Читать книгу Abandoned: The true story of a little girl who didn’t belong - Anya Peters - Страница 8

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.

Kathy lived at home with her and Mummy’s parents in Ireland, but I was born in England, on one of the beds in the long back bedroom in Mummy’s flat. But ten days after I was born she had to go back to Ireland, and left me there for Mummy to look after.

It was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement, just until the day she could come back to get me. But that day never came. She did come back – four or five times a year on visits – but she never took me with her, though every visit I was terrified that she might, that my uncle’s constant threats that ‘this’ time he was going to see to it that she took her ‘baggage’ back with her would be carried out.

Mummy had three other sisters. She was the eldest and Kathy was the youngest, still a child at the time Mummy left Ireland to make a life for herself over in England, and the only one left at home to look after their parents if ever they needed it.

She hadn’t even had a boyfriend before she met my father. I didn’t know who he was but I soon found out that he was a married man, and that they had been having an affair. Mummy told me that much one night after my uncle had stormed off to bed following one of their drunken arguments. My brothers and sisters had been herded off to bed earlier in the evening, but, as he often did, my uncle made me sit there and listen. It was on those nights, once he’d gone to bed, and before my brothers and sisters tiptoed back down one by one, that Mummy would tell me all her stories about growing up in Ireland.

Sometimes when we were on our own she would tell me stories about Kathy, and how she came over to England on her own on the ferry to have me in London, stories that only part of me wanted to hear. But layer by layer, argument by argument, year by year, as I, or more usually my brothers and sisters, asked more questions, I pieced together the details of my life story.

Mummy always made the stories sound romantic and exciting and sad, and we all felt sorry for Kathy not being able to be with her baby or with the man she had fallen in love with. I tried to forget that I was the baby they were talking about.

My feelings towards Kathy were always complicated, but I was shocked when I found out my father was a married man. In those days, extra-marital affairs were absolutely taboo. I looked at Kathy differently after that. I blamed her even more for the trouble Mummy was going through to keep her ‘secret’ for her, and for being the centre of most of the drunken arguments in our home.

‘She loved your father very much,’ Mummy always told me during those talks, ‘I know that much.’

I would pretend I wasn’t interested in the bits about Kathy and who my father might be. As usual I wanted to show Mummy that it was her I wanted to be my mum, not her sister; that this was my family and that I never wanted to be taken away from them. But of course I always did listen. I listened hard.

‘Did you know who Anya’s dad was?’ my youngest sister Jennifer asked one night.

We’d all asked the same question over the years. I pretended not to hear, but when I glanced up I saw Mummy look away and shake her head, and her eyes filled with tears again.

‘No,’ she said, swirling the drink in her glass and staring into it, ‘no I didn’t.’

‘Would you tell Daddy if you did?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said, pulling the belt of her dressing gown tighter and knocking back the last of her drink. ‘You bet your life I would. I wouldn’t put up with what I take from that madman … not even for my sister.’