Also by Toni Maguire
Don’t Tell Mummy
When Daddy Comes Home
Helpless
Nobody Came
Don’t You Love Your Daddy?
Can’t Anyone Help Me?
Pretty Maids All In A Row
They Stole My Innocence
Did You Ever Love Me?
Daddy’s Little Girl
Published by John Blake Publishing
An imprint of Bonnier Books UK
80–81 Wimpole St, Marylebone, London W1G 9RE
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk
Paperback – 978-1-789-463-05-7
eBook – 978-1-789-463-06-4
Audiobook – 978-1-786-069-93-1
All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or circulated in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue of this book is available from the British Library.
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Copyright © Toni Maguire and Emily Smith, 2020
Toni Maguire and Emily Smith have asserted their moral right to be identified as the authors of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.
This book is a work of non-fiction, based on the life, experiences and recollections of Emily Smith. Certain details in this story, including names and locations, have been changed to protect the identity and privacy of the author, her family and those mentioned.
John Blake Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk
To my partner and my two amazing girls.
Contents
Prologue
Part One
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
Part Two
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Most of us enjoy visiting the past. Sometimes old photo albums are taken out, their contents flicked through. Then, with fingers pointing to the pictures that have caught our attention, we reminisce and chuckle about the times in our lives that they depict. Other times, we catch the eye of a partner or an old friend when an image leaps out of our memory banks and we find ourselves almost saying in unison, ‘Oh, do you remember when—?’
Unlike those happy people with their carefree previous lives, I had packed away my past nearly 15 years earlier. Oh, not into a memory box, more like an illusionary filing cabinet where each drawer is neatly labelled. There were the ones showing the happy times I had spent with my mother’s family, labelled ‘Look At’, while others said ‘Leave Well Alone’. So, where are the ones of me before I met my partner, which should be stored safely away in albums? All too often the ones I have been asked to dig out.
Well, apart from a couple taken with my grandmother, which she slid into my hand the last time I visited, I never did have any photographs of those times. There are not in my possession any old albums full of square prints showing the various stages of my development from bouncing, gummy baby to self-conscious teenager.
‘They got lost when I moved,’ I announce breezily, though this is not true.
Those pictures were just never taken.
* * *
But, today, and no doubt again tomorrow, the wrong drawers of that cabinet will fly open, releasing images I do not wish to see. For they have been busy visiting me since they managed to escape. They float behind my closed eyes, sneak into my dreams, even interrupt the odd quiet moment I try and grab during the daytime. So, what has happened for them to be able to do that?
Well, a small person has managed, in no particular order, to open those drawers. The ones I had so firmly slammed shut when I escaped the place I had been forced to call home. How I wish, when they come into my mind, I could remain selective as to the ones I agree to look at. For I still want to hold on to those happy times spent with my mother’s family right up until the age of five. But no, each time I try and look at them, the others push them aside triumphantly to show me their darkness. Oh, if only I could erase those sections of my past. But despite all my efforts, it’s something I have failed to do.
Another memory, one that is neutral – a voice – entered my head not so long ago. It came from a teacher who had given me a gold star for an essay. ‘It’s good, Emily,’ she was telling me with a warm smile, ‘just be careful when you write a story to always start at the beginning.’ But then many books start at the end and travel back in time so I’m not finding that to be a binding method.
Well, in my case, without the part of my story that is unfolding daily, I might well have succeeded in keeping all the drawers locked. And then there would be nothing to tell, would there? So, what caused those drawers to fly open, releasing all those images, you might ask. I mean, who was responsible for that?
Why, none other than my daughter, my mini-me.
* * *
It’s now over 15 years since I spent Christmas in the House of Horrors, yet I still struggle at this time of the year. I’m on edge the whole time – something will go wrong, my partner will get mad at me, like he can when guests are expected – those are my thoughts the whole time. And then comes the big clean-up before his dad gets here . . . Hello, silent panic attacks, my old friend. I’m messy, that’s no big news, and the whole bathroom clean-up reminds me of my stepdad’s rages. Every slap, every pulling of the hair, name calling, every tear shed . . . they all come back to haunt me like a slap in the face.
You know things were bad when you’re not religious yet prayed to a god you didn’t believe in to make it all stop. I tried one year as an 11-year-old to drink my pain away. Luckily enough, we didn’t have much alcohol in the house so I picked a bottle of Bacardi. The smell alone made me almost throw up. More than likely, this saved me from alcoholism. That, and the constant fear he would know and beat me again.
I’m back to today, this day I so desperately want to enjoy and be present for my daughters. But I can’t silence the voice inside, saying I
’m messing the whole thing up.
The kids are mostly happy, I think – at least, I hope so. Getting away from France and them is only the start. Quieting their voices, and not being the little girl with all her fears I once was, is the hardest part. You think once you leave, it’ll be OK. Now it’ll all be great, there’ll be no reason to feel afraid or depressed – after all, you survived hell. What could be worse, right? But you can never escape the ghosts from the past, they live forever in your head.
Part One
Chapter 1
Well, what mother doesn’t seize every opportunity to do the same?
That’s not always to say that I find the time restful. All too often watching my daughter neatly line up each object in her toy box or rearrange her dolls to be in the exact position she wants takes me down the path leading to my own childhood. A path I have tried my hardest not to tread. I have come to understand why this happens: it is because she is just such a small version of me. At least, that’s what her father said the first time he held her. One look at her tiny face, her long limbs and fuzz of dark blonde hair, and with a beam of absolute joy he said, ‘She’s a tiny you, Emily.’ What I didn’t know then was just how much of a version of me she was going to turn into. Not that I gave my partner Patrick’s remark much attention then, I was too focused on my new daughter. The moment I heard that cry as she took her first breath, a wave of intense, pure love washed over me. And when the nurse laid her on my breast, my arms rose instinctively to hold her.
‘She’s perfect,’ I murmured, ‘just perfect.’ The second thought that ran through my head as I cradled her was that I would always protect her. ‘You will have a happy childhood,’ I whispered to her as I vowed silently to make sure of that.
During those first few days when I arrived home from the hospital, Patrick’s mother, Irene, was there to help. ‘You need to rest a little,’ she told me after she persuaded me to lay my daughter down in her cot. The moment Sonia left me, my arms felt both weightless and empty. If I could, I would have held her against me the whole day. Instead, I lay on my side, one hand brushing the edge of her cot while I listened to the music of her breathing. I simply loved the sounds she made, that quick inhalation of breath she took before pushing it out fast. Hearing those tiny, shallow baby breaths moved me almost to tears.
I remember so clearly the first time I noticed her eyes were following me, and later, how she kicked out her legs that had grown plump and firm. Then there was the day she smiled up at me. And no, I was certain it was not wind, no matter what the health visitor told me! Oh, there’s not a day of her development that is not firmly etched in my mind.
It took over two years before I spotted the signs that told me she was much more of a small replica of me than Patrick or I had first thought. It began when she started eating the same solid food as us. My hand was pushed aside the first time I tried to feed her the same way I had fed her the pureed food of just one colour: right from the start, she wanted her own spoon. And then I realised why. However difficult she found it at first, she busied herself grouping each vegetable together carefully. Mashed potato must not touch a carrot, the carrot must be separate from the pea.
The first time we saw the determined expression on her face as, wielding her spoon, she made sure the food on her plate was arranged to her liking, my partner’s sparkling green eyes crinkled with amusement as they met mine.
‘Told you she was a mini-you, didn’t I?’
Yes, she certainly was, I realised. But then with all the time we spent together, I suppose I was her role model, wasn’t I?
‘She’s just copying me,’ I said, then burst out laughing when I gazed down at my plate with its same neat arrangement of vegetables.
But there were other signs, weren’t there, other than her fussiness with food? Ones she could not have copied. Signs that showed she had inherited even more of my childhood idiosyncrasies, such as the screams when I brushed her hair. Over the months it had grown from easy-to-look-after fine baby fuzz to thick curls.
You most probably just pulled it too hard, I told myself at first, rushing to the shops to buy a gallon or two of detangling serum. Well, that helped, even if I now spent half an hour or so brushing carefully, a small section at a time. So, that was not too bad.
But her baths, now, they were really hard.
From the first day Sonia was lifted gently into the family bath to the accompaniment of ear-piercing wails and flaying limbs, she expressed just how much she hated it, especially when her hair was washed and rinsed using the shower attachment. Not only that, she screamed if a drop of water clung to an eyelash and shuddered when shampoo was rubbed into her scalp or baby lotion onto her body.
It was that first time when we progressed from baby bath to the family bath, my arms holding her while Sonia’s screams rocketed around the room, that a memory was unleashed that I had locked away all those years ago. Just for a split second, instead of seeing my hands on my daughter’s shoulders, another pair, much larger than mine, with a smattering of coarse black hair on their backs, appeared. And suddenly it was not my daughter who was in front of me but my terrified younger self. Knowing what was about to happen, she was trying frantically to wriggle away from those hands. She could hear the mocking gleeful laughter ringing in her ears as like a thousand stinging hailstones, water gushed down from the shower.
I could remember clearly what happened next and how my five-year-old self had screamed and sobbed. I could almost feel the rawness in her throat as, still dripping with water, she tried to stand, only to find her legs were too weak as though there were no longer any supporting bones beneath the flesh. She collapsed then, five-year-old me, gasping for air as she struggled to breathe.
Sonia, I vowed to myself, I will never let anything like that happen to you. I will always make your bathtimes safe.
From that day on, I think of everything I can to make bathtime a fun time. I tell her jokes, I make up games like running her rubber duck up and down the water and float little plastic toys, though there are minimal results there. In fact, the only thing that works is making as many funny faces as I can, something she finds simply hilarious.
‘More!’, then ‘More, Mummy!’ become her catchphrases as soon as she adds a few more words to her vocabulary, and by the time I lift her out of the bath, my whole face aches. But at least there have been a few giggles, even the odd snorting little laugh, which are a lot easier on the ears than those early piercing screams. But all this did not stop the one question that was worrying me from entering my head continuously. The one I asked the health visitor about repeatedly from the moment my daughter turned two.
‘How can you explain the fact that she’s still not really talking?’
Each time she went to great lengths to reassure me that my daughter was healthy and clearly bright.
‘Well, children develop at different stages. She’s advanced in everything else. I mean, she was potty-trained before she was one, wasn’t she? And just look at those drawings, they look like the work of an older child now, don’t they?’ she said in her calm and soothing voice.
That was all true, but the niggling worry stayed in my head. A worry I did my best to ignore for another year. I knew she was as bright as a button so why couldn’t I content myself with that? Hadn’t I glowed with pride when she was given educational toys that were part puzzles and after a quick scrutiny worked them out at twice the speed of an average three-year-old? So, I tried out another one where the packaging informed me it was ‘suitable for four- to six-year-olds’.
The same result.
But that niggle of worry still refused to go away. Sonia might be as like me as it was possible to be except I could speak at three. I remember that all right – it was my ability to talk that got me in so much trouble. Another memory of my childhood
that, not wishing to see, I pushed aside, only to find for once it was replaced with one that made me smile.
Me, somewhere between three and four, curled up on the rug in my grandmother’s house, a bowl of chocolate ice cream on my lap. I’d stopped stuffing it in my mouth to say something. I can’t remember what, just that she was laughing at whatever it was I had told her.
‘Such a little chatterbox you are, Emily,’ she said with a beaming smile.
So, I could speak well then, couldn’t I?
I had to accept that each day it was becoming increasingly obvious that Sonia’s speech was noticeably behind what was expected for her age group. Not just slower than mine had been, but slower than all the other three-year-olds in her nursery. Not only that, but when she learnt a new word she liked the sound of, she would hold it in her mouth so she could repeat it over and over again. That was when I brought in a speech therapist. But I heard the same comforting words coming from her as I had from the health visitor: ‘She’s bright, children develop at different paces.’
Reassurances I forced myself to believe.
‘Her speech is improving,’ said the speech therapist after a few weeks. ‘Stop worrying, she’s a healthy, clever little girl.’
Maybe she should have told me what her real thoughts were then. Or perhaps she believed I knew the answers to those questions I never asked.
There’s nothing like parental denial, is there? So, I chose to believe everything would sort itself out.
When Sonia was strong enough to hold my hand as we walked, she pulled on it hard as she hopped across the pavement’s white lines. She had refused to walk on them since she had taken her first steps, but then, I told myself, so did I. And as for a white kerb . . . well, I stepped over it quickly enough too, didn’t I? It must have been seeing my movements that made her little body stiffen in concentration before she leapt over it. Each time she succeeded, her wide, triumphant smile told me what she was thinking: that we had both escaped something bad happening to us. How did I know that? Because that was what I had also thought when I was her age. Not that I ever worked out what exactly the bad thing would be. But then I had good reason to feel continuous fear whereas there was nothing in her life to cause her to be afraid.