Somewhere Only We Know ....... (2 page)

It was no
wonder people were shocked - the majority of them didn’t have a
clue. Sasha and Scarlett, her bestest friends, well of course they
knew! They were the ones that help pick up the pieces when it had
all got too much a year ago. When a bottle of wine and a boat load
of tablets seemed like a far better option than living a life
without Ben. They were the ones that picked her up and made her see
what she had and not what she was missing. They were the ones that
were there for her when all hell broke loose less than a month ago
and they would be the ones that would watch over her family whilst
she abandoned them to live 300 miles away. ‘I’m maybe taking the
cowards way out this time but I’m certainly taking the next best
option in running’, Caroline thought to herself.

Surprise
Surprise

Caroline sipped on her latte and despite
trying her very best to concentrate on a leaflet offering
discounted AA Roadside Recovery, her mind started to wander. Doubts
about who she was and what she had become began to form in her
mind. ‘Was there something amiss in my personality? Do I not have
the gene that gives us morals? Is it something in my upbringing or
in my choice of male partners that so obviously causes them to be
doomed from the outset? What has made me become the blatantly
selfish liar that I have become? Or is it simply falling in love
with forbidden fruit and not having the will power to stop it?’ The
thoughts buzzed around and around in her head.

She gave into the buzzing and let her
thoughts race away. ‘If I’m going to crucify myself I may as well
start at the very beginning and make a proper job of it!’

The sound of
Cilla Black’s voiced boomed over the buzzing. ‘Da da - da da - da
da da da da da ….. (What the hell Blind Date!)

‘
Right contestant number
one - what’s your name and where do you come from?’

‘
My name is Caroline and I’m from
Newcastle!’

‘
Question number one for
contestant number one’ went on Cilla. ‘Tell us about your childhood
chuck!!’

Caroline
shook her head. ‘I am seriously
losing
the plot here mind’, she said to herself. ‘Well Cilla, here
goes!!’

I’m the only child of Margaret and Bill
Burton. Born in the mid-sixties to Margaret, my real dad was
already married when my mam met him, hence the blank name on my
birth certificate. For the first five years of my life I lived with
my mam at my Granny and Granddad’s small semi-detached council
house, along with two aunties and two uncles.

Even at a young age I knew I was a bit
different so to speak. I wasn’t really sure who my mam was.
Margaret went out to work, she was very glamorous and though she
was loving, I can’t remember her being very maternal. My Granny on
the other hand showered me in love. There are photographs of me and
her when I was little and even in the old black and white snaps,
you can see our adoration for each other.

My Granddad
was a different kettle of fish, he wasn’t nasty to me or anything,
but I got the feeling that I was a disappointment. He was old
school, a pitman and a drinker, looking back I could see that what
my mam had done by having me the wrong side of the blanket, would
have been quite the scandal in the 1960’s, especially in the little
pit village we called home. Kinsley, where everyone knew everyone
else’s business. Funny this is that even today I am known as
Margaret Hunter’s daughter, which is ironic as most of today’s
children are born to unmarried mothers.

But my early
years were happy amid the jumble of my family life. I think that I
was a bit spoiled by all of the family. They made a fuss of me and
spent time doing things that were fun, so it wasn’t until I started
at Infant School that I
realised
what was missing from my life - a dad.

On
reflection I think that is when I learned to tell lies. Playmates
would ask ‘what does your dad do? Why doesn’t your dad ever pick
you up?’ So I lied, ‘my dad is in the Army!’ I chirped.

What the
hell! How could I tell a whopper like that at 4 years old? But I
stuck to my story, though even with an imaginary dad, I was always
on the outside looking in, never quite in with the popular kids,
just waiting on the edge for someone to invite me in. Maybe that is
where the rot had set, the tall gangly girl whose dad never
materialised. So I started to live in an insular world, a world
full of secrets and lies. A world which was blown out of the cosmos
when Margaret announced she was getting married, but not only that,
she and my new dad were moving 25 miles away from our village to a
new town called Washington. It wasn’t just them moving to
Washington, they were taking me with them!

So at the
tender age of 5 years old, I was wrenched from the only family home
I had ever know, from the love of my Granny and my Aunts to live in
a house with a mam I barely knew and a step dad I hadn’t even met.
Well that wasn’t strictly true. I remembered an incident that
happened not long before, while I was out shopping in Newcastle
with my mam. We were in a big department store when out of the blue
my mam pushed me into a rail of clothes and told me to stay still
and not say anything. For the next few minutes I did as I was told,
but the curiosity got the better of me and I peeped through the
rail of coats. My mam was talking and giggling with a man. When,
after what seemed like a lifetime, she pulled me out, she was for
some reason in a really good mood. She was in such a good mood she
took me to Mark Tony’s for a huge ice cream. If that had been my
new step dad, he certainly didn’t know anything about me when he
first started courting my mam.

But Margaret married Bill and we moved to
our brand new house in Washington New Town. My heart was broken. I
missed my Granny so much. The damage done to both of us by the
separation would affect us both for years to come. But my mam was
my mam and at the end of the day she had the final say. I was going
with them and that was that.

My biggest
memory of that time was when I started my new school. It was a new
build and for some reason my records from Kinsley Infant School
hadn’t arrived when I did for my first day of school. I was very
tall for my age and painfully shy, how it happened I have no
recollection, but instead of being put in a class with my age
group, I was put into a class full of 10 and 11 year olds. And
there I stayed, though I have no idea how long I was there. I
remember going home and crying, but I think my mam thought I was
crying for my Granny, which I was because she would never have let
that happen to me in a million years, she would have known in an
instant that something was wrong. I didn’t make friends and I
certainly couldn’t do the work. Maybe my teacher thought I was a
thick country girl, because she didn’t notice anything
either.

At the same
time as this was going on I became a ‘latch key kid’. my new dad
didn’t get in from work until an hour after I finished school, so I
was given my own front door key which was attached to a piece of
wool and placed around my neck. That hour alone in the new house
was the most terrifying thing of all. I had never had to spend any
time on my own before, I had never even had my own bedroom at my
Granny’s house, but here I was every Monday to Thursday left on my
own in a new house that made lots of strange noises.

For those
first few months of living in Washington, my life was a nightmare.
School, home, new dad, missing my Granny and even having to get to
know my mam. Every aspect was scary. I had no friends, which in a
brand new school full of brand new pupils should have been the
easiest thing of all to do. But my classmates thought I was babyish
and cried to easy, which was not surprising really, I was half
their age.

It wasn’t as if my mam and dad weren’t nice
to me, they were lovely. I had a great bedroom and a playroom
stuffed with loads of toys for me to play with, but for me it was
the loneliest time of my life. The high spot of each week was when
we went to my Granny’s on a Sunday, but even in her comforting arms
I didn’t open my mouth about what was happening at school. It took
something much more humiliating to happen to me for that to be
brought out into the open.

Our permanent teacher arrived in the shape
of Miss Johnson. She was a force to be reckoned with and handed out
test papers for us to learn the moment she arrived on the Monday
morning. Tables and spellings. I copied them and copied them all
week in preparation for our test on Friday morning, but none of it
made any sense, I was barely 6 years old. Every morning that week I
woke up to find myself soaking in my own wee. Still I said nothing
to my mam and dad. Friday morning came and Miss Johnson began
shouting out the words she had given to us asking us to write them
on the paper, spelling them correctly. I was clueless. I was
terrified. I wet myself. I can still see the yellow water trickling
around my chair. The class went into an uproar and Miss Johnson
marched over and grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out of the
classroom. I became hysterical and it took a slap across my wet
legs for me to be able to breathe properly again.

My mam was
summoned to the school. She was mortified at the state I was in and
I can remember her shouting ‘she is only a little girl, how did she
get into this state?’ As Miss Johnson began to explain, I can
remember my mam say ‘why on earth would a 6 year old be tested
under these conditions?’ And then it was out. The school in their
wisdom had let me sit in a class with children 5 years older than
me and no one had noticed.

The
following Monday morning I was placed in with my right class, but
everyone knew I had wet myself and I could hear all my classmates
laughing and whispering about me. The wetting myself incident would
follow me for the rest of my days in Washington.

I was on the outside looking in again. All
the time I was in the wrong class, my real classmates had forged
friendships. I was once again a loner, someone who made up stories
to get their classmates attention. Not that they wanted to be my
friend anyway, but that was my life for the next few years. One big
lie after another, until in the end even if I was telling the truth
no one believed me. A release came when once again we were on the
move, another brand new house 10 miles away. But this time, at 10
years old I was prepared and ready for it.

Swing Low
Sweet Chariot

The new
house turned out to be lo
vely, it had a
nice garden and it was in a cul-de-sac so it was very private. My
mam and dad seemed very proud of the fact that they were buying it,
a first in our family, and they both worked very hard to make sure
the house always looked its best.

I started my new school. I was in the last
year of the Junior School and I started the way I meant to go on.
This was a new me, confident and popular, I was going to act my
socks off. At 11 years old I looked like a 14 year old. My body was
fully developed and I used it to ingrain myself into my new class.
A twang of my bra was never off limits to the lads and I had been
known to show them my knickers if the mood took me. As young as I
was I was very aware of sex, this was mainly thanks to Margaret and
Bill; as I liked to call them if I ever thought of them and their
sex life, and their night-time activities.

Margaret and
Bill; the old dogs. Well I suppose they weren’t that old really,
but to me they were ancient. Anyway, I can remember clearly the
first night I ‘heard them‘. It must have been the week of my tests
at school and I had woken myself up in my wet bed. I remember as I
lay there in the dark I could hear yelping noises coming from my
mam and dad’s room. I lay and listened with excitement, it was
around my birthday time and I thought that God had heard my prayers
and I was getting a puppy.

All of the next day at school I could hardly
contain myself, I got in from school and went straight to my mam
and dad’s bedroom. I searched everywhere but there was no sign of a
puppy. What I did find stashed under their bed were lots and lots
of magazines and a few strange looking toys. I sat on the floor
beside the bed and opened one of the magazines. It was full of
naked women in all sorts of poses, and in some of the pictures
there was naked men too. The men all had huge willies, much bigger
than the boys at school whose willies I had seen when they peed
against the school fence. As young as I was I was fascinated and
can remember having a warm feeling in my tummy. I put everything
back in its place, even the odd toys and crept out of the bedroom.
Over the following years I would often have a rummage under my mam
and dad’s bed, the noises in the night continued but the puppy
never materialised.

But it was after we moved to Wrekenton that
my curiosity about sex was given a real schooling. Life was settled
and we were happy in our new home. I made friends and spent
weekends and school holidays with my Grandparents. My mam and dad
became keen members of our local Parish Church, they attended
Sunday morning services and were often out at Church functions.

It was an unexpected stay at home one
weekend that gave me a peep at what my mam and dad got up to when I
wasn’t around. Like I said most weekends I went to Kinsley, but I
had developed a temperature at school one Friday afternoon and it
was decided that I would just stay at home that weekend. I stayed
in my room dozing on and off for most of Friday night and all of
the Saturday, but a trip down into the kitchen on the Saturday
teatime seemed to throw my mam and dad into a frenzy of
whispering.