I had two mothers in the house, but neither wanted to know me. Neither seemed to love me. I hadn’t found out anything about my father, as Julie would never sit down and talk to me properly. She didn’t seem interested in getting to know me, and avoided me most of the time. She was only affectionate with Diana and John. They seemed not to want to get to know me, either, which was sad. I was desperate to know more about where I had come from, why I had been sent away – especially to someone like Barbara – but there never seemed to be a time or a place to ask.

  Occasionally Julie would say things about me going on holiday with them or visiting their house, but it was so vague. I would latch on to it, and then it was never mentioned again. I hoped she might mean it, but something inside me made me not really trust her.

  Things finally came to a head when Barbara lost her temper in her usual volcanic way, becoming utterly furious with Julie. The row blew up one evening when she was putting on her lipstick in the hall mirror.

  ‘You’re not going out again!’ spat Barbara, standing behind her. ‘That’s every night this week!’ It sounded like she was talking to me, rather than Julie.

  Julie stopped, mid-pout, and looked back at Barbara in the mirror. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Where the bloody hell are you going every night?’ snapped Barbara. ‘You’re using me like a babysitting service! This isn’t a sodding hotel!’ I watched this from a safe distance, behind the upstairs banisters.

  ‘You’re not my bloody mother,’ said Julie, affronted. ‘I can go out if I want.’

  At this, Barbara went red and exploded. ‘Right, that’s it! You’re out, all of you.’

  Julie nearly dropped her pink lipstick. Her mouth opened like a goldfish (I could see it in the mirror). ‘What, now?’

  ‘Yes, now. Out!’

  I could see the blind fury on Barbara’s scarlet face and I scuttled back into the toilet and peeked out. Barbara was suddenly stomping up the stairs to my room, where Julie had been sleeping, and started throwing things into her bags. Julie hobbled up the stairs behind her in her stilettos and I could hear the two women shouting, and then fighting, in my old bedroom.

  ‘Leave that alone!’ I could hear Julie shrieking.

  ‘Get out!’ shouted Barbara. ‘Now!’

  Diana and John appeared in their pyjamas and came and stood with me in the toilet. We could hear the two women squabbling like children, and I put my right hand up to my eyebrow and started pulling.

  A few minutes later, a white-faced faced Julie appeared, grabbed the two children, and they all went downstairs. I crept and looked through the gap in the door. She was dabbing her eyes and mumbling to herself. Barbara was in the kitchen, crashing pots and pans. Julie had called a taxi on the hall phone.

  When it came, she said to me, dramatically, on the doorstep, ‘I’ll be in touch,’ and then she was gone. Half of me wanted to believe her, but the other half felt it might be a promise that would be broken as soon as she said it. Julie seemed the kind of person who couldn’t mean what she said, or say what she meant. I wasn’t sure if I could believe or trust her. In my heart, I really hoped against hope that I was wrong.

  After this episode, things got worse again. Barbara and Kevin went back to their reign of terror. There were slaps, kicks and punches for every little thing. Ian was becoming an even shadowy figure and spent a lot of time slumped in front of the TV of an evening. I wasn’t allowed to watch much, if any.

  Ian and Barbara were arguing a lot and not getting on. She had developed a new habit: buying things and then wanting to take them back. Ian was not happy about this, and there were many arguments about money. I was now twelve going on thirteen. Some days there were deliveries in our best living room of big brown boxes: a fridge, a washing machine, a new cooker (which was mustard and brown in colour). Barbara had gone on a spending spree in Debenhams. When Ian came home there was a big argument. Usually he didn’t stand up to her, but when it came to her spending he stood his ground a bit more. They argued and argued, and finally Ian said they would have to be sent back; he was not paying for them. Barbara was livid, so the next day I was kept home from school, as my job was to wait for the men to come and take them away. Barbara was so furious at this that she got a carving knife and hit the old cooker and fridge with it, making long, dark lines on the white surface. She literally cut the paintwork in her anger at Ian. The battle may have been lost, but the war was not over.

  A few weeks later, a new mustard-coloured cooker was installed and Ian was painting the kitchen a cornflower blue. She had won in the end due to the state of the paintwork of the old appliances.

  ‘I deserve better, after all I’ve put up with,’ claimed Barbara, and the thing she particularly thought she deserved was a furlined leather jerkin from a famous furriers in town. I was taken into the shop and made to hold her bag while she tried it on. It was extremely expensive, and something unlike anything she had worn or had before. Barbara usually wore her old lady uniform of grey and black, with a bit of beige, and now she wanted this glamorous jerkin, made of expensive dark-brown suede. Barbara kept saying, ‘It’s very practical’ and ‘It’s warm and it looks great,’ as she described it to Ian later. He said no. He didn’t think it was worth the money. Plus, they couldn’t afford it. Barbara’s face tightened into a white point, her mouth thin with annoyance.

  ‘You’re just a man, what do you know?’ she taunted him. ‘You’re a bloody rapist, just like the rest of them.’

  Whenever Barbara was furious with Ian, he was called a ‘rapist’ – it was the worst thing she could say. I didn’t really understand what it meant, but he would go very pale and walk out the room, so it was obviously bad.

  The next day, however, I was hauled into town (instead of going to school) and we bought the jerkin. Barbara was pleased. I’d never seen her so happy about something. She brought it home, put it on, and admired herself in the mirror. I wondered, fleetingly, if having Julie around had made her think a bit more about her appearance. Julie had bags and bags of new clothes all the time (no wonder her husband thought she spent too much, as she obviously did). But Barbara had never really spent on herself. She spent on the poor dogs – at least when they were puppies – and vet bills when they we
re put down (which was a frequent occurrence). She certainly didn’t spend on me, as all my clothes were second-hand. And Ian just wore the same old clothes and overalls all the time.

  The next day I did go to school, which was largely a waste of time, as I spent all day looking out of the window at the trees, sky and birds, not following anything much. When I got home there was a real commotion going on. Barbara said Ian had changed his mind. He had put his foot down about the jerkin, so it had to be taken back. She was in a total fury. The next day I was kept home and sent into town with the jerkin in a bag and told to take it back and get a refund – on pain of death.

  I went into the really posh fur shop, feeling completely out of my depth. The manager looked down his nose at me – I must have looked a sight in my grubby second-hand clothes. I made up a story that my mother was too fat and the jerkin didn’t really fit her now. This must have seemed crazy to him, as Barbara had bought it herself just a day earlier. After pondering for a while, he said he would return the money, but looked pretty annoyed and said he hoped this would be the end of it. I felt embarrassed, but thought: mission accomplished.

  When I got home, with the refund in my hand, I handed it over to Barbara. I thought she would be really pleased, as it was a lot of money. I thought she would smile and say thank you for a change. Instead, she slapped me hard across the face and told me to go to bed without any tea. I had walked miles into Oxford (as I had no bus fare), and I had done her dirty work for her. I had missed breakfast, lunch and school to do this, and had dealt with the annoyed manager in the shop for her. Yet I had a slap and punishment for it.