I Won't Forgive What You Did by Faith Scott

Author:Faith Scott [Scott, Faith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Child Abuse, Personal Memoir, Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781849831567
Amazon: 1849831564
Publisher: simon & schuster
Published: 2010-09-30T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

Joe didn’t seem to care. He was determined to move on, and gave his four weeks’ notice anyway.

My father was livid. ‘I found you that fucking job!’ he shouted. ‘That farmer trusted me! I have a fucking relationship with these people! You stupid bastard!’ But Joe was adamant. Nothing my father said made the slightest difference. He was leaving. So now we had nowhere to go.

I contacted the council to see if they’d help, but all they could offer us was a bed and breakfast place in town, coincidentally close to the Honey Globe cafe. We had no choice but to take it, even though it was completely unsuitable; Joe had got a new job as a labourer, in a nearby town, and would now be away every weekday from six in the morning to six at night – sometimes later, if he had to work late to finish a job – and the days now seemed interminable. I’d got used to him popping home for lunch when on the estate, and now he was gone for twelve hours at a time and when he was home he seemed distant and preoccupied.

I was only doing my old cleaning job two mornings a week now, as the lady’s children were all in school, so I had a lot of time on my hands. But, uncomfortable hanging around someone else’s house all day, I’d wrap Alfie up and we’d spend our time mooching round the streets or visiting my mother, or my elder sister. Yet I felt in the way at my mother’s house now, so would spend my time engaged in the largely pointless task of cleaning up the mess, clearing out and scrubbing. Since living in my own home, it always struck me anew how alien and chaotic her house was.

Once again, I felt sad and lonely, and the depression I’d had since Alfie’s birth, that for a time had almost lifted, now returned with a vengeance. I knew I had to do something or else plunge even deeper into the abyss, so I contacted social services to see if we could be moved from the bed and breakfast. What we needed was a place of our own again. Perhaps then we’d get back on track.

All they had to offer was a live-in job for me, looking after a family of six children, whose mother was due to have an emergency hysterectomy. Joe and Alfie and I would apparently have our own ‘very large bedroom’, and would share the rest of their ‘nice house in the country’.

I took it – a rash and impulsive decision – and the three of us moved in straight away. Unfortunately, however, what they hadn’t told me was that not only would the children’s father be there, but also that the nice house was actually in the middle of nowhere and our bedroom was dingy, cold and damp. They were a poor working-class family, living in very poor conditions, in a house tied to a farm.

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