The next House

I can't really say that I ever 'lived' in that house.

Our first night there is lost to me. No matter how hard I think I cannot bring it back into reality. There were odd things that were alien to me. The toilet was not in the main bathroom, the kitchen small and the garden unloved. They are things that would become my norm over the passing months.

As I stepped out of that car - my life had changed beyond all recognition - I just didn't know it.

There was just the three of us now. My mum, my sister and I. My brothers 19 and 18 chose not to make the move with us and there was this unsaid vibe that stopped me from asking about the whereabouts of my father.

Yet boxes and boxes of my brothers unwanted belongings filled the largest bedroom of the tiny little house and my sister and I crammed in on top of each other in a room no bigger than the bunk bed that we shared.

It's easy to see now, that I was in shock. I was nine years old, leaving school on Friday to be wrenched away from everything that I knew to be true.

Monday for me meant a new school. I had come from a small town. Everyone knew everyone else. All of my siblings had passed through the schools before me, my two best friends were born one day either side of me, our mothers meeting whilst confined to the hospital ward and us children thrown together in friendship forever (or so we thought).

I had never had to do anything alone before. Strength in numbers - if my siblings reputation didn't proceed me. Today really was the first day of the rest of my life.

I can't recall going there, to school with my mum on my first day - but I know (hope) that she wouldn't have sent me alone. Again - another marker of that traumatic time in my young life that is missing from my memory.

I do remember a few things from that first day - like what I was wearing (homemade maroon dungarees), what was for lunch (fish fingers and chips) and that from that very first day, my card was marked.

The Old House....

There I was, jammed in between the boxes, driving away from my beloved home.

I loved, that house with all my heart – and I search regularly on the internet, hoping that one day I can buy it back and return to my happy ever after. Of course in my whole grown up life, I have never seen it for sale.

As a child, it was a strange place to live. A house full of spooky goings on but nothing that ever put me on edge or worried me. Nothing that was ever said aloud but felt by us all.

Built in Georgian times the house was a shadow of it’s former self and long since spilt into three dwellings.

The interior simply didn’t pan out to the spirits that roamed and I would often spring out into the hallway outside my room expecting to see someone there when there was just a faint smell of cologne or a sharp chill.

But to me that was simply part of being in that house. Some of my friends felt it too – and not in a good way. Not all of them liked to come over and play. Our house was often suddenly chilly, draughty and void of sound.

When I dream, I'm always in that house. Like it's part of me - through and through. As my life has moved forward - as I have grown into a mother myself, in my dreams my children play there - in my house, as I did as a child.

My sister.....

I grew up in a small Town not unlike the one that I have chosen to settle in with my own family. I loved it there. I had lived there all my life.

We, as a family knew everyone - and everyone knew us. My paternal grandfather and my father's brother's family lived there too. Though not close emotionally we were all tied by geography.

I am the youngest of four children. I have two brothers who are ten and nine years my senior and a sister - seven years older.

We are not - and have never been a close family. From my earliest memory I have been told that I was a mistake. Maybe that was meant in jest - but it has been said to me so many times through my life that it has become an engrained part of who I am.

I've always looked up to my brothers. But they are not of the same generation as me - and in fact I now also have two children myself with a ten year age gap and I can see the love and admiration in the little ones eyes every time he looks at his big bro. He is his hero, plain and simple.

For me it was a little different with them being boys and me being a girl - but I loved being allowed to sit in with bro no2 when he was on his illegal CB radio - I thought he was the coolest.

Things with my sister are and have always been a little different. When I came along she was seven and used to being my parents number one and only brown eyed girl.

My father was/is a photographer and their are piles and piles of images frozen in time from the period before I was born but next to nothing to celebrate me.

There was a time - before I realised that she hated me, that I would have done anything for her. After all she's the only sister I have. We shared a room for most of my childhood and I wanted to be her friend more than anything.

I was seven when I first realised that she hated me with every ounce of her soul.

It was the summer. Both of my parents worked full time. The boys were by sixteen and seventeen and off doing whatever boys of that age did in the late 1970's. Getting high and listening to heavy metal.

By contrast my under achieving sister was landed with looking after me - day in day out whilst our parents worked.

The first week of the holiday, I remember was pretty cool. I trailed round after her and her friends. Around the park, up the canal, across the fields. I didn't complain - I was just happy to be around them.

The second week - something changed. Off our parents went to work and we went up to get dressed.

"You're not coming with me today", she informed me - and threw 10p onto my bed.

"keep yourself entertained - I'll be back before they get home from work."

And that was it for me.... Off she went with her pals. I was ruining her cred. Not cool to have your little sister hanging around.

That summer - the summer when I was seven - the same age as my beautiful daughter is now. I roamed fields, canals, streets and building sites looking for something - anything to keep me entertained. Always on the understanding that if I wanted my 10p to spend on sweets that I would be back home by 4pm.

And I was - I didn't let her down. But it frightens me to death to think of my little girl in my childhood shoes....

The wrath of my sister came the day that she didn't turn up to pick me up from school. I was in the first year of Juniors - so year 3. Her upper school was just around the corner and came out five minutes before us.

That day I waited, and waited and waited - but she didn't show. As I was fresh from a summer of roaming the streets and spending all day alone - the two mile walk home didn't bother me in the slightest. I knew she wasn't coming to get me - so off I went.

As I walked around the corner - there she was with a group for her friends, trying to look tragically cool, cigarette in hand. I didn't say anything but she panicked and handed the offending article to one of her pals.

I wasn't stupid - I'd seen her and she knew it. I just kept on walking, I hadn't got far when she caught up with me. Full of apologies.

"It wasn't mine.... I was holding it for someone..... I don't smoke..... pleas dont tell....." and I didn't.

But for the first time in my life I had something on her and I knew it. Is that a good place to be at seven?

Hell yeah...

I threatened every time she pissed me off until one day she snapped. I was laying on our bedroom floor and she kicked me, breaking four bones in my hand.

That shut me up.

My hand was killing me - but she made me say that I had fallen over something in the knee deep mess on our bedroom floor. That's not an exaggeration - I don't think we saw the carpet for years. There was never a cleaning regime - and I even remember that once I couldn't go to ballet cause I could only find one shoe - and I'd been looking for at least an hour.

Anyway, my hand swelled. It was the first of many, many broken bones that I would endure through my whole life - but as we lived twenty miles from the nearest hospital - taking me there was not a priority.

It was two days later that I sat in the plaster room for the first time. I kind of liked the attention and looking back I can now see that the pattern in my behavior of harm and cure started right there as my arm was wrapped in that cold wet plaster cast for the very first time - even though (that time) I was not the cause.