Living With Evil Read Free

business but ours’. I wondered if she put the black blankets up because really she didn’t want people to look in. ‘Don’t you go telling anyone what goes on in our house,’ she’d warn. ‘I don’t want anyone poking their nose in our business, do you hear?’
     
    I knew she felt strongly about this, because usually she gave me a clout round the ear to emphasize her point. ‘Keep your mouth shut, you little bitch. Don’t answer the door. Don’t let anyone in, d’you hear me?’
     
    The hall window was the ‘strictest’ window of all in the house, and Mammy was always going on about it.
     
    ‘Don’t you dare move that blanket, you little cow!’ she warned me, time and time again, raising her hand to show me what I would get if I disobeyed her.
     
    Mammy only allowed us to have one lightbulb in the house, and that was usually used in the living room. I hated going to the toilet at night, not just because I was scared of spiders crawling up my ankles outside in the dark, but because I was terrified of picking my way through the pitch-black house and into the backyard to use it.
     
    Mammy would sometimes put extra lightbulbs in if one of her relatives visited, but she took them out as soon as they left. It made me think that it couldn’t be right to keep the house in darkness - so why did she do it? Why didn’t she want us to see at night?
     
    She told me it was because we couldn’t afford lightbulbs, but she said it with an odd look on her face, which made me think it wasn’t true. I knew we could afford cigarettes and alcohol, because we always had lots of Mammy’s favourite drinks, and she and Daddy smoked sixty cigarettes each a day. Lightbulbs cost less than cigarettes, didn’t they? I didn’t think we could be that poor.
     
    The front bedroom of the house was the most stifling room of all, because of the smell from the toilet bucket and the stink of stale smoke and sweat that always hung in the air. Every night I felt as if I was trapped there all alone, even when I wasn’t.
     
    There were always other kids in the house. I already had five older siblings when I was born in October 1961, but I always felt like the odd one out, the one who didn’t fit in, and was on my own.
     
    My oldest brother, Joe, lived round the corner with Granny, and my three big sisters were much more grown-up than me. Esther was nearly eight years older, Margaret six years older, and Catherine was almost five by the time I was born.
     
    My other brother, Peter, was just two years older than me, but he always acted really grown up and had a reputation for being tough and streetwise. Mammy adored him. I looked up to Peter and wanted him to like me. I felt safe when I was with him, because everybody in the neighbourhood thought he was ‘hard’. He seemed to carry this reputation like a badge of honour. It was almost as if, the worse he behaved, the more Mammy protected, loved and cherished him.
     
    With me, she was totally different. She never said a kind word to me or gave me a cuddle, and she regularly started fights and beat me.
     
    ‘Cynthia, will you empty the bucket now!’ she said to me one day. It was 4.30 p.m. I’d already done the washing-up after school and been to the shop for her cigarettes, while she had just got out of bed after another late night. That was her routine every single day.
     
    ‘I won’t be a minute, Mammy,’ I shouted. My stomach turned over at the thought of emptying that toilet bucket, but it was one of the many chores I had to do, or else. Mammy kept an old jam jar by her bed that she’d spit and cough phlegm into, and it would be my job to empty that out too. I loathed it.
     
    Peter was nowhere to be seen, and my big sisters were out, as usual. I felt like the baby stuck at home with Mammy doing the chores and being shouted at, smacked and hit, however hard I worked.
     
    ‘Get up here now, you lazy bitch,’ Mammy screamed again. ‘The bucket needs emptying right