Helpless
bedroom window, head down, working on a car, and after what seemed like months but was probably barely a couple of weeks, my willpower broke. Out of the house I went and nervously approached him.
    I cleared my throat, hoping he would look up with a smile. But for the first time ever he did not respond with his customary wide smile of greeting. He acted as though he was, if not unaware, then indifferent to my presence. I stood there for a moment feeling that I was being ignored, and then in a tiny voice asked if there was anything I could do to help.
    He raised his head slowly without a flicker of a smile and looked at me dismissively.
    ‘No, Marianne, I don’t think so. You are still a little girl. I thought you were different but you aren’t. I don’t want help from little girls, so run along and play now.’
    I felt something cold in the pit of my stomach that made me tremble.
    All thought of what I had been trying to achieve left my mind. I was scared then, scared that he meant it, for if he was no longer my friend then who did I have?
    ‘I’m not just a little girl,’ I managed to reply as, with head down, I shifted from foot to foot.

    ‘Well, if you are not a little girl who are you then?’ he asked. But I had no answer for that and just hung my head.
    ‘Well, are you my little lady then?’
    ‘Yes,’ I replied, and he smiled at the victory that had taken him such a short time to win.
    That was another boundary pushed to the limit, and another step was taken.
    I once heard a famous actress say in an interview that we have to experience misery to appreciate the times when we find happiness. I think that she got that sentiment wrong. We don’t know how unhappy we are until we experience the opposite emotion. We only feel the need to be loved once we have experienced it and, at eight, I knew I did not want to lose affection from the first person who had shown it to me.
    I had no understanding of what was really happening, that he was watering the seeds of my dependence with his kind words and caresses, nurturing my need for his friendship.
    But it was when I met the man with no legs that the biggest step of my childhood was taken.

Chapter Sixteen
     
     
    I t only took a week for my confusion to return. We were parked in the woodland area, and once again I had done something I did not want to. This time there had been little of the gentle stroking and the cuddles that I liked. Instead his hand had gripped my head and forced it firmly against his chest and my hand had been pushed down into his lap. I did not hear the gentle voice murmuring endearments into my ear but instead the sound of deep grunts that left his mouth as his body stiffened against mine.
    A warm sticky fluid spread under my fingers, then clung to them. A sour smell rose into the air. I held my breath, not wanting to breathe it in.
    He lifted my wet hand up to my mouth, forcing one of my fingers into it.
    ‘Suck, Marianne, you’ll like it,’ he said, watching me closely. My finger tasted salty and the odd smell had come even closer to my nose. I tried to pull it from my mouth and he laughed. For the first time since I had met him I felt his laughter was not with me but at me.

    Those treacherous tears of mine had flooded my eyes, overspilled and trickled down my cheek. My face was turned from his but I could feel the warmth of his body next to me on the car seat, hear his breathing, smell his aftershave and hear his voice.
    ‘Come on, little lady! Don’t be a silly little girl. Come on, look at me.’
    His fingers went under my chin, turned my face towards him and tilted it upwards until his eyes looked into mine.
    ‘Marianne, have you seen your baby brother without his clothes?’
    ‘Yes,’ I whispered.
    ‘Well, what do boys have down there?’ And he pointed to that something that still flopped outside his trousers, that something that he wanted me to hold, that something that I had just seen grow as though it had a life of its

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