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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 thestairs, 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 andlive 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 night in the spider cupboard.
    Where was Dad that night? Why didn’t he come home? Was it because he hadn’t come home that Mum was in such a foul temper? I had no way of knowing. If I ever asked where he was, Mum would say ‘Working to keep you’, or ‘Out with Granddad’, or ‘At a meeting’.
    I didn’t have contact with any other children so I didn’t realize it was unusual for daddies to be away all week. When he got back on Friday nights, I was so overjoyed to see him that I just threw myself into playing and jumping on top of him and begging him to do his silly voices, putting the hurts and cares of the week behind me for a short while. I could revel in his affection and forget for a while what a bad, naughty, disgusting girl I was, and how much Mummy hated me.

Chapter 6
    T here was one place where I learned about love as a child, and that was at my Nan and Granddad Casey’s, Dad’s parents. Nan Casey was a big-boned woman with dark, waved hair and smiling eyes. She had a soft gentle voice and a face that was full of compassion and humour. I was usually taken to visit her every second weekend and she’d throw open the front door and run down the path to sweep me up in a huge hug, crying ‘My baby! My baby!’ She didn’t seem to get on very well with Mum, and Nigel and I were often left there with her while Mum and Dad went off somewhere else.
    We’d have such fun those