Punished: A mother’s cruelty. A daughter’s survival. A secret that couldn’t be told. Read Online Free PDF Page A

Nothing would mollify her.
    While I was being punished, Nigel would do his best to protect me by shouting at Mum to stop, and afterwards he would comfort me, putting his arms round me to give me a hug if Mum wasn’t looking. I loved him to pieces. His presence obviously deterred Mum a bit – my punishmentsgot much worse in the year when he, aged five, had started school but I, aged four, was still at home.
    The garden was slightly safer than the house, because Mum tended to be working indoors and left me to my own devices, so I spent a lot of time there, keeping out of her way. I remember one time she came out, though, and saw me collecting worms and dropping them into a jam jar I’d found.
    ‘What are you doing, you nasty girl?’ she demanded. She picked up a worm, yanked my head to one side and dangled the worm so that it was wriggling inside my ear. ‘He’s nibbling your ear, and he’s going to get stuck right inside your head. Can you feel him wriggling?’
    I was petrified of the worm getting stuck and screamed and screamed for her to stop. Where were the neighbours? I suppose they must have been out that day, and maybe Mum knew it. She hated me talking to our next-door neighbour, Edna Crisp, over the fence and would call me indoors if she was in the garden hanging out her washing.
    Edna saved my life one day, though. I had refused to eat some carrot that Mum had served for tea and she grabbed a bit and forced it into my mouth, pushing it back until it got stuck in my throat. I gasped in panic and managed to inhale the carrot and soon I was choking and coughing, scarlet in the face and unable to breathe. I’m not sure what happened next because I was in such a state, but I think Nigel ran next door to get Edna. She hurried into the room and thumped me on the back repeatedly until I coughed up the carrot, then she took me on her lap and hugged me as I cried and shivered in shock. Mum turned her back on us and started washing the supper dishes.
    ‘That could have been nasty,’ Edna said to my mother’s back, obviously surprised at the lack of reaction to my nearly choking to death.
    ‘She’s all right now, isn’t she? You were here. It’ll teach her to eat more carefully in future,’ said my mother.
    ‘Well – if you say so.’ Edna was clearly taken aback by the cool response the whole event had got from my supposedly loving mother. When she left, it was with a suspicious air and I had the feeling she would be watching carefully from now on.
    * * *
    Mother must have guessed that she’d given away something of her callous attitude towards me. Most of my punishments took place inside the house so that the neighbours wouldn’t hear anything untoward, but one sunny afternoon when I was four, Nigel and I were playing in the garden. He was pedalling his red tricycle with me standing in the trailer behind it and holding on to his shoulders. I called for him to stop when I saw a pretty butterfly fluttering around the roses. I’d loved butterflies ever since Dad had told me that my name was the name of a type of butterfly.
    I found a jam jar lying in the soil and unscrewed the lid to find some bits and pieces of garden twine inside. I emptied them out. Just then, Nigel spotted a bumblebee alighting on a pink rose and we decided to try and catch it. Carefully we crept up on it, put the jar over the top then slammed the lid and twisted it shut. Neither of us had any idea that bees could hurt you. I looked at it buzzing furiously inside the jar and I remember thinking that it had afriendly face, like a child. I wanted it to be my friend. We put the jar in the trailer of the tricycle and cycled off round the garden squealing with delight as we gave our new furry friend a ride.
    The squeals soon brought Mum out from the kitchen, demanding to know what was going on.
    ‘We’ve got a new friend,’ I said nervously, suddenly unsure of myself. I picked up the jar to show her.
    ‘You cruel, horrible child,’ she