I spent the summer escaping to the youth club with my friends whenever I could, drinking cider and trying to forget my worries, but it never worked.
I never felt happy, not really. Even when I was laughing and joking, I felt numb inside. My heart never fluttered with joy, and I wasn’t comfortable joining in when my mates started talking about pop stars they fancied and crushes they had on local boys. I didn’t want to know about boys, but I did want to grow up fast, just so I could get away from Mammy and Daddy and leave all the bad things behind.
Leaving primary school and going to the Tech would be a step in the right direction. I’d dreamed of the day I would be old enough to finally walk away from Mother Dorothy, and when it came I whooped with sheer delight and relief. I never wanted to see that wicked old bag again as long as I lived. I hated her with a passion.
I was nearly thirteen now, and getting bigger and stronger. I was moving on, and life was going to get better - wasn’t it?
One day, I vowed, I would get my revenge on all the people who had hurt me.
All those men would pay for what they did to me, and I would make Mammy pay for what she did to my baby, too.
Chapter 17
Nightmares and Dreams
When I joined the Tech as a determined and rebellious thirteen-year-old, my teacher told me I was intelligent and could become anything I wanted, if only I could focus on my work.
The problem was, I couldn’t focus on anything except the enduring horrors of the abuse I was suffering at home and in the awful building I was still being taken to.
My brain felt permanently fogged. However much I wanted to learn and make something of my life, every day felt like a huge emotional struggle. Try as I might, I simply couldn’t put all the bad things that happened away in a box in my head and pretend they didn’t exist. The abuse was continuing, and by the time I was fourteen I realized I was pregnant again.
I recognized the symptoms from when I had Noleen, and I left school as soon as was legally possible. I didn’t want to have to deal with questions about my changing shape, I just wanted to hide away. I didn’t tell my friends about the pregnancy. I had been brought up to keep secrets, and I was still very much under my mother’s control, so I said nothing.
While they spent their leisure time lazing around the beaches and going to discos Mammy, or Ma as I’d started calling her, started locking me in the house. She hid my shoes, threw my clothes in the bin and refused to give me any money.
I felt very mixed up. I stole her alcohol whenever I could and crashed out in bed, too tired to argue or care. I had no energy, and nothing to get up for. Many days just passed in a blur of boredom, misery and fear.
I gave birth for the second time in June 1976. This time my baby was stillborn. He was an incredibly tiny little boy with transparent skin, and I can only assume he was extremely premature. I was flooded with a feeling of enormous relief when he didn’t breathe. Ma couldn’t harm him. I couldn’t love him and lose him. The decision was made, and he was already gone.
Afterwards, for the first time in a long time, I remembered Noleen very clearly. My heart ached for her, but I felt new emotions too: bitter hatred and anger towards Mammy. I no longer cared what she said or did to me, and I rebelled more than ever, smashing the house up and refusing to help with the chores.
When she hid my clothes, I’d wear anything I could lay my hands on, just to escape. My friends were fantastic and always accepted me, whatever state I turned up in. They were the ones who took me to hospital when I threw myself on to the jagged rocks in the sea one day, not caring whether I lived or died and, again, a week later, when I deliberately rode a Chopper with broken brakes down a steep hill and into a couple of parked cars. After both incidents, I was cut to ribbons and bruised black and blue, yet my parents never said a word. Granny told me the devil was trying to ruin my life and I would burn in hell. Suicide is a sin in the Catholic Church, and that’s all she cared about.
Mammy’s response to my behaviour was to pack me off to live with Esther in Wales when I was fifteen. My friends cried when they waved me off at the ferry at Dun Laoghaire, and tears streamed down my face. I stood on the deck holding a carrier bag with a few clothes in it, feeling utterly alone. I knew I would miss them so much. We had had such fun singing songs and mucking about together, and they had been my only source of happiness. I was devastated at leaving my four younger siblings too. I’d been like a mammy to them all, and I hated being apart from them, but as usual I couldn’t argue with my mother. She ruled with a rod of iron.
Esther’s house was lovely, and she made a huge effort to welcome me at first, but I struggled to settle in. I missed my friends too much, and the Welsh girls I met were so different to me. They had different tastes in fashion and music, and they didn’t drink and smoke like I did at home.
I upset Esther by borrowing shoes and clothes from her neighbours’ daughters, like I did with my friends back
