out what had been going on when the rows in our house reached volcanic proportions.
But, despite Dad’s jealousy, there was no way Mum was ditching Tony and having Dad back. Because what I didn’t know then was that, all through what I’d thought of as my perfect early years, my dad had been having a string of affairs.
Natalie was just nine months old when Mum and Dad had decided to have another baby and Mum fell pregnant almost immediately. But around the same time Dad started going out most nights with his mates, leaving Mum looking after a small baby alone and expecting another.
It was only one day when she found a long blonde hair wrapped around one of his socks as she filled the washing machine that everything became clear. Dad admitted it all. It was a woman who worked in one of our local shops. What a cliché! But it was easy, I guess – and so was she.
I love it when Mum tells the story about how she threw her best coat on, strapped Natalie in the buggy and marched up to the counter of the shop, pushing in front of all the other customers.
‘I hear you’ve been screwing my husband,’ she said calmly to the woman, suddenly finding herself the centre of attention in the shop as all the other customers listened in.
‘Leave him alone,’ Mum said determinedly.
‘Are you threatening me?’ the woman sneered.
‘You’re bloody right I am,’ said Mum, spinning the buggy round and storming out.
I’ve always liked to think that moment was Mum’s victory over a woman with the stunted imagination, let alone morals, to shag a man with kids. But it was a hollow victory. That weekend Mum miscarried the baby. She’d lost an unborn child and her belief in what her marriage had been.
Mum said everyone was entitled to make a mistake and agreed to take Dad back so long as he promised never to do it again. He said he couldn’t promise but he’d try. Some commitment, eh? Anyway she took him back.
Mum says a string of ‘other women’ followed over the years, which is why when she finally called time on the marriage, she really couldn’t go back.
It wasn’t until I was older that Mum told me about Dad’s affairs, but I picked up enough information from ear-wigging their rows at the time to have a pretty good idea what was going on.
I’d always been such a Daddy’s girl, I’d adored him, and finding out that my dad wasn’t who I thought he was hit me hard. I felt betrayed.
Tony started coming round quite a bit in the evenings. He would hold Mum when she cried about Dad, and Grandad, and me. If he’d known at that time what he was taking on by getting involved with Mum and all of us, he would probably have run for the hills! But he was kind and caring and he stuck around. He would come round a lot when Dad wasn’t there, which was another huge jolt for me and Natalie. It just confirmed for us that we were never going to get our old life back. The only thing that softened the blow was that we both liked Tony. We called him Hog because his hair stuck up like a hedgehog’s bristles. He didn’t even seem to mind too much when we took the mickey out of him.
Mum, Natalie and I were still living in the attic because Dad was refusing to move out of the house. There was a court battle pending over who would keep the house and it was becoming really nasty. Dad instructed one of his American cousins, a hotshot lawyer from New York, to act on his behalf. And then a few times this really scary heavy bloke came round saying, ‘We’re going to make you an offer – you should take it.’
But Mum had nowhere to go to, so we stayed in the house, living like normal downstairs during the day when Dad was at work, then scuttling up to the attic each evening. We’d sit up there watching television and hear Dad walking around downstairs singing manically. It was like something out of a horror film.
One night it kicked off really badly between Mum and Dad. There was screaming and shouting downstairs, a smashed teapot and so much anger. I lay in bed, the pillow over my head to dull the noise as I cried and cried.
After that night Mum applied for a restraining order against Dad. In the end, though, she let him back into the house and the court case over what they should do with our home rumbled on.
In January 1991 Mum filed for divorce and my perfect life was well and truly over. That same month Dad finally lost his job and it was obvious that sooner or later we’d have to move out of my beloved Stanley Road.
Things at school were going rapidly downhill too. I started spending most of my days sitting in the medical room with the school nurse, Mrs Bullock. My teachers didn’t mind because they could tell I was very weak. I looked awful and hadn’t been concentrating on my lessons for months. Mum had told them about the problems at home and maybe they thought I was just going through a difficult patch and I’d pull through soon.
Mrs Bullock became a surrogate mother for me in the hours when I had to be away from my real mum. I loved her and wanted her total attention all the time. If another pupil dared to come to the medical room with a cut knee or something wrong with them and needed Mrs Bullock, I couldn’t bear it. I would pace up and down, feeling angry and anxious. This is my room, I’d say to myself. I need Mrs Bullock – she’s for me and me only.
By the beginning of 1991 I had reduced what I would allow myself to eat more and more until it was virtually nothing. For breakfast it would be one small glass full of hot orange squash and four cubes of fruit salad. Then Mrs Bullock would give me tea and two digestive biscuits in the medical room, which would be my lunch. Obviously she knew that wasn’t enough, but I think she too was grateful to think I was getting something inside me.
I negotiated with Mum – or should I say bullied her? – into letting me eat my evening meals out of a peanut bowl. If she ever tried to serve something up on a normal dinner plate I’d just freak, push the whole lot away and refuse to eat anything at all.
But even a peanut bowl-sized portion was no guarantee I would eat. For a normal dinner I would allow myself ten strands of spaghetti or two small potatoes with some vegetables. And when I had eaten the amount I’d decided was acceptable, that was it, I’d stop eating and however much Mum begged, cajoled or shouted at me, nothing would change my mind.
And all the time she was growing more and more terrified and frustrated as the weight fell off me.
We went to the doctor four or five times but each time it was a locum and he was insistent it was ‘just a phase’ or ‘girls being girls’ and ‘something I would grow out of’. How wrong could he be?
My doctor’s notes at the end of 1990 recorded my weight as 21.4 kilograms (3 stone 5 lb). By February 1991 it had dropped to 21 kilos (3 stone 4 lb). The locum described me as: ‘Very quiet, introvert and controlled. Reluctant to open up. Kneading her hands and tearing up the Kleenex given to her when she started to cry.’ But he still sent me home again.
I was also suffering from Raynaud’s Disease, which affects blood flow to the extremities and means you are incredibly sensitive to the cold. But by then I had so little body fat protecting me that it was hardly surprising.
One evening things hit a new low at home. Mum had cooked dinner, so again I trailed up to the table, sat down, looked at my peanut bowl and point-blank refused to eat. Normally Mum would try to persuade me at first, but this time she just lost it.
‘I can’t stand this any more,’ she screamed. ‘Are you trying to kill yourself?’
She dragged me to the floor and with one hand held me down by my hair while with the other hand she scooped up fistfuls of pasta and tried to force them into my mouth. I was screaming, clawing at her and trying to push her off me. Then I clamped my lips shut. Whatever she did, she wasn’t going to make me eat.
Another time Natalie and I had gone shopping with my auntie and Mum for bridesmaids’ dresses because my cousin was getting married. We were in the restaurant in Debenhams and Mum ordered us fish and chips. But when it arrived I picked at a few peas, then pushed it away.
Mum went mad.