I Know What You Are: Part 1 of 3: The true story of a lonely little girl abused by those she trusted most. Jane Smith

floor, Dan’s alcoholism began to get really bad. Even when he was working, he must have struggled to pay the bills for all of us, plus whatever he spent on alcohol for himself and weed for him and Mum. Things got even tighter when he started turning up at building jobs drunk at 9 o’clock in the morning and getting sent home. Eventually, when he stopped working altogether, he would sit around in the park all day, drinking with the other alcoholics who went there to while away their jobless hours.

      Then, one day, Dan’s kids simply disappeared. I didn’t know what had happened to them: one minute they were there, teasing or tolerating me; the next minute they had gone. It wasn’t until much later that I found out they had been taken into care. Apparently, after moving on from using me as a decoy for their shoplifting exploits, the two boys had begun to get involved in more serious forms of petty crime. Then one of my stepsisters got an infection and was taken to hospital, where she was flagged up as ‘at risk’.

      There were lots of things that didn’t make sense to me at that time – and there are many things that still don’t. But although I might not have understood what being taken into care meant, it would have been better if someone had given me some kind of explanation rather than none at all. As it was, the sudden, mystifying disappearance of my four stepsiblings was just one more of the many incidents that occurred during my young life that made me feel anxious and insecure.