Girl for Sale Page 2

  The best Christmas I can remember in that house was the one when Shane arrived home with dogs as presents. I must have been three. I loved animals and it was magical, not only to have the pets but to have some sort of affection shown to us. It was Christmas Day and we were summoned downstairs to the lounge. Already I had heard the scampering, whimpering and barking before I opened the door and almost didn’t want to believe it in case it wasn’t true. I have no idea where the dogs came from but I have my suspicions: they weren’t puppies. It was snowing outside and just for a moment everything was perfect. My sister and I shared Brandy, a long-haired golden retriever. Shane got the boys a mongrel, Mitch, to share, and he kept a Staffordshire Bull Terrier called Tyson – a vile creature – for himself.

  For the next few weeks we were enthralled by our new pets. We’d play with them in the garden and take them for walks. Shane showed more affection to his status dog than he did to his wife and children – I suppose it boosted the hard man image he carefully maintained.

  One afternoon, after we’d had the dogs for a while, I heard a commotion in the garden and looked out the window to see Tyson attacking Mitch. Jayden was screaming and trying to drag him off his dog. There was blood everywhere. The Staffie was ripping poor Mitch apart, continually snapping at its throat with its powerful jaws. The mongrel’s injuries were so bad that it died there and then in the yard. Tyson was subsequently destroyed.

  Home was a hellhole, no matter whether you were a kid or an animal.

  There was no routine. We went to bed when we remembered to go upstairs or were left to fall asleep on the sofa or the floor. We were left to sort ourselves out. Often we didn’t go to bed until midnight. Sometimes Jayden would take it upon himself to carry us up to bed. I remember waking up in his arms if I fell asleep somewhere in the house. We used to get left on our own a lot because Shane was out all the time and Terri would disappear for periods. We never knew where. Often there were strangers coming in and out of the house. With hindsight, I assume they were drug dealers. It was only years later that I realised what Terri was doing when I used to see her heating tin foil with a lighter.

  Terri never stopped drinking. I’d get up in the morning and she would be drunk. Often her best friend, a neighbour, would call round and they drank together. As the day went on they grew louder and louder, and Terri’s friend, who also had a young child, then tried to straighten her out before Shane arrived. Ironically, he used her neglect of us as an excuse to beat her. The friend brought toothbrushes and toothpaste round with her to try to hide the smell of alcohol on Terri’s breath and helped her to dispose of the empty wine and vodka bottles.

  I never saw any tenderness or affection between Shane and Terri, just tension and hatred. I don’t remember them ever going out or getting a babysitter. They shouted at each other; they didn’t talk. There was a fight every day, if not more than once a day. In the end, I learned to block it out and assumed this was normal – I thought it was what people did. I didn’t know any other families with young children to make comparisons because we didn’t mix. Shane’s social life was drinking with his friends and Terri’s was drinking at home.

  In our own way, we were all affected by the violence. We huddled together and cried, and as we got older we tried to stop Shane, who was often drunk too, but he just swatted us away like flies. The beatings were brutal – he used to smash Terri’s head up against the brick arch between the lounge and the kitchen. Drunk and incapable, she took her beatings but sometimes whimpered. Early on she learned not to fight back. She was hospitalised so many times and still the authorities let five children live in the house. They knew what was going on because often the police were called by concerned neighbours.

  It was always fists when Shane beat Terri; always sustained and brutal. There was never just a slap. Sometimes I wondered why she never defended herself and hit back. After all, she was tall and big and he was short. I used to think, if she tried, she would have been able to batter him. But fighting back would have made him worse. Obviously very strong, he was also savage.

  I should feel sorry for her, and I do understand that she was a victim and suffered terrible abuse, but even in later life when she broke away from Shane, she showed no affection or responsibility for me. She was not a nice person.

  One memory stands out from those early years. Later in my life, when counsellors asked about my first memory, it was always the same one that came bubbling to the surface: the image of Terri’s bloodied and swollen face being repeatedly forced into the metal sieve of a mop bucket by a snarling Shane, as if he was trying to wring the alcohol out of her.

  As he assaulted her, my terrified brothers screamed and ran around him, nappies hanging down around their knees. We all tried to stop him but he was a man possessed.

  I don’t remember what led to that particular beating, but I assume he came home and she was drunk. The fight took place in the kitchen, where there was an old-fashioned galvanised metal mop and bucket. Shane repeatedly punched Terri until she fell on the floor. Then he grabbed her by the hair, dragged her over to the bucket and shoved her face into the metal grid. I heard bones crunch; it was sickening. He was pushing down on the back of her head so hard that the sinews in his forearms strained. Then he smacked her on the back of the head with the mop.

  It was one of the few times she screamed: she was screaming for her life. At one point he knelt on her back and she twisted at such an awkward angle I thought he was going to break her neck. There were trails of blood down the sides of the bucket. Her face became so swollen that when he eventually stopped she was stuck in the bucket. She lay on the floor sobbing and bleeding, with the bucket on her head, twisted like a broken doll.

  Terrified and traumatised, my siblings and I cowered in a corner, crying. Shane stood over her, motionless until the sound of police sirens roused him. Whenever the law arrived, he made off like a coward out the back door and down the alleyway at the end of the yard. A neighbour must have called the police.

  When they came, Terri had to be cut free from the bucket. Her nose was crooked and pouring blood. She needed to stay in hospital for several days and we were taken into temporary care. Still, we were sent back when she was released. She never filed charges and there were no prosecutions.

  I hate Shane for what he did to us and to Terri. But, ironically, later in life he did show some interest in his family. After we were taken into care, he was always the one who turned up on contact visits with sweets and lemonade. He would talk to us and ask about our lives. But from Terri there was nothing: she turned up drunk, looked at her watch repeatedly and asked whether it was time to go as if she couldn’t wait to leave. I have never looked up to my birth mother, and I learned from birth never to look to her for anything because there was never anything to look up to.

  There was never a time of normality when we lived together as a family. I cannot remember a normal day. I don’t recall feeling safe; I didn’t know what safety was. If I’d had the choice, back then, I would have liked to live anywhere but that house.

  I remember wondering why we were there, and why we’d been born.

  Chapter two

  BRIEF SANCTUARY

  In the depths of this miserable home life there was one place where I could be normal and felt secure, if only temporarily. My grandparents’ house in the Cheshire countryside was a sanctuary for all of us; an oasis of calm in the midst of the chaos. Terri’s adoptive parents, Anne and Malcolm Evans, were the only people we could run away to. In many respects, they were the parents we never had. They looked out for us and knew about some of the problems we faced at home because we sometimes went to stay with them when there was trouble. While our birth parents starved us of affection, they did their best to fill the vacuum. When Terri was hospitalised, or the police were called after a fight, Granddad would make the long journey to take us back to the peace of his home. Like a silver-haired superhero, he swooped in to save the day.

  Often the mercy missions would
take place in the middle of the night after he had been alerted by a slurred, drunken call from Terri or, if things had got out of hand, a call from the police. Nan and Granddad were the most stable influence in my life at the time. If they weren’t rescuing us after one of Shane’s onslaughts, they would visit and bring food parcels and clothes. They knew we were never fed or clothed properly and would often arrive with homemade cakes and bags full of groceries, along with warm clothes and essentials like new underwear and pyjamas.

  For as long as I can remember, Nan looked like a stereotypical granny. Her grey hair was styled in a tight curly perm. I don’t know how old she was when she got it, but I can only ever remember her with that one hairstyle, and I couldn’t imagine her as a younger woman. She was tiny, around 5ft 3in, and always seemed to be wearing an apron. Granddad was originally from Manchester and was very tall. He looked like a giant from my vantage point, but he was a friendly one, like something from a children’s story.

  Nan and Granddad’s house was everything ours was not. They were complete opposites. Their house was very homely, it was bright and warm; worlds apart from the dark, dank space we were used to. It had comfortable, soft furnishings; it was clean and it smelled of home cooking. It was also child-friendly. Although we were only there occasionally, they did everything they could to make it welcoming for us. It was a bungalow and, although it was obvious old people lived there because of the old-fashioned furnishings and decor, it still felt like a place where we could be at home. We didn’t need to have our guards up when we were there. There were toys for us and beds we could sleep in, with warm duvets and clean sheets. It felt so safe, like no one could get to us when we were there.

  Nan would always prepare home-cooked meals when we stayed and, each time we walked in, the smell of roasting meat or home baking filled the house. She used to make banana muffins and we each had our own teacups with little clown faces on them. We usually turned up at the house after a particularly nasty beating, and Nan would sit us down at the table, pour us hot tea and serve up muffins before we collapsed into bed.

  Outside there was a lovely garden with a well-kept lawn and colourful borders. Nan and Granddad loved gardening and in warm weather would be outside with us, encouraging us to play and to be the carefree kids we could not be at home. Their bungalow was in a quiet street; our house was on a busy main road and there were always people screaming and shouting outside. Our grandparents’ house was quiet and in an area where there were a lot of retired couples. Often the neighbours had their grandchildren over as well and we played with them.

  The length of time we stayed there depended on the circumstances at home. If Terri had been hospitalised then we stayed longer, sometimes for up to a week. It was like going on holiday. When it was time to go back, I got anxious. The thought of returning home filled me with uncertainty, and left me torn between two worlds: my home and my grandparents’ home. One was warm and cosy, the other was chilly and hostile. Despite realising at a young age that what was happening at home was frightening, I was too young to know how neglected we all were and in my mind the horrific incidents were my normality. To some degree, we all felt a misplaced sense of loyalty towards Shane and Terri, so, when we did get home from our grandparents, we learned to play down the details of the fun we’d had because, if we spoke excitedly about the toys and the games, we were told that we were being spoilt. My little brothers especially didn’t want my parents to feel like they were unappreciated.

  When we weren’t being protected by my grandparents, the job fell to my elder brother, Jayden. He was four years older than me, whereas Kirsten was 11 months older. Jayden took care of us right from the off; he saved our lives on a few occasions. He has always been a big boy and had to grow up rapidly. Even when he was five and six he was making sure we were safe when fights broke out, and by the time he was seven years old, he was standing up to Shane. Jayden wouldn’t let him anywhere near us and in the process his protective nature earned him a lot of injuries. On one occasion, he tried to defend Terri by kicking Shane in the privates and then, when our father’s anger turned on us, Jayden herded us all into the pantry and locked us in before he ran off to call the police. He learned to dial 999 in an emergency very early on in life.

  When I was a little older, I learned that Jayden was not my full brother. Appropriately for Terri and Shane’s chaotic, confused life, Jayden’s real father was Shane’s brother, which makes him my cousin and my brother at the same time. My uncle slept with Terri before she was with Shane but that has never mattered to me and has never altered the way I feel about Jayden. We have had our issues and have fallen out over the years. Jayden has had his demons to face as much as me, thanks to our early years, but I have only ever viewed him as a brother and was always thankful for the way he looked after us. We were always close and in later years, when we were finally taken into care, Jayden was adopted by my nan and granddad and cared for them loyally as they grew older.

  Jayden was a gorgeous kid. Always tall for his age, even as a toddler he looked older than his years. He was handsome and had dark hair; always stocky and bulky, but not fat. He was very active and loved sports. They became his escape and I’m sure they were a way he could channel the frustration he felt at home. He played football and especially enjoyed the rough and tumble of rugby. Always fearless, Jayden didn’t seem to care about being hurt. Each of us in our own way became immune to pain and fear in our later lives, and we have all had our issues to deal with because of this. We became risk takers and each developed a warped sense of personal safety.

  Despite the burden Jayden had to shoulder at home, he was always smiling. He managed to see the best in everyone, or at least he tried to. It was as if he had the maternal instinct Terri should have had. Along with the photographs I have of Terri, I also have pictures of Jayden when he was young, and in them he is often holding me when I was a toddler. He has a defiant look in his eye, like a lioness protecting her young.

  When I look at those photographs now they make me feel sad because they remind me of just how quickly we all had to grow up and how much we missed out on. We didn’t really have a mother or a father; the adults who were supposed to be protecting and guiding us were not fit for parenthood. We were our own family and, at times, Jayden was our mum and dad. We all looked out for each other and Jayden did his best to keep us safe. In the bitter cold of winter we took care of our younger brothers and made sure they were warm, snuggling up to them and sharing blankets and quilts when the house got so cold you could see your breath in front of your face.

  Like a pack of wild animals each of us knew his place in the hierarchy of our dysfunctional family. Jayden was the protector and, along with Kirsten and me, he looked after our two younger brothers when they came along. Jamie arrived first, a year after I was born, and Harry was born a year later.

  Kirsten inherited Terri’s dark hair, as did Jamie. Her face was thin and she was a scrawny little thing, all bony limbs. In bed, I would often get a spiky elbow or knee in the back whenever she fidgeted around, trying to find a comfortable spot.

  Kirsten and I developed a different relationship to the one I had with Jayden. We were so close in age that throughout the years our roles interchanged. When I was young, she acted as the older sister. She taught me the things I should have been taught by adults, such as how to tie a shoelace and how to use cutlery. When we were placed in temporary foster care after fights at home, Kirsten and I would inevitably be put together while the boys were sent elsewhere. It was impossible for social services to find a home where all five of us could be accommodated. In those early years, we were taken away and sent back three times but then there were the times when we were whisked away by my grandparents too.

  Social services automatically became involved following any incident the police had attended. Mainly the foster carers looked after us overnight while Terri went off to hospital to be patched up. It was always an adventure when we got back together and we excitedly told each other
where we’d been and what we’d been doing. Inevitably, the houses we stayed in were warm and equipped with toys and games for children. As we grew older, the role between Kirsten and me reversed, and she used to get scared and come to me at night for reassurance.

  We all learned to hide behind masks. To the outside world, we were gregarious, smiley, friendly children. For my part, I remember being overly eager to please people. Maybe I believed that, if I smiled, I would feel happier and, if I really tried hard to please people, they would give me the love and affection that was so badly lacking from my parents. Kirsten was like me – a smiley and friendly child. She was also very bouncy; she couldn’t sit still, bordering on hyperactivity. Whenever she got the freedom of some space, she ran around until she exhausted herself. She craved attention because she didn’t get much at home. Extremely excitable, she babbled on for ages whenever anyone engaged her in conversation.

  Early on we all started to develop behavioural problems. We were never potty trained by our parents and this affected us. Up until the age of four, I was wearing a nappy. Our levels of personal hygiene were appalling too: we were rarely washed and taught each other how to clean our teeth. Kirsten developed the strange habit of drinking vinegar. If ever there was any in the pantry she would steal it and drink it. If we happened to be out somewhere, and there were sachets of it, she made a beeline for it and filled her pockets. On one occasion after we were taken into care and taken out for a meal, Kirsten disappeared. Eventually she was found under a table in another part of the restaurant, drinking from a bottle of vinegar. On another occasion, she was hospitalised for bingeing on it.

  Our lives started to change when my grandparents arranged for us all to go to a nearby nursery. It was the first time we had been given any structure. Most likely they realised our lives were in freefall and wanted to help us get some form of normality. Perhaps they realised that the longer we were able to escape from the misery of our house, the healthier we would be.