Amy, My Daughter Read Online Free PDF

‘incidents’ – for example, Amy’s nose-ring. Jewellery wasn’t allowed, a rule Amy disregarded. She would be told to take the nose-ring out, which she would do, and ten minutes later it was back in.
    The school accepted that Amy was her own person and gave her a degree of leeway. Occasionally they turned a blind eye when she broke the rules. But there were times when she took it too far, especially with the jewellery. She was sent home one day when she’d turned up wearing earrings, her nose-ring, bracelets and a belly-button piercing. To me, though, Amy wasn’t being rebellious, which she certainly could be; this was her expressing herself.
    And punctuality was a problem. Amy was late most days. She would get the bus to school, fall asleep, go three miles past her stop, then have to catch another back. So, although this was where Amy wanted to be, it wasn’t a bed of roses for anyone.
    Amy’s main problem at Sylvia Young’s was that, as well being taught stagecraft, which included ballet, tap, other dance, acting and singing, she had to put up with the academic side or, as Amy referred to it, ‘all the boring stuff’. About half of the time was allocated to ‘normal’ subjects and she just wasn’t interested. She would fall asleep in lessons, doodle, talk and generally make a nuisance of herself.
    Amy really got into tap-dancing. She was pretty good at it when she started at the school but now she was learning more advanced techniques. When we were at my mother’s flat for dinner on Friday nights, Amy loved to tap-dance on the kitchen floor because it gave a really good clicking sound. The clicks it gave were great. I told her she was as good a dancer as Ginger Rogers, but my mother wouldn’t have that: she said Amy was better.
    Amy would put her tap shoes on and say, ‘Nan, can I tap-dance?’
    â€˜Go downstairs and ask Mrs Cohen if it’s all right,’ my mum would reply, ‘because you know what she’s like. She’ll only complain to me about the noise.’
    So Amy would go and ask Mrs Cohen if it was all right and Mrs Cohen would say, ‘Of course it’s all right, darling. You go and dance as much as you like.’ And then the next day Mrs Cohen would complain to my mum about the noise.
    After dinner on a Friday night, we’d play games. Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary were two of our favourites. Amy and I played together, my mum and Melody made up the second team, with Jane and Alex as the third. They were the ‘quiet’ ones, thoughtful and studious, my mum and Melody were the ‘loud’ pair, with a lot of screaming and shouting, while Amy and I were the ‘cheats’. We’d try to win no matter what.

    Another lovely birthday card from Amy, aged twelve. This came just after yet another meeting with Amy’s teacher about her behaviour.
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    When she wasn’t playing games or tap-dancing, Amy would borrow my mum’s scarves and tops. She had a way of making them seem not like her nan’s things but stylish, tying shirts across her middle and that sort of thing. She also started wearing a bit of makeup – never too much, always understated. She had a beautiful complexion so she didn’t use foundation, but I’d spot she was wearing eyeliner and lipstick – ‘Yeah, Dad, but don’t tell Mum.’
    But while my mum indulged Amy’s experiments with makeup and clothes, she hated Amy’s piercings. Later on when Amy began getting tattoos, she’d have a go at her about all of it. Amy’s ‘Cynthia’ tattoo came after my mum had passed away – she would have loathed it.
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    Along with other pupils from Sylvia Young’s, Amy started getting paid work around the time she became a teenager. She appeared in a sketch on BBC2’s series The Fast Show ; she stood precariously on a ladder for half an