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don’t you?’ she laughed.
    The only time I remember her crying about any of his rule changes was when he trashed her make-up collection. He held her face in one hand, distorting her mouth so she looked likea fish, and then began to make her up like a clown with exaggerated red lips and large black crosses on her eyelids which smudged in her tears.
    ‘Look at the state of you,’ he said, roaring with laughter and twisting her face so she could look in the mirror. She began laughing then–laughing, coughing and crying all at the same time.
    I was watching through a crack in the door, confused that Mummy could be happy and sad all at once.
    With a clatter, Dad tipped Mummy’s make-up into the tin wastebasket in the corner. Her best rosy brown lipstick fell onto the carpet and he stamped on it with a crunch.
    ‘Could do with a new bit of carpet in here anyway,’ mumbled Mummy, cigarette clamped between her circus-painted lips.
    Once she had stopped working at the pub, the lack of money gave Dad yet another reason to lose his temper. Ever since he had taken up with Mummy she had provided for his every need and now that money was sparse Dad found things difficult.
    ‘No booze, no fags, and I can’t even have a fucking bet.’
    In desperation, Mummy would send Diane or Cheryl over the road to Nanny’s to ask if she could spare a few quid to tide us over. Since taking up with Dad she hadn’t spoken to her family directly but she wasn’t too proud to ask for cash. Nanny couldn’t bear to think of us children going without the basics so she would always put a little money in an envelope and send it back to Mummy with her love. Little did she know that instead of buying food, Mummy would give themoney straight to Dad who would quickly smoke, drink and gamble it away.
    Sometimes I’d cry myself to sleep because I missed Nanny so much. I couldn’t understand why I was sometimes allowed to visit her and other times I couldn’t. I wanted to ask, but once I’d made the mistake of saying ‘Nanny’ in front of Dad and he’d smacked my bare legs so hard that I wore his red handprint for the rest of the day. It made me frightened to even think about her when Dad was around in case he could read my mind. If I saw Nanny and Freda sitting out on their balcony when I got home from school, they would wave and shout across the busy road, and even though I wanted to jump for joy and blow kisses, just as I used to in the old days when Nanny picked me up from nursery, I was worried that Dad might see me from our flat window, so I turned away and ran up the steps into our block as fast as I could.
    Once Mummy whispered to me in the bathroom, warning me not to sneak over the road to see Nanny in case I got run over. She bent down until her frowning face was level with mine and her grip tightened painfully on my upper arms. I knew she wasn’t really worried about me crossing roads because I walked to school on my own every day now and I was allowed to play in all sorts of dangerous places, such as the canal where a boy had drowned once and derelict houses with floors missing. I knew it was just that she didn’t want me going over to Nanny’s because Dad didn’t want me to, and if he found out, he would be angry.
    The thought of Dad’s anger flipped my stomach. He quite often smacked my bare bottom if I didn’t do what he askedstraight away–and sometimes I didn’t understand what it was he wanted me to do and got punished for it.
    One day I was watching cartoons on TV when I heard him bellowing from the bedroom: ‘Lisa, come here a minute.’
    I ran through as quickly as I could, and when I got there I was surprised to see that he was lying on his bed completely naked. He was rubbing his ding-a-ling up and down and looking at the pictures in a magazine. I could see a naked lady on the front. She had blonde pigtails like Claire at school and was sucking her finger.
    ‘Come and park your little arse over here,’ he said. ‘I