Stuart Howarth - I Just Wanted to Be Loved - A boy eager to please. The man who destroyed his childhood. The love that overcame it.

Stuart Howarth

I Just Wanted to be Loved How one boy overcame a terrifying past

IN MEMORY OF MY FRIEND ‘BRETT LOWE’

15 SEPTEMBER 1975–23 AUGUST 2008 AGED 32 YEARS

‘Many are called but few are chosen’

And

‘MICHAEL ALEXANDER JACK’ 14 NOVEMBER 1952–8 MAY 2008 AGED 55 YEARS

‘It only takes a moment to inspire’

GOD BLESS YOU BOTH

Chapter One - Growing Up In Ashton-Under-Lyne

Chapter Two - Trying to Make A Life for Myself

Chapter Three - Falling Apart

Chapter Four - Being Inside

Chapter Five - Release from Strangeways

Chapter Six - Party at the Pub

Chapter Seven - Life on the Outside

Chapter Eight - Self-Medication

Chapter Nine - The First Steps

Chapter Ten - The Babysitter

Chapter Eleven - Meeting My Real Dad

Chapter Twelve - Burnt House Farm

Chapter Thirteen - Waiting to Die

Chapter Fourteen - Living with Geoff and Sue

Chapter Fifteen - Housecleaning the Soul

Chapter Sixteen - The Pity Party

Chapter Seventeen - Family Therapy

Chapter Eighteen - Strangeways in the Dock

Chapter Nineteen - Learning to Understand the Past

Chapter Twenty - Under Pressure

Chapter Twenty-one - Please, Daddy, No

Chapter Twenty-two - Pushed to the Limit

Chapter Twenty-three - Crying on Live TV

Chapter Twenty-four - Losing My Surrogate Dad

Chapter Twenty-five - Staying Clean

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

‘What fucking time do you call this?’ Dad snarled as I crept in the door. ‘You're fucking late.’

I glanced over his shoulder at the clock and could see that I wasn't late. It was seven o'clock exactly, the time he'd told me to get home. If I got back before then I'd be in trouble so I always timed it exactly to the minute. ‘I'm not. It's …’

The words dried up as he rose suddenly from his chair, his lip curling the way it always did when he was angry .

‘Sorry,’ I pleaded, as his fist caught the side of my head, knocking me into the wall. I crumpled to the floor. ‘No, Daddy. Please don't.’

He kicked me in the side and I curled in a ball with my hands cradling my head. It was no use, though. I was hauled up by the arm as he kicked and punched me ferociously then hurled me against the door before pulling me back up for more .

I was only seven. There was a loud buzzing noise in my head, the noise I always heard when I was terrified. He threw me round the room, laying into me wildly with his fists and feet, not caring how badly I got hurt .

When he'd finished beating me he shoved me towards the stairs. ‘Go and get yourself cleaned up, you filthy bastard. I'll be up to see you in a bit.’

My legs were trembling as I climbed the stairs. Why did I always make him angry? Why couldn't I get it right?

I washed my face then went through to my bedroom, every bit of me aching. I considered hiding inside the walk-in wardrobe but I knew it would make things much worse if he had to haul me out. Instead, I crawled under the covers and pulled them up to my chin. I buried my face in the pillow and that's when the sobs came .

I knew what would happen next. Even as I cried for Mum, my sobs muffled in the pillow, I was listening for him coming upstairs. Bile rose in my throat as I worried about what he would make me do this time. The waiting was horrible. I could already smell the rancid, stale-sweat smell of him and hear his panting breath. There was a bitter taste in my mouth and I hurt all over. There wasn't a single bit of me that didn't hurt .

I began to tremble with fear, and then I heard it: the loud creaking sound of that first step, and then the next. He was coming. There was nothing I could do .

I don't remember a time before Dad came to live with us although I was three when he moved in. He was a colourful, larger-than-life character who worked as a dustbin man in the smarter areas of Ashton-under-Lyne, and on his rounds he would pick up all sorts of cast-off items to bring home. We were proud to be the first family in the street to have a television, even though it only worked intermittently when you banged the sides, the first to have a washing machine, and the only ones to have a PVC sofa and ornaments and paintings on the walls.

All the neighbours used to come round to admire our newest possessions, do their laundry in our machine and drink beer and smoke in the sitting room, but there was an undercurrent of jealousy as well. There was definitely a feeling that we thought we were a bit above ourselves, which didn't go down well. I got bullied by some local boys, who used to play tricks on me like getting me to swallow a spoonful of margarine by pretending it was ice cream.

I had two big sisters: Christina, who was two years older than me, and Shirley, who was a year older than her. Poor old Shirl the Whirl, as I called her, was born with spina bifida that meant she was confined to a wheelchair, paralysed and without feeling from the waist down. She also had hydrocephalus, or fluid on the brain, and epilepsy and a hunchback, and she was always having to go into hospital for operations and coming back covered in bandages. There was nothing wrong with her mind, though. I loved Shirley because she was the one who looked out for me when she could and tried to make sure I was OK. Christina was tougher and more independent when we were little.

Mum had been married to a man called George Heywood whom she'd met when she was just sixteen, but he turned out to be a drinker and a womanizer. He couldn't handle the pressure of having a disabled child so he soon disappeared from the scene. It must have been really tough for Mum being on her own with no money and with kids to raise, so when David Howarth came along with his jet-black hair and moustache and his ready charm, she was easily swept off her feet.

‘David is your real dad,’ she whispered to me, ‘and George was the girls. But don't tell them or they'll be jealous that you're the only one whose real dad lives with us. Let's keep it to ourselves.’

None of the other kids in our street had their real dad living with them, although there might be stepdads or boyfriends in the house. I was chuffed to bits that I had my real dad and, what's more, he had a proper job and he brought home lots of presents for us. I used to be his favourite, and that made me feel very special. I hero-worshipped him and strove to do whatever I could to please him, although I was always a bit scared of him as well.

Dad had a smallholding, which we called ‘the Pen’, where he kept pigs, chickens, geese and ducks. His father lived in one of the sheds up there, amongst heaps of scrap from the dustbin rounds, an old rusting car we kids used to play in and litter strewn everywhere. It was up there that Dad started his campaign to ‘make a man of me’, as he put it. He'd make me collect the eggs from the hens, although their flapping wings terrified me, and he'd put ferrets down my trousers, where they scratched and wriggled. I was especially scared of the big black boar and the sows that snuffled around in the mud, but I was learning to keep this from Dad because if he sensed I was scared of something he would push me right into it as part of his campaign to toughen me up.