Read What Daddy Did for Free Online

I know that it was before my half-brother and half-sister came back from Barnardo's. I don't know why it had been decided that I was bad that day (I rarely did), but I had been told to spend the whole morning and afternoon in the bathroom, in my underwear, with my hands by my sides. I wasn't allowed to move an inch.
     
Not an inch.
     
As I write this, I can almost feel what it was like that day when I was hurt so much – not physically, but emotionally. It hurt more than anything Helen ever did to me because I loved my Daddy at this point. I looked up to him, he was my hero – and he was going to fail me.
     
'Wait till your father gets home,' Helen hissed in my ear.
     
'Wait till your father gets home,' she shouted into my face.
     
It was her mantra for hours and I did as I was told. I did wait. I did wait until my father got home. But even though I had no idea whatsoever of what I had done that was so 'bad', there was still a little part of me that thought, 'Well, when my Daddy does get home, he'll know that I'm a good girl, and he'll know that Helen is lying. He'll know this because he's my Daddy.'
     
I waited and waited.
     
I was almost numb with cold and stiff from the lack of moving around when I finally heard him coming in the front door. I listened to his footsteps walking up the lobby into the living room. I felt relief. My Daddy was home, and I hadn't had all hope kicked out of me yet. I thought that he would tell me to come through, have some tea, get my pyjamas on and go to bed. At first, I heard the muffled voices of him and Helen talking, then I heard him coming to the bathroom door.
     
When he came in, I almost shouted out, 'Daddy!' but he grabbed me by the wrist so quickly that I didn't have a chance. 'Why are you being so bad?' he asked me. 'Why are you being so bad, Donna?' He kept on asking me that question as he pulled me by the wrist through to the bedroom. 'Your Mummy is trying her best with you, but you have to be good,' he said. I tried to tell him that I was, I was good, but I was crying so much that I couldn't get the words out. My Daddy sat on the lower bunk bed, pulled me over his knee and then he hit me and hit me over and over again on the bottom. I kept saying, through the sobs, 'I will be good, Daddy, I am trying to be good,' but it was as if he couldn't hear me. Finally, he stopped and said that it had hurt him more than it had hurt me. He told me that I had to be good for my Mummy and that I was to stop giving her trouble, then told me to go to bed. He finished by saying that he didn't want to come home the next day and find out that I had been 'bad' again.
     
That became a pattern; it set the trend for many more occasions. Helen had now convinced my Dad that I was bad, and by the number of occasions he beat me, I could only assume he believed her. On many more occasions throughout my childhood I was to discover my father's wrath, always induced by Helen. I know that she was behind it because when she left he stopped beating me. If only she could have taken the memories away with her too.
     

Chapter Six

     

C HASTISEMENT
THERE ARE SPECIFIC TIMES I remember when my Dad would repeat this pattern – he would come home from work, talk to Helen then come to 'chastise' me.
     
That was the word he used.
     
During the very early days of my return home, I would sometimes find the courage to speak up and question why I was being smacked. Why did Helen say I was bad? Why did I get shouted at? Why did I have to go to bed? Why did I have to stand naked in the bathroom for hours? To begin with, I could ask these questions because sometimes my Dad would just give me a talking to on his return home from work. I was trying to make sense of Helen's rules and expectations of me. I was trying to work out what I'd done during the day that made Helen shout and yell to my Dad about how bad I'd been. I didn't realise that there was no real rhyme or reason to it. She was just evil.
     
When he came