Joe McKee was a clever man. He was very good at making people believe he was a nice person. I learned that very quickly. People always smiled when they saw him in the street. They would stop to talk to him, and he would listen intently to their news and offer his nuggets of wisdom, or reassurance or condolence as appropriate.
I quickly lost count of the number of times I heard people say: ‘You’re a sound fella, Joe,’ and they’d pat him on the back. Sometimes they’d slip a shiny fifty pence piece into my hand and tell me to treat myself to something. They’d give me a sympathetic look and pat me on the head. I’d smile and thank them, because that was what was expected, but I never bought sweets, not with that money. That money always felt like a consolation prize.
I’d started to think that the whole world must have known was what happening in my house. That they couldn’t be oblivious to the fact that I was a troubled child, that something was badly wrong. I started to think that they either didn’t care or maybe, worse than that, this was something that happened to all little girls and just nobody ever talked about it.
Like how nobody ever talked about the fact that Santa wasn’t real. I learned that one quickly too, the year my mother died. Instead of the lovingly wrapped pile of presents under the tree, there were some books and a selection box. New underwear wrapped up in crinkly Christmas paper. Pants and vests. Nightdresses, when I preferred pyjamas. A board game, something we would have to play together, because I never, ever asked anyone to come back to the house with me. I was too scared to. Imagine they found out? Imagine if he hurt them, too?
No, it was better to go it alone. And I had my dolls for company. And I had my growing collection of fifty pence pieces, which I saved in a spare Trócaire box I’d taken from school. If I saved enough, maybe I could get a plane ticket and fly away to America or somewhere. Then I’d write to my granny and grandad and tell them I was safe and happy, and maybe they would come and visit me.
I’d never tell Joe, though. Never, ever tell him where I was.
So it broke my heart, and my spirit, the day I came home from school to find Joe standing in the living room, in front of the fire, the Trócaire box, used to collect money for charity during Lent, on the mantlepiece.
It was May, I remember that. It had been a sunny day. Warm. I’d made a daisy chain at school and I was still wearing it around my neck when I got home. I had a sense of things being, maybe, possibly okay. That things were going to be okay.
Then I saw him. Saw the expression on his face. Thunderous. Not the smiling, genial ‘sound fellah’ everyone thought he was.
‘Would you care to explain this?’ he said, thrusting the box at me, a picture of a starving African child, eyes wide, staring at me.
‘I was just …’ I was trying to think. How to tell him I was saving to run away. How I never wanted to see him again. Or what to say so he wouldn’t know my plan, after all. That I would still have a chance to get away with it.
But I didn’t get past those three words.
‘You were just what, Heidi? Stealing? From a charity? From these starving children?’ He thrust the box at me, so close to my face that I closed my eyes in anticipation of an impact that didn’t come.
‘That’s not what …’
‘I know people feel sorry for you, poor little girl, having lost her mammy.’ He spat the words at me. I felt flecks of his spittle hit my face, his coffee-tainted breath fill my nostrils. ‘But this! This is despicable. I have never been more ashamed of anything in my life. After all I’ve done. After all I do and you steal from a Christian charity from people who have nothing?
‘Maybe you’d like to live out there, Heidi, starving, sick, alone. Then you might stop being such a selfish, moody little bitch! May God forgive you for what you’ve done!’
He grabbed me by the arm so tight that I feared it would break and he hauled me through the house, the Trócaire box in his other hand, and into the street. He let go only to open the car door and then he practically threw me into the back seat, my head colliding with the sill of the door as I fell. The skin of my bare legs burned against the hot leather of the car seat and I tried to curl up.
‘Sit properly, girl, or so help me!’ he hissed, of course keeping his voice low enough that no neighbour out mowing their lawns or soaking up the sun could hear the vitriol with which he spoke.
He wouldn’t tell me where we were going, and I dared not ask more than once. Soon we were at the parochial house and he was hauling me from the car, my daisy chain breaking and falling to the ground, trampled over by his heavy shoes as he dragged me to the door.
‘Now, Heidi, you are to tell Father Campbell what sins you have committed and you are to beg him for his forgiveness. You wicked child, it’s a good thing your mother is dead so she doesn’t have to be humiliated by how badly you’ve turned out.’
Father Campbell was an old school priest. Small, round, hunched with his white hair that seemed to sprout as much from his nose and his ears as it did from the top of his head. He didn’t ever speak during Mass, he bellowed as if he had the power to bring forth hellfire on command. Every child I knew lived in mortal fear of Father Campbell and I was no different.
My legs were wobbly beneath me, my arm aching from Joe’s tight grasp as he dragged me towards the large wooden door of the parochial house. I couldn’t help but cry, even though I was trying so hard to be brave. I always tried to be brave no matter what, but this … It was beyond me.
I prayed with all my power that Father Campbell wouldn’t be in. That Father Brennan would answer the door instead. He was young then, new to the fold, considered to be approachable. He told funny stories when he visited us at school. I might have a chance of him believing me.
But it wasn’t Father Brennan who answered the door. It was Father Campbell, who glowered at me from beneath his heavy-set eyebrows as Joe told him of his deep shame at finding the ‘stolen’ Trócaire box and money in my room.
I don’t know which scared me most. The abuse I took from Father Campbell, who told me hell had a place waiting just for nasty little thieves like me – a place where I would be shown no mercy for stealing from innocent, starving children. Or the fact that Joe handed over my savings, my escape route from all this, to Father Campbell and my hope of getting away was gone.
The beating I got back at home could not have broken me more than the loss of that money. The beatings I knew I could take as long as I knew I could get away some day.
Of course, what followed the beating was worse. The creaking of the floorboard and Joe, his face a picture of misery at my door, telling me he was sorry. That he had done it only for my own good, you see. I had to learn. I had to be a good girl. Then he crossed the room and even as I cowered from him, he climbed into the bed beside me.