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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СКАЧАТЬ lived nearby, and get her to come and sort Mum out for him. Aunt Melissa loved my dad, just as everyone did, and would do anything to protect her little brother. She would come charging down the street and the two women would have the most colossal fights outside on the garage forecourt, pulling one another around by the hair, slapping and kicking with all their strength. Aunt Melissa would always win so after a while Mum started to run away as soon as she saw her coming, diving into a waiting car that one of her drinking buddies from the pub would have brought her over in, the driver revving away like a bank robber on the run. I think Mum enjoyed the drama of it as much as anything else.

      The harassment was continuous, with Mum endlessly ringing the house and the garage as well as turning up looking for fights. She used to scratch the paintwork of Dad’s car and smash Marie’s windows with bricks, trying everything she could think of in her campaign of hate and revenge. Eventually it became too much and Graeme, the garage owner, had to tell Dad that the constant scenes with Mum had to stop because they were starting to upset customers and interrupt business. He couldn’t allow them to go on if it was making customers too nervous to come in. He called one evening and asked Dad to meet him the next day for a chat about what they should do. That night Marie and Dad discussed the situation.

      ‘It’s not good for Joe to have to keep witnessing these scenes,’ she said. ‘You need to leave him at home with me. He’s five years old and he’ll be starting school soon enough – I can just keep an eye on him till then.’

      ‘No, no,’ Dad was adamant. ‘Lesley’ll be round here to get him if I do that. He likes coming down the garage anyway.’

      It was brave of Marie to offer to look after me because she was as scared of Mum’s violence as everyone else was, apart from Aunt Melissa. Mum was a tough woman, who was able and willing to hit hard. She was capable of knocking grown men out with a single punch, let alone a petite woman like Marie. Marie and Dad talked about it endlessly that night and eventually he agreed that he should at least leave me at home with her the next day while he went in to discuss with Graeme what they were going to do about the situation.

      So I stayed with Marie the next morning and Dad came back at lunchtime to get his tools. He always had his own special set of tools that he guarded with his life and wouldn’t let anyone else touch, not even his mates at the garage.

      ‘I’ve told Graeme I’ll get a court order to keep her away from the garage,’ he said. ‘But he thinks that if Joe doesn’t come to the garage for a bit that will mean she’ll stay away too.’

      I was standing listening to them as he collected up his tools and went towards the door. He glanced back at me.

      ‘Do you want to come to work with your dad?’ he asked with a wink.

      ‘No,’ Marie interrupted. ‘What would Graeme say if he found out?’

      ‘Graeme’s not there this afternoon,’ he wheedled. ‘He’s all right. Just one more time. It won’t hurt him.’

      ‘I’m not happy about this, William,’ Marie protested. ‘You don’t want to risk losing your job.’

      ‘It’ll never come to that,’ Dad insisted, so Marie gave in and let me go.

      That was an afternoon I’ll never forget as long as I live, the afternoon my life changed for ever. I can remember every single detail of every little thing that happened that day, because the details are etched on my brain and thirty years on I still relive them in my nightmares. As I slipped my hand inside Dad’s big fingers and walked out to the car that lunchtime, I had no idea that life as I knew it was about to come to a brutal end.

Chapter Three Inferno

      It was a cold, windy day in February. Dad and I had just driven up to the garage and parked on the grass verge when one of the other mechanics, a good friend of Dad’s called Derek, waved him over to a car that was up on one of the ramps.

      ‘Can you smell petrol, William?’ Derek asked. ‘I’ve looked all over but I can’t find where it’s coming from.’

      ‘You get back in the car,’ Dad said to me. ‘This’ll only take a minute.’

      I would rather have helped him with his job, but I didn’t bother to ask because I knew he would say no, and I knew he would come back for me as soon as he had sorted out the problem. He’d explained to me lots of times how car engines were dangerous things and he couldn’t risk having me messing around with them unless he was able to watch me all the time. There weren’t many things Dad insisted on when he was with me, but that was one of them.

      He turned the key in the lock of the Ford Capri and I watched through the windscreen as he went over with Derek to examine the damaged engine. I didn’t mind waiting. I loved being at the garage with Dad, even though he had told me this might be the last time we could do it for a while because of all the trouble Mum had been causing for him.

      I sat behind the steering wheel in his driving seat and rattled the gear stick around, imitating the movements I’d seen him make when he was driving. I idolized him and wanted to be like him in every way possible. I wasn’t worried about the locked car doors because I knew perfectly well how to open them if I wanted to. Dad had explained it to me very carefully after that time I let the handbrake off. But I wouldn’t have disobeyed him because I respected him completely. If he said I was to stay there then that was what I would do. He had never had to raise his hand to me in my whole life because I never gave him cause to. I would have followed him to the ends of the earth and never questioned a single thing he told me to do.

      Through the windscreen I watched Dad lying down on the greasy garage floor in his overalls like I’d seen him do a hundred times before and sliding under the car to see if he could spot where the petrol was leaking from.

      It was just another normal day at work for all of them. I heard the phone in the office ringing, the giant bell in the workshop going off like a fire alarm to make sure that it could always be heard above the revving of engines and the clanking of tools. Derek went into the office to answer it.

      ‘Dad,’ I shouted out through the crack in the window, knowing exactly what his answer would be even before I asked the question, ‘can I come under the car with you?’

      ‘No,’ he shouted back, as I knew he would. ‘You stay there. I won’t be a minute.’

      As I went back to playing with the gear stick and steering wheel I saw a customer coming out of the waiting room with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He had the collar of his jacket turned up against the cold. I didn’t really know what petrol was; it had always looked just like water to me whenever I’d seen it – water with a funny smell. So I didn’t think anything of it as I watched the man casually flick his fag end towards the main door of the garage, where the wind picked it up and bounced it back across the floor, making the still-burning tip glow fiercely.

      One minute there was nothing happening, everything continuing as normal, and the next there were huge orange-red flames roaring up around the car that Dad was lying under. I could see his silhouette in the middle of the inferno wriggling its way out and rising through the flames and I started to scream for him, my little boy’s voice trapped inside the car just yards away while the fire roared around him outside.

      ‘Dad! Dad!’

      An explosion lifted the car he had been under into the air and flipped it onto its side, like a special effect from some action film or television СКАЧАТЬ