sides of my throat between his thick, gnarly fingers. He would stare at me as I struggled for breath, and a terrifying panic would overwhelm me. Spots of light would dart across my vision. When I was smaller, I used to think these flashes of light were fairies, glimpsed infrequently in our world, but I think then I understood they weren’t fairies at all, and I used to dread seeing them. There would be a strange smile across Uncle Peter’s face as I fought to breathe and I wondered if one day he would just forget to let go, and would kill me by accident.
It was worse when he was really drunk, it would take longer. That’s when I was the most scared by the choking. He would squeeze until I began to scratch at his arms with my nails, trying to dig into those greasy, hairy arms. Then he’d stop squeezing and stroke my hair as he forced his brutish penis into me. For a while I thought about killing myself, or running away, but I didn’t know where to go, I knew I wouldn’t survive on my own. And I didn’t want to leave Mum with him, I was sure he would kill her.
But suddenly it all stopped. It stopped because Uncle Peter had a nasty accident. It was a few days after my twelfth birthday. Mum had gone out to see her sister to do some shopping or gossiping or both, I wasn’t sure. Maybe she just wanted to get out of the house. As she left and the front door slammed, I spotted a nasty glint in Uncle Peter’s eye. I had gone up to my bedroom and clenched my eyes shut.
He was at the top of the stairs. They were very steep stairs, they wouldn’t be allowed to build stairs like that in houses anymore. Not safe at all, they wouldn’t meet the health and safety regulations these days. Apparently, he lost his footing and tumbled awkwardly. It was me who called the police. They came really quick too, they did in those days, before they got bogged down in bureaucracy and paperwork. There were two of them and they arrived at the same time as the ambulance. The policewoman sat down next to me on our sofa – it was an orange, velour sofa, worn and threadbare – and she put her arm around me, and told me I was very brave, and that I had done really well to make the emergency call. When my mother came home, I heard the policeman speaking to her, even though his voice was very low. I had good hearing, I think it was honed through practice. The policeman told Mum that Uncle Peter had had a bad accident, ‘them are dangerous stairs, easy to trip, and sorry love, but I think he’d had a drink too, I really am sorry love, yes you best go to your daughter, love, she’s been really brave, must have been a real shock for the little’un ’, and then I heard one of the ambulance men whisper to the policeman that it looked like Uncle Peter’s head had caught the banisters, and his neck had been broken. ‘It would have been quick, he wouldn’t have felt a thing’, the ambulance man had said, but I remember thinking that that was unlikely, if you smash your head and break your neck, it has to hurt a lot, even if it is only for a split second.
I never told Mum about Uncle Peter and the abuse. I never told anyone. I didn’t see the point. It was too late. Uncle Peter took a piece of me that I could never get back, no matter how much talking was done, and he was dead. I didn’t want to bring it all up, it didn’t seem fair to Mum.
I have often wondered since if Mum knew what was going on or, at least, suspected what was happening, but I could never bring myself to ask her. And I just get worked up now if I think too much about it, I mean, I was just a young girl, I should have been able to count on my Mum, there’s no fucking way on earth that should have happened, I was just a fucking kid...
Mum died a few years later, there was only so much alcohol and cigarettes her body could take. I was sent to live with an Auntie that I had never even