Daddy's Little Earner (20 page)

‘How do I get out of this dump?’ I asked loudly.

The other kids all laughed, telling me there was no
way of getting out; the place was far too secure. On many
occasions over the next few years I would prove that it
wasn’t, but I remember feeling very lonely and scared
that night, wondering what on earth was going to happen
to me next.

The scenery around Bramerton was beautiful, filled
with idyllic, well-cared-for little villages where people
lived pleasant tidy lives so unlike mine it was hard to
imagine. The place itself, however, was more or less a
children’s prison. I was forever being locked up and
punished for trivial rule breaking like being caught in
possession of a cigarette lighter. If we wanted to light
our cigarettes we were supposed to ask a member of
staff. I suppose they thought we would burn the place down if we had our own lighters, but we could probably
have done that with a lighted cigarette almost as easily.
On the whole, however, it wasn’t a bad place; they
even gave us a fag allowance. They had their own little
school on the premises, which I hated from the start.
Pupils spent their whole time making moccasins or nailing
felt to boards, a bit like prisoners sewing mail bags,
none of which I had any time for and the teacher seemed
really up himself.

Initially I spent six weeks there while they tried to
work out what to do with me next. They soon discovered,
however, that no one else wanted to take me on and that
they were pretty much stuck with me. It’s not hard to see
why. On paper I did not look like a very good bet. It was
common knowledge by then that I was on the game and
it was on the record that I kept running away from
anywhere they took me to, trying to get back to my dad
who was the source of all my problems. I guess I ran away
all the time partly because Dad told me to, but also partly
because that was what Mum had done with us and
because I never felt like I belonged anywhere so there was
no reason to resist the temptation to move on. I was
always hoping that the grass would be greener somewhere
else, despite constant disappointments. And wherever
they put me I always wanted to escape back to Dad,
the one place where I felt I belonged, however horrible
the reality of it might end up being once I got there.

Social services had tried many times to get me back
into mainstream schooling but I would always decide I
hated my new school and would spend my days skiving
off and drinking tea with a group of people who used to
hang around the city centre. That was how I ended up
being put in Bramerton – but despite the warnings from
the other kids, I found it wasn’t too hard to escape from
there when I wanted to head back into the city centre.

It wasn’t long after I arrived at Bramerton before I
struck up a relationship with a man nearly twenty years
older than me. It’s surprising how many men are willing
to get involved with a young girl in care. He even asked
me to marry him and bought an engagement ring from
his friend’s catalogue. Apart from the fact I was still only
fourteen, he should maybe have picked up the signals that
whenever he tried to have sex with me I would cry and
panic. Social services were writing reports saying how
promiscuous I was, but actually I hated sex and it seems
quite obvious now that I wanted older men like this guy
to be father figures to me. I was looking for love and protection
in all the wrong places and in completely the
wrong ways.

In December that year Mum gave birth to my baby
brother, Adam, and I went to the hospital with my new
boyfriend to visit them. Things between Mum and me
were very strained; I don’t think we’d even spoken since
Terry and I had been taken back into care, so the visit was a little awkward, but my new brother was the most
adorable thing I had ever seen; he was so beautiful and I
loved him at once. That’s when I got the idea in my head
that it would be wonderful to have a baby of my own to
care for.

It soon became obvious, though, that I wasn’t really
welcome to visit and that I wasn’t going to be a part of
Mum’s or Adam’s lives. Since leaving us back when I was
six, she had never sent Christmas or birthday cards and
that had always hurt. After our failed reunion and subsequent
separation again I hoped with all my heart that the
door could be left open with Mum, but when no card
arrived that Christmas I knew for sure she didn’t want
me. Mum had said that she was determined to be a brilliant
mum to Adam as she had screwed it up with her
other kids and she wasn’t going to do the same with this
one. I can honestly say I was never jealous of my baby
brother – I have never resented him, but I did her. From
the moment we left her new house Mum cut us off as
completely as she had when she first left us. We got no
calls, no cards, no letters and no visits. It was like we had
ceased to exist for her once more. I tried writing letters to
her but I received no response. I suppose she was hoping
to make a clean start with her new baby and didn’t want
any of the ugliness of the past to intrude.

It was at this point that I gave up on everything. I felt I
had finally lost everyone, even Terry Junior. Social services had told me that there wasn’t a children’s home or foster
home in the county that would take me. It felt as though
everyone had given up on me, although I guess they were
doing the best they could to find a solution to an almost
impossible problem.

Escaping had become like second nature to me. As soon
as I saw an opportunity to get back to Dad, if he was out of
jail, or back to my friends in the city pubs, I would take it.
I dare say it was also obvious to anyone with experience in
dealing with difficult teenagers that I had started doing
drugs as well as drinking. In Bramerton I was mixing with
some pretty hardcore people aged from twelve up to eighteen.
We used to sniff glue and aerosols, none of us wanting
to say ‘no’ when it was offered and risk looking like wimps.
I never liked it, particularly the glue, because it only gave
you a hit for a few seconds and then left you with a nasty
headache. Aerosols weren’t so bad, but I preferred more
grown-up drugs if I could get hold of them. Through my
friends in the pubs I got hold of cannabis and tried that,
then I moved on to speed, which would become my drug
of choice for the next few years.

I was generally pretty uncooperative and difficult with
anyone who tried to tell me what to do. I guess the refusing
to do what people told me stemmed from having Dad
ordering me around for so many years, bullying me into
doing things that I really didn’t want to do. If people asked
me nicely I could be cooperative, but the sort of people who worked in a place like Bramerton didn’t always have the
time or inclination for such niceties, which meant I didn’t
always react well to them. The couple who ran the home,
Mr and Mrs Mcquarrie, kept their distance from me at first
but I remember I was always nervous if I was called up to
see them for some misdemeanour or other. Mr Mcquarrie
was the sort of man who automatically commanded
respect, a man with a headmasterly presence.

Most of the anger that I had boiling away inside me
was directed towards myself. I was often slashing my
wrists or other parts of my body in self-disgust, taking
overdoses or sitting in a bath tub trying to scrape myself
clean with neat bleach and a scrubbing brush, not bothered
that I was rubbing so hard I was drawing blood.
Some of the other girls were anorexic and bulimic and I
was just as convinced as they were that I was overweight
and I used to long to be like them. I would try to make
myself sick after meals, as I saw them doing, but it never
worked. I would push my fingers down my throat but it
would only make me gag, I could never actually rid
myself of any food. My body repelled me because Dad
had repeatedly told me how fat and ugly it was, and
because of the way it had been bought and sold so cheaply,
used and disposed of over and over again by anyone
with ten pounds and a few minutes to spare.

There was a fashion amongst the girls at Bramerton
for tattooing one another with needles and Indian ink. The staff didn’t take much notice of that sort of thing; I
suppose it was a pretty harmless pastime compared with
suicide attempts and arson. I actually tattooed the word
‘Dad’ on my forearm because I still felt I belonged to him
and truly believed I always would. I started out doing it
with a needle and ink but it was taking so long I got bored
and finished the job off by slashing clumsily away with a
Stanley blade.

Having learnt my lesson that day back at junior school
when I turned on the bullies who were picking on me, I
was determined to establish a reputation for being the
hardest girl in Bramerton so that I would never get into
a position where I might be bullied. I’d had enough of
being a victim at Dad’s hands and with scumbags like
his mate Pete and all the pathetic punters in their shiny
motors. I wasn’t willing to accept it from anyone else,
ever. I hated violence but I knew that I would have to
establish my credentials amongst these hard cases if I
wanted to avoid being picked on and beaten up the whole
time. Over time I became top dog amongst the girls, partly
because I was there longer than most other people and
knew my way around, and partly because I protected my
position with my fists.

I made sure my reputation amongst the girls was
established quickly, showing that I would never be afraid
to use violence under any circumstances if I was pushed. I
must have been convincing because I hardly ever had to actually fight; just fronting up to people was enough, but
I knew I had to be prepared to prove how hard I really
was at any time. Every new girl who came in was going
to test the boundaries to see if she would be able to take
over my spot at the top of the pile. I could never allow that
to happen.

I wasn’t a bully at all myself. I would never pick on
anyone weaker than me. I was more of an agony aunt to
most of them, but now and again I had to assert my
authority and stick up for myself because someone was
challenging my authority. I felt the other girls were constantly
watching to see how I reacted to challenges, waiting
for me to show a weakness.

After I had been there a few months a new girl grassed
me up for something – I can’t remember what – and a
crowd formed with the other girls who knew me threatening
her that I would beat her up after lights out. It was
almost as though they were proud of how hard I was and
looked forward to watching how I was going to show this
upstart the error of her ways, putting her in her place.
Grassing on anyone was a cardinal sin in a place like
Bramerton so I knew they were going to expect me
to dole out some sort of punishment. I hoped that if I
came on aggressively enough the new girl would crack
and apologize and quickly prove that she had no bottle. I
would then be able to just issue a warning and walk away
without doing any damage. I had a feeling from the disdainful looks she was giving me and the mocking tone
of her voice, however, that she wasn’t going to be that sort
of girl. She was going to be prepared to call my bluff.

I was feeling sick with anticipation of what I was
going to have to do as a group of us went to her bedroom
that night, psyched up like an adolescent lynch mob. I
didn’t want to have to do anything but I could tell from
her attitude as she faced us down that she was after my
position and she wasn’t going to back away. She was out
to prove how tough she was, just as I was, and it was
reaching a point where it would look like weakness in
either of us if we conceded any ground. I knew I was
going to have to use violence and in the heat of the argument
I acted instinctively, picking up a piece of broken
glass and threatening to slash her face. Even as the words
came out of my mouth I was praying she would back
down because I really didn’t want to do it. The thought
of slashing anyone’s face made me feel terrified. I would
rather have just punched her but I had made my stand
and reached a point where I couldn’t actually drop the
piece of glass without looking soft.

The other girls were baying for blood, goading me on,
accusing me of ‘losing it’. I really, really didn’t want to do
it but I couldn’t think how to get out of the situation without
losing the high ground. My mind was racing and I was
buzzing with adrenaline. There wasn’t time to try to reason
my way out of the situation. Making a snap decision I slashed the edge of the broken glass across her hand rather
than her face. I wish I’d had the courage to tell them all to
fuck off, put the glass down and walked away, but I wasn’t
ready for that. The blood flowed from her cut and all
hell broke loose as the girl became hysterical and the staff
were called. They came running and my victim was
rushed away to hospital for stitches. They marched me off
to a little room downstairs and locked me in.

One member of staff, a man who really hated me, was
so pleased that I had finally overstepped the mark he
couldn’t stop himself from gloating: ‘We’ve got you now,
Maria. You’re going to Holloway now.’ (The notorious
women’s prison was always a threat they hung over me.)

I thought he was probably right but I felt so bad about
what I had done and the sort of person I had become that
I really didn’t care any more. I thought I deserved to go
to prison.

The staff called the police who took me away for a
night in the cells. In court the next morning, Mr and Mrs
Mcquarrie turned up to give evidence. Seeing them
made me even more certain that I was on my way to
prison. I knew that they all thought I was out of hand
and this would be their big chance to get shot of me. To
my surprise, Mr Mcquarrie stood up in court and fought
tooth and nail to get me remanded back to Bramerton,
arguing that if I went to Holloway I would be on a
downhill road that I would probably never recover from. I felt so guilty about what I had done that even I thought
I deserved to go to prison but Mr Mcquarrie’s pleadings
swayed the court and they agreed that I should be taken
back to Bramerton and given another chance. The other
girl was moved somewhere else for her own safety,
which didn’t seem fair to me, but the whole incident
cemented my reputation as someone you didn’t mess
with unless you wanted to end up hurt, humiliated and
shipped out.