Читать книгу Tell Me Why, Mummy: A Little Boy’s Struggle to Survive. A Mother’s Shameful Secret. The Power to Forgive. - David Thomas, Mark Schultz - Страница 10

In 1973 at the age of five I start school. Calder Bridge Primary School is a large old building with tall windows, built in the shade and surrounded by trees. Even in summer, it feels dark and cold, and looks like something out of a horror film. I am already a nervous child and I’m not looking forward to it.

To make matters worse, Mum takes me to school to begin with but then puts me on the bus. It’s a short trip and she asks one of the older kids to look after me. Although Lizzie is a very nice girl I’m anxious about this arrangement and I can’t understand why my mummy won’t come with me on this bus and look after me.

‘Please take me to school, Mum,’ I plead as the bus comes round the corner.

‘You’ll be fine,’ she says, putting me on the bus. ‘Off you go.’

This isn’t a good start for me at my new school and I feel lonely and insecure among all the strange faces. All the other children seem to have at least one parent taking them to school; some even have two.

I don’t know anyone and I find it difficult to talk to the other children or make any friends. In my first year at primary school I get picked on by a girl called Karen, two or three years older than me.

She is tall and towers over me. I have ginger-red hair and she soon discovers that I have a slight lisp and can’t pronounce my ‘s’s clearly. After that she picks on me mercilessly. I spend most of my time trying to avoid her but she always manages to seek me out.

‘What’th the matter, Ginger Bithcuit, have you done poo-pooth in your troutherth?’ she calls out to me in the school playground. ‘What’th your mummy going to thay? I bet she’ll thpank your bumbumth?’

‘Go away! Leave me alone!’ I reply miserably. ‘I haven’t done anything to hurt you.’

‘Oooh, baby Ginger Bithcuit’th cwying,’ she taunts back. ‘He’th going to wee all over hith troutherth coth he’th tho upthet. Boo hoo! Boo hoo! You’d better go and tell your mummy and she can kith you better!’

I don’t know how or why, but she’s hit the target, picked on my weak spot. I don’t really understand what’s going on at home, but Mum scares me when she’s out of control and I somehow feel crushed and humiliated by this sneering jibe.

I blush bright scarlet.

‘Look at Baby Ginger! Hith fathe hath gone all red. It’th all gingery like the retht of him.’

Her friends laugh and snigger. But I’m praying that she’s had her fun now and if I’m lucky she’ll leave me alone now for the rest of the day. Of course she knows very well that the last thing I’m going to do is tell Mum. I can’t tell my mother and I can’t tell anyone else either.

Karen doesn’t physically hurt me and I don’t mention these incidents to anyone, but this is the first time I have been bullied and I hate it. It destroys my confidence and makes me deeply unhappy. I withdraw into myself, feeling that I’m on the outside looking in. From now on I keep myself to myself and mainly talk to the other quiet kids.

I’m not used to people being nasty to me like this. In the years to come I will come to understand that I have been bullied, just as I will come to realize that my mother has been sexually abusing me, but at the age of five I don’t attach these labels to what is happening to me. All I know is that at school Karen makes my life miserable, while at home I have two mummies – the Light Mummy, the caring, loving and affectionate one, and the Dark Mummy, who frightens me when she’s drinking and out of control.

But even with Dark Mummy, I can comfort myself that I’m doing it to make her happy and if it pleases her it makes me feel better. Besides, she isn’t hurting me and that’s what matters.

I don’t know if Mum notices the effect of the bullying on me, but after a few weeks I start inventing excuses for not going to school.

‘I’ve got a headache/toothache/earache/my tummy/ foot/elbow hurts.’

Usually Mum won’t have any truck with these excuses: if I’m able to get up and eat my breakfast then I can go to school. Then, miraculously, I come down with a real stinker of a cold and sore throat and she keeps me at home for over a week.

When it’s time for me to go back to school, I am more anxious and nervous than ever. But by this time, to my huge relief, Karen has grown bored with taunting me and apart from an occasional verbal swipe the bullying seems to tail off. Probably she has found another victim, but after that she leaves me alone.

Besides, things have started to change for me slightly. Maybe Karen has picked up on this and thinks twice before having a go at me, but for whatever reason, she has moved on and so have I.

What’s changed is that I’m learning how to defend myself – and it helps that I wear clogs as shoes at school. There’s a working clog factory a few miles from where we live and as they are sturdy and long-lasting, they seem not only practical but it also makes economic sense to Mum for me to wear them.

The front of a clog is very hard and hurts if you come into contact with it. Unfortunately, I choose to employ them as a weapon at school and start kicking out at any kid I fall out with. I have become physically aggressive to defend myself against being bullied.

This kicking out makes kids more wary of me. Upon kicking another pupil, they start screaming in pain and I find myself getting hauled up in front of the teacher. Despite my protests of doing it in self-defence, I get into trouble. As a rule I only tend to do it in the classroom and these incidents are few and far between, but I’m always unrepentant, which never helps.

‘But Miss,’ I plead, ‘they were hitting me first.’

‘I don’t care, David,’ she insists, ‘you can’t wear them any more.’

This scolding hurts me more than the bullying and I try to control myself. I also hate going home and telling Mum I have been in trouble at school.

It never occurs to me that there’s anything very wrong with what’s going on between me and Mum. I think of the peculiar physical intimacy between us as our ‘Special Time’ and I like it in the way that a child in a normal relationship with their mother is aware of and understands a cuddle. I don’t want to spoil what we have between us, and so from now on I’m a model student at school, well behaved in class, hardly ever getting into detention and never being sent home from school.

After this I stop kicking out at other kids and I avoid conflicts. If someone tells me to do anything – whether it’s grown-ups or other children – I agree to it or find a way round it to make sure that other people don’t get angry or upset with me. I don’t want to be hurt and I don’t want to get into trouble for hurting anyone else. It’s in my nature to be submissive and I don’t want to be bullied – but that’s going to lead to far greater problems for me in the years to come.

In my first year at Calder Bridge I win a gold star from the Head and I’m overjoyed. I’ve just discovered how much I like being the centre of attention. I enjoy the feeling of being good at something. When a few weeks later I see another older lad getting a lot of attention because it’s his birthday it makes me feel very jealous. I wish it was me who they were all making a fuss about. I also discover something else.

Walking home from school with another boy, we race each other and I beat him.

I love beating him and I love winning.

* * *

At home, we have very little money to live on. After my parents split up, Dad pays Mum maintenance but it’s never much according to her – although I have no idea how the money from the houses has actually been split up. I don’t know any different and am grateful for what I have or what is given to me. Although I have some books, board games, Lego and toy cars, I don’t have many toys; they are mostly secondhand. Around this time, 1974–75, Mum is a member of a Halifax Gingerbread Group for single parents who meet at each others’ houses and take it in turns to hold a gingerbread evening. She makes friends and does things with them that also involve children, and she sometimes comes home with toys for me, which is always exciting.

Although we have little cash, Mum always makes sure I have the things I need and it’s the same throughout my childhood. One day my friend George who lives across the fields gives me a bike. Mum can never afford to get me a bike because it’s too expensive. I sometimes wonder whether Dad will think about buying me one, given his love of two-wheeled machines, but he’s hardly ever around nowadays and I can only assume he’s preoccupied with his own problems.

There’s no point in my complaining about wanting a new bike, I’m never going to get one. George’s old bike is definitely the next best thing. It is light green and beige and doesn’t have a saddle, which makes it difficult to ride, but I’m not bothered. I think it’s great. In any case the road we live in has a small dip so I stand on the pedals going down, get off at the bottom and push it back to the top.

For my sixth birthday, Mum gives me a red articulated truck. It is new, not secondhand, and I’m thrilled with it. I take it to school to show off to the other kids. It’s great being the centre of attention for once and I feel so proud. Then one of the children takes a swipe at it, knocking it out of my hand. It crashes to the floor and breaks into pieces. All the kids go ‘Ooooohhh!’ and run off to avoid getting the blame.

I stand there, crying my eyes out, not because the toy is broken but because I know I won’t get another new one. I hide it in my bag and don’t tell Mum.

* * *

When she’s not drinking she wants the best for me and she does this by being strict with me. She is anxious for me to do well in school and when we go on trips to other places in West Yorkshire and even to the seaside at Blackpool, she’ll drag me around historical sites – maybe not kicking and screaming but sometimes a little reluctantly when I’d just like to have fun. Like her mother Sandra did to her, she pushes me hard, and keeps a close eye on me when it comes to schoolwork.

In stark contrast to how she is when she’s drinking, when she is sober she won’t tolerate bad behaviour. Once she makes her mind up on something, that is that. She always gets me to wash my hands before each meal and after I’ve finished eating I have to ask to leave the table. She believes in good manners and behaving myself in public, although this doesn’t stop her doing embarrassing things herself.

One Saturday, when we’re shopping in Halifax she buys me some fruitdrops and when I put one in my mouth I realize it’s blackcurrant.

I pull a face and immediately take it out.

‘Come on, David,’ Mum is saying, ‘we’ve got to get back home.’

‘Can’t we go to the toyshop and see the model railway, Mum?’ I plead.

‘No, I’ve told you once, we need to get home now.’

Mum has made up her mind and starts walking me towards the bus stop.

But I want to go and see the model railway in the toyshop and in a fit of pique I throw my fruitdrop on the ground.

We’re in the middle of the town centre, milling with people, probably including children from my school. That doesn’t worry Mum. She pulls down my trousers and smacks my backside in full view of anyone who is watching.

If Mum has decided on something and laid down the law, that’s final. She won’t allow any argument.

One evening, she makes kedgeree, a rice dish with fish. She is brilliant at baking but awful at cooking and as this is one of the few meals she can successfully cook, she often makes it. Although I can eat it, kedgeree is probably one of my least favourite meals, so I eat as much as I can stomach and leave the rest.

‘Are you leaving that food?’ Mum asks.

‘Yes, I’ve had enough, Mum,’ I reply.

‘Right, well in that case, you will eat it for your breakfast.’

When she says something like that I know she means it. I’ll have to eat it in the morning.

The meal has been bad enough the night before when it was warm and freshly cooked, but cold fish and rice for breakfast are disgusting. Yet the next morning, there it is, waiting for me. I struggle to get it down, doing everything in my power to stop myself throwing up.

This teaches me a lesson: not to upset Mum and to do exactly as I am told. From then on, I do this to the best of my ability, both through fear of reprisal and because, strangely enough, it makes me feel close to her. I rarely defy her and am always excited when she pays me a compliment.

* * *

The first Christmas after we move into the house on the far end of the block at Calder Bridge, Mum works very hard to turn it into something special: we decorate the house with crêpe paper and baubles on the tree, and there’s a big bag of gifts on Christmas morning. The decorations are cheap but plentiful and we put them all over the house. Mum takes small items like chocolate bars and wraps them up in Christmas wrapping paper. It may not be quite the same thing as a real present but it helps make the bag look bigger and that’s what matters to me.

I sneak down early on Christmas morning and start opening my presents. I feel a warm, glowing excitement and I want the day to go on forever. But I know this day will end and that sooner or later the Dark Mummy, the one who comes to me at night when she has been drinking, will return. And although I’m only six, I’m starting to realize that what she is asking me to do for her, and do to her, is very wrong.

My mother is drinking more than ever – I know that, because she is making me do things to her more often. It only seems to happen when she drinks and she never comes to me until she is badly drunk. That seems to happen quickly as soon as she starts drinking brandy.

It is always the same. She wants me to make her happy by rubbing her minnie. She never touches my willy or shows any interest in doing anything more than that. She takes my hand and places it on her minnie and rubs it.

But one thing is different now. Before, she needed to guide my hand and do it for me. But now that I’m older, I am learning to do it with less help from her. That seems to give her more pleasure and so it pleases me more.

I am totally unaware of the sexual and moral implications of what I am doing. I am just happy that Mum and I are doing something together that feels intimate. I am an affectionate and tactile child, loving to cuddle and be cuddled. And I feel that what has happened between us is a natural extension of that. But why she drinks and why she wants me to do these things for her is a closed book to me.

On the other hand, even as a six-year-old I know that Mum has been very lonely since she and Dad split up. Things have been difficult for her and yet she has driven Dad away through her difficult behaviour. I think she truly did love him and expected to spend the rest of her life with him. She is now solely responsible for bringing me up, and without any career or job to support her.

Mum can still be great company. She’s in her late twenties and I sometimes see men looking at her and wanting to talk to her, but a few years later when I look back at this period it dawns on me that it must have taken an unusual man to accept her with all her problems, especially as at this stage she’s had a six-year-old in tow.

From this time onwards, I begin to realize that the men closest to Mum are much older than her. They are the only ones who seem to be able to cope with how she is when she drinks. And around this time, something terrible happens as a result of her drinking which I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

* * *

Mum has a friend called Charlie who lives in a small terraced house in a village called Mystendyke, not too far from where we live. Charlie has a beard and is tall and thin. To me, he seems very old but he’s probably only in his sixties – certainly a lot older than Mum – and I’m not sure of the nature of their relationship. He’s good company and I enjoy going there as he is always nice to me, telling me stories and jokes.

One night when we’re there at his house, Mum gets steaming drunk and their conversation becomes really heated. Even though I’m only six, I have already seen this many times before and I know what’s coming. They begin arguing and as each minute goes by, I can sense that it’s about to get completely out of control.

Mum is now beside herself with rage. When drunk, she has no idea at all what’s going on or any control whatsoever over her actions. Anything can happen and it often does.

She doesn’t care about me either when she’s like this. She’s not a distant, unfeeling mother when she is sober, but on this night I can sense that I am surplus to requirements. Then something happens that changes all that. Somehow, in the course of the argument, she gets locked outside the house with me on the inside.

She is shouting bad words, banging on the window. I am completely bewildered by what is going on and just sit there crying. Of course, Mum hasn’t tried to explain it to me and all I want is for her to be back inside the house.

‘Charlie,’ I’m crying, ‘please let my mummy in!’

‘No,’ he shouts, ‘she’s not coming back in.’

By now she’s at boiling point.

‘Let me in, you old bastard!’ she screams at Charlie through the glass.

‘Not a chance!’ he shouts back at her from inside.

She bangs harder until there is a sudden almighty crash as her fist goes through the window. Glass shatters all over the floor and my mother’s head appears at the hole, her hand covered in blood where the glass has sliced it, blood dripping on the window ledge.

When, years later, I see Jack Nicholson’s manic portrayal of the disintegrating writer Jack Torrence in Stanley Kubrick’s film of Stephen King’s horror novel The Shining, I can’t help being struck by the similarity of the scene where Nicholson takes an axe to a wooden door, finally breaks through, pokes his heads through the shattered door and jeers at his terrified wife, ‘Here’s Johnny!’

But, for me, at the age of six, the reality of seeing my demented mother’s blooded fist breaking through the glass to be followed by her head is far more terrifying than any movie and it’s a vision that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

She points and shouts abuse at Charlie at the top of her voice, telling him to let her in.

When he refuses, she turns on me.

‘Open the door, David, now!’ she screams.

I can see the obvious desperation of the situation even if I don’t understand it, and I badly want to help her. I run to the door, trying to reach the latch, but can’t quite make it.

‘Come on, David,’ she is shouting at the other side of the door. ‘Come on!’

On the third attempt I succeed and release the latch. As Mum has been leaning on the door, and I have no time to move out of the way, it immediately swings open, bringing her full weight crashing down on me, knocking me to the floor. Completely oblivious to this, she leaves me there and, staggering along, pushes herself from one piece of furniture to the next, her hand dripping blood on the carpet, screaming at Charlie.

‘You fucking bastard. Why wouldn’t you let me in?’

Without giving him a chance to reply, she lunges at him, raining punches down on him again and again. They are inaccurate but he is an old man and he just sits in his chair, hardly able to defend himself. All he can do is curl up, trying to push away her flailing arms.

He is too old to retaliate.

She is too drunk to be reasoned with.

I am too frightened to speak.

All I have been trying to do is help her, but it feels as though in the process I have made things worse; and now Charlie is getting hurt too.

What is most shocking to me is the sudden unpredictability and volatility of my mother in this situation. For all I know she might well have killed herself, and Charlie, and even me in her drunken rage.

I’m so upset that I still can’t speak for the rest of the night and even the next day I find myself keeping my distance from her, at least in my mind. I am looking at my mother differently now and what I see has changed something in me.

It may only be a small loss of innocence and trust, but from that night onwards I can never turn back the clock. I cannot make things better, or find my way back again to the mother I so long for her to be.

From that night onwards, my Dark Mummy is never far away.

* * *

Life with Mum is a rollercoaster. It doesn’t help that by the time I am six Dad has met someone new and within a year has gone to live with her in Manchester many miles away from where we live in Yorkshire. Her name is Maureen and she lives there with her two sons, Harry and Alex, who I discover are two and four years older than me.

When I come downstairs one morning in the summer holidays of 1974 I find Mum crying. She’s sitting at the kitchen table filling out a large, official-looking form in her careful, almost schoolgirl handwriting.

‘What’s the matter, Mum, why are you crying?’

‘Nothing, David, just eat your breakfast.’

‘What’s that you’re writing?’

‘OK, if you want to know, I’m applying for legal aid. That’s the only way I’m going to be able to afford to pay for solicitors.’

‘Why do you Ford Slisters?’

‘Never you mind, David, you’ll understand one day.’

It takes me a while to work out that Mum and Dad are now no longer married legally and by this time it’s 1975 and Mum tells me Dad has now married Maureen in Manchester. I can’t understand why he hasn’t invited Mum and me to the wedding. After all, we’re still his family. Why wouldn’t he want us there?

Maureen hasn’t been involved in my parents’ separation but this doesn’t stop Mum hating her with a passion. She has managed to get a photo of her and has written ‘Bitch’ on the back.

I don’t dislike my new stepmother. After all, I don’t know her. I haven’t even met her and nor has Mum as far as I know, but I’m intrigued as to why Mum hates her so much.

* * *

One day Mum and I are walking near our house when we see Rastus, our beloved orange and brown five-year-old collie, on the opposite side of the road at the top of the hill, some 50 yards away. Mum calls to him and he comes running down the hill towards us. We watch him all the way and as he gets to the road he doesn’t stop. Before we know it he’s been hit by a passing car just five yards in front of us.

There’s a terrible screech of brakes and the next second the car stops twenty yards or so further up the road. But it’s too late – Rastus has been killed instantly.

I can’t quite grasp what’s happened. It’s the first time I’ve been brought face to face with death and after the shock I’m inconsolable. There’s nothing we could have done to stop it but in my mind I keep re-running the incident like a video, trying to press Pause before Rastus reaches the road.

I cry for days.

Mum cries too as she loves her pets, especially Rastus. But although she’s very sad, her response is actually quite calm and dignified. I don’t know why, but I’m surprised as I expected her to be hysterical, like she is when she’s drinking. It now occurs to me just how carefully she can keep her emotions under control when she’s sober.

* * *

Dad returns to Halifax once a month and takes me to see his mother, my grandmother. They never talk at all about his father – my grandfather – and I often wonder about him. It seems that Dad has been brought up mainly by his mother and when he talks about his upbringing to me he describes it with affection.

Grandma brushes my hair, which I like, and lavishes attention on me, which feels wonderful to me. It is unconditional and different from that of my mother. Although Mum’s attention is certainly not conditional when she is sober, when drunk the only attention I get is when she wants me to touch her. She will decide how and when to show me affection – and nothing I do makes any difference. I may not fully understand this, but I sense it. Grandma, on the other hand, does that thing that grandparents do: she’s highly attentive for a short period of time.

But Grandma has a strange side to her personality. She lives on her own – a quiet, eccentric, affectionate woman, with unusual views. She isn’t very tall, walks with a slight stoop, and wears her long grey hair in a bun. Her house is like a junk shop, crammed with books, furniture and weird, exotic bric-a-brac, such as a carved wooden statue of three monkeys with their paws covering their eyes, mouth and ears.

‘That means, see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil,’ she says.

She’ll talk about subjects I’ve never heard anything about in a fascinating way and I hang on to her every word. She knows a huge amount, does Gran, and I’m amazed and intrigued. I often wonder what it was like for Dad having her as a mother, with just the two of them living in the same house and how it must have affected him. I also wonder what he thinks about the things she tells me, but he just sits there in an armchair among the potted palms and peacock feathers while Gran talks to me; he’s looking slightly bored and bemused, like he’s heard it all before, and just lets her get on with it.

But, despite her crazy ideas, I love Grandma, which means that Dad doesn’t have to work too hard to entertain me.

Nowadays it sometimes feels like Dad is simply going through the motions of being a father. I look up to him and desperately want him to be more involved. But he seems to have moved away emotionally as well as physically, never to return. He has chosen to be a distant parent and not get involved in my daily life. I can’t work out whether it’s because he doesn’t care and can’t be bothered, or because he simply doesn’t have it in him.

* * *

It’s really up to Mum to provide me with whatever it takes for me to have a happy and complete life and she can’t do it either. Life with her seems to rock violently from one extreme to another.

But one thing she can do very well is make new friends. One of them lives just around the corner from the school in Calder Bridge. Mum’s new friend has a daughter the same age as me called Katie. She is very pretty with a nice smile, long brown hair and she wears glasses. I often play with her and as I’m always keen to please, I’m happy doing anything Katie wants to do.

One evening at Katie’s house, I am alone with her and decide to do what I do with Mum: I put my hand up her skirt and into her knickers. Her minnie feels different. It is smaller and there are no hairs. I start rubbing her in the same way as I do for Mum but Katie doesn’t respond at all. This puzzles me as Mum always does, especially as I work hard to do it well.

After a short while she pushes my hand away and we play at something else. I don’t mind because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what we have done. It’s just a game and we simply play another one that she likes.

* * *

By the time I’m seven, I know that Mum is drinking regularly. It isn’t happening all the time – certainly not every day – and a lot remains hidden from me. I don’t see her starting to drink. I only see the results when she has drunk a whole bottle. She is never just slightly drunk or tipsy: she is either sober or completely smashed.

In a rare moment of confession much later on in her life, she tells me that her main problem is that when she’s opened a bottle of brandy she can’t stop drinking it until it’s empty.

Once drunk, she completely loses control, not just of her emotions but also her body.

And something else happens when she drinks in the evening. I remember the first time it happened . . .

* * *

Mum usually makes me tea when I come home from school but one day this doesn’t happen. She lets me into the house but then goes off upstairs.

It feels like she’s been gone a long, long time and she still hasn’t come down and I’m getting very hungry.

‘Mum, are you there? Where’s my tea, Mum?’ I finally call out.

‘Be right down, David,’ she replies after a minute.

More minutes go by and she still hasn’t come down.

Then she does.

She’s half undressed, and although she’s trying to walk normally she’s not quite steady on her feet as she comes into the living room where I’m sitting.

The clock on the mantelpiece says ten past seven and it’s past my bedtime but Mum doesn’t seem to notice.

‘David!’ she calls out as she sees me.

She staggers towards me and reaches down to hug me.

‘David, give your mother a cuddle.’

Her words are slurred and I can smell the brandy on her breath as her face closes in towards mine.

‘Can’t we have tea, Mum? I’m hungry.’

‘Yes, let’s have tea, I’ll make tea,’ she says and staggers off into the kitchen.

I follow her, and I’m now feeling frightened but I’m not quite sure why. It’s never happened before that she’s forgotten to make me tea because she’s been drinking.

Now she’s trying to open a tin of baked beans and she’s getting angry because the tin opener won’t work.

She slams the tin down on the kitchen table and starts looking for a saucepan in the bottom cupboard but as she bends down she falls over.

‘David, come here and give me a kiss,’ she says angrily, forgetting that she’s been trying to find the pan.

‘Oh Mum, can’t we just have tea?’

‘David, do what your mother tells you!’ she shouts.

I know better than to disobey her.

I join her on the floor and she pulls me towards her.

‘Give me a kiss, David.’

I do what she says and instantly I can smell and taste the brandy on her mouth. I feel a little sick and finally pull away.

‘Mummy, I’m tired. Can’t we have tea now?’

‘Yes, let’s have tea,’ she groans and tries to get up but collapses again on the kitchen floor . . .

Mum never gets to make me tea this evening and that’s the first time this has happened. She seems to have forgotten completely about my tea and even about me.

In the end I make myself a jam sandwich and put myself to bed but I stay awake for a long time, waiting to hear her come upstairs.

After what seems like another hour or more I hear her staggering to her bedroom and slamming her door shut.

Only then do I dare allow myself to go to sleep.

* * *

For me the first seven years of my life in Calder Bridge are a stark mixture of lightness and dark – I think of my earliest memories of playing as a child in a wonderful, exciting setting, the happy times playing in the woods and fields or in the scrapyard down the lane and I remember that one happy Christmas. But I also remember the sexual contact with my mother – the alcohol, mood swings, violence, blood, swearing and pain. Calder Bridge has created good memories and bad for me, but mainly I am haunted by the bad ones.

We are soon to move away from there, but the problems won’t be resolved in our new home. Instead of life getting better, it is about to get much worse . . .