Punished: A mother’s cruelty. A daughter’s survival. A secret that couldn’t be told. (10 page)

‘That means she’s a ghost. You’re lucky you can see ghosts. I wish I could.’

I can hear ghosts! I thought to myself. So that’s what the voices are – they’re people who were alive and have died. And I can see them too.

I wondered why I could see and hear them, and why they chose me to speak to. Was it a good thing or not? I knew that they couldn’t hurt me, but they could still scare me. And I knew that this place was full of them.

When I went to bed that night, the air was thick with children’s voices whispering to each other, and disembodied faces were dancing all over the walls. It was an eerie experience and there was no way I could sleep with all the activity in the room. Mum had hung my old curtains at the window but they didn’t fit right across and I could see lights twinkling outside.

Curious, I went to the window to look out and there, to my horror, was the old woman who had stood in the doorway earlier – except now she was hovering a few feet above the canal. I screamed as loudly as I could until I heard footsteps clattering up the stairs. Mum burst into the room.

‘Why are you not in bed?’ she demanded.

‘There’s a ghost,’ I said. ‘The old woman. She’s in the canal.’

Mum drew her hand right back and slapped me across the face with her full strength so that I fell and cracked my head on the bedside cabinet.

‘Will you shut up about your voices and your ghosts or you’ll be locked up in a funny farm one day! Don’t you think I’ve got enough on my plate right now without dealing with you as well?’

She raised her hand to hit me again, so I scrambled into bed and pulled the eiderdown right up to my eyes.

‘If I hear another murmur out of you tonight, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born,’ she threatened, then turned and walked out, slamming the door behind her.

I touched the sore place where my head had hit the cabinet and it was sticky with blood. Mum didn’t realize that there had already been plenty of times in my life when
I wished with all my heart that I had never been born. The world was a scary, dangerous place for me and I could feel instinctively that it was about to get even scarier.

W
hen we first moved into Shernal Green, the cottage was virtually derelict. There was no running water so, until it was connected, Nigel and I had to carry in buckets of water from the well. Every room needed extensive plastering work and redecoration, so it was like living on a building site for the next few months. Mum was distracted, busy choosing paint colours, running up curtains and making endless cups of tea for the workmen.

Nigel and I started at Tibberton village school. To get there we had a one and a half mile walk down twisting country lanes to Oddingley parish hall, then a coach ride to Tibberton. At first I liked it. It was smaller than my last school and the teachers were very friendly and eager to help me settle in. I was further on in maths than the others in my class, and my reading was at the same standard, so I didn’t have to worry about catching up. However, after we’d been there a couple of weeks Nigel had an epileptic fit in the classroom and I think it gave everyone quite a fright. They’d probably never seen anyone in that condition before, writhing on the floor, moaning and with saliva dribbling down his chin. No
matter how many times I’d seen it, I never got used to it. I always panicked that he was going to choke and die.

Next day, as we approached school together someone shouted out, ‘Hey, Loony Boy, are you going to have a fit today?’

‘Ignore them,’ I warned Nigel, but a small group of four or five boys and two girls crowded round us, jostling us and taunting, ‘Loony Boy, Loony Boy!’

Nigel lost his temper and lashed out wildly. Unfortunately he hit the glasses one of the girls was wearing. They flew off and smashed on the ground and there was a communal gasp of shock.

‘Look what you’ve done! You’ll have to pay for these.’

‘Leave him alone,’ I said. ‘It was your own fault. He can’t help having epilepsy.’

‘It speaks,’ quipped one of the girls and they both giggled.

Nigel and I walked into school without saying anything more, but the friendly atmosphere had changed. From then on, the other kids gave us a wide berth because we were ‘strange’, not quite like them, and they didn’t feel comfortable around us. As Nigel’s sister, I was instantly tarred with the same brush as him. Faced with something they didn’t understand, the children herded together to ostracize us.

Back at the cottage, Mum seemed to be permanently in a grumpy mood so I stayed out of her way as much as possible. Nigel often locked horns with her though. He was still her favourite and she indulged him in ways I could
never expect but at the age of nine, going on ten, he was pushing his luck more and more. He’d make faces behind her back, leave taps running, trample mud on the floors and help himself to food from the pantry. Mum was so busy with the renovation work on the house that a lot of this slipped by unnoticed. Even I had more freedom than normal. When we’d been there a month, I’d hardly been punished at all and the bean cane hadn’t been brought into the kitchen.

Dad was rarely there – he only ever appeared at weekends now – and Mum seemed sad and preoccupied. She often just heated a tin of beans and served them with tinned corned beef or Spam for our supper, rather than cooking a proper nutritious meal with vegetables. Sometimes she forgot to tell us it was bedtime and we stayed up till nine or even ten o’clock.

Given the relaxation of discipline, Nigel and I relaxed as well – him more than me. One day he got in from school and dropped his schoolbag in the hall before running into the kitchen to get a drink of juice. Mum was in the pantry deciding which cans she was going to heat for our tea.

‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ she challenged him. Then her eagle eyes spotted the schoolbag right in the middle of the hall floor. ‘Put the juice cup down and pick up your bag right away before one of the workmen falls over it and sues me.’ Her tone was that of cold, nasty Mummy and I shrank back into a space beside the dresser, trying to make myself invisible.

‘Get it yourself,’ Nigel quipped, turning his back on her.

‘Watch out!’ I screamed seconds later as a tin of beans hurtled through the air. Nigel turned slightly and that
move probably saved him from a serious concussion. The tin hit the wall at full speed, causing a huge chunk of plaster to fall out, then it ricocheted off his shoulder before crashing to the ground. He cried out in pain and shock. Mum stormed across the kitchen, grabbed him by the ear and marched him out to the hall, where she forced him to pick up the bag.

‘Go up to your room! Get out of my sight!’ she shouted at him and kicked his bottom, causing him to lurch forwards on to the stairs.

I considered my own position and decided to get out of her way, so I slipped out the back door and walked down the garden to an overgrown patch of lawn. I picked a long blade of grass and slit it with my thumbnail, then blew through it to create funny tunes, something Dad had shown me. I wondered if Nigel would be allowed to come out to play but thought it unlikely after that scene. He’d gone too far. Mum might have lightened up on our punishments in the new house but she was never going to put up with downright cheek like that.

When I reckoned it was teatime, I wandered back to the kitchen and peered in. No one was in the kitchen so I opened the door quietly and walked down the hall, poking my head round doors until I found Mum and Nigel in the sitting room. Nigel was lying on the sofa with a cloth on his forehead, his eyes closed. Mum was sitting in an armchair knitting, her needles clacking furiously.

‘Your brother’s had a fit,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to get your own supper. There’s some bread in the bread bin and leftover Spam in the fridge. Go and make a sandwich. You’re old enough to feed yourself now.’

I looked at Nigel. His face was deathly white and he was so still I wasn’t even sure he was breathing. ‘Is he all right?’ I asked.

‘Of course he’s not all right. He’s got epilepsy,’ Mum snapped. ‘As if I don’t have enough bloody trials in my life. Go on – don’t you add to my worries tonight.’

I slipped off to the kitchen and made my sandwich, taking great care not to leave any crumbs on the tabletop. After I’d finished, I pulled a chair over to the sink and washed up my plate and knife then put them away. I was determined not to give her a single cause for complaint. The voices in my head were speaking to me again. ‘He’s not very well.’ ‘Maybe he needs a doctor.’ ‘Where’s your dad? Why doesn’t he come home?’ ‘Keep out of her way tonight. Put yourself to bed.’

I followed their advice and after supper I went up to the bathroom, brushed my teeth and washed my face and hands, then undressed and went to bed. All was silent in the house. I dozed off, then wakened with a start a couple of hours later. My first thought was to be worried about Nigel. I crept out to his room as quietly as I could, my heart in my mouth every time the floorboards creaked.

Nigel was tucked up in bed, his chest rising and falling peacefully, and I watched him for a while feeling a great rush of love for him. My brave, crazy big brother – imagine standing up to Mum like that! I was so relieved that he seemed to be all right again. But I was also aware that our holiday from Mum’s ire was now over. Our bad, angry Mummy had returned.

Over the next few weeks Nigel was frequently absent from school. Mum said he wasn’t feeling well but when I asked him he said he was fine, just a bit tired. They’d changed the medication he was taking to control the epilepsy and the new brand didn’t seem to be agreeing with him so well.

I hated doing the walk to and from school on my own, especially as the nights got darker and more wintry. I was always afraid that someone was going to jump out from a hedge and attack me in the fading light. I developed a system of breaking down the journey into manageable chunks. When I walked along the side of the main road, I kept to the right on the way to school and the left on the way back. I ran full tilt along the twisty sections with tall, overgrown hedges on either side, then walked the parts that were more open, with fields stretching to the horizon. If I saw anyone coming towards me I’d duck behind a hedge and wait, completely still, until they’d passed, then I’d go back to my walking or running rhythm again.

One day it was raining hard as I walked home. I took my plastic Rainmate from my schoolbag and tied it over my head but the raindrops were still trickling down the back of my blazer. I accidentally splashed in a puddle that was deeper than I’d thought so my socks and shoes were wet through and that’s what I was worrying about when I reached home. Mum would be furious.

I went to the back door first but it was locked and I couldn’t see anyone through the glass. I went round to the front door but it was locked as well. I rang the doorbell but there was no answer, so I stood under the wooden porch for a while, thinking they’d be back any minute.
Mum had probably gone on the bus to take Nigel to the doctor, or to pick up some shopping.

The rain got heavier and heavier, huge drops splattering off the ground and spraying my legs. There was a leak somewhere in the porch awning and my blazer was getting drenched. I started shivering. Where could I shelter until they returned? We hadn’t met the neighbours yet – I didn’t even know their names – so I thought I’d better not knock on their doors. Instead, I decided to go and sit in the pigsty. I sprinted across the garden and through the little gate. The roof was watertight and the earth was dry so I sat down and hugged my knees to my chest, rocking back and forth to try and keep warm.

It was very dark and stars were twinkling in the sky when I saw car headlights coming down the lane. The rain had abated but I was still soaked to the skin and shivering with cold. When the car pulled up, both Mum and Dad got out and I was relieved. Mum wouldn’t be able to punish me so harshly for getting wet if Dad was there. I crept round to the front door.

‘Are you all right?’ Dad called. He came up to put an arm round me. ‘Christ, you’re soaked. We got back as soon as we could.’ He took his key out and unlocked the front door.

‘Take your shoes and socks off and go straight up for a bath,’ Mum ordered. ‘Look at the state of you.’

‘She won’t have eaten, Muriel.’

‘Bath first then I’ll make her a snack.’

I was halfway up the stairs before it occurred to me to ask, ‘Where’s Nigel?’ I turned round. They looked at each other awkwardly then Dad spoke.

‘That’s where we’ve been. You’ve probably noticed that Nigel’s not been very well recently and we’ve been talking
to the doctors, trying to decide what to do to give him the best chance of getting better.’

I felt as though my heart had stopped beating as Dad spoke, such a terrible sense of foreboding filled me from top to toe.

‘Anyway, they decided it would be best to take him to live in a special school with other children who have problems like his. It’s in a place called Surrey, quite a long way away from here, so your mum and I took him there today.’

‘When’s he coming back?’ I asked, scarcely daring to breathe in case I missed a vital piece of information.

‘Well, we don’t know yet. It depends how he gets on. You have to be brave, Lady Jane. I know you’re going to miss him but we all want what’s best for him.’

Mum hadn’t spoken. I looked at her now and caught just a glimpse of triumph in her expression. Nothing tangible, but I became convinced that this was all her doing and I hated her with a passion. She didn’t like having a son with epilepsy. It embarrassed her. It was a burden for her to deal with his fits, and she didn’t like being perceived by the outside world as having anything less than the perfect family. Now it was just going to be her and me. We caught eyes and I could see her thinking the same thing.

‘When can I visit him?’ I asked.

‘We’re not sure. Soon, I hope,’ Dad said. ‘You can write to him if you want to. I’ll get you some envelopes and stamps and you can tell him everything that’s happening here. He’d like that.’

‘Go and get in your bath now,’ Mum ordered. ‘You’re dripping on the stairs.’

I could barely raise the energy to climb the stairs and get in the bath. Every part of me felt heavy and exhausted. I missed my big brother so badly it was as though someone had stabbed me in the heart and ripped a great big gash through my chest. Now, for the first time, I was completely and utterly alone.