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breathing was troubled. While I had to wait on my foster-mother all the time, it was much better than having to satisfy the sexual desires of the men who had called to the house for the previous six years.
    My foster-mother remained bedridden and towards the end of 1961, she was taken into hospital again. This was to become my salvation. Although I did not know it at the time, I was never to see my foster-mother again.
    I was never to return to that house of horror.
    It was the end of a period of my life that contained no laughter. I thought I might also be able to stop crying, even though I shed most of my tears in private. If I cried in public, there was always somebody to scream, ‘Stop crying’, at me. My usual response to this was, ‘I am not crying, they are just tears dropping.’
    It was an end to a period of which I have a dominant memory of ‘torn clothes and a torn body’. The clothing was always ‘second-hand’, always dirty and never washed afterwards. If it was not torn when I received it, somebody else ripped it, usually a man, trying to get me out of it.
    I was taken to stay with a different niece of my foster-mother. Her name was Kit. She was happy in her life and she lived with a lovely compassionate man, her husband Tony, outside a small market town called Buttevant, in County Cork. They had no children of their own. She became the nearest thing to a mother that I could have had.
    The first thing she said to me was, ‘You are never going back to that house of shame.’ From this moment on, we formed a sort of bond between us.
    They had a small bungalow, which was spotlessly clean and nicely decorated. It had all the modern conveniences, which I had never been used to previously. It had electricity, piped running water, a bathroom and a Rayburn cooker, which seemed to keep the whole house warm.
    It was in this house that I learned to wash myself properly. There was hot water, heated by the Rayburn cooker and piped to all the taps. That first evening, Kit tut-tutted as she cleaned places on my body that I am sure had never seen water before. She showed me how to wash my body thoroughly. I still feel that I will never cleanse myself fully of the filth from those dark days.
    It was late December and Christmas was only a matter of days away. The first time I walked in the front door of their house, I was stunned by what I saw. I was stopped in my tracks with amazement. With my mouth wide open, I inhaled deeply. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life.
    What I saw before me was my first Christmas tree. It had all kinds of decorations on it. There were many little silver and gold balls. There were little silver bells attached by silver chains. The best part of all was the set of about a dozen Christmas-tree lights, which flickered on and off. I thought it was just magical.
    After being fed, they put me in a large double bed, which I had all to myself. I expected someone else to turn up, to sleep in it also, but it was all for me.
    That first night, I did not sleep a wink. I was so excited. I thought I was in heaven.
    Kit and Tony were very kind to me.
    The next day, they brought me to Limerick City in their car. They brought me to a large department store and bought me new shoes and new socks. The shoes were coloured cream and the socks were blue. This was the first time that I had ever had shoes and socks that were bought brand new and had not been used by somebody else. Up to this time in my life, my clothing, shoes and socks had been supplied as charitable donations and were always somebody’s cast-offs.
    I loved the fuss that the sales lady in the store made of me. She called me ‘a little lady’ and made me try on so many different pairs of shoes, until I found a pair that I really liked and wanted.
    I felt overwhelmed. It was the first time I’d ever been given a choice. Nobody had ever asked me what I wanted before. My wants or needs had never been considered. It was a difficult gesture