Free Punished: A mother’s cruelty. A daughter’s survival. A secret that couldn’t be told. by Vanessa Steel Page B

threatening manner. He turned reluctantly and went back into the next room.
    I looked down at the palms of my hands. The skin had gone all white where it had touched the searing heat and neat patterns of the rings had been transferred on to my palms and fingers. I could smell a sweetish smell like meat cooking on a barbecue. My hands felt strangely tight and it was hard to move my fingers. I just stared at them and started shaking.
    ‘That should stop you next time you’re thinking of thieving.’ Mum’s voice was quieter and gentler now, her rage dissipated. ‘I’m doing this for your own good so you don’t end up in jail one day. No daughter of mine is going to be a jailbird.’
    I couldn’t move or speak. I suppose I was in shock. I just stared at my hands.
    ‘You’d better go to bed now,’ Mum said, almost kindly. ‘So long as you learn your lesson from this, we need say no more about it.’
    As I walked slowly up the stairs, my hands were beginning to throb with a dull pain that got worse by the minute. I suppose the nerve endings had been damaged in the initial contact but as feeling returned I began to get very nauseous and dizzy. I crawled into bed, pushing my hands under the cold pillow in a vain attempt to cool them down. It hurt to have anything touching my palms, though, so I rested them on top of the covers and lay very still, very shocked. My teeth were chattering.
    It was obvious to me that Mum had crossed some boundary and I was scared to death. If she could burn my hands like that, what wasn’t she capable of?
    When I closed my eyes, whispering voices came into my head: ‘She shouldn’t have done that’; ‘You’re not safe here’; ‘You’re not going to be able to do your schoolwork tomorrow’; ‘You have to run away’.
    I opened my eyes again because the room was spinning. I felt very cold and shivery, as if I had the flu. I lay on my back, trying to keep as still as possible. I was scared to move in case I was sick on the bed, which I knew would make Mum even madder.
    An hour or so later, Nigel managed to sneak up to see how I was.
    ‘Mum said you touched the cooker. Are you OK?’
    I shook my head very slightly.
    ‘Was it her?’ he asked.
    ‘She did it,’ I whispered. ‘She held my hands down on it.’
    Nigel sat on the edge of the bed and looked at my upturned palms, with the fingers curled into claws. ‘They look really bad, Nessa. It’s all gooey under the skin.’
    I shifted my head to look down. Huge blisters were rising on the whitened areas and oozing pus out the sides. ‘It really hurts.’ A few tears trickled down my cheeks but I didn’t cry properly.
    ‘I’ll try to get help. If Dad comes home, I’ll tell him what happened. Don’t worry.’
    I slipped in and out of a fevered sleep and wakened when the bedroom door opened and Dad came in and switched the light on. He was still wearing his grey outdoor coat so he’d obviously just arrived home. He put a hand on my hot forehead then gave a loud gasp when he saw the state of my swollen, weeping palms.
    ‘For God’s sake! What on earth were you playing at, Lady Jane? You know better than to touch a hot cooker.’
    ‘Mummy did it,’ I said dully, and for once he seemed to believe me.
    He gave a sharp intake of breath and gently picked up one of my hands to look more closely. I winced.
    ‘We’ve got to get this fixed,’ he said, pulling back the bedcovers. ‘Let’s put your slippers and dressing gown on. I’m taking you to Nan Casey’s.’
    It hurt a lot getting my hands into the sleeves of the dressing gown. My arms felt stiff from the shoulders down. Dad was as gentle as possible. He found my pink fluffy slippers and put them on my feet then he picked me up and carried me down the stairs, being very careful not to let anything touch my damaged hands.
    Mum came out of the kitchen and said, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
    ‘I’m taking her to my mother’s. These hands need medical attention.