Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [27]
As a six-year-old, my bedtime was rounded up to seven. On the one hand, I was glad to get a moment to myself. On the other hand, the second that light went out I just burst into tears. The other kids in my room, the boys in particular, weren’t too impressed.
‘Oi, shut up!’ came one unsympathetic response.
‘Yeah, be quiet, baby!’ came another.
That made the rest of them laugh. I felt so small and so very alone. But the more I tried to stop crying, the harder it was and the harsher the insults.
‘Not scared of the dark, are you, baby?’
Yes, I was – I always had been.
‘Maybe she misses her mummy.’
Yes, I do! Didn’t they miss theirs? If they did, no one showed it.
‘Has poor little baby lost her mummy?’
Laughter.
‘Has your mummy dumped you here and run away?’
‘No!’ I cried. ‘That’s not true.’
That was the worst thing I could have done. It only gave them fresh ammunition. I was still denying it when I eventually fell asleep, still sobbing.
In hindsight, those kids had their own troubles and they were working through them as best they knew how. It wasn’t personal. I was just the latest target. For all I knew, they’d all been through the same tough initiation. Unfortunately, my tears weren’t the only expression of my unhappiness.
Waking up in your own urine is a horrible way to start the day. There’s that confused moment when you first come round and you try to work out what the odd sensation is. Are you awake or is it still part of a dream? And then you realize. And then you scream.
Suddenly it wasn’t just the boys in my room who were shouting at me to put a sock in it. There were bangs on the walls either side. A minute later the door crashed open and my foster dad stormed in.
‘What’s this bloody racket?’
I was so mortified I could barely find the words. ‘I’ve wet the bed,’ I said eventually.
‘Have you now?’ he grunted. ‘Well, sheets are changed once a week, so you’ve got a while yet. My advice is, don’t do it again.’
And that was it. He just walked out, leaving me to lie in my own wee. I’d been there less than twelve hours and already I hated him.
I must have managed to curl around the damp area, but by the morning it wasn’t so much the wetness that was the problem as the smell. I realized then that that was what the whole house stank of: soiled laundry that this pair of so-called caring citizens couldn’t be bothered to clean.
In my first week I think I wet the bed three times. You can imagine the stench of my pyjamas and the quality of sleep I must have been having as a result. The worse it got, the harder it was to get back to sleep. And the less I slept, the more scared I became.
Every house has its own voice, those noises you hear in the dead of night when things seem to be clicking and creaking. Some of the other kids loved to pretend there were monsters creeping along the landing and the younger ones always fell for it. That never bothered me. It was the dark that I hated. Even in my little cupboard under the stairs at May Road, I’d always had a bit of light at night, even if it was coming from the moon and stars outside the window. In fact, even though I’d already lived in more places than I could remember, none of them scared me like here because I’d always been with Mum.
Just remembering her set the tears off once more. Yet again I found myself demanding why I was being held captive here. It was horrible and scary and I felt so lonely.
I just want to go home!
Not being allowed visits from my grandparents or mother seemed so cruel. I made an effort to play with some of the other children, but my heart wasn’t in it. It didn’t matter what the game was, at some point I found my mind wandering back to Mum. I would wonder what she was doing, where she was. More often than not,