It was all patchy and in different lengths. I didn’t feel very attractive on the inside so I didn’t care what I looked like on the outside.
I can now see that I was trying to punish myself.
Da went mental when he saw me but I didn’t care. In fact I was delighted at having pissed him off.
I wanted to look really ugly so he wouldn’t want to look at me anymore. Of course, it made no difference. Da had his peep-holes at strategic locations around the house. If he wanted to look at me, I could do little to stop him.
*
By this time, Da had discovered that I was drinking, so he began to watch me closely and try to control me. I often wonder did Da know why I was going off the rails, or did he even care.
I personally believe he knew the abuse he inflicted on me had transformed me into a dysfunctional teenager but he didn’t care. Da was driven by self-gratification; that is what drove him to abuse children.
Whether or not his daughter was suicidal was almost an irrelevancy. My memory of this time is one of utter loneliness.
Though I had friends outside of school, they were mainly drinking buddies. Sometimes, when I just wanted to escape, I’d tell my parents I was sleeping over in a friend’s house. On those occasions, I’d go and buy some drink and spend the night sleeping rough, with only the alcohol to cushion me from the cold, hard ground. As far as I was concerned, it was better than being in a bed at home though and feeling Da’s eyes staring down at me from the ceiling.
If I didn’t have money for alcohol and I couldn’t find any to steal from home, then I’d just go to my parents’ drinks cabinet with an empty plastic bottle and fill it up.
Alcohol became my sedative. I didn’t care what it tasted like. I would mix loads of different spirits together. More often than not, it would taste awful but it got me completely drunk, or out of my head.
I don’t even remember getting hangovers. I never minded being out in the dark either. I was afraid of no one. I wasn’t an aggressive person but if someone started a fight, small and all as I was, I could fight back and box their ears. But I never fought out of spite or anger. I just defended myself.
I remember the worst dig I ever got was from a girl from Blanchardstown in west Dublin. I had gone for a walk with some fella she fancied one Friday night, but all we’d done was sit in a field chatting while we drank a flagon of cider between us. But later on that night she marched over to me with her hands on her hips, her face scarlet with anger.
‘You keep your hands off him unless I say you can have him. Right?’ she said as she gave me the most unmerciful kick.
It took a few seconds for the pain to die down but when it did I jumped up and boxed the little bitch black and blue. I couldn’t let her win. If she got the better of me once, there’d be no stopping her and she’d never leave me alone. From then on, nobody in that gang ever dared pick on me as that girl had been a toughie. If you could kick her ass in a fight then people knew not to mess with you. I developed a reputation for being tough, which was great because it meant people were too scared of me to ever try it on so I was rarely in any fights after that.
*
When I was 15, I started using acid when I began hanging around with a girl from Cabra. She was deadly craic. There was this lad she fancied from Phibsboro, on the north side of Dublin, so she introduced me to him and his mates. They were a few years older than us and were small-time drug dealers so I was a little intimidated by them when I first met them.
‘How yis? Ye wanna hang out in town?’ asked the taller one.
‘I haven’t got a bean. I’ve no odds at all,’ I said.
‘Sure don’t worry. We have a few bob to collect and we won’t leave ye stuck,’ said the smaller one.
I knew he liked me straight away. I thought he was all right. He looked a little like Mick Jagger but he wasn’t really my type. But I thought he was funny and I found it hard to resist people who could put a smile on my face.
Up to this point, I had drunk a lot of alcohol and smoked a lot of hash, and when I couldn’t manage to roll a joint, I would eat it. I’d go into the toilet, burn the hash with a lighter to soften it and crumple it into some tin foil before eating it. Smoking was better though, it gave you more of a buzz but I was crap at rolling a joint so sometimes it was easier just to eat it. People used to tease me that my catchphrase was, ‘Here, I’ll buy a spot off you if you roll them for me first.’ I even bought a little machine to do the rolling but it was even more useless than me.
So we followed these guys up to a pool hall and watched as they collected money from different people and handed over small packages in return. We thought these guys were real bad asses so when we called up to one of their houses later we got the shock of our lives.
‘Come on in girls and take a seat,’ said a nice lady who turned out to be the mother of one of the guys.
‘Will you have a cup of tea?’
‘No thanks. I don’t drink tea,’ I replied.
‘Are you one of those healthy-living people? You certainly look fit and what a lovely shine off your hair. Can I get you anything else love?’
She seemed like the nicest woman in the world. She clearly hadn’t a clue what her son got up to when he was out of her sight.
‘Bye bye love,’ she said to her son as we were leaving, ‘Have a nice time playing video games.’
We all headed into town to a games hall. It had video games in the front and snooker tables in the back. I used to be in there every second day back then when I was on the hop from school.
The lads pulled out what looked like sheets of cardboard with lots of tiny pictures of strawberries dotted all over them. They tore off two small squares and handed one to me and one to my mate. They told us to put them on our tongues and wait for the strawberry surprise. The surprise was the best fucking high I’ve ever had. My senses were heightened to the point where I thought I was going to become airborne. I felt like I could do absolutely anything.
The boys gave us each some money to play video games and I headed straight for Space Invaders. I got the highest score on the machine. I felt unbeatable. Like I had the Midas touch and everything I touched turned to gold. It was a big change to the usual feeling of everything I touched becoming dirty and contaminated.
We spent the night walking around town, swinging around lampposts and giggling at nothing. Everything looked different with acid—it was like we’d found a portal into a parallel new-and-improved version of the world, where things were almost the exact same just a shinier and happier version.
That was the start of acid for me. I fell in love with the drug and couldn’t get enough of it. It was fairly cheap and the lads from Phibsboro gave us plenty of freebies too. After a while, one tab a night turned into two, which turned into five, and before I knew it I was popping them like Tic Tacs and losing count.
It wasn’t all fun and games though. The comedown could be horrible. You could go into the horrors altogether and get very paranoid. And the more highs you had, the worse the paranoia got. Everyone was looking at me and everyone was talking about me. At least that’s what I thought. But acid numbed the pain in my head for a little while at least and the paranoia was worth that short bit of relief.
*
I dropped out of school altogether during the Inter Cert year. I did the exam all right and I scraped a pass but after that I just wanted out. I made up some excuse about wanting to train as a hairdresser and how I’d managed to line up a job. Of course, this was complete fabrication on my part. I was the girl who ran a mile in the opposite direction if I saw a loose strand of hair. But I left anyway and that marked the end of my school days.
It was around this time that I stopped vomiting in the mornings too. I’m not sure why this was. Maybe it had to do with me being old enough to be able to get out of the house more. I also now had drink and drugs to take away the pain and sickness. All my other routines stayed the same though. I still had my Rice Krispies, my bowl and spoon,
the orange juice and the pill. And by the afternoon, I’d be passed out on the couch as usual from tiredness. Even though Da wasn’t calling to my room at night anymore, I’d still feel anxiety taking over my body every evening as the sun went down. I couldn’t control it. And then there were the nightmares. Sleep was a double-edged sword—although I badly needed the rest, it meant making myself vulnerable to nightmares.
Da continued to spy on me but I did what I could to hide from him. I’d turn the light off before getting undressed or get undressed under my dressing gown. I even tried using my Ma and Da’s en suite, but Da wised up and bored holes under the sink that allowed him to spy on the whole bathroom. All he had to do was open the door of the hot-press, get down on his knees and peer through. I often stuffed newspapers into the holes just so he knew that I knew. But it didn’t bother him at all. He just pulled them out and carried on watching. He didn’t care that I knew.
Chapter Eight
The first job I ever had was in Burgerland on O’Connell Street. I pretended to my ma that the hairdressing job had fallen through. I was glad to be out of the house.
I loved the job in Burgerland. The staff came from all different walks of life: there were college students, college dropouts, kids like me who had dropped out of school and others who were in it for the long haul and wanted to become a manager one day. I didn’t care what anyone had been doing before they ended up in Burgerland ’cause once they put on the uniform we were all on the same level and we all followed the same rules. In between the hard work, we had the best of craic and many of the people became friends first and co-workers second.
Every Sunday at Burgerland, I was given the role of dressing up as a packet of fries in a big foam costume. I had to go out on to the street and shake hands with passing kids, who either ran away from me in fear or fell at my feet in adoration. Most of the other staff refused to do this job, mainly because they’d have felt like a prat. The foam costume reminded me a little of the Fozzy Bear one I had worn in the Gaiety. No one could see me. I could hide behind a screen and be someone else for a while. So I volunteered for the role as the hideous sponge packet of fries and I’d dare anyone else to show as much enthusiasm for it as I did.
When I was working the early shifts in Burgerland I used to get a lift into town with one of the managers who lived near me in Castleknock. Things at home were a bit better by then ’cause Da, who was forever changing jobs, was working in England. He was away from Monday to Friday and then I’d be gone out all weekend between work and partying so I hardly saw him at all.
I used to tell my manager that Da lived in England. I don’t know why I lied—I guess it was the reality I secretly wanted. But one morning my manager called to the door for me when Da was home and he answered it. Afterwards, in the car on the way into work, my manager asked me about him. I felt terrible being caught out on this lie. I just muttered something about him being back for a while and he didn’t ask me any more questions. But that morning I realised that if I didn’t get this shit sorted in my head that I’d ruin the little life I’d built up for myself by telling silly lies. So, feeling like I was now safe from my da, I started blocking things out. One by one I pushed the bad memories to the back of my mind, well out of reach.
The Burgerland Christmas do the following year was a great night out. Temporary staff were brought in so that we could all go to the party. The function was held in a city-centre hotel and after we had gotten the meal out of the way the disco started and the real fun began.
I was in the middle of tearing up the dance floor when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a cute guy walking in. He was obviously into mod music judging by his skin-tight haircut. I asked one of my co-workers who he was and she told me he was the brother of one of the supervisors in another Burgerland branch. Deadly.
I got on great with this supervisor and we were always buzzing off of one another. So, you know how you are at 16, you find out if he’s single, does he like the look of you and so on. After the usual intervention by a friend, who sidles up to the guy, giggles and whispers, ‘My mate fancies you’, he came over and asked me to dance. His name was Billy and we clicked straight away.
After the party, a gang of us went back to Billy’s house where myself and Billy cosied up together on the sofa, surrounded by all the other newly formed couples, who were kissing and whispering sweet nothings into each other’s ears.
Billy told me he was 17 years old. He had left school early like me but he had landed on his feet with a good job in a printers. He had a lovely sensitive side to him that came to light the more I talked to him.
I went into work the next day walking on air. I was dying to hear from him. A few days went by with no word and I was climbing the walls but then he turned up in Burgerland one day with a mate of his. I remember overhearing his friend saying, ‘She’s lovely man!’ I was especially pleased ’cause I was wearing the not-so-flattering Burgerland uniform, complete with a red cap and hair net.
Myself and Billy were practically inseparable from that day on. I was besotted. That Christmas, he bought me a silver Claddagh ring but I’d only had it a few days when I lost it somewhere in my bedroom. I’m not very religious but the ring meant so much to me that I got down on both knees and said a prayer to my namesake saint. My full name is Audrey Jude Delaney and Saint Jude is the patron saint of hopeless cases. I have to laugh sometimes at how apt my naming was. I prayed until I had carpet burns on my two knees from all the kneeling. But it worked. The ring turned up in the most unlikely of places and I found my faith in God being gradually restored.
Over the next few weeks, Billy and I ran up ferocious phone bills between us. We just couldn’t bear to be apart so the minute we separated and returned to our own homes, we’d be on the phone to one another. I would go down to the phone box across from the shop in my estate and he would ring it at a pre-arranged time.
I’d go down in the lashing rain or gale-force winds just to talk to him, even if we’d already spent the last few days living in each other’s pocket. There were no mobile phones back then. I lived two bus journeys away from Billy but whenever I visited him, either his brother or his da always insisted on giving me a lift home. He had a lovely family and they all treated me like I was one of their own.
*
Drugs were becoming a big problem for me around the time Billy and I got together. I never told him about it but I took whatever I could whenever I could. I was taking hash, acid and uppers and downers in the form of pills. I also took other tablets that I think were Valium but I never knew for sure. All these pills were cheap; kids as young as 14 sold them for pocket money. I took anything offered to me really; half of the pills could have just been antibiotics for all I knew. I just took whatever was going and hoped for a high.
One night though, I was in a right bitch of a mood because I had nothing to take. I had been spending so much time with Billy that I had lost contact with the people who usually hooked me up. So that night myself and Billy went to see a band in this club in Dublin. I felt all grown-up because the last time I’d been in the club had been seven years earlier for a roller-disco night. The band sang the song ‘My Girl’ that night and this became mine and Billy’s song from then on. After the band, Billy wanted to go to his friend’s 16th birthday party. It was taking place in a shed at the back of the guy’s house where music could be blared as loud as they wanted. But a half an hour into the party I got all stroppy when I realised that no one had any alcohol.
‘Jesus, is this it? It’s like a kid’s disco,’ I said to Billy.
‘It’s just getting started. It’ll probably warm up in a few minutes.’
‘But sure no one has brought drink or anything. How can you get a buzz going? This is boring.’
I didn’t say what I was really thinking, ‘Where are the bleedin’ drugs?’
Looking back, I’m mortified by how I acted but I think I just panicked at the thought of having to meet all these new people completely sober. I’d ha
ve no choice but to be me. And the problem was that I didn’t like me.
‘Billy, can we leave? I don’t know anyone and the girls are looking me up and down and making me feel uncomfortable.’
‘C’mon, lets go so.’
So we left and headed to a nearby pub. I downed several vodkas one after another until the room was spinning but at least my thoughts weren’t going at 90 miles an hour anymore.
*
The following April, after Billy and I had been together for four months, the inevitable conversation about sex came up. I knew I definitely loved him by now. He was a massive part of my life and I was sure that he felt the same about me. I was always staying over in his house, sleeping in his sister’s room. But every so often we’d get the house all to ourselves and we’d climb into his bed and kiss and cuddle.
Billy treated me like an angel. He was the only guy I’d ever been with who made me feel special. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for me and he always put me first. The only thing that confused me was how come he didn’t see the dirt in me.
Fear stopped us going all the way for the first couple of months. I was 16 and a half and I was mad about Billy but I found it all very confusing. My biggest fear was that he’d be able to tell that something had gone on before him. But lust won out in the end and we arranged to do it down by the Phoenix Park one day. It was all very mechanical. There was no such thing as foreplay; Billy kissed me for a few seconds before putting on a condom. We knew nothing about STDs but we were definitely scared of pregnancy. He came quickly. Afterwards, as we were getting dressed, Billy turned to me and said, ‘I thought you were supposed to bleed the first time.’
My face turned scarlet. Billy was a gentle soul and he wasn’t saying this in an accusing way, he just seemed confused.
I panicked and within days I’d finished with him. I just couldn’t handle the sexual side of the relationship. I hated lying to him and I was so bad at it that I was convinced he believed he wasn’t my first. The sex reminded me of my da too and I worried that now that we had done it once, I’d have to do it all the time. The only way to stop the bad memories coming flooding back was to finish with Billy. So I pulled the plug on my relationship with the loveliest bloke I had ever met. I was heartbroken but I desperately needed to feel in control again.
All My Fault: The True Story of a Sadistic Father and a Little Girl Left Destroyed Page 8
