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Authors: Alice Lawrence,Megan Lloyd Davies

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BOOK: Daddy's Prisoner
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I didn’t want to take off my clothes but knew I had to. Dad was giving us The Look, daring us to do wrong because then he’d be able to give us a doing when the strangers left.

No one spoke as we stripped until the boys stood in their Y-fronts and me in my knickers and vest.

‘Turn around,’ Dad snapped.

We stood silently in a row as the strange man and woman looked at us.

‘Lift up your vest, Alice.’

I pulled it up to reveal my bare back.

‘Now get out and go upstairs,’ The Idiot spat.

We grabbed our clothes before running out. Later, we heard the front door slam and I knew the man and woman had gone. We didn’t have any bruises that day.

‘If anyone asks questions then tell them you’ve been fighting,’ Dad said later. ‘I’m going to make sure those bastards don’t come back.’

I can remember wondering if I could sneak out of the house and tell the man and woman what Dad did to us all. But I couldn’t because then I’d leave Mum, my brothers and sister alone with him and we all needed to stick together.

I don’t know who it was who called social services but The Idiot was convinced it was Granny Ruby and screamed at Mum to make sure that ‘fucking nosey bitch’ never returned. The social services did, though, a couple of times. We never saw them but knew they’d been because they left plastic sheets to put on our beds. They’d seen enough to know our house was filthy – filled with stinking clothes, urine-soaked bed sheets and dirty dishes. It was like a pigsty. You couldn’t see the carpet for food and old clothes, mould grew in the kitchen and the flowery cover on the settee was stained brown all over. But that was the way The Idiot liked it.

With bad teeth and the bitter smell of sweat always clinging to him, I never once in my life saw Dad have a bath and he’d spend his last few pence on the gadgets he was obsessed with, like telescopes and binoculars. So although he raked in money from child benefits, there was still often not enough left to buy proper food. He always made sure there was just enough to feed him, though: potatoes and gravy or fried eggs, my mouth would water and my stomach growl when I smelled his food. Sometimes we’d sneak his potato peelings and fry them for our tea but we often went to bed hungry and soon learned to steal food from the local shops or cupboards at home. Of course, we’d get another slap if we were found out but sometimes we were just too hungry to care. Dad would shout, though, if I cried about my stomach gnawing and so I looked forward to going to school because we were given hot food there.

Mum tried to look after us, of course, but it was hard for her because looking after Dad was a full-time job. Making cups of tea, shaving his face as he lay watching TV and fetching and carrying for him, she was at his beck and call and he hated her doing too much for us. She did whatever she could when he wasn’t watching too closely; tickling us and making us laugh if she came up to our bedroom, giving us cuddles when his back was turned.

Meanwhile we ran wild: playing hide and seek in the streets when we were allowed out, or in the two bedrooms we all shared on the many days when we were kept inside. There was a third bedroom as well but it couldn’t be used because it was piled high with junk The Idiot had collected over the years. So he and Mum slept on a bed in the lounge where he could keep an eye on everyone because that’s the way he liked it: nothing could happen in our house without him seeing it or on his say-so. His reeking home was his castle and in it he was king.

Access to the toilet and water was one of The Idiot’s favourite ways to control us because he knew he’d be able to endlessly punish us for wrongdoings. We were all so scared that we soaked our mattresses night after night. By the time I was nine, it had got so bad that the wooden bed frames were wet through because there were usually at least two children in each bed at night. With no hot water a lot of the time, the air in our flat was thick with the acrid stink of stale urine.

Once again, Mum tried her best but Dad got so angry if he saw her stripping off the wet sheets that it was easier not to. As I grew older, I also tried to take the soiled bedclothes off the holey mattresses but he’d hear the noises as I moved about.

‘What are you up to?’ The Idiot would bellow from the lounge and I’d stop what I was doing as I held my breath.

He seemed to love the fact that we couldn’t stop ourselves from having accidents at night. Sometimes I’d wake up in time and try to get to the loo. But then I’d hear the creak of his bed as I tiptoed to the bathroom and stop still for fear he’d hear me because he did not like us using the toilet at night. As I stood waiting in the dark for what seemed like for ever, I’d feel a warm stream of urine running down my leg as I wet myself. All of us did it and the carpets were sodden. But The Idiot didn’t bother about the stench until he was itching for a fight and then he’d humiliate us.

‘Was this you?’ he screamed at me one day when he walked into the bedroom I shared with Laura. ‘Dirty little bitch.’

He pointed at the sheets hanging off one of the beds. They were stained dirty brown and the springs of the bed were peeking through the ripped mattress underneath. Grabbing me by the back of my neck, Dad started pushing me towards the bed. I knew what was coming and panic rose inside as I was propelled forward.

‘Please, Dad, no,’ I screamed. ‘I didn’t mean it. I’ll clean it up. Please, no.’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ he roared as he bent me over the bed.

Pushing my face, he ground it deeper and deeper into the wet sheets. I struggled to breathe as my nose and mouth were pushed into the cold, clammy, stinking bed. The smell was so strong I felt my stomach turn.

It seemed like for ever until my head was finally pulled back and I looked up to see The Idiot standing in front of me.

‘Have you learned your lesson now, you dirty little bitch?’ he screamed, his hand closing like a vice around my neck. ‘Do you want me back in here again?’

I felt so dizzy, my head was twirling as he spoke to me.

‘No, Dad,’ I whispered.

‘Well, then, clean this mess up and if you don’t do it properly you’ll be sorry, do you hear?’

He stomped out of the room as I looked around. Our bedroom windows had been nailed shut after we’d been burgled so there was no way to get fresh air into the place, let alone dry the washing and air the mattresses. I’d never be able to do as he said. Fear filled me as I started to cry.

I knew we stunk just as much as our house did so in the mornings I’d try to wash by topping and tailing myself in cold water like Mum had shown me. But cold water couldn’t get rid of the sour smell ingrained on my skin and the other kids at school soon started picking on me.

‘Smelly freak, four eyes stinky,’ the boys and girls would cry.

Or sometimes they’d throw bits of paper with messages on at me in class. ‘You stink! Go back to where you came from.’

I didn’t like being alone in the playground, of course, but it was better than being at home because at least I wasn’t going to get hurt at school. The other kids didn’t like me and called me names but they didn’t hit me like Dad did. I knew I was different because of that but still felt ashamed when I started getting ‘special treatment’ because it made me even more of an outcast. Each day before class I’d be given a shower and clean clothes to wear by my teacher, Miss Pritchard, who waited while I washed and helped with my back if I couldn’t reach.

‘It’ll make it easier for you in class,’ she’d say if I started crying about being different. ‘Don’t you want to make friends, Alice?’

I wanted a friend more than anything because all the other children sat in twos while I was always alone. But I felt ashamed my teacher was washing me and knew I had to keep it secret because otherwise I’d be in trouble with The Idiot. He didn’t want anyone helping us. After a few weeks, though, I realised that getting washed might be a good thing because I met a girl called Kirsty who became my first friend.

In the beginning, Kirsty just said ‘hi’ to me but gradually we started playing together – skipping with ropes, throwing balls, that kind of thing – and soon we were sitting next to each other in class. I was so happy. Kirsty was pretty, wore brightly coloured clothes and her hair was neatly combed into bunches, plaits or ponytails. I wore old sweatshirts and my hair was always straggly because even though I tried to do a neat ponytail, it never looked as nice as Kirsty’s.

Just like the showers and clean clothes, I knew I must keep Kirsty a secret from The Idiot because he’d take her from me if he knew. So I didn’t whisper a word about my new friend at home and started looking forward to going to school even more. Now I didn’t hang around the lunch hall hoping to get a second helping, instead I ran out into the playground with Kirsty. But although I enjoyed having a friend very much, it confused me at times when she told me stories about her mum, dad and the ‘family stuff ’ they did together.

‘My daddy took me swimming last night and we played together,’ she’d say.

I didn’t understand what she meant.

‘He put me on his shoulders and threw me into the water. I swallowed some of it but Daddy pulled me up and out.’

At first I told myself that Kirsty must be making up stories because that kind of fun only happened in books. My favourite was the Cat in the Hat who visited a brother and sister and caused all sorts of funny problems. But that wasn’t real life and daddies didn’t play with you. I only felt safe when mine was out and Laura and I would put on our pyjamas before Mum sneaked us a drink of juice as a treat and cuddled us.

‘No carry on tonight,’ she’d say as we got into bed. ‘Talk quietly and then go to sleep before he comes home.’

But sometimes I’d have bad dreams when my eyes closed and Mum would have to come to see me again.

‘Lie back down now and think of something nice,’ she’d say and I always thought of cuddling up to her, never Dad. I didn’t understand what Kirsty meant when she spoke about hers.

But after a few weeks of being friends, Kirsty told me one day that she couldn’t play with me any more.

‘Everyone’s picking on me too because I’m your friend,’ she explained.

‘But we can talk when no one’s listening,’ I pleaded. ‘We can be secret friends.’

‘No. They’d see us. They’d know.’

And so Kirsty moved seats in class and I was alone again. The only people who never turned against me were my brothers and I knew they were my only real friends as we continued to get up to all sorts of mischief. I think it was a way of releasing all the anger and frustration inside but the adults around us just seemed to get exasperated when we got into yet more trouble. When I was about ten, I was playing tag on a roof with Michael and tried to jump on to a ledge below to get away from him. But I made a mistake and ended up crashing twenty-five feet to the ground below – fracturing both legs, which meant two weeks in hospital and even more time at home with my legs in plaster. Trapped in the house with Dad, I longed to go back to school, though Mum made it better by sitting with me on the sofa or sneaking me an extra bag of crisps. She also tried to make sure I did all the homework sent to me by school but it was hard because Dad had the TV on all the time and, of course, we couldn’t turn it off. When I finally got back to school, though, I was as wild as ever with my brothers and no one ever thought to ask why. Maybe they just considered us a bad lot or weren’t interested because we were too much trouble, but no one looked closely enough to see what lay hidden behind our front door.

I never knew why The Idiot hated Michael more than the rest of us but it was always him who got it worst because something about him made Dad even more vicious. The slaps were always harder and the words crueller.

‘Little bastard,’ he’d scream as he whacked Michael with his walking stick. ‘You are, aren’t you? No son of mine.’

No matter what Michael did, he always got the doing. If Simon hit first, then Michael was the one who was punished for the fight; if all of us got into trouble on the streets, then he was the one The Idiot turned to first with his fists. It upset me to see Michael getting hurt but he laughed it off and would never talk about it with his little sister. We were too young, of course, to find the words but the fact that I was a girl was enough of a reason to hide that he was hurt. When Michael got a second-hand bike, he’d give Simon backies but wouldn’t offer me a ride; if we watched a karate film on TV and I tried to copy the moves like my brothers then they’d laugh at me. I was just a girl after all and that was the way things were.

But even though Dad hated Michael more than any of us, there was trouble if someone tried to interfere with his son. I must have been about ten when Michael picked a fight with a boy whose father then came out into the street to finish him off. Michael told us all about it when he got home and The Idiot immediately took out the Samurai swords he kept hidden under the bed and headed out.

‘Michael! Get down here and come on,’ he shouted as they left the flat.

I don’t know what happened when they were out but they hid the swords as soon as they got home. Michael put his under a mattress while Dad stuffed one in the lining of the sofa and we thought that was the end of it. But the police came round later that day and although they didn’t find Dad’s sword, they easily uncovered the one my brother had hidden. Once the officers had left, Michael got a bad beating from The Idiot for being so stupid and a few weeks later we got home from school to find we were moving.

BOOK: Daddy's Prisoner
12.55Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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