The Girl Nobody Wants: A Shocking True Story of Child Abuse in Ireland (27 page)

Later that evening, mum came up to the house to see us, and she said that when she got home the fridge was full of cabbage, turnips and bacon; and she had asked Jim where it all came from, but he wouldn’t answer her. We all looked at each other and then we all fell about laughing, while mum just stood in front of us looking puzzled. Then I told her what I had done to Jim with the food, and I told her that I could not go back to her house anymore, and she said ok and then she left.

I spent the next few weeks staying with Tracy at her house and my condition was far from perfect, but Fred could see the condition I was in and he left me alone for most of the time. Every day, mum would come to Tracy’s house for a cup of tea and to see if I was ok; and every day, I would ask her if she could ring the council for me, to ask them if they could find a home for me, as I needed my own place for me and my baby; but she never did. She always said that she would ring them when she got home, but she never did; she just couldn’t be bothered with it, as she was not going to get anything out of it.

Every day, I would have nothing to do but just wait around all day, and walk from one sister’s home to another just to pass the time, and I was angry with everyone. I just couldn’t sit still for a moment, and I continued to wander the streets and my belly just kept getting bigger and it felt like it was going to burst. I felt sorry for myself, as I was only sixteen and I felt very alone and a long way from home and I wished I had been back in Ireland.

Then one evening, while I was visiting Karen at her flat, I walked into the living room, and as I entered the room one of her husband’s friends was sitting on the sofa; and as I walked in, he looked over at me and he said, ‘Hi.’ I turned towards him and, in that split second, the expression on my face wiped the smile clean off his; and after that, he never said another word to me. I had given him a look that had shown him how disgusted I was with men and then I walked into the kitchen to put a couple of painkillers into my mouth, drank some water and then I left the flat without saying goodbye to anyone. I hated all men and especially the ones who tried to talk to me. Little did I know then, but in about seven months’ time I was going to meet him again; and next time, it would be the beginning of the both of us spending the rest of our lives together.

Even though Tim had left me and gone back to Ireland, I still kept in touch with him all the time and I rang him almost every day; but each time I spoke to him, he said that if he had to live with my family, then he would rather stay in Ireland. I told him that I was trying to get my own place for my baby and me, and he said that if I did manage to get my own place, then he would come back to me.

I was now almost nine months pregnant and my baby could have come at any moment, but Tim still refused to come back to London, so Tracy said that she had an idea. She said that she had already arranged to go back to Ireland to see daddy, so she suggested that I should go back with her. That way I could show Tim my big belly and then persuade him to return to London with me. I only had a couple of days to go before the baby was due, but I still said yes as I didn’t want to have the baby on my own, and the very next day we left for Ireland.

I found the travelling very difficult and my belly hurt, but I had to go and I was so close to my due date that everyone on the train and ferry couldn’t help themselves and they just had to stare at me. I was only sixteen years old, barely five foot three tall, and my belly was almost as round as I was tall. When we arrived in Ireland, we still had a long way to travel to get to our dad’s house and the only transport that we could afford was the coach. And every time it went over a bump in the road, I thought I was going to have the baby, but I wrapped my arms around my belly and I never let go until we arrived at daddy’s house.

As we left the coach, we walked towards the house and I still recognised it and daddy was standing by the old wooden gate, waiting for us; and by the look on his face, I knew that he was happy to see us. But it was now very late in the evening and I was feeling sick and tired from all the travelling, so I went straight upstairs to bed and I fell straight to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I got up and, without any breakfast, I went straight out to look for Tim. The village was small, so it wasn’t long before the word got around that I was looking for him and soon Tim came and found me. I told him that I was only staying in Ireland for two days, then I had to go back to London to have my baby, and I told him that I wanted him to come back with me. He looked at me and then he looked at my belly, and once he realised the condition I was in, he agreed and he said that he would come back to London with me and we both walked off towards my dad’s house.

However, when we got back to the house, Tracy was in a raging temper and she said that all dad wanted from her was money for drink; and he said that if we did not have any money for him, then we should leave him alone and go back to London. I was not the slightest bit interested in what was going on and I just stayed out of everyone’s way for the rest of the day.

The next morning, I left the house and I paid for an extra ferry ticket, so that Tim could travel back with me, and off we went back to London, leaving our dad to his daily routine of drinking himself stupid all the time. Tracy couldn’t wait to get back to London as she was missing Fred a lot; and all the way back, she kept begging me not to have the baby on the ferry, and then she did the same on the train and I said ok. However, I was in pain and I was suffering. I was having very bad pains in my belly and I really thought I was going to have the baby before I got back to London. But for everyone’s sake, I just kept smiling and eventually we made it all the way back without any major problems; and once home, I settled down and I felt much better.

The next morning, Tracy rang our mother and she told her to get on the phone to the council and to get me a place to live, as I was about to have a baby; and within half an hour, mum rang back. She said that she told the council about me and they gave her an address of a hotel that I could go and stay in for now. She could have done that for me weeks ago, but she just could not be bothered.

I was so happy and Tim and I went off with the address to look for the hotel; and within an hour, I was in my own room. For the first time in my life, I had my own real place to live in. The council had sent me to a hotel in Kilburn that was an old Victorian house and it had a sign outside the house that said, ‘Hotel, cheap rooms to rent’; but inside it was rotten and infested with cockroaches. And my room was right at the top of the house in the attic, but I loved it; they even gave me breakfast for nothing, if I got up early enough that is. Tim was feeling much happier now because he didn’t have to sleep at my mum’s house; but after a few days of being together in the hotel, he began to hit me again. And even though I was ready to give birth, it did not seem to make any difference to him, and that made me feel very sad.

A week later, I had my baby and I had a long and difficult labour, and after twelve hours of screaming, I was ready to give up. I was so exhausted from being left to do all the work of giving birth by myself, that I couldn’t give birth on my own and I ended up with a room full of doctors and nurses all rushing around and panicking. They had left it almost too late and now both the baby’s life and my life were in danger, and they had to use forceps to get the baby out of me as fast as possible. And the doctors had to cut part of my body open with scissors to get the baby out of me before it was too late.

I was exhausted, I had given up and I was not able to push anymore. I had only just turned seventeen three weeks earlier and now I felt like the doctors had destroyed me. Once the doctors got the baby out of me, they began to relax, and I was so happy when they handed me my baby. I looked at my baby and I could see that it was a boy; and for the first time in my life, I felt completely happy with myself. I now had Tim with me and my own baby boy, and a place to live. What more could I want? I now knew that nobody could come near me and ever touch me again, and I knew that I could stay away from my family if I had to, as I now had my own family to look after me.

And a week later, I was strong enough to leave hospital and I went home. At first, everything was fine, my baby was beautiful and healthy, Tim was taking care of me and he got a job on a building site; but then, one night, my brother Simon came to the hotel. He told me that he didn’t want to stay with Kevin anymore, and he asked me if he could stay with Tim and me in my hotel room, and I said yes. He was my baby brother and I would have done anything for him; and a few hours later, he moved in with Tim and me.

But then, a couple of weeks later, Tim’s younger brother turned up at the hotel. He had come over to London from Ireland and he had no place to stay, so he had come to us. But Tim told him to go away and to go find somewhere else to stay, but I shouted at Tim that he was wrong to send his own brother away and I told his brother to come in, and that he could stay with us for as long as he wanted. So now there were four of us, all aged between fifteen and seventeen, plus a baby, all living in the one hotel room and I loved it because there was always something going on.

However, after a week, Tim gave up his job and he began to spend all of his time with the two boys; they would all go out in the morning and they wouldn’t come back until the very early hours of the next morning and, for most of the time, they left me on my own with the baby. I tried to talk to Tim about what he was doing and I asked him why he was leaving me alone all of the time. I told him that me and the baby should come first before the boys; but instead of him saying, ‘Yes, you’re right’, he told me to shut up and to leave him alone So I had no choice but to put up with him, but then he started to come home drunk, and when we were alone he began to hit me again. I asked him to stop hitting me, but he said that it was entirely my fault that he was back in London, and he said that he didn’t want to be stuck with me and the baby any longer and he hated everything about me.

And for the next couple of months, we argued constantly, and things just got worse between us; he began to hit me even more, it was as if he was taking his anger out on me. Then one night when he came home drunk, he dragged me around the room by my hair and then he punched me into my chest. And as I fell back, he hit me again, then I felt one of my ribs snap from the punch, and I felt the rib move up into a vertical position under my skin. I fell to the ground and Tim stopped hitting me and stood over me. I looked up at him and then got up and we both looked at the rib poking up in my chest. I shouted at him, ‘Look what you’ve done’ and we both just looked at each other in shock; but I had to do something, so I began to move the rib back into place and Tim helped me.

The pain was terrible, but I pushed and eased the rib back into a position that looked normal and then Tim helped me into bed. He gave me some painkillers and he looked after the baby for me while I tried to sleep. The next morning, the pain was just as bad, but I never went to the hospital for fear that they would take my baby away from me. So I just kept taking the painkillers and Tim helped me to bandage my chest up to stop the rib from moving; and after a couple of months, the pain felt a little better, so I removed the bandage. But the rib would still make a cracking noise if I bent over or took a deep breath, and I couldn’t do a thing about it, so I just left it at that and I tried to forget that it ever happened. And eventually, the rib stopped making a noise and the pain went away.

CHAPTER 11

New Friends

By now I was sick of Tim going out and leaving me all alone with the baby, so I decided to do what he was doing; and one night, I picked my baby up and I went off out. And I went around to my sisters’ houses and, to my disbelief, I found out that Tim had been hanging around with my own family every day, while I was sitting in my hotel room on my own, and he was even spending time with one of my own sisters and nobody said a thing to me. I was gutted, but I wasn’t going to let it stop me from enjoying myself; after I had found out what he was up to, I never confronted Tim again about where he went or what he was doing, as I knew it would only make things worse for me.

But I was not going to sit around and do nothing, so every day I would get up and go out with my baby. At first, I just spent most of the day walking the streets, pushing my baby around with me from one sister’s house to another. Then, after a while, I found myself staying out longer; and after a couple of months, I was in a routine of walking home at one or two in the morning all on my own. And all the time Tim would be hanging around with my brothers and sisters and none of them, including Tim, were bothered if I was around or not. And some nights, Tim would get back to the hotel just after me and I would ask him why he never came home with me, but all he could say to me was ‘Sorry, I was busy.’ I knew what busy meant; it meant he was hanging around with the rest of my family and not me. But if I tried to confront him about what he was doing or I tried to talk to him about what he had done all evening, he would begin to hit me again. So most of the time I said nothing to him, as I didn’t want to get hurt again.

I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t want to lose Tim and be left all on my own with a baby. So I thought that the best thing I could do was to continue going out to my sister’s and to leave him alone; and after a while, it worked and he stopped hitting me. But I soon became fed up being left on my own again and I began to follow my sisters out to pub; and everywhere they went, I followed, pushing my baby with me. I always fed my baby and I kept him well dressed and wrapped up warm and I never once neglected him; he was a part of me and it didn’t matter if it was day or night, we went everywhere together.