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

me. I had a stepbrother who was turning into a pawn for his mother. There was no sign that my half-brother and half-sister were going to be arriving any time soon. I was always cold, always hungry. I was never hugged,never loved. I was already learning degradation and meaningless punishment for imaginary transgressions that were never explained.
    I was home.

Chapter Four
     

     
T HE L ITTLE W ITCH
     
1964–1965
     
    DESPITE THE AWFUL THINGS Helen was already doing to me, that first summer at Easter Road is one of the few times I remember having happy moments. A lot of the early days – before the recess, before the beatings – were spent being introduced to other members of the family, particularly on my Dad’s side. These family visits were the only time I ever saw him properly – the rest of our moments together were fleeting, when he was rushing out to work, or listening to Helen’s criticisms of me. However, when we went to see his family, I got to be with him for much longer. I was carted around, shown off, and that seemed much more in line with what I had expected to happen when I first left Barnardo’s.
    I don’t know what to make of those relatives now. There were lots of them – the Fords were a sprawling bunch – but for all their friendliness, they were never really there for me. They saw me come back into the family, they knew my history – and that was enough. These people flit through my memory now as characters in a play, a play that is my life, but they’re just walk-on parts – and perhaps that’s how I appeared to them as well. I was just wee Donna, Don’s daughter, the one who should be so very grateful to that nice young lassie Helen for taking her back in when my own evil mother had deserted her.
    Uncle George and Auntie Valerie were two of the first I met. They lived in a ‘nice house’ in Clermiston, on the north-west side of the city. Edinburgh, like all other places I suppose, was very clear in its delineation of what constituted ‘nice’ people and ‘nice’ places. Cleanliness and not bothering others had a lot to do with it, but your address and the proximity of green spaces and fewer pubs really got a family up a few notches. George was one of my Dad’s brothers. I remember he was older and greyer than Don. He wore glasses and always had a very serious air about him, as if he was permanently worried about something he couldn’t voice. He and his wife had two children – Gordon and little Valerie – and, to me, they ticked all the boxes: a proper family with Mum, Dad and kids who weren’t sent to a home.
    Uncle Alex was very different. My main memory of him is of a man who had a great sense of fun and an air of mischief about him. He was married and had children too, but it is Alex himself – not as a Dad or a husband but as an individual – who is burned in my mind. He was one of those people who makes everyone smile just by being there, a real joker. Others were always happy to see him, always laughing when he was around. Most surprisingly for me, my Dad changed when he was with that brother. From always seeming weary, and carrying the burdens of the world, he became a happy young man who would go out and enjoy a beer, have a joke, be normal . Our home life made my Dad miserable, even I could see that. Helen was always shouting at him or narking about me. We never had enough money, so she wanted him to do as much overtime or shift work as possible – of course, that also helped her in that he wasn’t around to see how she treated me. She moaned that she couldn’t afford to buy the things she wanted, that we had less nice stuff in the house than other people, that she didn’t have the clothes all her friends could parade about in. This confused me because Helen did always seem to get what she wanted. When we went to the local shops, she generally had enough money for a lipstickor something sparkly, but, to my Dad, she constantly pleaded poverty. He must have been