Learning to Love Amy by Mia Marconi

Author:Mia Marconi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Amy was convinced there was a reason for India’s ‘coldness’, a reason that made me want to cry. She was certain a fourteen-year-old cousin had touched India. She had said as much to social services, but nothing had been proved, and India had never made a complaint. Amy went on about it for years, though.

As the months passed and I got to know Amy better, I found out there was a good reason for this. What I heard made me so angry I wanted to weep.

Amy had her own troubled past. She was the youngest child from a big family, brought up on a council estate in Manchester. Their alcoholic father was killed in a drunken brawl one night, leaving Amy’s mum with seven children under ten to care for. She married again a few months afterwards and moved to London when Amy was a toddler. The family made their home on a rough council estate in South London, but Amy never forgot her dad. She talked about him as though he was a hero, which was a complete fantasy, as he was clearly never a knight in shining armour – he used his family and never provided for them. If he came through the front door, Amy’s mum knew that he needed cash or a bed for the night, and if there was anything in the fridge he would have that, too.

Idolising her dad distracted Amy from the sexual abuse she was suffering at the hands of her stepfather, Mike.

There was no doubt in Amy’s three-year-old mind that the abuse was her fault. She knew she was to blame, because Mike told her that she was time and time again.

‘If your poor mummy found out what you made me do she would cry. You must never tell her, because she would be upset and you would have upset her.’

Then he would say, ‘You’re a dirty little girl. You like this, don’t you?’

‘I don’t, Mike, I don’t,’ Amy would cry.

Then he would threaten her. ‘You do this, you dirty little cow, otherwise I’ll kill you. If you let me do this to you then I’ll leave your brothers and sisters alone.’

How could she defend herself against that monster?

Mike’s threats were venomous, evil. There was not an ounce of compassion in the man. His only thought was for his own satisfaction and manipulating Amy into silence. He was a liar, too. It didn’t matter what Amy did; he never left her brothers and sisters alone, except perhaps for one …

How Amy survived I have no idea, but she endured this abuse for two years before her brother Luke came home one Sunday afternoon and opened the bedroom door to find five-year-old Amy masturbating Mike. Luke told her later that he had fought the urge to run to a get a meat cleaver to cut off Mike’s dick, but he thought better of it and had the presence of mind to call the police. After that, the system took over and all the children were placed on the ‘at risk’ register.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.