The Blue Room

When I was about seven or so I moved upstairs, away from the yellow room with my little sister. My parents let me pick the carpet and the colour for the walls and I chose robin egg blue for both. They took out the top bunk bed, and put a skylight in, and I picked the blinds – white with a pale green grapevine pattern that made me think of the grapes in the tiny raised swimming pool at nanny and granddad's. In summer we would sometimes bring an inflatable boat and row the two strokes from one end to the other and back again, and the sun filtered through the roof and the vines and our voices echoed in the small space.

They took the top bunk out when I moved in, but the steps remained – wooden sides painted a thick white, and carpeted steps up to the top of the shelves. There were two shelves and a hollowed out upside down triangle cubby hole that I filled with stuffed animals. The shelves were thick and wooden and white as well, more part of the wall than furniture – they'd been constructed out of the space where a false wall had been, and made thick enough to match, and several feet deep, so I could crawl onto them, high up in the corner of my room, if I wanted. To start with I did, they were part of my playspace, although it hurt my head when I bumped it on the artex ceiling. I hated that spiky texture and became weirdly afraid of it – I hated to touch it at all, and it had a sense of evil to me that in retrospect seems an odd quality for a ceiling to have. After a while I converted the top shelf into a museum, placed all my treasures there and arranged them into sections and labelled them. I loved science and history back then, loved the long latin words and the ordered sections and sub-sections, the stories and explanations, the history. Age was magic to me, anything older than I was was an artefact, a relic, it had weight and importance. I loved the hidden backgrounds behind everything, the idea that any stone or shell I might find had a story, it had a name and relatives and a derivation. I looked for fossils everywhere. The carpark by the lake where we fed the ducks had slate shingle that occasionally offered up a tiny fossil, and every time we parked there I would dawdle and examine them for treasure.

Beneath the steps was a little alcove where I put the books I was in the middle of reading, where they could easily be picked up and discarded from bed. I frequently had five or six books on the og at the same time, and books I'd recently finished would pile up there as well, waiting for me to return them to the bookcase. I kept Growler there too. He was the teddy bear my nanny gave me as a birth present, that growled when you tipped him on his belly. His fur was coarse and rough now, bare in places, and he'd become misshapen from years of hugging, but he was my most treasured possession. I used to pretend he was my twin, in my mind he came into existence the day I was born, so he had to be my twin. I read a lot of stories with twins in, and I wanted one. A twin was someone closer to you than anyone, that would always be close to you, that understood you and you understood them. With a twin you could never be alone. I talked to Growler in my mind as well as aloud – it didn't make much difference. I knew he wasn't really alive but somehow it felt like blasphemy to acknowledge it, and I treated him with respect and care – I couldn't leave him facedown because how would he breathe? I would acknowledge to myself that I knew he didn't breathe, but it was somehow sacrosanct, a little pretence that was important to maintain. I told Growler everything, and when I felt sad sometimes I would put my face into his fur and breathe deeply, because he somehow still smelled of my Nanny's house. I know he couldn't possibly have really done so, he probably wasn't even in their house for more than a couple of weeks at most, and he'd been in my possession for years. But somehow the smell of Growler was the smell of my Nanny's house to me, so potently, and I saved it for when I needed it. I was afraid I could use it up if I sniffed it too much, that the smell would go away and I would lose that last connection to my (now dead) Nanny.

I remember after my dad hit me and I was allowed to go to my room to cry, P would follow shortly after, and check where he'd hit me – usually the bum – to see how bad the mark was. It never bruised, but for several minutes afterwards there would be a bright red handprint wherever he'd smacked me. It was a kind of ritual, and I had this impression that there was a line, some measure of how bad it was that legally he wasn't allowed to cross, how long the mark was allowed to last, or how bad it was allowed to be, and that was what P was looking for. Patiently waiting for evidence that he'd gone too far and we could do something. And she would hug me. And sometimes she'd tell me off for whatever I'd done and sometimes she'd have sympathy, but either way I'd know he shouldn't have hit me, and that was why she was there. So I'd know it wasn't okay.

I remember her coming into my room, years later, right before I moved to the orange room. She was at college by then, and she'd been to the Citizen's Advice Bureau to find out if she could take me and S with her if she left home, if we agreed to come. She wanted to know if I would want to. I think I said yes. I remember telling her I hated our parents, and her being surprised. She told me she hated dad, but not mum. And I felt guilty, because I didn't really hate mum either, and I wasn't sure why I'd said it, but didn't feel like I could take it back, because then she'd think I'd just said it to impress her. Maybe I had, a little. Not consciously. But I was angry and hurting, and I did hate dad, and I was angry at mum because she didn't stop him, and I wanted P to know I was on her side. I wanted out, and I wanted her to think I was grown up enough to make that decision. She didn't want to push me into it at all. I remember she seemed surprised that I felt able to say it already, that I hated him, and she said something about how at my age she'd still been confused about it all, it had taken her a long time to realize she hated him. She seemed impressed that I had already figured it out.

It never happened, of course. Whatever the latest crisis was settled down, and P left for university and I stayed until it was my turn to go. He stopped hitting me not long after I moved to the yellow room (although he didn't stop threatening me).

I remember the day I realized it could end. My mother was in hospital – I don't remember what for this time, she had all sorts of medical problems. I think it might have been for her bladder this time, I remember her carrying around a catheter bag. We were all there I think, although I don't remember S. There was some kind of row, I think dad was mean to mum, and A and P took mum's side. And my dad threatened to hit them, and they told him if he laid a finger on them they were calling the police, that they were over 16 now and so it was assault. And he didn't hit them. There was bluster and shouting and we went back to the car. And I remember looking at them and realizing they had power now, they could stop him hitting them. And so when I was 16 I would get the same power.

My dad hit me less once I was in secondary school. It still happened sometimes, I remember my best friend coming over once, and me her and my dad were messing around with a ball, and me and dad both went for the ball at the same time and our heads collided. It was an accident, but my dad's immediate reaction was to blame me, so he hit me. And then we stopped playing with the ball, and my friend looked really uncomfortable. After that she didn't come round again, and told me it was because my dad scared her. I was mad at him for that, but I preferred going to her house anyway, so we did that instead.

I don't know why I focus on the hitting all the time when I talk about my dad being abusive. It was only one part of it, he didn't even hit us that hard really, and it was mostly just on the arse. Sometimes he'd hit us round the head, but mum didn't like it when he did that, she thought we were going to get brain damage or something. I'm fuzzy on the details, I just remember that there was some medical reason she didn't think he should hit us round the head.

It was more the fear. The hitting us was more of a warning, that he could always hit harder. He was a big man, an athlete, although he got pretty fat for a lot of my childhood as well. I have always been terrified of my father. It used to be a protective kind of fear as well, knowledge that he could always protect us, because no one could ever be bigger or scarier than our dad. But mostly it was just fear of him, knowledge that no one could ever protect us from him, either, because no one could ever be bigger or scarier than our dad.

I remember when I was little – I must have been about five or six, I was walking to school with my mum and we were going to the front entrance, which means Reception or Year 1 – realizing that I must be a bad girl. Getting hit was a common occurrence when I was in first school – I remember figuring out that it happened about once a day, but I don't know how accurate that is, my memory has always been dreadful, and I could well have been extrapolating from a particularly bad week. I just don't know. But it was common. And I knew that I only got hit if I was naughty. So I must be naughty a lot. But I didn't mean to be naughty. I didn't remember ever deciding to be naughty. I realized that I was just a bad person fundamentally. I must deserve it, or they wouldn't do it. I didn't have friends at school, and my sisters told me all the time how I was an annoying little brat, and my parents hit me all the time because I was naughty. I must just be a bad person. A pathetic, annoying little shit.

Later on I would challenge the assumption that I deserved it. I became aware it was maybe not okay, but at the same time I think that underlying knowledge that I basically suck has lingered and festered and swells up every time I get depressed. I still often feel grateful and surprised that people actually like me, and I still often expect them to change their mind once they actually get to know me. It's better than it was, I think. Having some friends that have stuck around for years has helped a lot. But that sneaky voice still turns up whenever I'm crazy, telling me I'm disgusting and pathetic and Bad. That I'm a failure and I always will be. That no one could possibly like me if they really knew who I was. I've worked hard on fighting that voice, and I think for a while I was winning, before everything went to shit again.   I often think I'm beating it and then I find it underlying things that I didn't even realize were there. Maybe I'm making progress again though.