Free Anne's Song by Anne Nolan

confidently in tune which is why we all had our own solo spots in the act. Some fans would come to every single one of our performances and a few of them became our friends. I particularly remember a couple called Marlene and Graham Collins who'd often help by driving us home with our stage wear at the end of an evening. When I was a bit older, they'd also take me all over the country to watch football matches, one of my favourite pursuits.
    I lapped it all up, loving the warmth of the applause, but, even so, I felt torn in two. Because I was in my teens, I longed to be with my friends, going to discos, staying over and having girlie nights. So, much as I enjoyed performing, I resented it, too. I hated missing out on all the normal things a teenager enjoys doing and that included going out with boys. My friends were getting boyfriends; I was singing. I'd send Jacqui postcards from everywhere we went if we were performing away from Blackpool. We'd be working sometimes as many as five nights a week, so it was very hard to keep our friendship going.
    At the same time, Dad was becoming obsessive if he caught us even looking at a boy in the audience. It started when I was thirteen, so Denise can only have been twelve and Maureen ten or eleven. Just one glance from any of us in the direction of a boy while we were performing and he'd be on at us when we came off stage. His reaction was always the same.
    'I saw you flirting with that boy,' he'd say. 'Still, if you want to act like a little slut, that's up to you.' He'd be sneering, sarcastic rather than shouting the odds.
    I ignored him, deliberately refusing to answer back, but that didn't stop me thinking that perhaps he truly was mad. Did he seriously imagine that his daughters were going to remain spinsters until they died? Or was it that he somehow wanted all of us for himself? The result of this irrational behaviour, of course, was to make me as secretive as I knew how. If I saw a boy I liked the look of. or ever got chatting to one, my father would be the last person on earth I'd talk to about it.
    It sickens me to this day to think that he was telling me I was making myself look cheap by, at the most, glancing at a boy, when he'd done the things he'd done to me. Even though I'd shown him in the most forceful way I knew how that I didn't want him touching me or getting anywhere near me again, he'd still try it on when I was least expecting it. I was in the kitchen in Waterloo Road on one occasion – I must have been fifteen by now – filling the teapot with boiling water from the kettle just before we were due to leave for another singing engagement. Dad came into the room, walked up behind me and reached out in an attempt to touch my breasts.
    I wheeled round on him. 'Go away!' I shouted. 'Leave me alone.'
    He laughed, in a way, I think, that was meant to make me believe he was just having a bit of fun. 'I've told you,' I said, 'just go away.' But he made another lunge at me. I had the teapot in one hand, the kettle in the other. As I jumped and tried to push him away, the boiling water spilt all over my hand. My piercing scream brought my mother running into the kitchen from the lounge to discover me shocked and trying to stifle my sobs from the pain.
    'What on earth's going on?' she asked, crossing the room to see why I was so distressed.
    'Dad was fooling around,' I said, 'and he knocked my arm when I was filling the teapot with boiling water.' Even though my hand really hurt, my instinctive reaction had been to cover up for my father. He was the picture of innocence, of course. He butted in and pretended that it had all been no more than a bit of horseplay and that I didn't seem able to take a joke.
    What I should have said was that Dad had been trying to fondle my breasts. But I didn't. This was an opportunity for me to tell my mother everything that had happened between my father and me, but, once again, I didn't speak up and tell the truth. In a way I was covering