Cry Silent Tears: The heartbreaking survival story of a small mute boy who overcame unbearable suffering and found his voice again. Joe Peters

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      The beating made Marie all the more nervous and anxious to stay out of her way and not to annoy Mum any more than she had to. Occasionally when I was with Marie I would slip up and call her ‘Mum’, because that is what she seemed like to me – far more maternal than the screaming, battering woman I had been born to. She would quickly correct me and tell me to call her ‘Auntie Marie’, terrified that if Mum found out what I was doing that she would go completely mad, seeing it as yet more evidence that Marie was trying to steal her child as well as her husband. Mum might not have wanted anything to do with me herself, but she certainly wouldn’t have wanted Marie to have the satisfaction of taking me away from her.

      While they waited for the divorce to grind its way through the system Marie changed her surname to Peters so that we would seem more like a family unit. She even took to wearing a wedding ring because in those days around our way there was still a stigma attached to single mothers in many people’s eyes.

      But the shadow of Mum and her wild, violent temper was always hanging over Dad and Marie, making them both nervous in different ways, always looking over their shoulders, expecting her to pounce at any moment shouting abuse and throwing punches. My younger siblings and I were a link that would always be there, never letting Dad escape completely from this unwise, youthful alliance.

      One day he received a call from Mum to tell him that Thomas, who was not yet two, had been taken into hospital covered in burns. By that stage Dad must have accepted that Thomas was his because he rushed straight to the hospital. Thomas had been admitted into an intensive care unit, with burns all the way down one side of his body from his head to his waist.

      ‘There was a pan of boiling water on the stove,’ Mum told him when he asked her what had happened. ‘He was sitting on the floor and Larry slipped and knocked the pan all over him.’

      I doubt if Dad believed her story, however convincingly she told it, but there was little he could do to prove she was lying until later, when my oldest half-brother Wally confessed that what had actually happened was that Thomas wouldn’t stop crying and so Mum had thrown him into a bath of scalding water in a fit of temper. Whatever the truth, Thomas was left badly scarred and needed endless skin grafts over the following years. Dad was angry enough when he heard Mum’s own version of the story, wanting to know why she wasn’t watching over such a small baby more carefully. When he found out Wally’s version of events he immediately brought Ellie to live with us at Marie’s, while Thomas stayed on in hospital, struggling for his little life. Dad might not have been as close to Thomas or Ellie as he was to me, but he still didn’t intend to leave them to the mercy of a woman who was capable of doing such things to a defenceless small child.

      Mum, however, wasn’t about to allow him to walk off with her precious Ellie and she was constantly coming round to Marie’s house, banging furiously on the door, screaming abuse and demanding they give her children back, laying into Dad and Marie with her fists whenever she had a chance, bringing in the welfare workers and arguing her case for being allowed to keep her own children rather than handing them over to her husband’s ‘whore’. There was no way she was ever going to give in quietly and go away so in the end Dad was forced to compromise and allow Ellie to go back to her since she had never done her any harm. When Thomas was eventually released from hospital, Mum grabbed him and took him home and there was nothing Dad could do about it. But he wasn’t going to let me go. For a while it looked as if Mum might be going to settle for that and give up picking fights over me, but not for long.

      After the day Mum grabbed me from Aunt Melissa’s, dragged me home and burned my hand on the iron, Dad reported the incident to social services and they duly went to interview Mum. Yet again she managed to convince them that it was Dad who was the violent one, not her, and she was able to show them the bruises where he had punched her when they were struggling over me. She could be incredibly convincing when she wanted to be. It was as though she was two different people: the one who faced the outside world with a sweet smile, and then the monster who erupted once we were behind closed doors. She was brilliant at convincing anyone in authority, such as teachers and social workers, that she was a wonderful mother, struggling bravely on with bringing up her children alone. For them she would put on a wonderful act and anyone who knew her better was too frightened to contradict, allowing her to keep up her respectable façade in the eyes of the outside world.

      I didn’t have any problem about being with Dad all the time, and when I was little his employers were very understanding about having me around the garage, even when I caused trouble – like the time when I let the handbrake off in his Capri while I was locked inside to play. I can clearly remember the horrified look on Dad’s face as the car rolled steadily down towards the main road with him desperately trying to hold it back, calling out to me to pull up the locks so he could get in while I was laughing happily at all the attention, jumping up and down with excitement. I must only have been about three at the time, maybe just four.

      ‘Good boy,’ Dad kept shouting. ‘Open the door! Open the door!’

      It wasn’t till we were out in the road that I realized the danger and by that time it was too late and the car was travelling too fast for me to be able to get the door open in time. People scattered in every direction at the sound of Dad’s shouting and fortunately we managed to get right across the road without hitting any of the passing traffic or pedestrians, the car dragging Dad along with it. We eventually came to a halt against a wall with a hedge on top. The impact sent me flying and my head banged hard against the dashboard. Not wanting to leave me in order to run and get the key, and still unable to persuade me to unlock the door in my dazed state, Dad smashed the window and pulled up the lock himself. When he finally managed to pull me out he hugged me so tightly I could hardly breathe. He was crying from the shock of the whole thing and never even told me off. He probably let me get away with more than he should have, but I certainly wasn’t complaining about that.

      No one in the garage minded that Dad brought me to work – he had been there so long he was pretty much the boss – but it became harder for them to turn a blind eye when Mum started turning up and causing fights, trying to get me back from him, accusing him of kidnapping me, ranting on about his ‘whore’. I’m sure she didn’t actually want me, unless it was to get the benefit payments; she just didn’t want him and Marie to have something that she believed belonged to her. She had heard about the handbrake incident and tried to use it to prove that Dad was being an irresponsible parent by taking me to work with him. She never missed a trick in their on-going war.

      More often than not she would be drunk when she decided to make these visits to the garage, and she would always be spoiling for a physical fight if she could provoke Dad into giving her one. Whenever he saw her lurching in through the doors Dad would shout to the other lads working there, telling them to take me into the office out of harm’s way and we would watch the two of them battling it out through the windows. I already knew that I didn’t like my own mother. I was scared of her and watching her in action through the grimy glass made me all the more certain I wanted to stay with Dad and Marie.

      ‘Come to Mummy,’ she would say, holding her arms out to me as if she expected me to run joyfully into them, but I wouldn’t be able to move, rigid with fear at the very sight of her. Even when I knew Dad was there to protect me I would still pee myself with fright when she started shouting at me. She always seemed to be shouting and screaming, attacking everyone and throwing spanners and other tools around. If she managed to get close enough she would scratch at Dad’s face and eyes as he struggled to restrain her.

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