Daddy's Little Earner Read Online Free PDF

was someone else, a feeling Iwould grow very used to over the coming years.
    Mum came with her parents a few times to visit us atthat foster home. Although I have no memory of her I doremember my granddad being there. Mrs Watson wasvery understanding apparently and let Mum bath us andread us bedtime stories.
    We were only allowed to see Dad for one hour a weekduring that time under supervision at the social servicesoffice. One week he didn’t turn up and so they just tookus back to the Watsons’ in Suffolk. The following day heturned up at the social services office roaring drunk andhighly agitated, demanding to see us, insisting that it washis right. The social worker, a Mr Ashby, explained tohim that as we now lived so far away visits had to bearranged to suit everyone. Dad refused to see reason andstarted to beat the poor man up, having first locked theoffice door so he couldn’t escape. The police eventuallyhad to smash the door down and when they burst in theyfound Mr Ashby with three broken ribs, a broken nose,cuts and bruises. Dad was still on top of him, trying togouge his eyes out when they finally dragged him off.That little outburst cost Dad a few months in prison but gave him something to boast about for years. He saw it asproof of how much he loved his kids, and how he wasn’twilling to let some pen pusher come between us.
    At the time Mum was convinced we would only be infoster care temporarily and that once she had got her acttogether she would have us back and would bring us upas a single mum. She assumed the authorities would beable to protect us all from Dad now they knew just howdangerous he could be. But once he was out of prisonagain Dad tracked Mum down and started to pester herto come back to him. He was always able to find herbecause of the involvement of social services in our lives.She moved and changed jobs twice to try to get awayfrom him and both times he found her by insisting on hisright to see his kids. Her employers and landlords wouldbecome tired of the harassment he would give her wherevershe went and would ask her to leave.
    Whenever Dad found her, he would just completelywear her down and promise things would be differentand tell her he was the only one who loved her. Mumleft him three or four times but each time he succeededin making her go back to him again. And each time hewould have her back out on the street again within aweek.
    By that time Mum had been arrested several times forsoliciting and had a suspended sentence hanging over her,but Dad still forced her back to work. She was terrified of being picked up again and being sent to prison, but hewouldn’t listen. One night she heard that the vice squadwas doing a sweep of the area and she begged Dad to lether go home early since she had already earned plenty ofmoney in the previous few hours. Dad wasn’t willing toeven consider it, becoming angry that she dared to suggestwhen she should stop work. It was his decision andnot hers, as far as he was concerned. As they stood on thepavement beside the busy road he lifted her skirt up andstarted shouting at the passing cars.
    ‘Come and get some of the best cunt in Norwich.’
    Mum tells me that that was the final straw. At thatmoment she decided she was going to have to escape fromhim once and for all, whatever the cost, even if it meantabandoning her children to his mercies. She had run outof options. She had no choice any more.

Chapter Four

mum leaves
     
    I have almost no memories of actually living withMum although I was six when she finally left forgood. I can’t summon up any mental pictures of what itwas like having her in the house with us. I have a vaguememory of a woman making jellies at a birthday partybut can’t picture her face. There would be no children’sparties after she left so it must have been Mum who wasthere in the kitchen making jelly. She says it was.
    Nearly everything I have described so far I learned fromher many years later or from other people who