Before I leave I repeat the words I had inscribed on the teddy bears. To Paul: ‘Goodnight my little angel, love Mummy xx.’ To Jay-Jay: ‘Goodnight my precious baby, love Mummy xx.’
I want them to know that Mummy is with them and that she loves them. When they had needed me most, on the day the monster took them from me, I had not been there.
My babies, if only I had known, I would have thrown myself in front of his knife, offering my life for yours. I promise I would have saved you. But I didn’t know, my babies, I didn’t know.
If only I had, if only …
Chapter 1
Beginnings
‘They would become the perfect prey for the perfect predators’
Ian Stephen, MA, Dip Ed, Dip Ed Psych, clinical and forensic psychologist
June: Did you ever doubt if you were loved? I did. I remember that cold feeling, as if it were yesterday …
Dad was in the kitchen. He was at the cooker. Something was wrong. Why was he making the dinner? Where was mum?
‘Dad?’ I asked.
He didn’t respond.
Something definitely wasn’t right. This tall, strong man at the heart of my life lit up whenever he saw any of his five children. No matter what drama was being enacted in our household, Dad could always be relied on to comfort us with his strong arms and soothe away our troubles in a gentle voice.
But he was silent and I was suddenly afraid. I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t read his eyes, but I knew even by the set of his shoulders that he was burdened by an ineffable sadness.
I had barged in through the door, trailing early evening air and winter cold into the warm kitchen. I was elated. Teenage hormones and the adrenalin rush created by sprinting from school had made me feel quite giddy.
All the way home, my thoughts had danced with the delights of lipstick, boys and David Cassidy. I was madly in love with the American teen heartthrob – heaven forbid, it was the Seventies after all – and all I wanted to do was play my one and only record on the precious stereo Dad had given me for my birthday.
I had sung the words of ‘How Can I Be Sure’in my head on the journey. I longed to reach home, to rush to my room, to languish on my bed and let David’s velvet voice wash over me while I gazed adoringly at his poster on the wall. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
But David and my girlish crush on him were driven from my mind in an instant. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.
I laid down my schoolbooks on the table and slipped into one of the chairs clustered around it. I traced confusion and concern with my finger tips on the Formica surface. I took a deep breath.
‘Dad?’ I said again. ‘What’s wrong? Something’s happened.’
He still wouldn’t turn round, still wouldn’t look at me. He had a spatula in his hand and he was using it to flick over meat in a frying pan.
‘Your mother’s gone,’ he replied in a voice that was weighed down by his obvious sadness.
‘Where?’ I said, rallying for an instant, believing that she must have left early for her beloved bingo hall.
‘She’s just gone,’ he said in the same voice: ‘And she won’t be coming back. Not this time.’
He turned to me now and the pain was etched in his face. I felt anger.
‘I hate her!’ I said.
‘Don’t!’ he said: ‘Don’t say that about your mum … ever!’
‘But Dad!’
‘Dad nothing. She’s your mum. She always will be.’
Those would be the last words Dad would ever speak to me, or any of us, about Mum. He never uttered a bad word about the woman. I was about to reply but my rancour was stilled by faces at the door – my brothers and sister.
‘June,’ Dad went on: ‘You’re a big girl now, the oldest, and I’m relying on you to help me with the others. We’re a family, we’ll get through this together, you wait and see.’
Dad’s words had the same effect as always. I was soothed. I extended my arms to Roger, Jim, Linda and Gordon, who was little more than a tot. They filed into the kitchen, a deserted, sheepish little bunch seeking comfort and reassurance.
I tousled Gordon’s hair, lifting him onto the chair as the others took their places around the table. Dad hoisted the pan from the cooker and said: ‘The tea’s ready.’
I had grown up in an instant. My childhood had become as much of a dream as my love affair with David Cassidy. I didn’t know it then but I was taking my first steps on a journey into a future in which my personal sense of unworthiness would convince me that I did not deserve to be happy. I was, in a sense, being trained to put up with less, to accept rejection as the norm.
Giselle: I never doubted for a second that I was loved.
‘Giselle!’
My mother’s disembodied voice. Trying her best to sound angry and failing. My dinner must be ready.
‘I’m coming, Ma!’ I shouted from the bedroom.
I turned back to the mirror. For the thousandth time I was appraising my looks, and I hated what I saw. Who could love me? I stood out like a sore thumb in my class at school. All of the other girls were tall, pretty or blonde, or all three. Here I was, aged 13; short, gap-toothed, red-haired and covered in freckles. Not a pretty sight, I thought, especially when accompanied by a crippling shyness that could make me blush to the roots of my hair if someone so much as spoke my name.
‘Gi-selle!’
This time there was an edge in Ma’s voice, which suggested she was running out of patience. I wasn’t unduly worried. Ma’s bark was far more ferocious than her bite. In fact, she didn’t have a bite. She was a softie, a sweetheart, who was loved by all. That’s not to say she was a pushover, because she wasn’t. But to this day, when I conjure her up in my mind’s eye, I picture a woman with a smile on her face. When my mother Jean was alive, it took a lot to switch off that smile.
‘Gi-se-lllle!’
I realised suddenly that the voice was closer than it should be.
‘Ma?’ I said, as she appeared at the bedroom door.
She wore an expression of mock anger, her brow furrowed in a feeble attempt to look stern. I almost laughed, but I didn’t. This was a game we played. The rules were simple. She would look angry. I would look penitent. Anger wasn’t in Mum’s nature and I had never known a reason to fear her or my big, bluff father, who, when it came to his family – and his youngest daughter – had an awesome bark but even less of a bite.
‘You looking in that mirror, again? You’ll wear it out!’ she said.
‘Look at me, Ma! Red hair and freckles! God hates me!’
‘But I love you, darlin’. C’mon, you’re beautiful,’ she said, enfolding me in her arms.
‘I’m not! I’m not! I’m not like the other lassies. They’re pretty and tall, not a wee carrot-head like me!’ I cried.
‘I’ve seen the lassies in your class,’ she said. ‘They all look the same. You’re special. None of them can hold a candle to you. You’re a lot prettier than they are. You wait and see. When they grow up they’ll all wish they looked like you.’
All lies, of course, but beautiful lies, spoken by a kind woman who for all of her life would live in the confines of a small, safe world, the boundaries of which extended no further than her home and her family.