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

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dress and new white socks while he and Mummy talked. What they talked about was me, and I listened closely. He was a tall, thin man in a tight brown suit who must have been about the same age as my uncle at the time, in his mid-thirties. He appeared too tall to sit on our settee, perching awkwardly on the edge with his brown leather briefcase on his lap; his back shaped into a letter ‘C’ as he bent over it and his knees up almost to his chin. He said no to the tea and the eight custard creams Mummy had laid out on one of the blue plates for him, and turned down cigarettes too, dismissing them without looking up, with a wave of a long, hairy hand that was all loose-boned, like a skeleton’s.

      He clicked the briefcase open and took out a large notebook and a blue folder of papers. I strained to see what was written on them, but Mummy caught my eye and shook her head. Mummy had told me he was going to be asking lots of questions and that if he asked if I liked my uncle to just say yes.

      Every question seemed like a trap. He asked me what the names of all my brothers and sisters were, and which one was my favourite, and did I mind having a different surname to them, and did I like school and what was my favourite lesson? When he suddenly smiled and asked who I liked best, Mummy or Daddy, I said Mummy, and then quickly changed it to a shrug, worried that he might send me to Ireland to live with Kathy if I didn’t. I sat there nervously, wiping my hot hands on the cushions. But I felt special sitting there too, in my best clothes and in all the peace and quiet, without all my brothers and sisters talking over me.

      Whenever he bent to write answers in his book, mine and Mummy’s eyes glanced at each other across the room swiftly, then away again, like birds flying to and fro across the sky. Mummy was small and pale and the only one in the family with dark hair like me, and I loved it when people said, ‘Don’t you look like your mum?’ or to Mummy, ‘Doesn’t she look like you?’ Sometimes Mummy ruffled my hair and smiled down at me saying nothing, but other times she said almost proudly, ‘She’s my sister’s little one.’

      As I sat there, I thought of the way she sometimes said that, trying to shuffle it all straight in my head again, telling myself I didn’t care because Mummy was my real mum really. I looked over at her staring back at me. Her face looked sad and thin and her head was shaking in a way that frightened me. I felt my eyes well up with tears at all the trouble I was causing.

      Next time he scribbled something, without moving her head Mummy curled her lip over her top teeth and did buckteeth, pointing at him, and I had to press my fingers over my mouth to stop myself from laughing. She shook her head and pulled a serious face to tell me not to, and I sat on my hands to stop myself from feeling anything at all, trying not to think of his buckteeth. I tried to do everything right and to sit still, and at the end I think we ‘passed’ because he shook Mummy’s hand when he left and patted me on the head.

      After he’d gone Mummy looked tired and smoked a lot. I swivelled my eyes over to the biscuits still on the plate.

      ‘Looking down his nose at us,’ she sniffed. ‘At least I have the manners to accept a cup of tea and a biscuit when it’s offered to me.’

      Mummy looked sad and I felt shivery, wondering if it was anything to do with me. In my head I saw the man’s buckteeth again and looked at the hard cream sandwiched between the biscuits. I thought of Mummy doing the buckteeth earlier to make me smile.

      ‘Maybe he only eats carrots,’ I said shyly.

      I felt Mummy’s smile before I saw it, and looked up at her as it grew longer and longer, spreading across her face until she was laughing and tears were rolling down her cheeks. Suddenly she found the energy to get up, ruffling my hair as she passed into the kitchen, saying I was a great girl, and that nobody was taking me away from her, and I could have all the custard creams ‘quick, before the others come in’.

      I bit into one, stuffing the rest into the front pockets of my dress, glad that nobody else was here, just me and Mummy and the whole place warm and quiet, all to ourselves, with the gas fire on and the clock ticking quietly up on the wall and everything put away, and the smell of polish everywhere. When I looked up at Mummy I could see that the tears had rinsed all the pain from her eyes, and when she smiled back at me, her blue eyes shining into mine, the smile spread all through me. Custard creams were the best taste in the world after that.

       Chapter 7

      The man my uncle thought was most likely to be my father, and who I secretly wished was, was also the type of man he despised: an Irishman who was the opposite in almost every way to him. He was a colleague of Kathy’s, someone who frequently came over from Ireland on business to meet clients and so could visit us more often than her. He never stayed with us when he came over, as Kathy always did. Instead he would stay in ‘posh’ hotels and visit us in black taxis or shiny rented cars, usually while my uncle was at work. Just the mention of his name sent my uncle into a rage.

      We came to know him as our rich, kind Uncle Brendan, who never hit anyone or raised his voice and who always smiled and tried to get me to talk. He was the only man any of us ever knew, except for our headmaster, who wore a shirt and tie and shoes you could see your face in, every day of the week, not just to dress up to go to the pub in on a Saturday night. He was definitely the only man, Irish or otherwise, any of us knew who didn’t drink.

      He always singled me out for special attention because he was Kathy’s friend and the only person in Ireland who knew about my existence. My brothers and sisters were bemused after my uncle’s treatment of me as to why anyone should pay me any attention at all. By coming to visit us, he was ‘doing Kathy a favour’, Mummy said. But my uncle didn’t want any ‘favours’ from anyone, especially him.

      Without the others knowing, I would be put into taxis to visit him at one of the big hotels in central London where he met his clients. I would tap hesitantly in new shoes across the vast marble lobbies, past displays of flowers almost as big as myself fanned out on antique tables, and into quiet hotel restaurants filled with gilt mirrors, silver candelabra and stiff, white tablecloths. It was all a world away from where we lived in the flats.

      Brendan seemed fascinated by my shyness. It seemed to put him at his ease too, and when we were alone together he went out of his way to try to put me at mine. He always seemed more relaxed when there were no grown-ups about. He talked more and seemed to relish the opportunity to come down to a child’s level. He drank glasses of Coca-Cola through straws in glasses clinking with ice and, declining the heavy, leather menus, would order cheeseburgers and knickerbocker glories, or steaks full of blood and plates piled high with profiteroles. I blushed at the smiling waiters and at Brendan’s questions about things at home, and tried not to wonder how Mummy and I would pay for this when my uncle found out where I’d been all day. But especially with who.

      Sometimes I would stay a night or two with him at whichever hotel he was staying at. I always got picked on for this by my brothers and sisters when I got back, and wished Brendan would treat us all the same, but he never did. When he visited the flats he’d take me to Mass at the local Catholic church with him too. Although all of us had been christened, we never went to church, so it was a novelty when Brendan visited. God was another secret too, something I could only talk about with Mummy. I wasn’t allowed to tell any of my brothers and sisters in case they told my uncle. He’d go mad if he knew Brendan was taking me to church.

      Behind their backs he already called both Kathy and Brendan ‘hypocrites’ and ‘Holy Joes’ and warned my brothers and sisters that they weren’t allowed to go anywhere near a church with them. So it was a special time, just me and him. He taught me when to sit and stand or kneel, and when to clasp my hands in prayer, knotting my fingers together like he did. Though on one visit he terrified me by telling me about the Holy Spirit prowling invisibly up and down the aisle reading everybody’s thoughts; swooping down, when you least expected it, on anyone with bad ones. After that I feared the Holy Spirit, who could see inside everyone’s minds as Brendan said, certain that he must know the bad thoughts I had about my uncle.

      Brendan didn’t know most of what my uncle did at home – how drunk he got and

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