In that moment, I imagined I was Heidi. I had the dress and the shiny shoes, didn’t I? I jumped up and looked in the mirror above the fireplace. I wanted to check if I really looked like Heidi, and I grinned as I climbed up onto the arm of a chair to see my reflection.
All day I thought I’d looked my best, but I watched my grin slip as I realized the girl in the dusty mirror didn’t have neat plaits and sparkling pearls for teeth like Heidi. Her hair was tatty and dirty, and her teeth were covered in black and yellow smudges.
‘Cynthia, will you get up here and take that bloody dress off?’ Mammy yelled. ‘Didn’t I tell you not to watch TV when I’m upstairs? Get up here now if you don’t want a beating! Where’s your father? Has he gone off to the pub, the drunken bastard…’
I was back to being Cynthia Murphy, and suddenly the sour, stale smell that hung in the air caught in my throat. I wanted to be sick. I would never be like Heidi, and I would never be happy. It wasn’t even worth dreaming about.
Chapter 5
Bye-bye, Esther
I cried when I heard the news that Esther was leaving home - she had got a job and was off to start a new life in Wales. I looked at my feet and sniffled. There must have been about seven or eight of us in the house at that moment, but I felt very lonely, as if Esther had already sailed away and I was left all alone with nobody to care for me.
‘I’ll come home for visits, and you can come and visit me, Cynthia,’ Esther told me kindly. She smiled, but I thought she looked sad too. I thought of all the times she took me down to the harbour to watch the boats bobbing on the sparkling sea. She took me there in the summer holidays, and on sunny weekends too.
I loved the summer, but I hated being stuck in our cramped and gloomy house with no sunlight coming in. The hot weather meant we could spend hours outside every day. Esther took me to the park too, pushing me high on the swings. I felt like a little butterfly, flitting through the air, as light as a feather.
The weight I felt pressing on my shoulders at home was always lifted a bit when I was outdoors. I didn’t even realize how heavy my shoulders normally felt until I was outside and felt the knots in my neck slip open, one by one. I loved being able to breathe fresh air. I loved going to the beach and splashing in the sea, and I loved the tingly, clean feeling I had when the sun dried my back as I sat on the sand. I never felt so clean as I did on the beach.
Esther taught me how to swim. She held my hand walking home, and she taught me how to look left and right when I crossed the road. She talked to me, asked me questions and listened to my answers. I could ask her things like ‘What is your favourite colour?’ and she would think about it properly and give me an answer, instead of swearing at me or telling me to ‘shut up nagging’. Then she’d say: ‘What’s your favourite colour, Cynthia? Tell me, why do you like yellow?’
I knew I was really going to miss Esther, and I had a little ache in my chest whenever I thought about her leaving. Instead of us watching the boats together, she would be crossing the sea to another country, leaving me behind. It wasn’t long now. I knew I had to get used to it, but I could hardly bear the thought.
For a little while now, Esther and I had been sharing the single bed while Mammy and Daddy had the double bed on the other side of the front bedroom. Mary and Martin sometimes slept in that room too, sharing the big blue cot that once belonged to me and Peter. There were never enough beds to go round in our house. Every bed had pillows at both ends so you could top and tail, and you never knew when the sleeping plans might change.
I loved the time I had sharing that single bed with Esther. I loved it when I heard her climb into bed after me. I felt safe next to her, and I enjoyed feeling her warmth in the bed. The shouting downstairs never felt so loud or so scary when Esther was there.
It wasn’t long after my sister left that Daddy started sleeping in the single bed with me. It seemed strange, but I said nothing. I was only eight-years-old.
‘You’re to sleep in the single bed again tonight, d’you hear me?’ Mammy said in a voice that wasn’t to be questioned or argued with, but I didn’t like it. It was very uncomfortable as there wasn’t enough room for us both. Daddy got too close and moved in that funny shuffling way that frightened me.
Mammy hardly ever looked at me when she spoke. Her sunken eyes looked like they had a fine yellow film stuck on them. I never asked her anything much, and I didn’t dare question her on this, but something didn’t seem right.
I was starting to accept that Mammy wasn’t interested in me at all. She’d told me loads of times that she didn’t like me, and that I was her ‘least favourite’ child, and now I started to think it must be true. Not going to my Holy Communion had shown me she didn’t care about my feelings at all.
Sometimes, when her relatives from the north of Dublin or England visited, she got herself dressed up in her prettiest dress and went to the pub wearing her red lipstick and swinging a black patent-leather handbag. I’d seen her potter round the garden too, planting
