The Bad Room

Both Jack and Ellen were fairly easy to cater for. He was obsessed with jam on toast so I kept making that for him, or I made sure he had rusks so he could eat them as a biscuit or I poured milk on them to make porridge. I bought Smarties but Jack didn’t like the orange ones so I used to pick them out before giving them to him. Ellen was still on a bottle of milk so I just had to make sure I had enough to keep her filled up. I felt an enormous amount of pressure as the eldest to look after them, especially Ellen, as I knew Mum had never bonded with her.

Mum received milk tokens with her giro, which you could exchange in the local store for bread and milk up to that value. I would go to get it but sometimes didn’t have enough tokens to make up the full amount. I said to the shopkeeper Mum would drop the rest off when she got her giro.

Previously Mum paid that bill, as it was our local shop, but he said, ‘Your mum hasn’t been in. Is she avoiding me? She needs to settle up.’

I just shrugged and said I’d tell her. What else could I do? I felt like I was the adult in our house. If the milk tokens were no longer an option I had to find other ways to feed us.

Our local doctor’s surgery had a coffee vending machine that served hot chocolate. I went in and told the receptionists we were hungry. They gave me hot chocolates and lollies. That prompted some action because a health visitor came to the house to check on our wellbeing. She was shocked to see us eating the last of some Weetabix out of one dirty saucepan. It was the only food we had left. The milk in the fridge had long since gone off, curdled and separated. It was another example of someone in a position of responsibility seeing for themselves the conditions we had to put up with.

Social workers also came to the house to check up on Mum and seemed shocked by what they found. I wasn’t sure if they believed me when I said there was no food in the house. They arranged for us to be given a food parcel.

The social workers did at least make some headway with the local school. They had expressed their dismay that none of us were going to school and one asked me when was the last time I had actually been. A meeting was arranged at the local school but Mum kept falling asleep in the headteacher’s office, complaining that she hadn’t slept for two weeks. I started school again but Mum hadn’t sorted dinners so often I went hungry during the day until the arrangements had been made for me to eat. Mum had the food vouchers but hadn’t given them to the school.

It was just a never-ending state of neglect, of which social services were routinely made aware. Neighbours complained when Mum locked us out of the house and they saw us stuck outside for hours. A bus driver got involved when he saw Ellen, who was then just turning three, wandering the streets. He kindly took her home and made sure she was okay.

Grandma rang them about her own daughter’s negligence or cruelty. Amid everything else that was going on, Mum still routinely lost her rag with me. A couple of days before my tenth birthday, in June 1998, she came at me with a mad look in her eye. I was eating a Toffee Crisp chocolate bar and I got such a fright I nearly choked. She slapped me around the face and to avoid being hit further I jumped around a camp bed but smashed my eye on the metal frame. My eye immediately swelled and turned black and purple.

Mum panicked. ‘Social services are going to take you off me and accuse me of hitting you when they see that.’

By the day of my birthday I was sporting a large, shining black eye. In previous years, Mum had made a big fuss of my special day, often taking us to McDonald’s as a treat. I would remember this one, but for much different reasons. She didn’t think she was responsible because technically she hadn’t caused the bruise and the swollen eye, even though I had been running away from her initial slap.

An official from the council’s housing department paid a visit the next day but Mum wouldn’t let him in. He called through the letterbox and saw me. He asked how I got the black eye.

‘I fell and hit my head on the bed,’ I said.

I don’t think he believed me. Mum was in the background, listening and passing messages to me. He couldn’t see her but I suspected he knew what was going on.

A council joiner then came to do some repairs and noticed Mum had locked Jack in the top bedroom. The door was shut and he was crying to get out. Neighbours complained again when they saw Jack running around outside without shoes on when Mum was supposed to be looking after him.

Social workers were now paying regular visits to the house, almost on a daily basis. One day we had been outside at a neighbour’s house. It was the end of June and still warm but Jack just had a t-shirt on and boxer shorts and Ellen was in a pyjama top with no underwear. When they asked why we were outside dressed like that, Mum got really defensive and started shouting. One of the social workers mentioned that several neighbours had reported seeing us outside, unsupervised. Mum kicked off, yelling about ‘interfering neighbours’ and would get so angry the social workers cut short their meeting and left.

Mum’s doctor prescribed her methadone to try to wean her off heroin and that brought about a change in her appearance, if not her attitude. Despite the lack of proper nutrition her weight ballooned and her skin became puffy. Being on methadone, however, was another accident waiting to happen. When next a social worker called – and Mum actually let her in the house – she found the methadone prescription sitting on top of the television in easy of reach of us children. She told Mum about the potential dangers but, as serious as it was, it was just another example of where Mum’s priorities lay. She was more interested in drugs by then than our wellbeing.

In the weeks before the end of the school term, I did not attend school. Mum was just out of it for large parts of the day, after being up most of the night. I was exhausted too, through lack of food and running around after my brother and sister. I never saw caring for them as a chore. I doted on them and was only concerned about making sure they ate something, but it was extremely tiring. It was also near impossible to keep on top of everything.

I tried to get help by ringing the social services’ emergency number, telling the person on the other end of the line that once again we had no food. A day later they delivered a food parcel. At last we were able to eat but all semblance of order had disappeared in the house. Mum was at the end of her tether and at times pleaded for Jack, who was still boisterous and difficult to discipline, to be taken into care. I couldn’t watch over them all hours of the day and night, and for that reason it was almost inevitable when a neighbour saw Ellen outside the house, on a warm July night, at 3 a.m. wandering around with no clothes on. No harm came to her but if that wasn’t a sign that Mum was completely failing in her duties I didn’t know what was.

The reports were so frequent social workers did drive-bys of the house to see what was happening. I got to know their cars. The same two social workers regularly checked up on us. Only one of them I found warm. She was called Shona and she seemed to really sympathise with my situation. She visited sometime after my birthday when Mum was again giving me a hard time. Dad had given me a present for my birthday and had tried to help out the rest of the family by handing over a food hamper. Mum saw this as an opportunity and told me to ask my dad for money. Shona intervened and said it wasn’t appropriate to ask me to do this. She gave Mum food vouchers instead, which seemed to calm her down.

The vouchers only provided temporary reprieve from our neglect, though. Before long the food would run out, there would be no money and once again we were at the mercy of social services. Their task was made doubly difficult when they asked to check what food we had and Mum once again refused to let them in the house. As they were leaving Mum rushed out with Ellen and left her on the doorstep, asking them to take her off her. When they refused and continued to their car, Mum picked Ellen up and lifted her onto the bonnet. They said they would look at a temporary solution.

Not long after, when Mum was kicking off at me again, I saw Shona’s car drive by. I approached the car and asked her if I could be put into foster care.

‘No, I can’t do that. I’m sorry,’ Shona said and drove off.

I was exhausted and heartbroken. I had always tried to protect Mum but now I was tired of her constant apologies for her violence. I was drained from trying to please her all the time, trying to win her love. I wanted my brother and sister to be looked after properly, bathed regularly and for them to sleep in a comfortable bed. I wanted them to be loved. I wanted someone to rescue us and I knew I didn’t want to go back. I wanted to be given away. I didn’t understand why social services wouldn’t help. What was the point of them receiving all these reports and having meetings with us when they didn’t seem to do anything? They just seemed to take notes and arrange countless visits.

Would anything be done?

I had no idea, but in the meantime I had no option but to go along with it. I tried to make the best of the situation, but just when I thought it could not get any worse I got a new shock.

I was in Mum’s room, jumping on her bed, listening to Alanis Morissette, when the cupboard door clicked open. I jumped off and went to close it. Spying something inside, my nosiness got the better of me and I saw a blue and white sports bag. I knelt down and began to unzip it. Inside were several large shotguns and one small handgun. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Whose were they? Why were they in our house?

Just then the bedroom door flung open and Mum was standing there.

‘Don’t go in there!’ she yelled. Then she softened her tone and crouched down to hug me. She zipped up the bag and closed the door. I was almost as shocked by her change of attitude as I was to seeing the firearms. Was she relieved that there hadn’t been an accident? We went downstairs and she immediately called someone on the phone.

I heard her tell whomever she was speaking to, ‘Pick the bag up now. I can’t have them around the children.’

The next time I was brave enough to peek inside the cupboard the bag was gone.

Mum might have had a narrow escape on that occasion. Next time she would not be so lucky.

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