Free The Step Child by Donna Ford, Linda Watson-Brown Page A

world was perhaps a warning.
    When the day itself came, I was simply up and dressed asnormal, and taken along the road by Helen, with Gordon in his pram. I was excited – but I kept it as quiet as I could. I do remember her giving me a ticking off for skipping as we went along the street. I do remember that she pretty much shoved me through the gates and left me to fend for myself. Other children were there with parents or older siblings. They were trying to look brave, or crying, or casting their eyes around rather bewildered. I was just left to get on with it.
    I had high hopes though. Maybe this was where my normal life would begin; maybe this was where I would become a little girl just like all the others. Not a Barnardo’s kid. Not a stepchild. Just me.
    It never happened.
    I did try. I tried to learn, I tried to play, I tried to make friends. But I was to become labelled, marked by the cruelties and abuses which Helen would be dishing out to me in such force so soon. All around me, adults would be able to close their eyes to the physical marks – the fact that I was so small, so skinny, so hungry, so bruised – but children don’t work like that. They knew there was something else about me. The smell. The look. The attitude. I was an outsider very quickly, and school didn’t become the haven I had hoped for.
    Teachers certainly didn’t save me from the world that was going to suck me in, but they weren’t the only ones. There were other people who should have been looking out for me – but Helen was too quick, too sly, too clever for them. It’s incredible really. This barely educated woman, hardly out of childhood herself, would be able to run rings round the authorities for years. My father was rarely around, and she made sure that he most definitely wasn’t there on any occasion when her words and the reality of the situation I was living in might tell different stories.
    As a child who had been with Barnardo’s for some time, there were obviously some rules and regulations in place. As I havealready said, there were concerns about handing over my half-siblings to my own father, given that he had no biological link to them. Similarly, when I was taken from Haldane House and returned to the Edinburgh flat, I was part of a paper trail which would be punctuated with visits. Staff from the social work department and from Barnardo’s would come to Easter Road at various times to check on my progress and that of Simon and Frances when they arrived. From what I can tell, letters would be sent to my home with a date and time of the proposed meeting – in effect, giving Helen a chance to clear the decks. She knew when my father would be out, or could make sure that he would be. In fact, there are notes from her in my Barnardo’s file acknowledging the planned visit times and stating that, unfortunately, her husband would not be able to attend. Conveniently.
    When Helen knew the Barnardo’s staff were coming, there was always a summit meeting. She would make me stand in front of her and then the warnings would start.
    ‘Do you want to go back to the home?’
    No.
    I didn’t want to be a child without a family again. I just wanted the family I was in to be so much better, so much kinder.
    ‘You’d better tell the truth when they come. Do you know what happens to little girls who tell lies?’
    No.
    But if I was living this hell despite being good, what on earth would happen to me if I deliberately went against Helen? She was turning night into day, black into white. I would be asked questions about how my life with her was – and I was being warned not to tell lies. What lies? I would be lying if I said I was happy. Lying if I said she was nice to me. Lying if I said I was loved and warm and satisfied and cared for. Is that what she meant?
    ‘You know what to do, don’t you? You know?’
    No. No. No.
    I didn’t know what to do. How could I?
    She answered her own question.
    ‘Of course you bloody well do