We didn’t have much in the way of family life – well, not in a positive sense. Ian was quite isolated, a loner who spent most of his time in his bedroom, reading a lot. I had a doll that was almost as big as me, which I loved so much, but that was about it apart from a few bits of toys. I didn’t get to keep my doll for long as Mum gave it away to a friend of hers for her little girl, right in front of me. I begged her not to, but she just told me to ‘shut the fuck up’.

The house was furnished with things my parents got from social services – they only had to ask and it was provided, all the furniture they needed. It was all very functional, though; just reasonably bare rooms, painted blue.

Every time Jenny wet the bed, Mum would make her strip it, hand-wash the bedding and put her wet knickers on her head. I do feel it was often about humiliation; there are ways to deal with that sort of thing, even for parents who have little education or understanding, but ours seemed to have a natural radar for what would cause the most emotional damage.

They drank a lot, and always had flaming rows with our neighbours – Mum would punch people’s front doors during her fights with them, getting furious if no one reacted, and in the morning she’d be too hungover to get up, so we’d sort ourselves out for school, even though we were all still very young. I wore second-hand clothes, and old-fashioned things like a plastic mac hat; there were no nice clothes or pretty things in my world – although none of that would have mattered anyway if I had felt loved and safe. No one ever really said anything about the state we were all in as we were recognised as the trampy family anyway, and I suspect many other kids were warned to stay away from us.

I have no idea when my own abuse started, as I can’t really remember a time in my childhood when it wasn’t going on. I have often wondered if anyone else was involved, as there were often unsavoury characters in the house. We would all be sent upstairs when they had one of their ‘events’, but it was quite obvious what was happening. I do remember – when we were in our first house, so I was no more than seven – Dad taking me to visit another man, someone who lived nearby. I know he had black curly hair that I focused on while I sat on his lap, as he tickled me and touched me under my clothes, but I don’t have any memory of anything or anyone else. It might have been worse, it might have been nothing, because there is always the chance I blocked things out, given how horrific my life was about to become. I can’t dwell on that sort of thing though. I can only focus on what I know to be true and factual.

Mum had spoken to me about sex from a very early age. In fact, I can’t remember a time when she didn’t – it was just one of her ‘go-to’ topics of conversation, as natural to her as telling me I was dilatory, or getting me to choose which of my siblings should be battered when Dad came back from fishing. She told me her story about how every man she had ever met had raped her, but I had no idea what that was. The word ‘rape’ meant nothing to me, although I knew it was something she enjoyed talking about as she returned to the subject so often, and her eyes lit up when she informed me that every man in her life couldn’t keep their hands off her. She was irresistible and they were all sex-mad bastards.

‘I’ve no one else to talk to about these things,’ she would say. ‘Are you listening? You’d better be.’ I would nod, and try to look as if I was taking in every word, but I wasn’t terribly sure of what had happened. As well as ‘every’ man raping her, she was sure that Dad was having an affair with each woman who crossed his path. At one point ‘a blonde’, as Mum put it, moved in across from us. When Mum saw this woman chiselling a hole in her front door one day, she claimed that was a signal for Dad to have sex with her. It was bizarre.

‘I do everything he asks me to, you know,’ she would say, ‘every dirty, perverted thing you could imagine, just so that he doesn’t start on you lot. He makes my life a fucking misery, but I just take it all.’

I never heard cries and I never saw a mark on her. As an adult, I am all too aware that relationships can hide a multitude of horrors behind closed doors, but there was certainly never anything I could point to and think, ‘Yes, he is awful to her.’ In fact, when some of the women she said Dad was having sex with turned up at our house, it looked as if she got on well with them. I would muffle my ears with a pillow as they all got more and more drunk, and louder and louder.

And there he was. There he is. My father. At my bedroom door.

‘I’ve got something to show you,’ he said, a smile playing on his lips. He closed the door behind him and sat down next to me on the bed. I had been dozing, but as soon as the bed shifted with his weight, I scooted up, hunched my knees to my chest. Instinctively, I was wary, but I always was. Good things didn’t really happen in our house. And here was the next thing. I remember it was a summer evening, the late sun was still coming in my window and I should have been playing outside, but that wasn’t allowed. I had to stay in just in case my ‘ill’ mother needed me. She would have these ‘episodes’ where she declared herself seriously unwell and I was required to keep watch, which meant staying indoors for hours at a time.

‘Look,’ he whispered, and opened a magazine he had on his lap. It was full of pictures. Pictures of naked women. It was very explicit, I know that. It wasn’t ‘just’ women with their clothes off, it was women with their legs open, things being done to them, positions and acts that my mind couldn’t even comprehend.

‘Look,’ he kept saying, ‘look.’ His eyes flitted from the pages to me, back and forth, back and forth. I had no idea what he wanted from me. Would I get into trouble for looking, or for not looking? When he didn’t get a reaction from me, he started talking about them, the women in the magazines, telling me I would be like that soon. I was eight. I was so embarrassed by it – yes, that was my strongest emotion that first night. Embarrassment. I was only a little girl; I didn’t want to see naked bodies. Things did go on in our house, and Mum did talk about grown-up things with me, but this was something new, and I just wanted it to stop. It was disgusting and horrific, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to react – what would cause the least chance of me being hit or shouted at?

‘You’ll be doing all of this soon,’ he told me. ‘Do you like it? Do you like them? Do you like what they’re doing?’ I felt concerned, but I didn’t know why; he didn’t touch me, so it wasn’t that. I guess it was just a sense of foreboding. And I certainly had no intention of ever doing the things he was showing me in those images. ‘Not long now though!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes, you’ll be like that soon.’

He stayed for a while – I don’t really recall how long – then he left, patting my leg and still smiling, as if we had enjoyed something nice. A touching father-and-daughter moment. My first experience of pornography, my first real exposure to what his twisted mind enjoyed.

He didn’t give me any warnings that night, didn’t tell me to keep it quiet – he didn’t need to. I had no one. I hoped it was a one-off, but I should have known nothing he or Mum ever thought of was ever a one-off. He was back the next night, but this time there was no magazine. I know I must have been asleep when he came in, because the first thing I remember was feeling groggy but waking up because he was lifting up my nightie. I came round very quickly as he started touching me.

‘No!’ I shouted.

‘Ssh,’ he whispered, ‘ssh, there’s nothing to worry about.’

And then he said it.

He said the thing he would keep saying for years.

All dads do this with their little girls.

It’s normal.

Everyone does it.

After this first time, the routine would become relentless but, although I knew I didn’t like it, I’m not sure at that stage I actually knew it was wrong. One morning, at breakfast, I blurted it out.

‘Dad comes into my room every night.’

No one said anything, so I tried again.

‘Dad comes into my room, into my bed, every night.’

Mum ignored it and so did he. That made me think nothing was wrong with it, that he was telling the truth – dads and daughters did this. I wasn’t trying to tell, I was just pointing out a fact, and if they didn’t react, then he must have been pointing out a fact to me as well when he told me it was normal.

As the weeks progressed, Dad did something else that was new. He spoke to me. He gave me attention. He made me feel special. And that was the key to it all. That was how he managed to carry on the abuse for years. When he first came to the bedroom of that eight-year-old, he knew I was a child who had never been loved, who had never been made to feel special. He knew that because he was one of the parents who had ensured it was the case. He used it in a way that was so cruel, and yet was so desperately needed by me. He would sit in my room for hours, every evening, and I had never, ever had that before.

He’d say such things to me, and the honest truth is, I wanted to hear some of them. I was starved of love, starved of affection, so I hung on to the nice parts.

He told me I was special.

He told me I was his queen.

He told me that, if I was chocolate, he’d eat me.

He told me that I was all that mattered.

He told me he loved me.

And then, when he had told me all of those things, all of those twisted things combined with the nice things, he would touch me. He would sit on my bed, and touch me. It didn’t hurt – we were both in our pyjamas – and it was attention, it was normal, it was what daddies did with their little girls, everyone was doing it. Then, after the touching was over, he’d talk to me again. The same words, over and over.

He told me I was his queen.

He told me that, if I was chocolate, he’d eat me.

He told me that I was all that mattered.

He told me he loved me.

He told me I was special.

It would go on into the middle of the night, while Mum was in bed; but, at some point, he changed tack. Maybe the type of touching he was doing wasn’t enough, maybe he had just been testing me to see what he would get away with; whatever the reason, he changed.

‘If you don’t want your mum to die, then you do know that this is for the best?’ he would say.

I didn’t want Mum to die. I knew she was often gravely ill (she wasn’t), I knew she had been at death’s door many times (she hadn’t) and I knew I had to be a good girl (I wanted to be). One night, he took me through to their bedroom while Mum slept. With a finger to his lips, telling me to be quiet, he slowly removed her clothes.

‘Look,’ he said, just as he had with the magazines, ‘this is what you’ll look like!’

He was excited, I know that, and I was so worried that she would wake up. In retrospect, I wondered if she knew full well what was happening. Could she have slept through it? Might she have heard him, panting with the thrill of his sordid little adventure? More than once, he put me in bed beside her – she slept, he touched me and I shook with fear that I was the one who would get into trouble.

Things changed very quickly after that in the sense that he seemed almost fearless; I think he escalated the abuse to putting his fingers inside me after three or four weeks. I can remember the shock of the first time very well, but I have struggled to know how to deal with it here. I want to be honest but there is a part of me that wonders who is reading this. I know there will be kind people who will recognise that little girl and her awful life, I know some will be supportive, but I can’t help but think there may be people like him too. I don’t want to give them hints about what to do, how to get away with it, and neither do I want to write anything that will be exactly the sort of thing they want to read, the sort of thing they think of all the time, the sort of thing they dream of.

So, I think I have to keep it straightforward. I have to say the facts. He started by touching me, then he got bolder and started to put his fingers inside me. At that stage, even though I believed his lies about it being a perfectly normal thing to do, it didn’t feel right. I knew that part of me was private and I had a sense that it was wrong for someone else to touch me there, but he reassured me all the time.

You’re so special.

I could look at you all night.

It’s OK, it’s nice, this is nice, you like it.

This is what dads do with their little girls.

You’ll thank me when you’re older.

You’ll be glad I showed you how to do this when you get a boyfriend.

I’m making it easier for you – you’ll know just what works when you’re a woman.

He never said anything nice to me when we weren’t in my room; he was still the father he had always been when it was daytime, or the others were there. The further he pushed his fingers inside me, the more painful it was, but whenever I flinched, he would try to reassure me. I never screamed, I never cried. I had no voice.

As time went on, he’d give me money – that felt worse. I didn’t want to be paid for this. I didn’t want to ‘earn’ it. He would sit on the edge of my bed, or kneel – he’d touch me and he’d touch himself. I remember seeing the ejaculate afterwards but not understanding what it was. He’d just keep telling me I was special when it happened, so very special. Sometimes he stroked my hair, always saying, ‘It’s OK, it’s nice.’ Then after ejaculating, he’d leave the room and I would be left with that stuff on the floor. I knew no one should see it, so I would go to the loo for paper and clean it up. It was constant.

After a while, he started to do things to me with his mouth, but I had no idea what the words were for these things, would never have known to call it oral sex. I did wonder, why in the world would he do that? What would even put such an idea into his head? He’d finish himself off or get me to touch him.

‘Do you like it? Doesn’t it feel good?’ he’d ask, but I’d never answer him. If he asked questions and I’d said, ‘No,’ it’d burst the bubble and I was terrified of what the consequences might be. From the moment he started to guide my hand to where he wanted it to be, to what he wanted me to do, I just accepted it. He’d often get me to start, then he’d finish. I guess he knew what to do. I’d just lie there, trying to keep my eyes closed. He built it up, but I was too naïve to realise what he was building up to. He told me I was responsible for cleaning ‘it’, his penis, and that was why I had to move it back and forwards, that was part of the cleaning, but, one day, after I had started to do that, he said, ‘Close your eyes.’

He hadn’t told me to do that before. Even though I often did, it was my choice, when I didn’t want to look at that ugly, disgusting thing in his pants.

I shook my head, still not able to bring myself to say ‘No.’

‘Go on, queen, close your eyes,’ he said.

I assumed he wanted me to clean it until he ejaculated but, as I sat there, he took hold of my head and tried to force himself into my mouth. I coughed. Gagged. Tried to move away. He stopped. I can honestly say that I will never shake that feeling off, that first time when he tried to push it in, a sensation that’s as fresh today as I write this as it was then. He tried another couple of times, but it never worked. Sometimes he would change his mind and try again, keep pushing it in, but he knew I wasn’t playing along with that and I guess he didn’t want to spoil his little fantasy that I was enjoying it all. He was always touching my breasts (such as they were), always touching me down there, always putting his fingers in me, also making me accept oral sex.

It impacted on everything. From that moment on, I always felt I wasn’t good enough, that I was a bad girl who no one would like. I felt stupid and scared and filthy. I felt that I did everything wrong at school and at home, that the things he made me do were appalling; but I had no choice. As always, I had no choice.

There was still a lot of social services involvement throughout this time, but they had no idea what was going on in my life, in the dark, with Dad. Mum was constantly telling me I was selfish, she had made sacrifices for me, I was spoiled and I made life miserable for her, but my big sister had it a hundred times worse.

When Jenny came back, she would wet the bed constantly, no matter what the social workers were saying about her improvement away from home, and she would be subjected to the same emotional push-pull as ever. In April 1979 Jenny was collected from Frodsham, where she had been for four and a half years – I was taken along to collect her, as they were worried Jenny would be upset and thought it might settle her to see me. ‘I am trying to get all concerned to normalise the situation and accept Jennifer as a normal member of the family without reminders or threats.’

Jenny was still on the ‘At Risk’ register and another social worker, Mrs Stuart, was brought in to support Miss Williams, to cover her absences and to act as a further safeguard. Before Jenny went to her new school, Miss Williams met with the Head, Mr Wootton, and told him the story – they both agreed it would be a struggle to get Jenny to school not smelling, and that she would be taunted for it by the other children. Miss Williams says in the report, ‘I feel Mr and Mrs Yeo are inclined to lie in and let the kids fend for themselves in the mornings.’

Yes, that’s exactly what they were ‘inclined’ to do. But while social services were watching Jenny, I was dealing with Dad’s ‘inclinations’ every night. He’d force my legs open, put his penis in between my legs, then close them tight. At first he’d rub himself to orgasm, then he would enter me. It always followed a pattern – he’d take my pyjama bottoms off, talk to me, tell me loving, twisted things, then do what he wanted to do. I hated it. The pictures in his magazines were really scary to me – I knew he was doing those terrible things to me, and the images would flash through my mind. I’d try to squirm away but I was so small and his whole body pinned me down. He’d often call me Nettie after my Auntie Jeanette, grunting and saying her name over and over again. He’d leave his mess on me and the bed, meaning I had to lie in it that night and clean it up as best I could the next day.

Sometimes, the raping was very quick but it was always excruciating – I bled a lot but I couldn’t tell anyone. Often, I’d throw my knickers in the bin and get into trouble for that. I’d get no sleep, either through the fear of him or him being there, but I’d still be off to school the next day, walking in pain, trying not to cry. I learned not to feel or say anything, though; I just got on with it. I had an overwhelming sense of being completely bad and completely guilty. ‘This must be my fault because I am so bad,’ I would think. ‘Mum can’t die, Dad can’t leave – I have no choice.’

I bit my nails down to nothing – and Mum teased me mercilessly about it. She once made me go to school with plasters on the ends of my fingers and said I had to leave them there for weeks to make me stop biting. In normal kids, who had baths and washes, they would fall off naturally but we rarely washed so they just got dirtier and dirtier. Eventually they did fall off, and I was terrified I would get into trouble, but Mum had lost interest by then. I also had a squint in my eye that I’m convinced was related to the trauma I was going through – I don’t have it any more, but it was very evident back then. I lived in a constant state of nervousness. I was the quietest of the family, according to Grandma, and I tried to keep out of the way whenever I could. At night-time that was an impossibility because he knew where to find me, but during the day, I just wanted to try and guess what would keep Mum calm so my world would be less horrific.

I often sat in the corner on my own, but that could enrage her too, so I would try to judge, try to second-guess – a habit I have to this day whenever I’m with other people. I’m always scanning a room, attempting to work out what would cause the least drama. I think it’s something many survivors do; it’s hard-wired into us. There were nights when I got no peace, even after Dad had left me once that night’s abuse was over, because if Mum was drunk – and she was a rotten drunk – she’d often take it into her head that she wanted company, so she’d scream at me to come downstairs, where she’d be watching a Barry Manilow concert or something on TV. Often bleeding, always sore, I’d crawl out of bed, my hands feeling the damp patches on my bed, or my legs feeling sticky, or my feet touching the mess he had left on the carpet from his disgusting body, and stagger downstairs to be shouted at for nodding off, or not ‘enjoying’ myself more. In the morning they’d still be asleep, drunk or idle and I’d be sitting at my desk at school like a zombie, with teachers thinking I was stupid or lazy as my body and mind paid the price of what went on virtually every evening at home.

Mum’s behaviour could switch very easily and there were always drinking sessions, sometimes with parties, sometimes not. These parties could go on for days and, again, I would have to navigate it all. There were usually fights, clothes thrown out of windows. Sometimes we’d be bundled out to Grandma’s if it got really bad. Mum had scars on her forearm where she punched her way through a glass front door to batter someone on the other side. I definitely remember being taken away somewhere else that night. There was always someone fighting, whether there was a party or not, as Mum and Dad rarely stopped even when they were alone. Once, Mum threw an electric fire at Dad; another time she stabbed him. She was always trying to get a reaction but it was only fishing or abusing me that ever roused him.

He kept saying he loved me, I was special. So very special. I did want to be loved, of course I did, but if this was the only love I deserved, it was because I was bad. Mum was always angry with me – nothing had changed in that department. He’d say, ‘Touching there is just like an arm or a leg, it’s just skin, isn’t it?’ He was looking at my body more as it changed and I became just something for him to play with. They were both twisted and we didn’t stand a chance.

While Dad abused me sexually, Mum didn’t seem to let up on Jenny psychologically. Jenny had asked Mum why she had been sent away and there was a vague story given about Mum not being well and maybe smacking her too hard so the doctors decided to separate them. When Jenny asked, ‘Why only me?’ Mum said it was because she loved her best and sometimes mummies hurt the child they love most. Horrible lies; horrible things to put in a child’s head.

We were both learning to blame ourselves, learning that there was little we could do. As I got older, I’d try to pull away or say no, but Dad had an answer every time.

‘It’s better that I do this with you than another woman as that would be really wrong,’ he’d say. ‘I’d have to leave, and then what would happen to your mum and the boys?’ Another favourite line of his was, ‘I’m doing you a favour because when you get a boyfriend, you’ll know what to do.’ He liked that one a lot.

None of those actions were the worst things, though. The worst thing by far was the shame of the sensations feeling nice – and that haunts me. I now know it just means your body is working normally, but any nice sensations as an adult then come with guilt. This is something I feel very strongly about, and it’s a part of my story I have wrestled with. I am so ashamed, but I also know that many other survivors feel the same way and it’s important to let them know it isn’t their fault. They’re not the only ones who have this, and it’s nothing to do with them being bad or dirty or shameful. Your body is simply set up to react in a certain way to certain things – it does it without understanding the context or the perpetrator; it just does. I hate him for that. He didn’t just take my childhood, he took parts of my adult life too; he took it all when I was just eight years old. The sad truth is, I rarely considered it an option to tell him to stop. I’d been groomed since birth to be no one, nothing.

We moved quite a few times and those moves are the real markers of the different stages of my life. Not that long after the abuse began, we left for a big four-bedroomed council house that Mum had really pushed to get. I can see in the files that she was always complaining about where we lived, that it was making her life a misery, that we deserved somewhere better. Wherever she lived was never right for her though. I guess you can’t leave yourself behind, no matter how many times you move to another building – you carry what is inside you and that’s why everything just kept on as it was; wallpaper and more bedrooms could never alter how broken our family was.

The physical and sexual abuse continued, and I can remember it much better from that point. There are lines in my head, in my memory, depending on where we lived, and in that one, I vividly recall the constant backhanders across my face, the bleeding noses, the way she wound my dad up to batter me black and blue. Any time I tried to gather the courage to ask for something, it would be thrown back in my face. I desperately wanted to join the Brownies and finally managed to bring myself to make the terrifying request, which was immediately refused.

In terms of my grandparents, I only really had contact with Molly and Harry but there wasn’t much of a real relationship with any of them. Jenny and I didn’t see Ivy and Bert very much; they didn’t visit us and only ever had anything to do with Ian. My mother would tell me they hated me, and that they thought I was the instigator of all the problems in our family, so I didn’t go to see them. On the few occasions I did go to their house, I remember feeling as if I wasn’t wanted there, so it wasn’t something I was keen to do.

I think there was a deep sadness in Molly, my paternal grandma. Dad was their only child. Although they had tried to have more, sadly it wasn’t meant to be. Grandma used to talk a lot about her lost babies, and sometimes she would cry. ‘I had more babies, you know,’ she would tell me, but I didn’t really know how to react, as I was only little myself. It was very sad.

When we were small I remember sometimes going to Grandma Molly’s house just round the corner from us, in the night when Mum and Dad fought. We would be bundled round there and would all be put onto the large sofa in the parlour, a room where we were never allowed normally. I would look at the ornaments (mostly of the Queen’s corgis) and photos. I can still remember the smell of their house, and the movement of the big rocking chair in the back room where everyone sat. There was a dining table with a thick red table cover and, on the odd occasion us kids went there alone, we played cards with Grandma and Grandpa at that table. They used to keep 2p pieces in a tub of Steradent cleaning tablets for false teeth, or we would play for matches.

I also remember they kept a toy with magnetic numbers and letters on and it was a really special treat to be allowed to play with that. The only couple of happy memories I have of my whole childhood are from being with Molly and Harry; they were very kind people. Grandma would give us orange juice and Grandpa would rub his bristly chin on my forehead and call me ‘little ears’. I think they loved us. I think so.

I stayed at their house one time and there was a chair next to the bed with a little blue torch on in case I needed to get up in the night. Their house was old, with steep stairs and extra steps to the bathroom. I remember thinking that night, ‘Wow, Dad can’t come in, he isn’t here!’ And it was quiet, so quiet, and so very warm – Grandma had tucked me in with a heavy feather quilt that felt like safety. She had lots of crystal ornaments in that bedroom and I used to pick them up one by one, really carefully, thinking I had never seen anything so beautiful.

Grandma worked in a fruit shop and if I went past she would give me an apple and I would devour it. On the rare occasions they did visit our house, they would always bring food, electric cards, phone stamp cards for my mum and dad, while Grandpa would always bring each of us a single piece of liquorice.

I only ever had one family outing, a walk along Seacombe promenade, on the Wirral, one afternoon with Molly and Harry. Mum and Dad had been fighting as usual, so Molly had taken us to their house, which was one minute from the promenade, and we all went for a walk. It was just how it should be – us kids and our grandparents – but I knew what we were going back to and there was a nervous ball in the pit of my stomach the whole time.

It’s a sad fact, though, that when I was small I was always wary of Grandma and Grandpa, even though I’m thinking of them warmly now. I don’t think I really wanted to go back and look at those memories because tied up in them, like with everything, is Mum. I never ‘felt’ like I should be scared of Molly and Harry, but my mother had told me horror stories about them both, so I knew they weren’t to be trusted from her point of view. I was told Grandma had sexually abused my father and his friends, and walked naked around the house. Mum told me Molly had abused my oldest brother when they were left to care for him when Jenny was born. I was also told Grandpa had tried to rape my mother; that he was horrible and under the thumb of Grandma, and that they wanted Jenny to live with them, and would never let her see the rest of us.

So, there it is – the only people who I could have confided in, if I hadn’t been groomed into silence, I wouldn’t have told anyway, as I believed they were also abusers.

Around the time we moved to the four-bedroomed house, Mum really ramped up the hypochondria. Of course, I didn’t know that was what it was back then; I really thought she was dying. It brought some very strange emotions to the surface. I hated what she did to me, what she did to Jenny, but she was my mother. It’s very hard to break free from that, and children still want a relationship with their mum. I didn’t want her to die – I just wanted her to change.

Any time I wanted to do anything, such as play outside, she would tell me I couldn’t, because of her vague illnesses. If I asked to go out she would say, ‘Do what you like’ really nastily. This made me feel too guilty to go anywhere, as I thought she was so ill. ‘You’ll have to stay in and look after me,’ she’d say. ‘Not that you’re any good at it – you’re a dilatory little bitch, but I’ve got no one else, have I?’

I never thought to ask, ‘If I’m so useless, why do you try and keep me with you in your last days?’ It was just another way to control me. She would keep me out of school if she needed to go shopping. I was still a tiny little thing, but she would make me drag the full, heavy wheeled trolley up the hill to our house with one hand while pushing her by the small of the back with the other. She’d huff and puff, saying I was doing her ‘no fucking good at all’, and I would feel my lungs burn with the effort of pushing a grown woman and dragging the shopping along at the same time.

One night she told me it was time for her to ‘go’, so I would have to sleep beside her as she died.

‘I’ll lie here on the couch and I can only hope it’ll be painless,’ she said, all the while looking the picture of health. ‘Don’t you fucking dare fall asleep, not while I’m on my last legs. You can sit there –’ she pointed to the floor – ‘and if I need anything, I’ll tell you.’

I did sit there, by the old-fashioned brick fireplace, and waited, exhausted, as my mother ‘died’. Finally it was too much. Mum was snoring, wrapped up in blankets, and I closed my eyes.

I woke up to her screaming, ‘You little fucking bitch!’ and kicking me as I lay there. ‘If you can’t be bothered to look after me, then fuck off to your bed, go on!’

‘I’m so sorry, Mum, please let me stay,’ I begged, confused as always by the twisted emotions I was feeling, but knowing I couldn’t bear for her to die that evening, alone, on the sofa, thinking I didn’t care. ‘Please, Mum, please!’

‘Oh, fuck off,’ she said, and stormed upstairs to her own bed. I didn’t sleep a wink that night, terrified that she would be dead in the morning; but there she was the next day, large as life, and it was never mentioned again. Well, not that particular ‘dying’ scene, but it stuck in my mind – Mum could die at any moment, so, above anything else, I had better try to be a good girl. For both of them.

We are warriors, Jenny, all of us survivors. We are warriors and we survive for a reason. I wish I could save us, you and the little Karen, and I’m trying to do so the only way I know how, by telling our story, but even warriors get tired. At times, I am exhausted by all of this. Writing it down makes my body ache and my head throb. I want to forget it all, but only by remembering will it be our legacy. I don’t want to hold on to the past any more; I’m not a victim. It has taken me a while to realise I don’t need anyone else’s permission to be who I am – I can decide. I have that power. So, yes, warriors get tired, but they always rise again – always.