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I’d had a sister who had died. But the idea that my mum had killed her, on purpose, well, that was horrible, unthinkable.
    On another occasion, Eunice was preparing dinner, chopping onions, while I sat drawing at the table, when she launched into her now familiar mantra: ‘Of course, you know your parents are hopeless drug addicts. They’re totally possessed by the Devil. They’re evil.’
    I looked up at her, furious. I was very loyal to my parents and quite feisty.
    ‘You can’t say that. You can’t!’ I blurted out.
    Eunice turned around, knife in hand, and fixed me with an icy glare. I felt the blood draining away from my face. My mouth opened, but the more she stared, the less I was able to speak.
    You were saying?’
    I opened my mouth, but again no sound came out. All I could see were her steely eyes boring fiercely into me. My eyes moved from hers to the knife and back I closed my mouth. I felt defeated, even though I knew in my heart of hearts that what she was saying was wrong.
    On my eighth birthday I was lucky enough to see my parents alone. It was the only time I’d seen them without Eunice as a chaperone since going to live with her. Dad bought me a little gold-coloured locket that day in a toy shop in the shopping arcade in Cheltenham, which I thought was truly beautiful. It was a gold, heart-shaped frame with a white and pink porcelain rose picture in it. I treasured this present and carried it everywhere until it eventually disappeared when I was about thirteen.
    After I’d seen my parents on my birthday Eunice bought a Barbie doll for me from a big shop in Cheltenham, seemingly determined to outdo my parents or to eradicate the good feeling I had about my dads present. These gifts might well have been some sort of bribe to make me think fondly of her, or perhaps she feared she might lose me to my parents as a result of our having spent time together unchaperoned.
    Sometimes the phone would go in Eunice’s living room and I would hear my parents leaving messages. One time I picked up the phone and was speaking to my dad when suddenly Eunice snatched the handset roughly out of my hand and hung up. Just like that. She didn’t explain, but the way she did it told me enough to know I was not to pick up the phone again. I was shocked, but I didn’t say anything. Or try to ring back I guess I just felt that I couldn’t, especially when she looked that fearsome.
    Another time I blurted out at the dinner table that I’d seen my parents having sex one night back home. I had heard my mum calling out my dads name loudly over and over and had thought, at first, that he was hurting her, so I got up, and then I saw they were doing something odd-looking together in the dark. Just as I said this, Eunice leapt up and clamped her large hand over my mouth, her grey eyes staring at me wildly, her face only a few inches from mine. I learned from this that sex was something not to be spoken about, particularly over a meal. Even though, or maybe especially, if what I said was true.
    Thus, the age of eight became a milestone for me because it was at this age that Eunice actually succeeded in cutting me off from my parents.
    Another significant event that sticks out in my mind from that early time at George Dowty is one which made me realize pretty quickly how differently Thomas and I would be treated from the new baby, Robert. For two weeks Eunice shut Thomas and me up in a tiny bedroom and wouldn’t let us out. She didn’t lock the door, but made it clear that we were not free to roam around the house or garden. The reason? We had colds and were not allowed out in case the baby got infected. It made no sense to us but showed what Eunice really thought about us in relation to Robert.
    While we were shut in Eunice told us to do a strange thing, which we did obediently, of course, no questions asked: we were to count up to a hundred in our heads and then blow our noses. Over and over and over again. So we would spend