she found another bee. I tried to run away and hide behind the sofa but she caught me and dragged me out. Knowing what was going to happen, this time I struggled like mad to get away from the bee in the jar but she held me in a grip of iron until it had delivered its sting. Once again, I was locked in the spider cupboard for the day as the poison raised another red, angry lump on my leg and the horrible, throbbing pain made me scream and cry. I clawed and clawed at the stings until the whole area was raw.
* * *
This happened a few more times, each occasion bringing me a fresh sting on my chubby thighs and a painful red lump afterwards. I knew better than to tell Dad, though. That’s one lesson I had learned. Mum had told him I was an unusually clumsy child, always tripping over and bumping into things, and he never seemed to question if I had a black eye or bruises on my arms and legs. He didn’t bath me so he never saw the sting marks under my dress, or the stripes from the cane on my bottom. Mum was in charge of our baths and I grew to fear hair-washing nights twice a week when she took great glee in getting soap in my eyes. If Nigel had already got out, she held my head under water as she rinsed off the shampoo until I was left gasping for breath and very scared.
She brushed my teeth roughly then it was straight to bed with the door shut. If Dad was home, he’d come up to tuck me in but more often than not I got into bed on my own. I wasn’t allowed to bring Scruffy or Rosie with me – they stayed downstairs. I would say the prayers I’d been taught by rote – thank you for a good day, keep me safe in the night, bless my grandmas and grandpas – then lie in the dark with the counterpane pulled up to my nose, praying that tomorrow Mummy would be happy and love me.
While Mum was punishing me, I felt very scared, and sad, and determined to try harder not to put a foot wrong.
‘Please love me,’ I’d plead with her. ‘Why don’t you love me?’
‘You would have to make me love you, and you haven’t. You’re not a loveable girl.’
She loved Nigel, though. He was her Little Boy Blue with his white-blond hair, and she always dressed him in powder blue when he was little. He got clips round the ear and raps on the knuckles, like me, but he was never beaten with the bean cane or locked in the spider cupboard. Whenever Mum went into the dining room to ask God who had been naughty, it was always me. I could tell quite clearly as a four-year-old that God didn’t love me at all and I didn’t know what I could do about it.
Sometimes I wondered if Mum loved Nigel because of his illness. Did she refrain from beating him with the cane in case it brought on an epileptic fit? Would she love me if I became ill? But no. When I caught measles, I was put to bed upstairs and left there on my own with no food and just a glass of water to drink. No doctor was called. I was left to get better by myself over the coming week.
* * *
One night I was trying to sleep when my attention was caught by a movement by the window. I looked over and saw that round the top of the curtains were some white shapes. They were moving about, dancing along the top of the curtain rod. I blinked hard and as they became clearer, I realized they were little eyes, children’s eyes. Petrified, I gripped the cover tightly round me but I couldn’t stop looking at them. There was no sound at first but, as I watched, more appeared until there were four or five pairs of eyes, all looking at me, and then I began to hear a whispering noise like the sound of very small voices. This was too much. I screamed in terror, convinced they were God’s people coming to get me because of all the naughty things I had done. What would they do to me? I had no idea. I was relieved to hear Mum’s footsteps coming up the stairs.
‘Mum,’ I sobbed, sitting up in bed. ‘There are eyes in the curtains and I can hear voices!’
I wanted her to comfort me, to give me a hug and tell me everything was fine, but instead she raised her hand and gave me a hard slap across the face. She pushed me back down on the bed.
‘Moaning brat, there’s nothing in the room. Go to sleep now. If I hear another word from you I’ll be back. You’ll be sorry if you make me climb these stairs again.’
She turned the light off and slammed the door, and a minute later there were the eyes and the whispers again. I began to whimper in fear and slid further down under the covers to try and get away from them. Mum must have heard my whimpers – maybe she was listening outside – because suddenly the door burst open and the light was switched on. She whisked the covers off me and dragged me out of bed by the hair. My legs hit the floor with a thud and, as she yanked me across the hall, I wet myself in sheer fright.
‘You disgusting, ugly, repulsive child,’ she screamed, totally infuriated now.
Nigel came out of his room, rubbing his eyes.
‘Get back to bed,’ she screamed.
He tried to grab hold of me and Mum pushed him away so roughly that he fell and cracked his head against the spindles of the banister. He started to cry and then to scream, and I suppose she was worried that he might have a fit because she shoved me away, telling me to go to bed, and went to pick him up.
I climbed into bed but my nightdress was sopping wet, which made me feel cold, and I was shaking with sobs as well. Gradually I calmed myself down, keeping my eyes tight shut, a picture of Mum’s ugly expression in my head. Anger transformed her beautiful face into something quite hateful.
I must have nodded off to sleep but I was woken by a hand over my mouth.
‘Now it’s time to deal with you, madam.’ She pulled the covers back and felt the dampness of the sheet. ‘You think I haven’t got enough to do without washing your disgusting sheets and pants and clothes all the time. Do you?’
She yanked me out of bed and over to the stairs, hitting me across the head all the way. She dragged me down the stairs, opened the door of the spider cupboard and shoved me hard on the back, bolting the door behind me.
‘Mummy, please don’t. I’ll be a good girl now and I’ll go straight to sleep.’
‘It’s too late. You had your chance,’ she gloated.
And then, for once, a streak of defiance came through. ‘You cow! I hate you!’ I called, then bit my lip, regretting it almost immediately.
The bolt slid back but not because she was letting me go back to bed. I felt a sharp, stinging pain as she hit me hard across the body with the bean cane, again and again, in a frenzied attack. I started screaming at the top of my voice so she grabbed a yellow duster from the cupboard shelf and forced it into my mouth. It smelled sickly, of lavender furniture polish. She threw me down on to the hall floor and continued hitting and hitting me all over as I twisted and tried to escape. She was like a woman possessed, all the frustrations of her curtailed life being channelled into sheer fury with me.
At last she stopped beating me and threw me back in the cupboard, where I collapsed on the floor. She slammed the door, pulling the bolt across.
‘Vanessa,’ she whispered viciously through the crack. ‘Be careful of the big hairy spiders. They’re going to crawl all over you in the night and nibble away at you. They’ll start at your toes and work their way up. You can’t come out till morning now.’
I lay in a heap on the red tiled floor, every part of my body raw and stinging from the caning, the taste of furniture polish in my mouth, the smell of urine coming strongly from my cold, wet, nightdress, and I sobbed and sobbed. I hated her that night. I wanted to run away and live anywhere in the world except there with her. I shook with cold, and fear, and pain, and the sheer injustice of it all. True to her word, Mum left me there till morning.
That night was the first time I saw eyes and heard voices in my bedroom, but it was soon happening every night when I went to bed. I had learned my lesson, though, and didn’t make any noise that would bring Mum up to my room. As I became accustomed to them, I felt less scared. After all, they never hurt me. And I couldn’t face the terror of spending another