Amelia's Story (Box Set the Complete Series Books 1 & 2) (3 page)

I knew there would be no use crying, she never soothed our cries and actually seemed to enjoy the tears. The imprints left on our bodies from the buckled belt would remain as a reminder for days. We would then be made to go to our room until she decided we had learned our lesson, then and only then would she unlock the door. At this time in my life I was confused and feared my mother but desperately needed to please her. I needed her to be happy with me, and wanted her to love me.

I did everything I could around the house, vacuuming, washing up, and looking after my little brother so she could watch her movies quietly. I would keep him entertained in the garden for hours. But it was never enough, and every day she picked out something I was doing wrong and suddenly, without any warning, I would receive an almighty slap or even a punch across the face. Jake and I were losing concentration at school, as unknown to us our bodies were harbouring small amounts of sleeping pills on a regular basis and this was affecting us more and more each day.

I did not know what it was like to live without fear, or to wake up in the morning with my mother in the kitchen getting breakfast ready. I woke up each morning to closed curtains, mother still in bed drunk from the night before (nursing a bad headache).

On days like these Jake and I awoke to our bedroom doors unlocked and can only assume she thought to unlock them in advance of her drunken spree while we were already asleep. We had to get our own breakfast every day (ready brek and cornflakes were a favourite, I recall!) During the winter we would favour porridge, but there was no microwave back then so we would have to make do with cold milk if mother was unable to get out of bed. I could not reach for the cupboards - they were far too high - so I would stand on a chair and climb onto the kitchen work top.

After feeding and dressing ourselves, we would go outside the front of the house and play with the other children. More often than not it would be near one o’clock in the afternoon before our mother surfaced and always in a bad mood, shouting and screaming because we had left a mess in the kitchen. After she had berated us to the point of bringing us to tears, mother would then throw us out of the house and shout further abuse at us and in front of the other children. We would not be allowed back into the house until after dark, but this suited both Jake and me.

During the hot summer days we would play with the older children from our square and often all head down to the wide river, with over-hanging trees. The other kids had been going down to the river long before Jake and me. They had made a make-shift swing out of an old tyre and a bit of rope (we thought this was the best thing ever!) We spent whole days hanging onto the swing and would jump off into the deep river below without any fear at all. Those days away from our mother were good days and earned a place in my memory bank for the future which was pretty empty.

We also spent many summer days scrumping in an old orchard attached to an old ruin near
Shepton School. The orchard was well stocked with damson, pear, apple, and plum trees, and many blackberry bushes too. We would be armed with old Carrefour plastic bags - lots of them - and all would eventually be filled with fruit until they were bursting, forgetting we would have to carry them all the way home! Jake and I would climb to the top of the trees teasing each other and seeing who could climb the fastest. There were many times when we would slip and fall, but this did not stop us, we would get straight back up on to our feet and within seconds we would be at the top of the tree again.

In the grounds of the old ruin there was a sundial several hundred years old
, I remember this so well because I was transfixed by it as a child, thinking it was beautiful. Just outside the front of the old ruin was a small lake, which we used to skim stones into. We would hold competitions to see who could skim the furthest.

I believe this old ruin has now been made into a luxury hotel. However, back then, this beautiful old building with large overgrown gardens was our place, Jake and Amelia’s secret place faraway from the clutches of our torturous mother. At the end of the day we would carry our bulging bags all the way home in the hope of pleasing our mother. On these occasions, even for just a little while, she would smile
, accept the fruit and start baking apple pies, blackberry pies, and plum pies. They were delicious, our mother was a great cook and produced great wholesome food, and when she was on form she could be quite pleasant during her more peaceful periods, but it never lasted. Not ever.

I thank God for our secret place, our very own secret garden, somewhere we could retreat to when things got really bad, this was the only place where we were truly happy. To us, this place was our “Garden of Eden,” with all the beautiful fruit trees and birds, it almost looked untouched by the modern world. This truly wondrous place was ours, Jake and Amelia’s, and it always would be.

One day when we were sent home from school, (I was seven and Jake was six) the Headmaster urgently called our mother in following complaints by our form teachers that we were both drunk and had fallen asleep at our desks during class. One of the teachers raised the concern when they could not rouse us from our sleep and could smell alcohol on our breath. The school reported our mother to the Social Services to cover their backs as this was normal protocol.

Jake and I had gotten hold of our mother’s alcohol earlier that morning, not realising what it was at all. The bottles had been left in the bottom kitchen cupboard; we came across them while making our breakfast and had drunk some before school thinking it was pop, but we had not drank very much at all as the taste to us was pungent.

However, it had not mixed too well with the sleeping pills our mother had slipped into our hot milk the night before. As you can imagine, she never took us to the doctor’s or rushed us to A&E because she knew she would be in serious trouble if they found these in our systems once they had pumped our stomachs. Instead, she managed again to keep the Social Workers at bay with a very convincing story and apologising for not putting the alcohol out of our reach. Claiming the only reason it was there was due to a party she had been to recently and had forgot to store the drink in a safe place on her return from the party.

Jake and I were feeling groggy most mornings now when we woke up, of course at this time we had no idea why we always felt like this in a morning. Our lives had become quite unbearable by now and we spent all our time trying to keep out of our mother’s way. In fact, we had turned it into an art form fit for MI5.

Colton Hall

Things were slightly better for a while following the incident with our school. Mother was less unpredictable and made a small effort but this was for her own gain more than for Jake and me. She knew she was on very thin ground once again and needed to keep the authorities at bay; our temporary reprieve was not out of guilt for her terrible actions, but purely for selfish reasons, not wanting to be found out once again for the un-fit mother she truly was.

We were told by our mother that we would soon be having a new brother or sister, and that she needed all the help that we could give her especially from me. She told me that she would be relying on me heavily in future to help with more chores around the house and look after the children. Our mother was still smoking and drinking heavily throughout her pregnancy, yet again, the further her pregnancy advanced the more bad tempered she got. A couple of months before Jenny was born we were told that we would have to go into care for a while as she needed some space.

Shortly after this, she voluntarily placed both Jake and me into care. Again she could not cope with the responsibility of Jake and m
e while she was expecting her third child. We were sent to Colton Hall Children’s Nursery Home in Shropshire. I remember it very well. I cried believing she was unable to cope because we were naughty children. She carried on drinking all through her pregnancy with her third child, eating very little and smoking in a manner that made you wonder if cigarettes were going to become extinct soon. Unfortunately, Jenny was born physically disabled and with cerebral palsy.

Jake and I spent all of the Christmas holidays in Colton Hall with no visitors. I remember Christmas day we woke up in strange somber surroundings, as I looked around I could see we were in a dormitory with at least ten other children who were already awake and huddled together laughing at us. Then one child pointed to our beds and Jake shouted, “Look Amelia your bed.” I looked down at my bed and the bottom half was soiled. Jake’s was just the same too.

We climbed out of our beds and just sat on the floor close to each other until a member of staff came into the dormitory. We were to discover a little later that all new kids got this treatment on their arrival at Colton Hall. That same morning we noticed that there was a plastic see through bag at the end of our beds, this contained fruit and a few little pleasures such as a colouring book and a bar of chocolate. All the other children were hurriedly searching through their bags to see what Father Christmas had brought for them.

Some of the more fortunate children were blessed with visits from their parents on this special day and some were not so fortunate. I remember that during our time at Colton Hall, I felt lonely and I wanted to go home. I did not understand why we were there, where was our mother and why had she not stopped by to see us over Christmas? To a seven-year-old child this was a very emotional thing to deal with; to even try and make sense of it all was a sheer impossibility. I just know I felt that Jake and I were to blame for everything; we really believed that everything was our fault because we had been naughty. We did not take well to Colton Hall and spent most of our time crying or sitting together and not saying much to anyone from one day to the next.

Eventually, we were allowed home and greeted with smiles and pleasantries, our mother made an effort for a while with promises that everything was going to be much better from now on and that we all have to stick together. However, this was not to last for very long before mother fell foul to her usual and cruel ways.

Soon after our half-sister was born it became apparent that the rest of the world was to blame for Jenny’s disabilities. Mother was struggling to cope with Jenny as she was born disabled and one leg was a little shorter than the other, so hospital visits and the frequent journeys were becoming too much for her to bear. Jenny was unable to walk by herself for a very long time. Jenny was beautiful despite her obvious disability, she was always smiling and laughing, in fact
, she was so unaware of her surroundings, it’s fair to say she was the happiest of us all and thank God for that small mercy. Jake and I loved her instantly, Jenny had a shock of beautiful yellow hair and bright blue eyes, her smile reached from one end of her face to the other, she was a true blessing for Jake and me. I loved her with all of my being and was amazed with this tiny new addition to our family. Jenny was a good few months old when we arrived home.

Totally out of the blue, a short while later, Jenny, Jake and me were urgently whisked away without any warning and with just a few clothes to cover us for the next few days. We had been told that our mother and father had been taken ill and needed to recuperate for a while. We had been left at a neighbour's house the day before but our parents never returned home. Everyone was anxious but they were trying so hard not to worry us.

As the events unfolded, I discovered that mother and Robert had both taken a suicide pact and overdosed together. They were eventually found by concerned neighbours who had slipped over the back gate and let themselves into the house. They immediately called an ambulance, and then they called the Social Services. Jake and I were both devastated, we had very little knowledge of what was going on; only that it was very serious. Of course we both knew where this was going to lead again. We were sure that we would be placed in yet another children’s home. Once again we were left fearing our immediate future, the familiar feeling of instability, insecurity, and fear was what we felt at that moment in time.

We were all sent to Colton Hall again, while our mother and father were being investigated by Social Services and the health services for their stability as parents. We at least were familiar with the surroundings of Colton Hall. We knew one or two of the children who were permanent residents until they reached a certain age and then they would be moved on to another home. So settling in the second time was far easier on us all than it was the first time. We were spared the usual ritual of our beds being soiled which was a relief to both Jake and me. The staff did all they could to make us feel welcome and I remember that our breakfast sitting was the very first time I had tasted honey. I was encouraged to try some with my porridge and it was delicious! I’ve loved it ever since. I will never forget that first taste in my mouth, a beautiful mixture of honey and oats! As the days passed by we were all settling into a routine. We were quite happy and had adapted well to our temporary surroundings, I loved the fact that we had a set breakfast time each day. In the morning when the alarm rang out like a billowing horn, we would all jump out of bed and get washed before we were all escorted to the small dining hall where there was a feast fit for a king set out before us; this was something we most definitely were not used to at all. The tables were laid with plain plastic cloths and small sized cutlery, the table was adorned with mini-sized boxes of cereal for us to choose from, there was warm toast delicately cut into triangles in a neat little toast rack, and the option to have warm porridge was there if we preferred.

I never wanted to leave the table, I wanted to eat everything set out before me, and most mornings I did! After breakfast we were all led into the nursery area, which also doubled into a play area for the five-to-seven-year-olds. Activities would be arranged to keep us amused until lunchtime arrived. Once again we would be greeted with a delicious feast of meat and potatoes and a side dish of peas, simple wholesome food. I loved it and the regular routine was so good for us all.

We thought about our parents less and less mainly due to the regular stability Col
ton Hall had given to us. Whilst at Colton Hall, a problem that I developed in the form of bed wetting had stopped after a while; I no longer woke up in the middle of the night soaking wet and crying out. Jake’s confidence had also increased - normally he was exceptionally shy – however, he had become more outgoing and was joining in with the other children more often these days, rather than sitting alone in the corner. Jenny was just happy no matter what thankfully, she was far too young to know what was going on; she was also taken very good care of at Colton.

Unfortunately
, our current welcomed stable lives were about to be disrupted once more. Our mother and step-father had now recovered from their overdose and had been discharged by the psychiatric consultant, who deemed them fit once more to be capable parents. The Social Services department had an urgent meeting following receipt of the health service’s psychiatric reports on them both. They were no longer a danger to themselves or their children. All governing bodies were convinced and in complete agreement that their children could now be returned home once more.

Sounds surreal but this was the 1970’s and things were dealt with far differently then than they are today. We were assigned a Social Worker who looked in on us all from time to time. I
can recall her visits very clearly. On the morning of her visit mother would actually be up and out of bed, cooking breakfast and laying the table. We would all be kitted out in our Sunday best, and because mother was happy we children were happy (and she knew then that all would be well).

The Social Worker would arrive on time as always, mother would greet her at the door presenting the perfect family image. The house would be spotless as were us children, and we would all be playing happily together, the perfect family picture. Mother always prepped us before the Social Worker arrived, warning us that if we were naughty while she was there that we would all be taken away, and we would never be allowed home again. This would put the fear of God into us and was enough to ensure we were on our best behaviour. Our mother always led us to believe that Social Workers were interfering busybodies who had no business calling on her all the time.

On the surface we looked like most families and the Social Worker would be happy. She would be armed with her black clip board, all the while writing away as she was talking to our mother ticking her boxes and satisfying herself that all was well. She would finish her tea and then leave until her next visit. As soon as she left, mother would almost immediately revert to type. We were instantly ordered to get changed out of our Sunday best and put our old playing clothes back on; the shouting and stressing would start soon after. We would all be ordered to go outside the front of the house to play so she could have peace and quiet. Translated, this usually meant she needed a drink or three. Eventually, when we were allowed back into the house we could tell our mother was different, she would slur her words and stumble around the house.

The arguments had become more frequent, more frightening, mother became terribly erratic, she would fly into an uncontrollable rage more often than not, and her target was nearly always me. She would lash out at me with anything she held in her hands at that moment in time, a rolling pin, a saucepan, even a dog chain. She would turn into a mad woman, sometimes calling me all the ugly names she could muster from within herself and with the front door wide open for all to hear and then I would be thrown outside.

Tears would fall down my face in bucket loads; I would barely be able to breathe through my crying, I would feel humiliated and embarrassed and pray the ground would just open up and swallow me. This would always be justified one way or another, and if she felt a shadow of guilt she would punish me for making her feel bad. I was to blame for her miserable life as far as she was concerned and I was reminded of this on an almost daily basis.

She would screech at me, “It’s your fault your real father left us, you were too demanding and you were a naughty child.” I was two-years-old when he left, how could any of this be my fault? The more she blamed me the more I believed her. She would shout out, “He hated you Amelia, he tried to drown you in the bath when you were two-years-old.” I would cry back, “You’re lying, you’re lying, stop it.” Again I would feel the force of her hand clip around my cheekbones; the sting would be felt for hours later. I spent the whole of my life believing my father tried to kill me by drowning.

She would drink more and more on days like these, we would be sent to our rooms with a cup of warm milk or chocolate (laced with small amounts of sleeping pills) to ensure we would not wake up during the night. Again, our doors would be bolted tight and each of our bedrooms would have a potty in the corner should we wake up and be in need of the toilet. Jake being a little younger than me, around six at the time, had taken to rocking himself to sleep as he too was frightened of the dark, it was his only way of coping.

Then our mother would put on her makeup, get dressed, and leave us home all alone while she went out for the evening.