Free A Fucked Up Life in Books by Anonymous Page A

fucking hate him, I hate him so much. How dare he say I have a problem?’
    Mum: ‘If he comes round here I’ll tell him where to go.’
    Friend: ‘I know you will, I know you will. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t picked me up. That cell they had me in was horrible. Have you been in one? Horrible.’
    I stopped what I was doing and went into the other room. Through clouds of smoke they were both sat there. I asked the Friend again who she was, and why she was there. My Mum answered,
    ‘Her fucking husband beat her up. The fucking prick. And then he rang the police and they chucked her in a cell and I had to go and fetch her. The fucking cunts.’
    I went back into the kitchen, brought food through and put it in front of them both. They ate it. I went upstairs and began to read a book, a book that Mum had bought me a couple of years back,
Wild Swans
. She was drunk when she gave me it and muttered some guff about family and women and love and a lot of other things that I have, over the years, learned to almost completely block my brain from taking in as the words fall from her mouth.
    So I sat upstairs reading, waiting until I had to do something else which would probably be either help Mum to bed because she’d drank too much, or kick this woman out. I assumed it would be the latter.
    I must’ve been up there about half an hour there was a knock at the door. As soon as the knock sounded both Mum and her Friend started screaming to me: ‘Did you lock the door, did you lock the FUCKING DOOR?’
    I went downstairs. Of course I’d locked the door. Mum had this habit of wandering off, so I’d always lock her in when I was there. I turned to see that they had shut the door through to the living room and were now waiting, silently. I opened the door. A rather large man was stood there.
    Man: ‘Is ___ here?’
    Me: ‘Are you ___?’
    Man: ‘Yes’
    Me: ‘I’m ___, ___’s daughter. ___ is here, but I’m not letting you in because this is my Mum’s house, so you’ll have to leave.’
    The man looked sad. He didn’t argue with me, he didn’t try to push past me. He just said, ‘I didn’t hit her.’
    I closed and locked the door. As soon as they heard me put the chain on they both sprang from the living room.
    ‘That fucking prick, I can’t believe he came here, what the fuck am I doing to do? How does he know where I am?’
    I took them both into the living room, and told them to be quiet. Did they want me to call the police? No, we don’t want you to call the police. Then stay here, I told them. I won’t let him in.
    I sat downstairs with them then. The continued to drink, and suddenly, Mum’s friend turned to Mum and said:
    ‘Remember when you fucked ___?’
    Mum looked at me, then looked back at her friend.
    ‘I did not fuck him,’ she said to me.
    ‘You did, you lying bitch!’ screeched her friend. ‘You said he was inside you on the sofa, here, on the sofa and you fucked him and then you pushed him off you.’
    My Mum went for her. I went for my Mum. I’m small, but she is smaller and I pulled her off easily.
    They were screaming at each other. I took Mum into the conservatory and asked her again who this fucking woman was.
    ‘I met her at the pub.’
    Great.
    There was a sudden bang and we turned around to see Mum’s friend making a quick exit, carrying 3 bottles of dry white and forty Superkings Lights.
    ‘THAT FUCKING BITCH HAS TAKEN MY WINE AND FAGS!’ Mum screamed, ‘RIGHT, I AM RINGING THE POLICE.’
    She rang the police. When they showed up and I answered the door, the man that I had spoken to earlier was back in his car, sitting outside the house. My Mum saw him. She invited him in.
    Both her and this man talked to the police about Mum’s Friend. She was an alcoholic. She’d been arrested because she was beating up her husband and threatening him and he didn’t know what to do. My Mum sat there the whole time telling him, ‘I know you didn’t hit her, I know