LITMIR.BIZ

      Copyright

       About the Publisher

      Prologue

      We had arrived. I had fallen asleep on the journey to a new life that promised peace, security and safety. I awoke with a start, in time to see the words spelled out in flowers – ‘Suffer the little children.’ My first sight of and welcome to Quarriers Children’s Village. I did not realise then that the ancient words, spoken by Jesus in the New Testament, which were displayed so beautifully in a floral arrangement by the entrance, would be corrupted before I was much older. Nestling in the Renfrewshire countryside, this was a place far from the grime and unpredictability of life in an inner-city slum.

      My sister Irene sat next to me in the back of the social worker’s car, her eyes luminous with uncertainty. I shrugged off sleep and wiped moisture from the car window. My first sight of the bell tower. It rose high above what I would later learn was known as the Children’s Cathedral. I had never seen anything so breathtaking. My world had been the drab, monotonous, utilitarian architecture of a sink housing estate, where no one looked up. Heaven was such a hard place to find. Structures such as the Children’s Cathedral dominated only places where there was hope. The soaring steeple pointed to Heaven, but I would soon find it was pointing the way to Hell. He would see to that. The bell tower was where he took me, its impenetrable walls stifling my screams as he stole my innocence and planted the seeds of my own destruction, which would come many years later, when I was an adult and believed that I had left the past behind.

      His name was John Porteous. He is at the heart of this story, but there will be few mentions of his given name. I once called him ‘Uncle John’, but I was a child then and trusting. I had yet to be betrayed by the man whose duty it was to protect me, to keep me safe. Therefore he is for ever the Beast – it is how I have referred to him in my mind ever since. For three decades it took all of my strength to block out the unspeakable things he did to me over my time at the children’s home. A single phone call, 30 years after I escaped his clutches, proved to me that my entire existence was an edifice built on sand. In a matter of a few seconds, the façade that masked the pain of a lost childhood and a misguided sense of shame was torn away. I was forced to stop running in a race that I could not win, a race away from my past. This time, this time justice had to prevail and I had to play my part. The phone call placed me at the centre of Operation Orbona, the biggest police investigation into systematic sexual and physical abuse at a children’s home. Eight of the abusers would be convicted, and I would witness the Beast going to jail.

      I thought then it was over. I was wrong. It was just the beginning. Before I could reach the light, everything in my life would be taken from me. I would lose my successful career, the millionaire lifestyle and everything I had so carefully created as a shield against my secret pain. This is the story of how I fought back.

      CHAPTER 1

       Born Into a World Beyond Poverty

      I am searching for memories. I am four years old. I think I am alone. I am still hungry, but I force myself to save some food, the remains of lunch. Mother, a tall, fragrant woman with a kind face and a ready smile, is in another room. Father, big, bluff, reassuring, is out of the house, but I don’t know where. He left with a cheery wave, ruffling my hair with large, clean hands.

      I am in the drawing room, a generously proportioned space that is little used. The ceiling, with its ornate, elaborate cornicing, seems very high above me. Light floods in through the tall window, which looks out onto a broad expanse of lawn, running into the distance towards a destination that is as yet unknown to me. Mother’s dog – a Cairn terrier? Misty? – is trying desperately to attract my attention, begging for what I have in my hand. The dog dances at my feet, but I reject the animal’s overture. This is about survival.

      I glance around the room, searching for prying eyes, before I unwrap the food from the napkin in which it is hidden. I am safe. I can hear the sound of clinking crockery coming from the kitchen. Dishes are being washed in a sink. Margaret, the middle-aged woman who seems to be part of the family while simultaneously distant from us, does the washing and cleaning for Mother.

      Mother is elsewhere, entertaining two of her friends, regular visitors to the salubrious detached Victorian villa in one of the most exclusive suburbs on the Southside of Glasgow. I have already been wheeled out to be touched and poked affectionately by my mother’s companions.

      ‘Such

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