I Won't Forgive What You Did Read Online Free PDF

‘cack-handed, left-handed and stupid’. Before school I can’t remember ever having a book or pencil, and now I was expected to use such things every day, not knowing what to do with either. I didn’t even know how to hold the latter in my hand, let alone how to write with it. I’d never had a book read to me, at bedtime or any other time, so when I encountered them, I used to start at the back and work backwards. When I did begin to write I was similarly confused. Being left-handed, it was natural for me to start on the right and work my way leftwards towards the middle. Straight away this reinforced just how different I felt. As did my mother. She told me, and anyone else who’d listen, she’d spoken to my teachers, and the school had informed her they couldn’t teach me; they’d just have to ‘leave me to sort myself out’.
    Which I did try to do. But such was my panic when I was asked to copy out even the simplest words, I would make an appalling mess. Being left-handed did feel like a handicap. The only way I could hold a pen was with my fingers wrapped around it and as I wrote my left arm moved across the page, and the ink from the fountain pen – which every child had to use – smudged all the words I’d just written. The pages of my books were therefore covered in long blue lines and smudges, leaving my writing unrecognizable. The side of my left hand was always stained blue as well, and this would often end up down my face, and on my clothes.
    It may well be that the school understood my difficulties as a left-hander – a significant minority of people are left-handed, after all – and, perhaps, had my family been like other families, it wouldn’t have mattered very much. But I hated being left-handed. For me, it was yet another visible and humiliating reminder of how useless I was.
    My sense of terror at being made to go to school – and therefore parted from my mother – did not diminish. I was in a constant state of anxiety about being away from home, and had been from my earliest years. I couldn’t bear my mother being out of my sight, let alone having to leave the house without her. The enforced separation filled me with intense fear, reinforced, as it was daily, by her indifference to where I’d been, what I’d done, who I’d met, how I’d fared. I really thought if I went to school, that one day I would not have a home to return to. This thought, which was present throughout my childhood, caused me a sense of extreme dread. I thought I’d disappear, not be missed, and be replaced by another child without anyone even noticing I’d gone.
    As a consequence, every morning I’d cry uncontrollably, filled with the most awful apprehension. Often I would run away, down the road, and hide behind the telephone box. If I breathed in, I could just about wedge myself into the space behind it and the wall and although it was dark, dirty, spidery and wet, I didn’t care. It was from here that my father would drag me out and pull me along the road to his lorry, all the time shouting over his shoulder at my mother, ‘I haven’t fucking got time for this, the little bastard, fucking hell!’ He’d then open the door, drop me inside the lorry and slam the door shut, while my mother stood on the doorstep saying nothing. By the time my father had climbed into the driver’s seat she would have already gone back in.
    He’d always make sure he locked the cab door. If he didn’t I’d try to climb out and run away again. He’d then drive the three miles to school in silence, while I sobbed, often picking up Mrs Hope if she happened to be walking as we passed. If she joined us, he’d immediately become someone else; charming, quietly spoken, laughing. The contrast was extreme. He was a completely different person, who didn’t swear. But I was so used to his behaviour changing I didn’t think to question it. I just thought that must be how all people were, and that his behaviour towards me must be