Daddy's Little Earner (14 page)

If you were in care you were given a set amount of
pocket money each week. I discovered that one of the
boys in the family who was younger than me was being
given more money.

‘Why’s that?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘Because I’m better than you,’ he replied casually and I
believed him because I always believed that everyone was
better than me. I remember feeling so devastated by that
simple remark that that night I prayed really hard, asking
God to let me go back to my daddy.

As soon as he came out of prison Dad would phone
whatever home I might be in, telling me to run away and
go back to him, which I always did at the first opportunity.
None of the places they put me in ever felt as though
they were my real home so it always seemed like the right
thing to do. Although I was frightened of Dad and hated
the things he did to me, he was still my dad and I still
wanted to be with him. Every time I went back to him I
always hoped that this time things would be different,
this time he would be kind to me and he would stop
doing the things I hated so much. But leopards don’t
change their spots.

It was like a game to him. He wanted to be able to
show the social workers who were trying to do their best
by me that all their efforts were feeble beside the power
he had over me himself. Whatever efforts they went to in
order to get me to safety he just had to snap his fingers
and I would go running back to him.

When Dad got caught doing something else, probably
shoplifting, he was sent back to prison. No one could really
explain to us what was happening; all Terry and I knew was that the social services took us back to The Durdans
for another long stay. It’s hard to remember exactly how
long we were there because time is so deceptive when
you’re young but it could have been nearly a year and I
got quite settled into the local school again.

I was still convinced that I wasn’t good enough for
anything, just as Dad was always telling me. I remember
the school used to have little maths tests each week and if
I scored nine out of ten I would be eaten up inside with
anger at myself for dropping one point, for not being
perfect. Even if I got full marks I would tell myself it was
only because the teacher had made the test especially
easy that week. I found it impossible to think that I could
actually be good at anything, actually be worth anything
to anyone.

While I was in The Durdans a few of the girls and I
would play dressing-up games and would hold beauty
contests. If I won I was convinced the others had let me
because they felt sorry for me and believed that I would
be devastated if I lost. It didn’t matter what anyone said
– I was certain that I was fat and ugly and useless, having
had it drilled into me for so many years. I was forever
throwing myself onto my bed in fits of hysteria, although
there would never be any actual tears, just a lot of shouting
about how I loathed myself and how I wanted to end
it all. If the staff heard me and asked me what was wrong
I would immediately clam up and say nothing.

There was so much going on in my head at that time,
so much that I was unable to explain to myself let alone
anyone else. I’d never been able to express myself or communicate
with anyone well anyway, whether they were
family or not. Dad had never encouraged us to talk about
ourselves or express our feelings; in fact he couldn’t have
been less interested if he’d tried. I was desperate for attention
but completely unable to think of a way to let people
know what I needed. It was like there was a glass wall
between me and the rest of the world. I couldn’t make
myself heard through it and the people on the other side
who wanted to help couldn’t reach me.

When a lad called Harry, who was a couple of years
younger than me, had a real explosion of temper and
smashed everything in his room at The Durdans I
watched with interest as the staff all rushed around taking
notice of him, trying to find out what was behind the
outburst and consoling him. Harry must have been feeling
really upset to do that, I thought. Hang on a minute;
I’m upset too. Harry’s approach suddenly seemed like
a good idea. If I had a real froth-out like Harry maybe
someone would take a bit of notice of me.

I waited a couple of days to let things settle and then
did exactly what I had seen him doing, smashing my
room to pieces, but for some reason I didn’t seem to get
the same sympathetic response as Harry. They must have
known that I had done it on purpose because everyone was furious with me – but at least they knew that I was
seriously upset about something. I was now getting a reputation
for being difficult.

A couple of times when I was a kid, probably when I
was eleven and twelve, the authorities sent me on riding
holidays. I got to stay in dormitories at a riding stables
with other girls I had never met before and who knew
nothing about me. We were each designated a horse that
we would look after and ride for the week. They were the
happiest times of my entire childhood. I had never ridden
before but I took to it immediately, going on picnics,
galloping along beaches and taking the horses swimming
in the sea, which was the most wonderful feeling ever.
I even won a rosette at the end of each week. I’d never
won anything before in my life and I thought I was going
to burst with pride and excitement. The people at the
stables treated me just like everyone else, as though I was
as good as them.

I remember falling in love with the first horse, a gentle
grey called Shandy, and just sitting in the stables talking
to him, telling him how great he was and how much I
loved him. The second time I had a stubborn little brown
pony called Nero but I fell in love all over again. I learnt
so much in those weeks. Horses were the only things I
ever learnt how to draw and we used to have bonfires in
the evening and sit round them in the dark eating baked
potatoes, talking and laughing. I’d never experienced anything like it. Despite being so happy on those holidays
I knew they weren’t reality for me and that at the end of
the week I would be taken back to my old life. It never
entered my head that I could actually have a life like the
people who lived and worked at those stables. I wasn’t
good enough for that. I didn’t deserve it. I could hardly
understand how I had got away with being allowed to
even glimpse into such a wonderful world.

I went on another group holiday to a big house where
we were taught how to do various arts and crafts and
outward-bound activities like canoeing. I was good at
that sort of thing, particularly the sport. At one home I
became obsessed with tennis, playing it every moment I
could manage to get a court. I was a strong swimmer
too. The very nice woman who taught swimming wanted
to put me up into the higher group but I kept refusing.
I liked being the best swimmer in the lower group and
I didn’t want to become one of the least good in the upper
group. It felt so nice to actually be one of the best at
something.

Dad never encouraged any of the things I was good at
– the tennis, swimming or horse riding – and I was never
allowed to go to after-school activities once I was back
home with him again. I remember I had a bike at one
stage and was very proud when I taught myself to ride it,
then I got home from school one day to find out that Dad
had sold it.

Maybe if I had been allowed to gain confidence and
realize that I wasn’t as useless as I thought, I would have
had more ability to stand up for myself later and refuse to
go out on the streets. But I really thought I was worthless.
Dad had told me so, over and over again, so I reasoned
that it had to be true.

N
ot knowing what else to do with Terry and me,
the social services eventually decided to send us
to a boarding school called Wymondham College. I was
eleven, and it was my first year of secondary school. All
our lives we had felt different and outside the norm
wherever we went, whether it was within our own family,
in the local schools we had been sent to or the foster
and care homes. In this posh boarding school full of
middle-class children, many of whose families were
serving overseas in the armed forces, we stuck out like
really sore thumbs. The authorities’ argument for sending
us there was that they wanted to get us away from
Dad’s influence, which was entirely understandable, but
during the weekends and holidays they would send us
straight back to him, so we were still completely under his influence and remained resentful and cynical about
everything the staff might be trying to do for us at
Wymondham.

At the introduction talk held when we first arrived at
the school a teacher asked all the new pupils if we had
names we preferred to be called, like Kate or Katy or
Kathy if we’d been christened Katherine. For some
unknown reason I piped up and said that I would prefer
to be called Diane. I have no idea why I picked that name
out of the air; I just didn’t want to be Maria any more and
I said the first name that came into my head. From then
on I was known as ‘Di’, like I had invented a whole new
identity. Except of course I hadn’t; it was still the same
damaged, confused and insecure me trying to fit in to yet
another alien world.

In many ways sending us there was a good idea. The
school regime provided an incredibly strict and structured
environment, totally different to anything we had ever
encountered before. Every minute of the day was accounted
for so there wasn’t much time for sitting around brooding
on the unfairness of life or on how much I was missing
Dad. There were organized sports during our free time
and I learnt to love games like hockey and netball, which
I would never have come across otherwise. Social services
had even equipped me with my own hockey stick. It felt so
good to have a possession of my very own, something I
dare say all the other girls there took totally for granted.

There were letter writing and reading times and
chapel times, and even some weekends were filled with
activities, so we were never given a chance to become
bored or get up to any mischief. Once I had got over the
strangeness of it all, there was a part of me that liked it,
but there was no way I was ever going to feel that I fitted
in with the other girls. They were all very kind and polite
to me, but they were so well spoken and well travelled
and lived completely different lives to anything I had
ever experienced that it was a struggle to find things in
common.

When you get twelve girls together in a dormitory, at
the end of a day they are bound to talk about their lives
outside the walls of the school. I didn’t pretend to be anything
I wasn’t, or make any secret of the sort of background
I came from, although I didn’t go into too much
detail of the things my dad got up to with me, but I was
still able to find plenty of stories to amaze them about
shoplifting and prostitutes and alcoholics. I’ve never been
good at lying. If someone asks me a straight question I
feel obliged to give them a straight answer, which was one
of the reasons I hated being implicated in all Dad’s various
lies and scams. But I don’t think the other girls always
believed me, thinking I was just making stuff up for
attention, or at least exaggerating the truth for dramatic
effect. My home life must have seemed even more of an
alien landscape to them than theirs did to me. Having been in some nice foster homes, and having been on the
riding holidays, I had a bit of an idea what their lives must
be like, but they would never have sat up all night drinking
and playing cards with men like my dad or seen prostitutes
going in and out of their house ‘doing the business’.
Most of them wouldn’t even have been inside a council
house. Prostitution was still a subject veiled in mystery for
respectable people in those days, hardly even talked about
in polite society. No one had made any of the explicit
television series about life on the streets that were to come
later.

At school I was always desperate to have a boyfriend
of my own. It wasn’t that I wanted any sexual contact
because by then I hated all that stuff, always finding it
painful, but I wanted to be part of a couple, to have someone
to care for me and love me. I wanted so badly to prove
Dad wrong and show him that he wasn’t the only person
who would ever love me that I was constantly chasing one
poor boy or another, trying to make them admit that they
loved me. Of course the boys I flirted with were keen to
get their hands inside my bra or my knickers and when
they did I would respond by becoming indignant.

‘Is that all you want me for?’ I would complain.

It was beginning to seem to me as if sex was all any
man or boy ever wanted from any girl, but despite the
mounting evidence I remained optimistic, starting again
on my search after each disappointment, determined to find true platonic love somewhere. Every time I got a boy
to declare his love for me I would be over the moon, certain
I’d proved Dad wrong and that I wasn’t the ugly
unlovable creature he had always said I was. As soon as
that boy chucked me because I wouldn’t let him paw me I
would be weeping and wailing and throwing myself
down on my bed in despair, certain once more that Dad
had been right after all and no one but him would ever
love me.

It was during that first year at Wymondham that I
started my periods. I was overjoyed when I discovered it
had happened because I thought that it would mean Dad
would stop having sex with me for fear that I would fall
pregnant. After all, he hadn’t put Mum on the game until
she was safely on the Pill, so hopefully he would give me
a rest from all that for a bit. I phoned him up from school
to tell him the news. He was delighted to hear that I had
become a woman, even though I was only eleven, but
it turned out it wasn’t going to make the slightest bit of
difference to the way he would be treating me. The next
time I went home the abuse started up again, just as
always.