Helpless: The true story of a neglected girl betrayed and exploited by the neighbour she trusted. Toni Maguire

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СКАЧАТЬ you,’ I said, grateful not just for the rug but for the unexpected attention. I smiled tentatively at him and received an answering smile back.

      That night when I went upstairs I proudly spread the rug beside my bed, and when I woke in the morning I simply gazed down at it, admiring its warm glow. All I wanted then was for his good temper to last, my mother’s face to continue smiling and for the angry noises never to start again.

      For those were the parents I wanted them to be.

      But time after time I was to be disappointed.

Chapter Four

      I had heard mention of the word ‘school’ and knew that it meant I had to sit in a classroom with other children, listen to a teacher and learn how to read and do sums, but until I was told that I was due to start in a week’s time I had not paid any attention.

      ‘Marianne, you’re not a baby,’ my mother said impatiently when I said I wanted to stay home with her, ‘so please stop acting like one. Anyhow you’ll enjoy it once you get there. You’ll make some little friends and it will be good for you.’

      But I did not see it that way. Apart from a few visits to my father’s relatives, I was not used to mixing with anyone other than my parents. The thought of being away from home made me follow my mother around the house trying to make her change her mind.

      ‘Stop your nonsense, you’re going and that is that,’ she said when I had repeated my protests for the umpteenth time.

      My mother continued to grumble that I knew how busy she was and that I should be grateful that she was going to take and collect me every day, not just put me on a bus. She omitted to say that her reason for taking me on her bicycle was because buses cost money and I was too young to walk the two miles to school alone.

      The day I was dreading, my first day at school, came all too quickly. Apart from having my face and hands washed after breakfast it began the same as any other. A dress I had worn several times was pulled over my head, my feet went into black Wellington boots and my hair was given a cursory brush. It was not until a satchel, bought from the second-hand shop, was placed on my back, and I was lifted onto the small seat behind the saddle of my mother’s bicycle and told to hang on tightly, that I fully accepted that I was on my way to school.

      Feeling every bump of those country lanes, I clung to my mother tightly for that entire journey. Once we arrived at the school she leant her rusty bicycle against the wall and lifted me down. Ignoring the other mothers who stood chatting together in the playground, she walked up to a young woman who, standing with a large notebook in the centre of a group of young children and their mothers, was obviously the teacher in charge.

      ‘Bringing my daughter for her first day,’ my mother said abruptly. ‘Her name’s Marianne.’

      ‘You be good, Marianne – do what your teacher tells you. I’ll be here to collect you later,’ she said to me before turning and walking briskly to her bicycle. I stared after her, knowing her leaving me was the reason I was feeling completely bereft.

      I felt my bottom lip tremble as I saw her peddling away and bit down on it, hoping that my tears would not start. I did not want to look foolish in front of the other children.

      ‘Marianne,’ I heard the teacher say, ‘come and say hello to Jean. It’s her first day too.’

      But as I stood in that playground I was overcome with shyness, so instead of doing what the teacher, who I later found out was called Miss Evans, asked I just looked around the play area with the bewilderment of an isolated only child suddenly faced with a sea of other children for the first time.

      In total there were around twenty children, all of them showing different emotions. Some had tears in their eyes, others stood in small groups clutching their satchels nervously, whilst their mothers, looking almost as tearful as their offspring, whispered final comforting and encouraging words before waving goodbye.

      But although I saw the tears and the woebegone faces that reflected how I also felt, I was far more aware of how those children looked, and they all looked different from me.

      There was not one child dressed as I was. I was very aware of my faded second-hand dress and the cardigan with darns in the elbow – these other children were so clean and shiny they positively gleamed.

      Girls’ hair was held in place by pastel-coloured ribbons, pretty crisp cotton blouses were tucked into darker pleated skirts and shiny leather shoes covered white-socked feet. Even the boys, with their hair freshly cut in short styles, white shirts with the shop creases still evident, knotted ties, miniature blazers and knee-length short trousers, looked band-box fresh.

      I looked down at my own skinny bare legs tucked into Wellington boots, raised a hand to my ribbon-free hair that my mother had cut and which hung jaggedly to just below my ears, and wanted to go home. I knew even as early as that first day that I was not going to like it there and because I was different that I was never going to make friends.

      A bell rang loudly and the teacher showed us how to form something she called a crocodile but was really pairs of children forming a queue. We followed her into an airy classroom where we were seated at scaled-down desks. Miss Evans asked each of us in turn to say our names out loud. She told us that we would do that every morning so that she would know if anyone was missing, and as each name was said she ticked a large book that soon I learnt was called a register.

      Surely she could tell that just by counting us, I thought, but said nothing.

      Next we were each given coloured crayons and sheets of paper and told to draw whatever we wanted. I scribbled lots of wiggly lines, admiring the colours on my sheet.

      Half-way through the morning we were given small bottles of milk and a white waxy straw to drink it through.

      At dinnertime another crocodile was formed and we were walked to the canteen. As soon as the last mouthful was swallowed we were sent outside to play. That first day I stood on the edges of the playground watching the other children playing. I wanted just one of them to come up to me and ask me my name and invite me to join them; but no one did.

      In the afternoon the teacher read us a story. To me it was just words without meaning about things I did not know about. There were no books in our house, just newspapers and the occasional women’s magazine, so ‘telling a story’ was not a concept I understood. Bored, my gaze kept wandering to the window. I saw some of my classmates’ mothers drifting into the playground and standing in small groups chattering to one another. My eyes focused on the road behind them – I was waiting for the familiar figure of my mother to appear.

      The clamour of the bell announcing the end of the school day rang out and as it trailed into silence I saw my mother push her bicycle through the gates and, exactly as I had done that lunchtime, stand apart from the other mothers. They in turn, like their offspring had done to me, paid her no attention.

      ‘All right, Marianne?’ she said when I walked up to her.

      ‘Yes,’ I replied, for something told me to say no more.

      ‘That’s good, then,’ were the only words she spoke before placing me on my seat and peddling away.

      She did not ask me any more questions.

      Neither did my father.

      Maybe СКАЧАТЬ