Anya Peters: Abandoned: The true story of a little girl who didn’t belong

The true story of a little girl who didn’t belong

This is a work of non-fiction. In order to protect privacy, some names and places have been changed.

HarperElement

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

HarperElement is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Published by HarperElement 2007

© Anya Peters 2007

Anya Peters asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007245727

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN 9780007348305

Version: 2017-06-08

To Mummy,

whose love was always there

as the dock leaf to soothe the sting of him …

And to Brendan, for never letting go.

‘Although the world is full of suffering,

it is full also of the overcoming of it.’

(Helen Keller, 1880–1968)

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

It’s after an argument. Mummy stands at the kitchen table counting out plates. It’s roast chicken, which means it’s a Sunday. And I know it’s after an argument because she calls Daddy ‘him’.

She runs through us all in her head, tapping out numbers against her palm, then slides that number of plates along the counter from the stack she has taken from the shelf.

‘Wait … who have I missed?’

I look up, nervous that it’s me. My two eldest sisters, Marie and Sandra, aren’t there that day so there should be seven.

‘Him, Michael, Liam, Stella, Jennifer, you, me,’ she says, counting us out again by name.

She always counts the plates out like that, in that order: almost by ages, except she puts the girls before me, and herself at the end. I like the way she puts me with her at the end, the way she says, ‘… you, me …’ Always like that.

Mummy never leaves me out; she treats us all the same, but every mealtime I’m waiting for the same thing, for there to be one plate short, or not enough of something to go around. And for my uncle, or even one of the others imitating him, to look around at me and say, ‘She can do without. She doesn’t belong here anyway.’

It’s what Daddy is always saying, screaming it out week after week in drunken arguments.

‘She’s not wanted here, right! She doesn’t belong here. I want her out.’

I feel my brothers and sisters stiffen on the settee beside me, rolling their eyes at each other. I know they’re all thinking the same thing: thinking that I’m the troublemaker; wishing I wasn’t there; that Daddy wouldn’t shout and argue half as much if I wasn’t, that they could watch TV in peace.

‘She’s not wanted. They dumped her over here with you because they didn’t want her over there and she’s not wanted here either. I want her out,’ he says, snapping open another beer, ‘she doesn’t belong here.’

I hold my nose to stop the tears, trying to lean back behind the others on the settee so he can’t see me, staring hard at the wires at the back of the TV, not daring to watch the screen in case something on it triggers my tears. He’ll hit me harder if he sees me crying. He always does.

‘She’s only a child; none of this is her fault. Leave her alone, you bully. Go and pick on someone your own size. She’s no trouble at all. This is my home, and if I want her here, she’ll stay,’ Mummy yells in the background.

I wish she would just stop, not argue back. Mummy is worn out trying to stand up for me – but usually she just makes it worse.

‘She’s wanted nowhere, right!’

‘Yes she is, you cruel drunk … Don’t listen to him, Anya.’

But I have to.

‘Why did they leave her over here then? Who wants her?’ he screams. ‘No one!’ he says louder, slamming the words into me.

‘Yes they do! I want her!’ Mummy hollers into the room.

I try everything to keep my tears in, but eventually they burst out, hiccupping as they come, my shoulders heaving, and he is over me, his fist raised, ready to give me ‘something to really cry about’.

Mummy wasn’t my real mum. Her younger sister, Katherine, who everyone called ‘Kathy’, was my real mum. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know that. Anyway, my uncle, who I grew up calling ‘Daddy’ like the rest of my brothers and sisters, would never have allowed it to be kept a secret. He took every opportunity to remind me that Mummy wasn’t my real mum, that I didn’t belong with them, and that any day I’d be sent over ‘to that whore of a mother of yours in Ireland’.

Kathy was twelve years younger than Mummy, and beautiful. She was slim and elegant, with long, soft-red curls like shiny new pennies down her back, and eyes that were almost navy blue. She had the tiniest hands I, or any of my brothers and sisters, had ever seen on a grown-up, little doll’s hands, with long oval nails always painted a pearly pink colour. I was fascinated by her: by her beauty and calmness and easy laughter, by her soft Irish accent and her gentleness with me. But I was fearful of her too, always on my guard with her, determined to keep her at a distance. Determined to let Mummy see that she was my mum, not her sister Kathy.

For years Kathy wore a heavy, gold charm bracelet that clattered noisily at her wrist, and on each visit there’d be a new charm or two. My brothers and sisters would gather around her, choosing their favourite. One of my earliest memories is watching, out of the corner of my eye, my brother Liam sitting in stripy pyjamas in her arms as we all watch TV in the small front room of our flat. He holds up her bare arm and sleepily goes through the charms one by one, trying to choose his favourite between a miniature of the Houses of Parliament and a cat with tiny, diamond-encrusted eyes. I watch her small hand stroking the back of his blond head, her red curls falling down across his chest, and feel suddenly cold and stiff, too young to put words to the mixture of jealously and hate I feel as I look on. I am eight months younger than Liam, but my uncle doesn’t allow anyone to hold or touch me like that.