Книга - The Nipper: The heartbreaking true story of a little boy and his violent childhood in working-class Dundee

The Nipper: The heartbreaking true story of a little boy and his violent childhood in working-class Dundee
Charlie Mitchell


Charlie's earliest memory at two and a half was listening to his dad batter his latest girlfriend in their Scottish tenement flat. Beaten and tortured by a violent alcoholic father in 70s' poverty-stricken Dundee, Charlie's early life was one of poverty and misery, but at least he had his best friend Bonnie a German shepherd puppy to turn to.Charlie lives with Jock, his violent, disturbed, alcoholic father in a Dundee tenement. Money is scarce, and Jock's love of vodka means that Charlie bears the brunt of his abuse. Often too bruised to go to school, Charlie lives in constant fear of Jock's next outburst. Subjected to hours of physical and mental torture, Charlie can only think of killing his dad. The only thing Charlie can rely on is Bonnie, a German Shepherd puppy, brought home to keep Charlie company while Jock goes out on his drinking sessions. But even Bonnie doesn't escape Jock's brutality.Please Don’t Hurt Me, Dad is an evocative portrait of seventies and eighties working-class Dundee, where everyone is on the dole, alcoholism is rife and most people have illegal jobs on the side.Somehow Charlie escaped from the everyday struggle for survival. Bonnie wasn't so lucky. Charlie's way out came in the form of a beautiful young woman who became the love of his life and his saviour.







CHARLIE MITCHELL





The Nipper

The heartbreaking true story of a little boy and his

violent childhood in working-class Dundee





























In loving memory of Shane,

the nicest and funniest person

I have ever had the pleasure to meet.

I’ll see you again one day.

Your big cuz, Milky Mitchell




Contents


Cover (#ub8c25ddb-1774-5481-acbe-bc1c19c5884c)

Title Page (#u83baea2e-7b23-57f9-85ac-42b999fa3bf3)

Dedication (#u3edcf353-7447-5b16-ae7d-61bab106680a)

Foreword (#u7b7d6aff-e1c2-5e41-9b68-d584be4b61c7)

Prologue (#u715b5d48-cddd-57e4-b886-11798445d1bb)

Chapter One - First Day, No Way (#u663fc58f-694b-5373-9ab5-af9090f82080)

Chapter Two - A Fairy Tale of Dundee (#ue9babc46-e69f-5f3a-a2c9-67ff115676b2)

Chapter Three - Tug of War (#uf8bd7550-dac8-54bf-8fb3-6bf80034fca7)

Chapter Four - The Woman in the Bath (#u4f3e7cae-04ae-572f-853e-9d4bd120cb3e)

Chapter Five - The Monday Book (#u76f0a5d1-3dbd-5848-b462-fe5734b4baed)

Chapter Six - The Three Amigos (#u5b49f9d4-1a8a-5bf9-8b3d-56a2be3ce636)

Chapter Seven - The Laughter that Hurts (#u1fc55843-3911-5cbc-93f6-61611baf4f65)

Chapter Eight - Twenty Pound Note (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine - A Boy’s Best Friend (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten - Pressure Cooker (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven - Inside an Igloo with a Drunk Bear (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve - The Swag Factory (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen - The Best Blanket in Dundee (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen - Air Vent (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen - Bonnie and Me under the Stars (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen - Home Sweet Home (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen - Big Geoff and Wee Geoff (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen - The Boy, the Dog and the Four Foot Woman (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen - Scared to Laugh (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty - Water Fight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One - Four Minutes Past Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two - The Rogues (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Three - The Puppies (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Four - Red Light on the Stereo (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Five - Off the Leash (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Six - Heartache Following Me (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Seven - A Voice in the Wilderness, a Face in the Crowd (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgement (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Foreword (#ucb18dec3-2557-5e4c-81b4-3a21c62da700)


I am an optimist and believe that everyone deserves a second chance in life. But I also believe that some people, such as my father, are evil to the point of insanity and beyond help. I am sure when you read what happened to me as a child you will understand what I mean.

For years I have tried to work out the reason for his behaviour towards me and have never come up with an answer. I’ve put it down to a chemical imbalance in his brain. Like being born without that cut-off switch that tells you right from wrong. These kinds of people know what they are doing is wrong but don’t care. And they use alcohol or drugs as an excuse to hide the fact that they actually enjoy it.

If you drink or take drugs, you do turn into a different person. But it’s not an excuse. You make your own life choices. And if you turn into a monster when you fill your body with these things, then it’s your responsibility to stop taking them. Life is really hard sometimes and every choice you make determines your future, and everyone is capable of making the wrong choices at some point in their life. The main thing is that you learn from your mistakes. Because one day your freedom may be taken away, or even worse, your life.

This book will show you the devastating effects child torture can have on a kid. It will make you sad and make you laugh and sometimes will make you dislike me. I’m in no way proud of any of the stories in this book, and I just hope that people can understand why I was like the way I was. My main aim is to show young people who are thinking of choosing the life I did what the consequences are. And to show people that no matter how close you are to death and giving up, there is always a chance that you can turn your life around.

In life, every decision you make has an outcome, some good and some bad, and there are always two roads you can take. I always chose the wrong road, as my anger or need for attention would make the choice easy. But over the years I have realised that I was using my childhood as an excuse for everything I did. A large part was my father’s fault, but a lot of it was down to the roads I chose.

Drugs and drink were my choice, and the violence that followed was caused by my decision to take them, as they would trigger memories of my childhood. I just pray that after you read this book, you will forget about being a victim, and start thinking about what is good in your life – what you can achieve and how you are going to make the most of what you have.

My advice to people who read this book is to think seriously before you live the life that I did. Who cares if all your friends are on drugs, or fighting every night? They can’t help you when you stand in front of a judge, or are struggling to pay the bills when you’re older.

And no matter what you go through in life, don’t use it as an excuse to self-destruct. Ask someone for help. Because the longer you let things happen, the more you’ll accept it as normal life.

Life is never over till the fat lady sings. Unless, she falls out of a window and lands on you.

Life is never easy, but if you think about famine, war and all the other terrible things that are happening in the world, it puts it into perspective. Having to pay bills, or arguing over EastEnders or your team losing a football match is not the end of the world.

Treat people the way you want them to treat you. The better the person you become, the easier your life becomes. Well, that’s all I have to say at the moment, except…welcome to Dundee.




Prologue (#ucb18dec3-2557-5e4c-81b4-3a21c62da700)


Through a small gap in the curtains I can see the snow floating gently past the street lamp. Trying to focus my eyes, I yawn. It’s the middle of the night and I’ve been woken up by the sound of shouting and swearing from the living room. A few moments later the bedroom door opens.

‘Come on you – get up.’ He’s dragging me out of the bed by my arm and yanking me down the corridor and into the kitchen as he sways from side to side. The smell of cigarette smoke and beer and vodka turns my stomach, as I’m now in his arms, and only inches from his scarred face.

‘What is it, Dad? Is something wrong?’

‘Wrong? No nothing’s wrong. I’ve made yi a cup o’ tea. Yi like tea, don’t yi?’

He pushes me down on the chair and starts to boil the kettle. Why has he woken me up like this and why do I have to drink tea? I don’t even like tea. But I don’t dare say anything. Besides I’m shivering as it feels like it’s minus ten degrees. It’s one of the coldest nights on record in Dundee and I’m dressed only in my old paisley pyjamas that are already two sizes too small for me.

‘What’s the matter, son? Are yi cald?’

‘Yeah, it’s freezing,’ I reply as my teeth rattle together.

‘This’ll warm yi up then.’

He turns back to the stove, pours the boiling water from the kettle into a cup.

The next few seconds seem to happen in slow motion.

As he turns round again I think he’s going to hand me the cup but instead he reaches across to me and there’s something in his hand but it’s not a cup and a second later I feel an agonising, scalding sensation that starts in the middle of my cheek, spreads across my whole body and then seems to shoot into my heart.

Dad has pressed a burning teaspoon on my face and he’s holding it there long enough to get a result – he’s scored a goal and he grins because he can see that I’m in agony as I’ve started screaming out in pain.

‘Oh, is it too hot for yi, pal? Sorry, son, this’ll cool it doon.’

He looks straight into my eyes and then spits right into my face, his saliva mixing with the tears running down my cheeks.

Dad grins again and takes a swig of his vodka.

I’m just a nipper, and I’m frightened and I don’t understand. But I am still too young to realise what the effect of living with Dad is going to have on my life; too young to know that I will live the majority of my childhood as a virtual prisoner, and that my home in the Dundee tenements will be my torture den.

And it has only just begun…




Chapter One First Day, No Way (#ucb18dec3-2557-5e4c-81b4-3a21c62da700)


It’s 1980 and a freezing September morning in a run-down tenement block in St Fillans Road in St Mary’s, Dundee. The winner takes it all, the loser has to fall…Snow is driving horizontally against the misty bedroom window and the Abba record has been repeating all night in the living room.

The time on my Mickey Mouse clock says 7.30 and it’s my first day at school – I’m nearly five years old and I can’t wait to meet new friends and play snowball fights with the kids I’ll meet. I’m a cheerful kid by nature, and as soon as I get out of my prison I always feel happy and excited and free.

I’m trying not to make too much noise getting up, as I don’t want to wake Dad. He’s probably not long fallen asleep. My head is pounding and my eyes have not yet fully opened as the swelling from last night’s head blows is dropping down my face and into my eyes.

I’ve opened my creaky bedroom door to go to the toilet, trying not to step on any loose floorboards in case Dad wakes up. The house is freezing and I’m shivering in my brown and yellow Y-fronts, the wind blowing through every nook and cranny in the door and windows.

I close the door and to my relief make it to the toilet, passing a broken mirror on the left-hand wall; I can only see the top of my head, so I stand on the side of the bath and stretch over with one hand on the sink, and peer in. I have never seen before what I see this morning – the shape and colour of what used to be my face is like a Freddy Krueger Halloween mask.

There is dried blood in the corner of both my eyes, and my neck has three long gashes down the back of my ear to my shoulder. My temples are swollen so badly that I can hardly see my ears. Then that creepy deep voice comes from the other side of the door.

‘Charlie! What are you doing in there?’

‘Nothing, Dad! I’m coming now! I’m brushing my teeth!’

‘Good lad, hurry up – I’m bursting for a piss.’

‘OK, Dad!’ I can hear him coughing his lungs up as he walks back up the hall towards the kitchen to release last night’s cigarettes into the sink.

Now I’m thinking, Why is he being nice? I thought he was annoyed with me after last night!…Maybe he didn’t mean to hit me. I open the door and he’s standing with his back to me in the hall, scratching his head with one hand and his arse with the other. He’s still a bit pissed from last night, I think.

‘First day of school today, son.’ He turns around slowly. ‘Get your clothes – oh, what the fuck has happened to you? Jesus Christ, your face, who the fuck did that?’

He looks angry, as if about to pop.

‘You, Dad! You told me to go to bed last night, and when I woke up you were punching me in the face for shouting and making a noise.’

I had obviously had a nightmare and must have been shouting in my sleep.

There’s a silence for about two minutes as he walks into the bathroom with his head in his hands. He sits on the edge of the bath and mutters something along the lines of, Please no again! Fuck no! Fucking hell! He turns to me with a confused look on his face.

‘Go back to bed, son, you don’t have to go to school, I’ll ring them and tell them you’re ill. Go on! Everything’s a’right, Charlie, close the door, son.’

I close the door and go back into my bedroom, totally confused at what has just happened. Did he batter me last night, or was it a dream? It’s absolutely freezing, so I’m just glad to get back into the warmth of my bed, avoiding the damp patch where I pissed it with fear the night before.

I lie down, pull the cover over myself and rest my head on the pillow, trying to work out what’s going on.

‘Ouch!’ I have to sit back up, as my head feels as if it’s in a vice when my temples hit the pillow.

I will never forget this pounding in my skull. It’s like having a heartbeat in my head, or in a cartoon when you watch someone hit their thumb with a hammer and it starts throbbing. I can’t sleep even though I am tired, so I climb back out of bed and walk over to the bedroom window to see if the snow is deep enough to build a snowman if I manage to get out later. It has gone off a bit and isn’t beating against the window any more, but it’s really deep, as it has been falling all night. I can see my downstairs neighbour with his mum and dad sliding him down the road with one hand each – on his way to school, I bet.

I really want to be out there and on my way with him, but no such luck. The state my face is in, I’m definitely not going out, as I look like I’ve just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.

I hear Dad on the phone to school, telling them I have sickness and diarrhoea and that I’ll be in as soon as I’m better, then I hear the floorboards creak as he walks back towards my bedroom door. I quickly lie back on the bed and wait for him to come in, praying that he’s actually sorry and not coming back to finish me off.

You see, you never know with Dad. He can change in seconds. But although I’ve always known that he can be really scary after what he did to Mum and Mandy, this is the first time he’s done it to me, the first time he’s battered me. Even though I want to think I dreamt it, I know it really happened. I’m terrified that it will happen again and I’m now seeing Dad with new eyes. There’s always been something about him when he’s drunk that has frightened me, but he’s never taken it out on me like this before. Overnight my dad has become a scary monster and it’s something I’ll never forget for the rest of my life.

The door opens, then he comes and sits next to me on the bed.

‘I’m really sorry, son, I can’t remember what happened.’ Then he puts his fingers on the side of my head and strokes it softly. ‘That will never happen again, son, I promise.’

‘It’s OK, Dad, I know you didn’t mean it.’

That isn’t what I’m thinking but he doesn’t have to know that.

‘Come on, son. I’ll make your breakfast – come through.’ He stands up and walks out of the bedroom.

I go through into the living room and sit on the couch next to the window, looking around the room. When I think back to it, I can’t imagine how he coped with a hangover looking at that crazy interior car crash of the early Eighties. That’s probably why he ended up as an alcoholic: he couldn’t handle walking into the front room sober, as the décor would have made him vomit.

We live on the middle floor of a grey, unloved three-storey tenement, up pee-stained steps to the front door. There’s a mouldy, dingy smell from the rotten carpet in the bathroom, the cluttered kitchen is further up, then three bedrooms and the living room at the end of a long corridor which I call the ‘Hall of Imminent Death’. It has cold, creaky floorboards and feels like a dungeon, very dark and grey. The dirty carpet and peeling wallpaper in the living room are flower-patterned but, bizarrely, totally different in colour: the wallpaper’s green and orange while the carpet is yellow and brown.

The living room has a two-bar electric fire with the grid broken off the front and the atmosphere’s always smoky from Dad’s cigarettes and butt-filled ashtrays. He makes new fags out of the butts with Red Rizla cigarette papers when he runs out of his ciggies. The TV in the corner is always on – if the money in the meter on the back of it hasn’t run out.

The L-shaped couch I’m sitting on takes up a fair share of the room. We got it from MFI. It has great big chunky square arms and is covered in some kind of potato sack material with a diagonal plum-coloured stripe, though it’s mainly faded to grey. This couch is where I spend most of my childhood getting battered.

The windows are black inside and out from never being cleaned, but it doesn’t really matter as there’s not much to see out of them – just the main road and a couple of semi-detached houses opposite.

Dad hoovers now and again but it’s rarely clean or tidy and there are always rings on the table from coffee cups. Even when Mandy stays, he does most of the cooking. We mainly eat chips, fish fingers and beans on toast, which is my favourite. (‘We had toast and beans, how posh are we?’)

I don’t have a bedtime. He doesn’t care what time I get to bed. Most nights when he’s drunk I want to go to bed but daren’t ask.

He’ll be sitting there dozing off with the telly on and then it will turn into that high-pitched whistle, or sometimes I’ll sit with him not daring to move, watching the Test Card with the girl holding the stuffed clown for hour after hour. We stick a quid in the meter and when that runs out he’ll just sit there swearing like a trooper for hours, but as always I don’t dare move.

However drunk he is, he never spills his drink. His head may be touching the floor but the hooligan soup – his vodka – will be intact.

Even if he’s hammered he’ll be on his best behaviour if I have friends over, but if they go to the toilet he’ll give me that snide look once they’re out of the room and will start swearing nastily. He’s able to control it though, and that’s why I know it isn’t just the drink that makes him do all the things he does to me.

Dad comes through from the kitchen with my toast and beans and a glass of water. There’s a fuzzy half-screen cartoon on the telly.

‘Here you are, son. I’ll be back shortly, I’m just nipping to the shops for milk.’

That means vodka – I’m not that daft.

‘See yi in a minute, Dad.’

The door closes and I start the difficult task of eating toast with lips like Mick Jagger’s. My jaw’s aching as well but nothing is going to stop me wolfing it down, as you can be sure that food is never spilling out of the cupboards in our house. You have to eat while you can, as you never know when it will be there again. It takes a few days for the swelling to go down and bruising to turn yellow and descend towards my cheeks, but I don’t care as I just want it to go, so I can get out into the snow and start school. Anything to get me out of this hellhole. I’m sure it’s colder in here than outside. The joys of living in a council flat.

My dad Jock is a big stout bloke in his early thirties, with dark curly hair and a squashed nose from getting it broken seven times. He’s always had a beard and moustache; sometimes it’s just stubble, but he’s never clean-shaven. His front teeth are like fangs, as he has broken his jaw three or four times and had it wired up with these strange-looking disc things that look like shirt buttons. He has a scar on his left cheek where one of his mates smashed a pint glass in it during a punch-up in the local pub (the Pheasant, I think it was called). He has big hands with great thick fingernails and massive footballer’s legs, and there’s a huge scar on his thigh where he had to have pins put in because someone ran him over after he had tried to run Mum over when she was seven months pregnant.

He’s a Jekyll and Hyde character, my dad. One minute he’s happy, asking me if I want to go camping, then in a flash he’s snapping about dishes not being done, or my bed not being made. Literally before he has taken a breath. It’s very confusing for me as a kid, as I have to adjust my thinking to cope with two different people, even though I only live with one. I don’t understand why he changes so quickly and there’s no one to help me deal with it. I’m on my own with him and I’m always scared of him.

Everyone who knows him says he’s one of the funniest blokes they’ve ever met, but a lot of them don’t know how mean and scary he really is behind closed doors. I, on the other hand, am a little short arse with fair mousy brown hair, and freckles on my cheeks and nose. Three foot nothing, built like the gable end of a pound note, with a home-made haircut that Worzel Gummidge’s idiot child would complain about and dressed in naff clothes that Dad buys me in jumble sales and bargain stores. Eighties tat.

Today I’m wearing a maroon jumper with patches on the elbows, Farah’s Stay-Press trousers with itchy wool, shoes that are at least one size too big from British Home Stores. Most of the time I wear hand-me-downs from Dad’s friends’ kids or from my Aunt Molly’s kids or from Barnardo’s, the charity shop in Reform Street. He gets a grant from the social to buy clothes – he sells it on sometimes for drink but will always make sure I have clothes for the start of the year – like today was going to be. He never takes me out shopping – he just gets the clothes on his own, which is why they’re always too big or too small. He mostly gets them bigger and says I’ll grow into them. It doesn’t matter to him that my shoes look like hand-me-downs from Coco the Clown.

I’ve also got some other footwear – some sand shoes like plimsoles and a pair of monkey boots, shaped like a meat pastie in front, with stitching like an Eskimo had got his hands on them.

People I know go snowdropping – that’s nicking off other people’s washing lines – but they leave clothes on our washing line. I remember one of Dad’s mates saying, ‘Jock, if your house was burgled they’d probably leave you a fiver and their shoes.’

It isn’t just us that are skint though: everyone’s in the same boat. They joke about it bitterly in the pub. Dad sometimes takes me in there with him.

‘What will the nipper have?’ one of his drinking pals will say.

‘Charlie will have what I have,’ he replies, but then gives a broad wink.

I sip a Coca Cola while he drinks his vodka and I listen to them all trading hard luck stories and generally having a moan. One of Dad’s friends says that when he has a bath he’s so poor he has to wash the dishes in there with him to save on water, with all the bacon and eggs floating around in his lukewarm bathwater.

The men in the pub drink their pints and moan and groan about the English and the state of the world. The English they call bloody animals, the police are bastards, the vatman’s a pig, the taxman’s a cunt – as if any of them have ever paid tax or VAT in their lives. All Dad’s friends spend all day in the pub and most of that time is spent talking about the English, but I don’t think they’ve ever even met an Englishman. They seem to have it in for the English, though, mainly because of a woman called Maggie Thatcher.

Dad blames everything on Maggie Thatcher. I used to think she was the old witch at number 47, the one with the moustache who stabs every ball that goes in her garden. But now I know who she really is. She’s a burglar from another rough area, who comes out at night and steals everyone’s worldly belongings.




Chapter Two A Fairy Tale of Dundee (#ucb18dec3-2557-5e4c-81b4-3a21c62da700)


Before I say what happens next, I need to tell you how all this began. I still don’t understand most of what went on when I was two years old, but I’ve managed to piece together what happened from my mum and from other people who knew how it was.

The story began around 1972 in Dundee on the east coast of Scotland, when a sixteen-year-old girl called Sarah (my mum) – who had just left school – met a twenty-one-year-old lad called Jock (my dad) from St Mary’s in Dundee. Mum was beautiful with blue eyes, a pale freckled face and long blonde hair which she wore in a fringe. She came from a decent family and was the middle of six children – with four brothers and one sister.

He was a strong, handsome lad, of average height and powerfully built. He also had blue eyes, dark curly hair and tanned skin from time spent outdoors. He was a promising footballer – his father had played for Dundee United – and he had three sisters and one brother.

They had been introduced to each other by mutual friends at a house party and hit it off straight away. He was a live wire, always cracking jokes, never serious for a minute. He was instantly drawn to her: she was very pretty, warm and bubbly – she loved to laugh and to make other people laugh. They were quite similar people back then, and at first they looked like a match made in heaven.

In the late Sixties, early Seventies, Dundee was a very poor city. Everyone seemed to be unemployed and there wasn’t a lot of things to do. Money was scarce. But they never thought about problems like that as they had found true love. They dated for a couple of years and things were going fantastically. He was always the life and soul of the party, and she loved her life with him, as he always had her in fits of laughter with his childish antics.

They decided to move in together as they were both happy and life was a breeze. They got married quite quickly and moved to a derelict flat up a back alley off Hilltown, a big road that goes right through Dundee. The street – Arkly Street – was a row of terraced houses like Coronation Street, with a welder’s yard and scrapyard at the end. The roofs were crooked and had sunk over the years.

They stayed there for twelve months. The odd argument occurred, but as my Uncle Danny used to say (that’s my dad’s younger brother), ‘Show me a couple that doesn’t argue and I’ll buy you a pint – and that’s a lot coming from a Scotsman.’

Then Mum fell pregnant in March 1973 with her first child, Tommy, born in December 1973, and again two years later in late January 1975 with her second, Charlie – that’s me. I was born in November of that year.

In between those two years Mum started to notice a big change in Dad. He was getting more aggressive and argumentative towards her. He would get jealous for no reason at all, and had even taken to locking her in when he went out to the pub. She had seen him fighting with men in town some nights, but that was normal in Dundee at this time. Men sorted everything out with a punch-up at the end of the night if they had a grievance. That’s just the way it was.

But Mum never thought that Dad would ever turn his anger on her, as they were meant to love each other. And people that are in love don’t lift their hands to each other. Dad obviously had a different view of love, as he was now coming home drunk and beating her and accusing her of having an affair with anyone who looked at her. He was gradually turning into a possessive, aggressive control freak who needed professional help.

The level of the beatings and mental torture he was giving Mum was beyond belief. He would keep her up for hours, snapping questions at her like an interrogation agent, then kick and punch and sometimes bite her.

* * *

I have a recurring nightmare right through my early childhood. I’m hiding in the corner, crouched under a table, terrified. I see what he’s doing to her and I can see clumps of her hair on the floor.

‘Yi fuckin’ bitch, yi think yi can pull the wool over my eyes?’ He’s dragging my mum across the room by her hair, kicking her in the ribs and stomach. He’s pulling all her hair out and she’s screaming and whimpering, bent over in agony, desperately trying to defend herself.

I want to look away but I can’t and the scene is branded in my memory forever.

‘Please stop it, Jock, let me go. I hav’na done anything.’

‘I hav’na done anything. I hav’na done anything,’ he mocks. ‘Yir just the innocent victim, eh?’

‘Yi ken I am, Jock.’

‘Yir a fuckin’ liar, that’s what yi are.’

He punches her in the face and I can’t bear to hear her screams.

‘Now are yi gonna start tellin’ me what’s really going on, yi fuckin’ slut!’

‘Nothing, Jock, nothing’s going on.’

‘Nothing, eh? So who wiz that fella eyein’ ye up yesterday – Mr Fuckin’ Nobody I suppose, or scotch mist maybe?’

He’s now in such a rage that I put my hands over my ears. I want it all to stop.

‘It’s all right, Charlie,’ says Tommy, who’s crouched next to me. ‘It’s all right,’ he says comforting me. ‘Go back to sleep.’

That’s when I wake up…

* * *

As I’ve said, living in Dundee it was the norm for men to be fighting every night. Women were used to seeing men beating each other up. But Dad had never given Mum the impression that he’d do that to her from the bond they’d had with each other. So when he started viciously beating her up and trying to take control of every part of her life, it took her completely by surprise. What’s more, she never knew how and when nasty Jock would appear, as there were never any warning signs. He would suddenly just switch.

It was really hard for women back in those days in Scotland: the men had control over them and everyone seemed to accept that if a man battered a woman, it was none of their business. It was a domestic and that made it acceptable. When I was a little older it turned my stomach to think of the many nights of torture Mum had gone through alone, and it infuriated me that no one ever helped her.

He’d go to the pub, she’d be in with the kids, he’d come home, beat her up and say she’d been trying to sleep with the neighbour, or the postman, or any man within a two-mile radius. At first it was more verbal bullying and mental torture, and then it got worse with beatings and thrashings. She couldn’t even go to the shops for a pint of milk without being questioned for hours on her return – he battered her so badly that he broke her teeth and nose.

Over the next few months Mum started to become numb to the mental and physical torture she had to endure at the hands of Dad, but was becoming seriously worried about us kids, and the fact that one night he might throw one of us out of the window, as he threatened he would do on quite a few occasions if she left. That was another thing about Jock – he was a very clever man. He knew exactly what to say to get inside your head and make you so scared and confused that you couldn’t think for yourself. Mum was now waiting for the chance to leave; she had been trying to hatch a plan for a while, but was too afraid of the consequences if he caught her sneaking out.

Finally Mum decided she’d had enough. Dad regularly went down to the benefits office to claim dole as he was officially unemployed, although everyone knew he worked as a roofer and chimney sweep. One night while he was at work, Mum seized her chance. A few nights previously he had broken her ribs and she had to go to hospital – and that was the last straw for her.

She grabbed a few nappies, and things that were close to hand, and managed to sneak out. Standing in a bus shelter on Hilltown that night, cradling us from the pouring rain, with tears and mascara running down her face, she swore to herself she would never go back to him. But there was still the problem of us kids. Dad was never going to let her leave and take his kids as well – no chance!

Even though he didn’t want us, he would still not let her have us. As it turned out, he was at least partly successful, as within a short while he managed to get me back.

And whatever inner turmoil, despair and anger he was going through, he would make me pay for it for many years to come.




Chapter Three Tug of War (#ulink_dffa9110-0900-51f4-8632-eb61afac14b4)


In 1976 after the breakup Mum and Dad started a three-year tug of war over us kids. There were doors kicked in, fights between uncles and aunts. One incident in particular stuck in my mind and later on in life made me realise that he never just flipped overnight but that he had always been an evil bastard.

I’m aged about three and Mum is at the social security sorting out her family allowance when out of the corner of her eye she spots Dad. Unfortunately they have both been booked for appointments in the same building at the same time. Mum’s heart sinks at the sight of him but there’s no place to run. Then Dad looks right at her and walks towards her with that evil smirk that she knows so well by now. As he approaches he doesn’t do much at first, just asks how she is and how we are.

After a short conversation Dad asks if he can hold me, as Tommy’s now hiding behind Mum’s leg with a plastic gun pointed at Dad, saying. ‘No Dad, go away.’

I can see in an instant the look of fear and hesitation in Mum’s face and then she’s handing me over to Dad and he’s grabbing me like I’m a rag doll. I’m scared, but mainly because I can see that Mum’s starting to cry and it’s making me cry too and I try to reach out to Mum, but Dad’s now holding me in a tight grip and won’t let go, even though he has sworn on us boys’ lives that he’ll give me back to her. Then that look comes back on his face and the voice she’s been so scared of reappears.

‘Do yi really think yir getting the nipper back, you bitch?’

Mum now realises that he’s again managed to twist her mind and sneak under her guard, this time bargaining with our lives.

He’s far too strong for Mum as he’s a big lump of a man and she is small and petite. Mum is now screaming at the top of her lungs, pleading and begging Dad to give me back to her, but Dad just stands there laughing at her, as he gets off on things like this – you know, watching people beg.

‘Please, Jock, geeze um back.’

‘If yi come back ti the hoose now, y’ill git yir bairn back.’

‘Kin yi jist hand ’im back in case yi drap um.’

‘Fuck off yi cow! If yi want um, come and git um.’

He pretends to drop me.

‘Oh, do yi want yir bairn?’

By now he’s taken me out of the social security office and we’re on the street. He carries me into the middle of the road and then puts me down between the two lanes of traffic, as cars swerve to miss me. I’m lying there, petrified, listening to the screeching of brakes and car horns hooting at me but I’m unable to move, confused about what’s happening.

‘Mum…Dad!’ I start to wail and scream.

‘Help!’ Mum screams. ‘Somebody please help! Look what he’s dain ti mi bairn!’

Everyone just walks past, not batting an eyelid. It’s in the middle of town first thing in the morning and not one person even stops to ask her what is going on.

Dad picks me back up off the road and points at Tommy.

‘I’ll be back fir him the morin tae, yi fucking bint.’

He’s holding me in one hand and has a cigarette in the other. Mum stands there screaming and begging passers-by to help, but her pleas fall on deaf ears.

Dad is now turning to walk away, throwing his Regal King Size towards her. Mum has no choice but to go back with him. Even though she knows he might kill her this time, the thought of leaving me with him is too much to take.

‘Jock, wait, I’m coming!’

He turns around with that evil smirk on his face. ‘I thought yi might.’

She walks up towards the house behind him, and is now trying to devise a plan. She will go back, take a beating, then earn his trust. That way she can wait until he’s at the pub and move us somewhere far away from there before he gets home.

As for me, I’m getting used to this constant snatching of me by one or other of my parents. It’s like they’re using me as a toy, a possession that both of them want. When you’re growing up, you’re learning to talk, learning to walk. I’m not – I’m just getting dragged around all over the place, listening to women getting beaten up.

I’m almost expecting Dad to snatch me away from Mum or Mum to grab me again. There is no such thing as routine in my life, as I never know whose house I might wake up in, who will be feeding me or putting me to bed, or whether I’ll get a bedtime story, although on the whole I’m spending more time with Dad than Mum so bedtime stories are definitely out of the question, apart from stories that begin with a clip round the head and end in being kicked around the house.

Apparently at one point when I’m just one year old my dad even holds me out of a window in an apartment seventeen storeys up – it’s my Michael Jackson moment – and says:

‘Do yi want me to let your fuckin’ son go?’

I later find out that from the age of six or seven months if Mum left the room, I’d start to cry. She’d come back in and say to Dad, ‘What are yi doing to him?’

So at that early age I must have been very attached to Mum – and also aware of what Dad was capable of doing to me.

* * *

About a week after Dad snatched me from Mum in the social security office, he decided to go out with one of his mates, as Mum had lured him into a false sense of security – a trick that she’d picked up from years of living with him.

I was in bed, but not asleep, listening to the sound of the evening traffic, when I heard her jewellery clanging and footsteps approaching the bedroom door. I knew it was her, I knew the sound of her heels on the creaky floorboards.

‘Wake up, Charlie,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll be goin’ to meh hoose. Wir goin’ on an adventure. But we’ll have to hurry up so come on – get your coat on, pal.’

She helped me dress and then packed a few clothes and I picked up Boris, my old one-eyed bear, and we walked out of Arkly Street, ready for a new life, a fresh start. Anywhere would do, as long as she never had to see his evil, scarred face again.

What Mum hadn’t counted on, though, was just how selfish and unsupportive the people around her could be: nobody wanted to get involved in this nightmare in which she was now living. There she was – two kids, no house, and no money for food in the freezing cold winter with a paranoid schizo wanting her dead.

My Aunty Molly (Dad’s sister) took Mum in for a while and a little later she met a man called Blake. He was a quiet, introverted man with a moustache and glasses, but he was actually very tough, an ex-soldier. You wouldn’t want to meet him up a dark alley. But at the same time he was very gentle and protective towards women.

Mum stayed at Blake’s mum’s house for two weeks while waiting on the council to give her a flat. But three weeks after Mum had escaped from Arkly Street Dad snatched us back. Blake was out in town somewhere with his mates and Mum was working that night, waitressing at a café up the road. Dad simply walked through the back door of Blake’s mum’s house and crept upstairs to the bedroom where we were asleep.

We woke up, dazed and confused about what was happening, until we felt Dad’s clawlike nails digging into our arms as he dragged us out of bed. We both of us cried and whimpered as we realised who it was, but he ignored us and hurried down the stairs past Blake’s mum who tried to stop him in the hall, but he grabbed her hair and shoved her out of the way and walked off with us into the dark, cold night.

Over the next two years Tommy and I were stolen back and forward at least five times. Every time Dad or Mum spotted the other one out in town, they tried to steal us back. Sometimes it was when Dad was working, or when we had babysitters looking after us.

On one occasion in town Dad saw Mum with us, pushing the buggy, and grabbed both of us but Tommy managed to wriggle free and ran through town, finding his way back to Mum.

Most of Mum’s time was spent trying to think of ways to get us back without getting her face smashed in by Dad. She had been trying to get her life back on track and now had a flat of her own. She lived with Blake in a council flat in Princess Street on Hilltown. In 1979 she married Blake and had his baby, my half brother Bobby. Years later I discovered that Dad had tried to run Mum over when she was seven months pregnant with Bobby.

At that stage Mum hadn’t been seeing Blake that long and didn’t really know that much about him – only that he was a nice, well-spoken man, really easy-going, totally the opposite of Dad.

Mum never mentioned her troubles to Blake, as she was scared what Dad might do to him if he got involved. What none of us – Mum, Tommy and me – knew until later was that Blake might be nice and polite to women and kids, but with fully grown men it was a different story. He could handle himself.

Blake walks into the bathroom one night, as he can hear Mum crying.

‘What’s up love?’

‘I’m worried aboot mi bairns, that bastard is probably hit-tin thum.’

‘Wha’s hittin yir bairns?’

‘My ex-husband, Jock.’

‘Put yir coat on and wi’ll go an git thum.’

‘Are you aff yir hade?’

‘What are yi on aboot, if yi want them back, lets git thum.’

‘It’s Jock Mitchell, yi maniac, ir you mad?’

‘Jock Shmock – come on, git yir coat on.’

Mum is now petrified. Even saying his name sends shivers down her spine. Blake walks back in with her coat as Mum looks at him in amazement.

‘If we go up there, promise me you winna let him hit me.’

‘He winna go near yi, come on.’

All Mum can think is that Dad will batter Blake, just like he’s battered her. And as no one has ever helped her before, she is now brainwashed into thinking he is more powerful than the devil. Even so, this is too good an opportunity to let pass, so she jumps in the car and heads off on her latest mission to get Tommy and me back. All the way up there in the car she keeps asking Blake, ‘Are yi sure yi kin fight now? What if he hits me? What if he’s got a gun?’

Blake just turns and smiles. ‘He winna lay a finger on yi, trust me.’

They stop outside the house, get out of the car, then open the front door and walk in. Mum is now digging her nails into Blake’s arm and shaking uncontrollably with fear, as Dad walks out of the kitchen and sees them standing there.

‘What the fuck ir you dain’ in meh hoose, and wah the fuck is he?’

‘Never mind wah eh am,’ says Blake. ‘Get yir bairns, Sarah.’

Mum is now trembling with fear at the sight of Dad. ‘I canna, he’s gonna hit me.’

‘You go near they bairns and I will hit yi,’ Dad snaps.

‘Do ya think so?’ Blake snaps back.

Dad has walked back into the kitchen and comes out again holding a knife.

‘What di yi think yir awa ti dae we that?’

‘Fuck all, I’m fixin’ a plug.’

The next minute Dad is sat back in the armchair with a broken jaw; Blake never gives him the chance to use the knife. As Dad has looked down, probably preparing one of his fly moves, Blake has booted him in the chin.

‘If you ever pull a knife on me again, ya prick, I’ll kill ya,’ says Blake.

‘The bairns are in the room. Eh dinna want this gittin’ oot o’ hand,’ says Mum, who’s starting to panic.

Tommy and I are upstairs asleep but the commotion wakes us up and we hear everything that’s going on.

Mum is now confused at the situation, as she has never seen this side of Dad. He is now on the receiving end for a change. But she’s still watching him like a hawk as this could be one of his tricks. And he still has the knife in his hand.

‘Come back the mornin’ and yi’ll git thum back. Dinna wake thum up now.’

‘Smack his puss, Sarah, fir a’ the hidings he gave you. It’s aright, he winna touch yi.’

‘No let’s get oot o’ here in case the police ’ave been phoned.’ She just wants out of there now, as she still doesn’t think Dad’s going to take what has just happened quietly.

They head off in the car and wait till the next morning to go back, but by that time Dad’s long gone. He has taken us to Aunt Helen’s house at the bottom of Lawhill (I play there with her kids, my cousins) and has then driven to hospital to get his jaw wired up. Mum only finds this out when she goes to my Nan’s house looking for us, as she’s greeted with a mouthful for what Blake did to Dad. I find that a bit weird as Nan knows what Dad’s like from past experience. I suppose blood is thicker than water.

Mum split up with Blake a couple of years later but as the tug of war between her and Dad continued, with Tommy and me being the rope they were pulling on, I never really got to know him.

In retaliation for Dad’s attempt on Mum’s life when she was pregnant with Bobby, there was an attempt on Dad’s life, when he was run over by a car as he walked out of a local pub. Dad got off lightly – just a few bruised ribs and minor injuries to the hip and shoulder which soon healed. He also had a twelve-inch gash to his leg which scarred it for life. He always claimed that Blake had something to do with this, but I think he just wanted to have another excuse to bully Mum.

He managed to snatch me again when I was approaching my third birthday and this time he headed over to the Isle of Man on the ferry, with me in tow…

I’m standing on the boat with him and it’s cold and windy and I don’t know whether I’ll see Mum or Tommy again. I’m fishing off the side of the boat and catch a conger eel with this orange rope handline, given to me by Dad to keep me amused. It nearly pulls me into the water and the rope cuts through my hand…It’s amazing that all of these fishermen have the best rods, reels and bait but catch nothing, and I have this silly little handline and I hook a thirty-pound conger.

But maybe it would have been better if the captain had never saved me from being dragged overboard – or maybe drowning me is Dad’s plan…

His new life in the Isle of Man was cut short and he had to come back. I don’t know why we only spent a few months there. I think he got kicked off the island for some reason, but he never told me why we came back.

Finally, when I was around three and a half years old and my big brother Tommy was five, they settled the custody battle in court.

Tommy and I are sitting there between Mum and Dad in a big, gloomy wood-panelled courtroom in Dundee. There’s this musty smell of ancient wax polish, disinfectant and broken lives. I don’t really know what’s going on but a man in a wig who I learn later is the judge seems to be in a hurry for us to leave, as he keeps snapping questions at Mum and Dad. Maybe he wants his lunch. Then suddenly he’s asking me who I want to live with, Mum or Dad.

By this time I’ve spent more of my life with Dad than I have with my mum and there doesn’t seem to be any choice. Besides I’m too frightened to say anything else.

‘Dad,’ I mumble nervously.

‘What’s he saying?’ says the judge.

‘He wants to be with me, Yi Honour,’ replies Dad, quickly and smartly.

Tommy has chosen Mum and in the next few minutes my childhood fate is sealed. The judge rules that I should live with Dad and Tommy should live with Mum. After all, it seems fair for both parents to have one kid each.

Mum’s crying and calling Dad a bastard and shouting something about access but Dad just says, ‘Yi can fuck off!’ and walks out of the courtroom, taking me with him.

‘Come with me, son. Come with me, son,’ Mum’s begging me as I follow my dad out. I feel stunned and miserable, and I’m trying not to listen too closely to her begging as it hurts too much. And even though I haven’t spent much time with my mum over the last few years and I don’t even feel I know her that well – she has already become a shadowy, distant figure in my life – I know I’m feeling that stab of pain in the pit of my tummy, a sense of isolation and terror, the same feeling I had when Dad snatched me from the social security office and lay me in the middle of the traffic.

Only this time, I’m the one who’s chosen not to be with my mum and I don’t even know why, except that I’m too frightened of my monster-like dad to do anything else. And I’m worried that by choosing Dad over Mum, I’ve let her down. I’m thinking that the breakup of my parents’ marriage must be my fault. I was the one who told the judge that I didn’t want to go with my mum and so I must be the one who’s to blame for her going out of my life.

I have been stolen back and forwards five times before by Dad and Mum, but this time Dad’s stolen me for good. And this time I’ve let him steal me. I’ve chosen to live with him so I’m also to blame. But it’s Dad who’s won the tug of war – not me or Mum. Dad is an animal that Mum just can’t handle. With him, it’s like banging your head against a brick wall. No matter how hard you try, you can never win, and Mum has had the last bit of fight knocked out of her. She has her consolation prize: at least she’s got Tommy, her first born.

As for me, now that I’m with Dad full-time I keep trying to imagine what it would have been like if I had replied ‘Mum’ to the judge not ‘Dad’, and if I had managed to escape along with Tommy that time he wriggled free of Dad in town. It’s a hard thing to say but I’ve wished so many times that I had been the one to go with Mum, not Tommy.

I’m not yet four years old and I won’t see my mother and brother again for most of my childhood. Instead my consolation prize is to look forward to years and years of physical and mental torture from my dad.

And my prison sentence has only just begun. The minimum term of my sentence is the whole of my childhood – though it may last much longer and could even be for life.




Chapter Four The Woman in the Bath (#ulink_e444203a-5714-54f3-923e-b70397d373da)


After Dad takes me away from that horrible courtroom and now that he has complete custody over me, I know that I won’t see my mum again. I know this because Dad keeps telling me.

‘She’s washed her hands of yir for good this time, the fuckin’ bitch,’ he smirks and of course I believe him. How can I not believe him? How can I know that she’s crying for me every day? How am I to know that losing me is the worst thing that has ever happened to her and that she will spend the rest of my childhood years trying to get me back? I only find this out years later and by then the damage of our being torn apart has well and truly been done.

But for me, as a boy of less than four years old, out of sight means out of mind. Besides, Dad has told me that if Mum gets her hands on me again she’ll try to kill me. She must be worse than Dad, I tell myself. After all, how can I know otherwise? And very soon I simply stop thinking about her.

After Dad and Mum broke up when I was ten months old, Dad had a short stint at the single life before he met a woman named Mandy. She’s a really pretty woman from a big, well-known family in Dundee. By well known I mean that where we live in St Mary’s, Dundee, everyone seems to know everyone else, especially when people come from big families. Mandy has three kids from her previous unhappy marriage, one girl and two boys, Julie, Paul and Peter. We all live together when I’m young.

Paul, who’s the middle child and a year older than me, soon becomes my best friend, and our friendship continues for many years into adult life. And Julie and Peter will always be like a brother and sister to me.

By the time I’m five I’m already living in fear of what my dad will do to me. The first time he battered me was the night before what should have been my first day at school. I now look forward to the rare occasions when he leaves me with someone else when he goes off somewhere, and for a brief time I’m free from him, off the hook. Like the time he takes Mandy and her three kids to Blackpool and leaves me behind with one of the neighbours, so I can go and pick berries to make money over the holidays.

Although my memories of my mother are already growing hazy I remember how Dad used to beat her up and mentally torture her, so in a way I’m not surprised when he carries on doing this in his relationship with Mandy.

Night after night I’m forced to listen to the thuds and moans coming through the wall, until I fall asleep. I have a good idea what’s going on, but I put the pillow over my head and cover my ears with my hands to block the noise out. I realise when I’m older that Mandy could have had anyone back then, as she was really good looking, but she ended up choosing a crazy aggressive thug with no morals or remorse for anything he did.

It’s hard to explain how this could come about but I know people think that Dad has a really funny personality when they first meet him – and when he’s sober. And the women he dates are led into a false sense of security by his happy-go-lucky attitude. But when he manages to get his feet under the table – once these women have let him into their lives and he’s installed in their houses – he’ll take to drinking and turn into an animal.

Even when I’m very young I know that he’s using drink as an excuse to unleash the sadistic side of his nature that he can hide very well if it suits him, and that he enjoys inflicting pain – physical and mental, on people who are weaker than him.

There are many, many nights when I get dragged out of bed at three or four in the morning because Dad has beaten Mandy, and if he leaves, I have to leave as well.

Dad is a very sneaky man where women are involved. It’s like he plans the beatings at certain times of the night, when the world has gone to sleep. And he will mostly aim for areas that can be covered up with clothes the next day. You’d know when he’s really been pissed the night before because Mandy’s face will be in a hell of a mess. I look at her sometimes, sitting on the couch with black eyes or burst lips, while he’s whistling in the kitchen as if nothing has happened.

The bond that I have with Peter and Paul will never be broken. I may not see Paul for many years but I know he’s always there for me and we’re still like brothers when we meet up again. Mandy has always been there for me to talk to – but after she finally manages to get away from Dad I don’t really see her that much, as my face is probably a constant reminder of what she went through at his hands.

Dad did a lot of bad things to Mandy in her life, but there is one particular night that scares the life out of me, a memory that I’ll take to the grave. I’m staying in Mandy’s house, and Dad wakes all the kids up including me, and tells us to come downstairs and watch.

‘Everybody up, git up yi fuckers.’ He’s staggering around, pulling the bed covers off the beds. ‘GET UP!’

He turns and walks back out of the room, while the four of us jump out of bed and run downstairs, where I can hear Mandy crying and pleading.

‘No in front o’ the bairns, please.’

We find them in the bathroom, where he has filled the bath to the top, and has Mandy by the hair, pushing her head under the water. We all realise at once that he’s trying to drown her and he makes no secret of it either.

‘Look at yir mum drooned.’

We all jump on his back and try to get him off. He pushes us away, but his rage seems to have subsided, as if he’s achieved what he wanted – to scare the daylights out of Mandy, and us children too.

He leaves Mandy in the water, blue faced and bruised, and wanders off to the kitchen. I stand there in shock as I think she’s about to die right in front of me. She eventually climbs out of the bath, shaken and shivering and hugging herself, grabbing a damp towel and retreating to her bedroom, as far away from him as possible.

I feel dreadful and guilty and ashamed, as if I’ve somehow colluded in what my dad has done to Mandy – after all, I am the spawn of this devil. I can never understand why nobody comes to help her but maybe he’s got a spell over them like he has over me. He’s so clever at concealing the truth. Maybe Mandy loves Dad that much that she never tells anyone – or maybe she’s just like most women in Dundee and is used to being treated like a punch bag.

All in all Dad’s with Mandy for five years – between when I’m two and seven. He finally beats her up once too often and she never comes back.

I miss her, as she’s been like a mother to me. But I can’t imagine how her children must be feeling, and even years afterwards I feel embarrassed even saying hello to her daughter in the street. I do stay in touch with Paul, though. We’ll always be like brothers – and I still see him at school, as he’s in the year above me.

Dad’s beaten me many times between the ages of four and seven, but then Mandy’s always been around to absorb some of the worst of his punches while I’ve been on what you might call the reserve bench.

Dad thought he had got Mandy where he wanted her. That’s the kind of man he is: power mad, always wanting to be in control, and bullying people weaker than him. He’s a hard man who will take on anyone, but as he gets older he seems to direct his obvious hate and anger at people who can’t hit back.

And now that Mandy’s gone, that can only mean me.




Chapter Five The Monday Book (#ulink_a4ee2d77-a172-5eb3-90f3-11ae7a3bb01f)


In the tenement block I live in with Dad in St Fillans Road there are six flats in each block and three blocks joined onto each other. Everybody knows everybody; people will come to the door asking to borrow some sugar or you will be sent upstairs to borrow milk or a fag until Monday when the giro comes swooping through the letterbox.

Dad is on the dole but works as a roofer-come-chimney sweep – obviously illegally, but he never gets caught as the social never come into our area. I don’t think they really give a monkey’s about poor areas, as they have nothing to gain from them. The only people that knock on the door are debt collectors, people in suits looking for Dad. I’m turning into the best liar in Scotland, as Dad will send me to the door to tell them stories about him being at the hospital, or at the dentist. Then I’ll come back into the living room, where Dad will be kneeling under the windowsill, looking out of a tiny gap in the curtains.

‘They believed me, Dad.’

‘Keep yir fucking voice doon, yi half-wit,’ he’ll whisper. Then he’ll start the questioning, once they’re out of sight.

‘What did they want? What did you say? Then what did they say?’

I’m six years old by this time and I never really pay attention to what they’re saying. I am more concerned about keeping them from pushing past me.

Between the age of five and seven, I learn how to keep on the good side of Dad. I will tell lies for him, keep lookout for men in suits when I’m out playing, and run to the shops for anything he needs. But I never know when he’s going to give me a beating and they’re getting worse. The first one he ever gave me – that meant I missed my first day at school – was just a taste of things to come. But today he takes it to a whole new level.

Dad has asked me to go and pick up his family allowance. He gives me the book for me to take to the post office and I then have to hand it over to the woman who’ll tear a page out and give me his money. On this particular morning I am waiting in the queue among all the old biddies and single mums, right behind an old man in his sixties who has obviously lost control of his bowels, and must have eaten sprouts this morning. The air is toxic around me, and my height isn’t helping at all. He smells like my neighbour’s dog after it rains.

‘Next please!’

Great, my turn. Thank God that windbag has gone – the air is so rife from his farts I can hardly see. I pull the book out of my pocket and hand it to the woman behind the counter.

‘There yi go, misses.’

She is peering at me over her National Health glasses, with a plaster in the middle holding them together.

‘Thank you son!’

She’s now looking closely at the cover of the book.

‘What’s up with your dad’s book?…All this black stuff on it, did he drop it?’

‘No he left it in his pocket when he was sweeping chimneys.’

The place instantly goes silent. Well, how am I to know he isn’t supposed to be working and claiming dole at the same time?

The woman behind the counter starts laughing. ‘You’re lucky I know your dad. You should be more careful who you say that to.’

Then all the people in the queue start laughing as I skip out of the door thinking I’m some kind of comedian. But I soon realise that Dad has a completely different sense of humour to me. I get back to the house white-knuckled from holding the money extra tight so I don’t drop it, then go into the kitchen and hand it to Dad.

‘There you go, Dad – sixty-nine pounds and thirty-eight pee.’

‘What took yi so long? Yi’ve been fucking ages!’

‘There was a massive queue, Dad, and some old woman was paying loads o’ bills.’

‘I’ll go mi fucking self next time.’

Don’t ask me to explain it, because I don’t have a clue why my mouth opens and blurts out this next sentence. Maybe it’s in case someone else tells him what went on, and then I wouldn’t get a chance to explain myself.

‘The woman asked in the post office why your book was black, and I told her it was soot from when you were sweeping chimneys, but she laughed!’

‘Yi stupid little bastard!’ I see his face change into a piercing, threatening stare as he puts his cup down on the kitchen worktop. I’ve never seen anyone’s pupils go so big and black, I can see myself in them as he takes a step towards me, grinding his fanglike teeth.

‘Come ’ere, yi little fucker.’

I walk backwards up the hall towards the living room with my hands up. ‘Sorry Dad, sorry Dad, sorry Dad. Please I’m sorry.’

‘Yi’re sorry, are yi?’ he says, walking towards me. Then boot! He kicks me right in the bollocks. I fall to the floor. Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! all over me, then he drags me up by the hair and throws me face-first into the wall. I fall onto the settee backwards screaming.

‘Please stop, Dad, I’m sorry.’ The egg on my forehead from the force of my face hitting the wall is now visible when I look up. ‘Dad, I’ll never do it again, I’m sorry, please, please, please – I’m sorry.’

I am now on my back with blood pouring down my face and into my eyes.

‘If yi say I’m sorry once more I’ll smother yi, yi little snivelling cunt. Shut it or I’ll stop yi breathing.’

So I don’t say another word. I just lie there like a dog on its back, with arms and legs in the air, sniffing and trying not to look at the massive egg-shaped bump on my forehead or say anything else that might start him off again.

‘Get up, idiot. NOW! Get up!’

‘Please Dad I’m sorry—’

‘What did I tell you about saying yir sorry?’ Smack! Smack! Bang! Bang! He just explodes again after pacing up and down the carpet, thinking about what it might mean for him to get caught by the social, I guess.

The beating goes on for around four hours. Dad covers my mouth to stop me screaming while smashing his head into my face and kneeing me in the groin. I can’t even catch a breath as his hand is covering my mouth and nose. When I try to roll off the couch to get his hand away from my mouth, we both fall onto the floor, where he keeps smashing my head with a shoe, while clumps of my hair that he has been yanking out of my head are all over my face, and are now itching the hell out of my nose. My head feels like it’s going to explode and my body is aching from the constant knee shots he is firing into it.

Suddenly he stops and gets up, walks out of the living room and into the kitchen, then comes back with a bottle of vodka and two litres of Coke. I feel like jumping through the window but we’re three floors up and if it doesn’t smash I know it will be ten times worse if I never get out.

‘Get oot my fucking sight.’

I don’t know whether I should move or if he is going to smash me on the way past so I just lie there, not moving from the position he left me, against the couch on the floor with my legs under the table.

‘If I have to tell yi again, fucking bed now.’

So I jump up and chance it. He stands up as I try to run past and gives me one more boot in the back, sending me head first into the edge of the open door. That white flash I see when my skull smashes against the door will send a shiver down my spine for the rest of my life – and as an adult I still have the little indentation on my forehead from that cracked skull.

I drag myself off the floor, stagger into my room and close the door, just making it as I fall down face first onto the bed.

Blood is now pumping out of my head and covering the bed cover. It’s about 9 p.m. and all I can hear is the lid from the vodka bottle being twisted back on, as I take the pillowcase off the pillow to press against my open wounds. I can hear the TV volume go down – he turned it up full blast earlier to drown out my screams. How nobody has come to the door this night I’ll never know; I could have been murdered and people would have just sat at home with the telly turned up, so they didn’t have to get involved. Bunch of cowards.

I stay up until about 5 a.m. waiting for round two, but it never comes. The pain is not the worst thing about tonight though; it’s waiting for the bedroom door to open that really gets to me. My eyes will start to close, and then I hear movement, or he’ll start singing along to music on the radio or one of his records at the top of his lungs.

Dad loves singing – especially if they’re sentimental songs and he’s drunk, and often when I hear them I’m crouched somewhere in the flat in pain and not daring to move. He’s got old albums from the Sixties like the Kinks and the Rolling Stones, Tamla Motown, the Supremes and Stevie Wonder; and cassettes from the Seventies – he’s always playing the Carpenters and Commodores and Abba; and then there’s new, modern 1980s stuff like Alison Moyet and Lionel Richie. These records are the soundtrack of my childhood years of battering and abuse.

I’m completely exhausted but for eight hours that night I watch the door handle, listening to the odd can blowing down the street, cats fighting out the back green, police cars and ambulances going past but none stopping. I think that maybe someone may have called them to come and get him, but I am never that lucky.

The next day Dad says nothing to me in the morning. I am off school again but this time he’s going to need a really good excuse as I’ll be needing at least two weeks to recover because of the mess I’m in. But he’s thought of something; I never find out what it is, but it works. He’s a brilliant liar, you see, and has everyone under some kind of spell for years to come. As a six year old I’m desperate to tell someone, but I can’t forget him telling me that if I ever tell anyone what’s going on, he’ll either kill me or my mum would get me – and she’s fifty times worse, according to him.

Dad has told me that my mum tried to smother me just after I was born and that’s why he had to keep stealing me off her. I’m finding it harder and harder to remember my mum so I’m starting to believe him – and I’ve had no contact with her or my brother Tommy since the day in the courtroom when I went off with Dad. He’s also told me that she might kill me if she gets her hands on me again, and I sort of believe this too.

At least I think I do. He can make me think yes is no, up is down, black is white. I sometimes don’t know what to believe. But I will end up believing what he wants me to believe just so that I can get some sleep.




Chapter Six The Three Amigos (#ulink_a59c1c98-5f6f-5f61-93b2-271e0204230b)


I go to school with my toes hanging out of the front of my trainers, wearing hand-me-downs that Dad has got from jumble sales or charity shops. I wear the same trousers for three or four years so the bottoms end up halfway up my shins. Most people are like that and I don’t feel like I stick out. In any case I don’t really care what other people think. When you’re getting what I’m getting at home that’s the last thing on your mind.

Besides, I love school. I try to have as much fun as I can when I’m at school. I walk through the school gates thinking ‘joy’ and enter into a different, safer world where the nightmare of the previous night’s beating can seem like a lifetime ago – something that happened on another planet and not even to me but to my twin brother – and unfortunately that affects my performance at school because everything that goes on within the school gates is sheer light relief as far as I’m concerned. There’s nothing they could possibly do or say that would have been able to control me, or would put fear into me in comparison with what happens at home.

I’ve got a picture of myself in a little white shirt and striped red school tie – not my normal clothes I wear for school but they look good in the photo. I’ve just started school and I’m grinning from ear to ear. I’ve got this Edward Scissorhands pudding-bowl haircut – my hair’s light brown and matted – and my face is a little red. That’s partly because of freckles and partly because it’s still swollen from a beating Dad gave me a couple of nights before. I’ve got styes in both eyes and a cold sore on my mouth, and if you look closely you’ll see my eyes aren’t as happy as my grin would make you think.

When I’m at school and free of my jailer I put up a front to protect myself, so no one knows what’s happening at home. I clown it up and it’s like that Miracles song Dad sometimes plays and sings along to, ‘Tears of a Clown’. The only good thing I’ve got from Dad is that he can be very funny, and so can I. Dad loves playing tricks. He’ll brick up someone’s front door, or get his next-door neighbour’s washing, put brown sauce on it and put it back on their washing line, and I do similar things at school – when I manage to get there – like moving people’s chairs away before they sit down. Or when we’re in the canteen eating school dinner, I’ll unscrew the top of the salt cellar and leave it loose on top, so when someone sprinkles salt on their chips, it all falls out.

Dad’s been taking me to the pub from the age of five. If I go off to the toilet, by the time I’ve come back there’ll be a group of men surrounding him and he’s entertaining them all, telling them stories and laughing, the centre of attention. But he’s lousy at listening to other people. He’ll make a joke out of everything they say, even if it’s a serious conversation.

Having Dad’s sense of humour helps me right through my school years. Even in my first years at school, I get by with quips and practical jokes. Besides, just getting out of the house and away from Dad makes school a holiday. School’s a breeze for me – it’s a lark. I’m aided and abetted in this by my best friend Calum, who makes my time at school – when I do go to school, that is – about the only thing that makes life worth living for me.

Calum Patterson! A kid in exactly the same boat as me but it’s his mum who’s bringing him up alone and using Calum as a punch bag. We never really speak about our home life, but we just know even at a young age what each of us is going through. Calum is a short-arse like me. He’s a right Scottish-looking child, with a ginger bowl-cut hairdo and freckles, and even though he’s just a kid he has a boxer’s nose and bags under his eyes like me. Like me he wears Staypress trousers, and British Home Stores jumper and shirt from the social grant that all people on the dole receive. His tie is always wrapped around his head. When Karate Kid comes out Calum thinks that’s him, running past people screaming high-pitched noises like hiiiyyaa.

We both walk around school with ripped trousers and scuffed shoes from climbing up the drainpipe onto the school roof. If anyone kicks a ball up there, we’re the monkeys that will go and get it – well, we’re the only two daft and fearless enough for the job. Calum is a lot like me. The way that he always cracks jokes or makes up names for people by using their most noticeable features.

For instance, we call ginger Garry Copper Crutch; fat Paul is Rollo; Alec with the glasses is Specky Ecky; and Peter Humphrey is Bogey, after Humphrey Bogart. Compared with what we both go through at home, our lives in school are fantastic, brilliant – a world away from the torture dens we have to go back to at 3.30 p.m. It is somewhere we can be ourselves, without the pressure of watching every word we say in case we’re mauled.

One day Calum and I are walking along the corridor between classes when we see a girl from the year above us arguing with a boy about how good looking she is. I only catch the end of the conversation. ‘I’m nicer looking than your lass, she’s a pure minger.’

As we walk past, she turns to us. ‘Lads, do you think I’m fit, couldn’t I be a film star?’

‘No, love,’ Calum replies, quick as a flash, ‘you’ve definitely got a face for radio.’

Her face turns purple and she proceeds to chase us down the corridor for the next two minutes so we’re late for the next class.

He has so many one-liners. Like the one he deals out to Claire Clark, a lovely, big girl, who’s always taking the mick out of me and Calum. Claire’s got a really pretty face but she’s a little overweight. She’s told everyone in school that Calum dresses up in his mum’s clothes at the weekend and the whole school has been slagging him off for days, so Calum makes up a rumour that Claire has been hit by a taxi and when the police came, they asked the taxi driver why he hit her. The taxi man replied, ‘I never had enough petrol to go around her!’

He tells this joke in front of about fifty people and I take to my heels before he has a chance to finish, as I know what’s coming. It is hilarious and Claire sees the funny side of it after we both get out of hospital.

I’m joking; we couldn’t offend Claire if we tried, as we’re like the Three Musketeers. She wouldn’t let anyone else talk to her like that, but with Calum and me it’s different. In school the three of us hang around together except when football is being played at lunchtime. She goes with the girls – skipping or swapping photos of Boy George or Duran Duran, or whatever it is they do. Claire’s mum and dad split up when she was young and her mum was an alcoholic like my dad. But Claire’s mum never beats her – she just doesn’t bother to look after her. It’s called neglect. I’m not saying that’s not as bad as what happened to me and Calum – it’s just a different kind of abuse.

At school it’s an amazing adventure just walking from one class to another, people tripping each other up and hitting each other with water balloons, but it’s not like at home – there’s never any violence. In class we play pranks on each other. The one I like best is tying people’s rucksacks to those all-in-one tables and chairs. They’re made out of metal and wood, and the chair and desk are welded together so that if you tie someone’s bag straps around the metal bar when they have their backpack on, they’ll stand up and end up in a heap on the floor, entangled in the furniture. I don’t know why I find it so funny or even why I do it, but that’s my party piece. Everyone has their own, and that’s mine.

One of the effects of the nightly torture sessions – the beatings and interrogations that go on into the early hours of the morning – is that I fall asleep a lot when I’m at school. I don’t pay attention – it’s not important to me compared with what’s going on at home, and as the teachers are quite strict I often get into trouble. I’m always messing around. But I have to be careful at school not to cross the line – if I get expelled or excluded I’ll be in for it at home.

As for my bruises, a couple of teachers do ask, ‘What happened to yir face?’

‘Oh, I was playing on the monkey bars and fell off.’

I’m a great liar as Dad has taught me to lie. I’ve become an expert through having to tell stories to the debt collectors and anyone else who comes to the door.

‘Just get rid of them,’ Dad would say.

I’m never bulled at school and I never bully anyone else either. I hate bullies as that’s what my dad is, and any kind of bullying behaviour makes me see red. I do play practical jokes on other kids though.

It can be quite dangerous messing about in school, as there’s a fine line between getting the cane or belt from a teacher and Dad being called in. I had to learn very quickly what I could get away with and what’s over the line. When Dad’s been called up to the school, it always ends in near death experiences, so when the headmaster calls him up on this occasion I’m not looking forward to it one bit.

I have been arguing with the Janitor constantly about who’s best – Dundee United or Dundee. Obviously it’s Dundee United but the Janny is a Dundee fan and can’t handle the fact that a seven year old knows so much about football and I don’t think it helps that the headmaster walks past and hears me tell him, ‘Dundee have never won anything, they are shite.’

That’s only one of the words I’ve picked up from Dad over the last few years. I go home that day expecting to be kicked around the house for the next few hours. Sitting in my room getting changed out of my school clothes I think, he’s just told the headmaster he will deal with me at home, I’m in for it now!

But a calm voice comes from the living room. ‘Charlie, can yi come through here, son?’

That doesn’t sound like the normal tone. What’s going on? I’m feeling very confused as I walk down the Hall of Imminent Death, the dark corridor that leads to the living room. I often think of it as my long walk of fear to the execution chamber, at the end of which is the Electric Chair. That’s the chair I have to sit on in the living room while Dad interrogates me for hour after hour until I can’t think any more and I feel like I’m going mad. I call it the Electric Chair because after four or five hours of questioning my head often feels like it has been fried.

‘Don’t worry aboot what happened the day.’

Wait a minute! I think, where’s the camera? Surely Jeremy Beadle’s going to jump out in a minute and then they’ll both kick the shit out of me.

‘That blue nose cunt disnay hey a clue, never let dickheads like that tell yi that Dundee are better than United, but if I ever catch you swearing like that again I’ll rattle yir arse!’

I’m standing in front of him waiting for the punchline, then the punch, but nothing happens. I think it must be another one of his mind games to see if I’ll bite but I get off scot-free. YEEHAA!

Brilliant! I think, if I ever get in trouble again, I’ll tell Dad that they’ve been slagging off Dundee United and I’ve had to defend them. Then he’ll fly downstairs in his steel toecap boots, and kick lumps out of anybody who says a wrong word.

What a strange, strange man. He doesn’t even tell me off, let alone batter or torture me. Maybe he’s been smoking something funny and has forgotten what I actually did. Or maybe the sicko just loves Dundee United that much. As he’s always telling me, my grandfather used to play for them and Dad could have signed too, but he passed up on the offer because he didn’t want any help from my granddad to become a professional footballer. I suspect it was more down to the fact that he was too violent on the pitch. I believe he went for trials with Norwich and some other English clubs but his temper always got the better of him, and managers don’t like smart arses with bad attitudes.

Whatever the reason for his leniency, I’m off the hook for today. I have to count myself lucky, but then again, whoever deals out the lucky cards seems to be ignoring me most days of my childhood.

There are a few exceptions, though; I do have the occasional good times with Dad and with my family, which shine out like a beacon in the darkness of my miserable childhood.




Chapter Seven The Laughter that Hurts (#ulink_f4ef065e-02cc-547d-be67-4da79c16c143)


At Christmas I’ll get a few presents, like a tracksuit or a football. If Dad has a girlfriend we go to hers for dinner. But some Christmases I’ve been battered so badly the night before that when I wake up in the morning I’ve found that Dad has torn the wrapping paper and the presents to shreds.

This doesn’t just happen once but on two or three occasions and each time I’m devastated. From all the excitement of Christmas Eve, peeping at the presents sitting under the plastic tree glowing with little red, yellow and blue lights, I haven’t been able to believe my eyes the next morning to find them hacked to bits. I often wonder if he does it deliberately so that he can watch the expression on my face change from the joy of anticipation to misery and disappointment.

And to add to my ever-growing confusion, I can never predict from one Christmas morning to the next whether I will find him crying and penitent, trying to put them back together again, or whether he will be sitting amongst the torn wrapping paper with a glass of vodka in his hand, waiting patiently to see the look on my face so that he can really twist the Xmas knife.

There’s only one really good Christmas and that’s when I’m seven. Dad says to me, ‘I’ll gi’ yi thirty-quid for clothes or I’ll get yi a bike, which is it?’

I’d love a bike but the thought of all that money for clothes, or anything else, is just too tempting so I pick clothes. By Christmas Eve I’ve picked the clothes I want – a light blue tracksuit from the Barnardo’s charity shop in Reform Street – and even have a bit of cash left over to spend on Mars bars and comics.

My favourite comic is the Dandy because it’s got Desperate Dan. My mouth always waters looking at his favourite food, cow pies. I also like football sticker albums, and will stand at the local shop swapping stickers with other kids trying to fill the book. So I buy a Beano and Dandy and a sticker album and The Observers Book of Wild Animals which I get from Barnardo’s for a pound. I love any wildlife books and I’m in love with white tigers even though I’ve never seen a real one.

On Christmas morning Dad gets me up. ‘Go and make me a cup of tea,’ he says.

I go into the kitchen and I can’t believe my eyes – there’s a brand new shiny red Raleigh bike – he’s got me both! And what’s more, we get through the day without him giving me a beating.

The longest I go without a beating is two days so the next day, Boxing Day, when I go out and play football and get grass on my new clothes he’s back on form, battering and torturing me for hours, asking me questions – sometimes the same one – over and over again.

And another thing: he confiscates the bike. I even think he only gave me it so he could take it away again. Once again I feel torn up, like those bits of wrapping paper he’s shredded. I’m shaking with fury and frustration yet I can’t show it to him so I go out and kick trees and lampposts, or if I’m playing football I smash the ball at anyone I’m playing with so hard they stare at me in surprise, but I don’t care. A few days later I get the bike back though. That’s when he’s feeling guilty the morning after he’s given me another battering.

The mental torture is always worse, I can take the physical punishment – he can smash a baseball bat over my head and it won’t hurt as much as if he’s got me in a corner, mentally torturing me. It’s hard to explain this except to say that bruises and cuts can heal, and it’s sometimes hard even to remember what the physical pain felt like a few days later when I’m at school. But the constant questions are like a corkscrew into my brain and my mind and my soul. They haunt me for days, weeks, sometimes months and even years, and I will hear his voice in my sleep, I can never seem to escape it. And then there’s the fear and frustration of not knowing what’s the best thing to do or say, to find the words that will make him stop, or at least not say something that will make him spin out the questioning for hour after hour.

I think Dad should have joined the army as he would have been the most persistent interrogation officer on the planet. One night with him and even Shergar would have come out of hiding, handed himself in, given himself up. OK, Jock, he’d say. You win. It’s like you said, I just did it for the publicity.

Once a year on New Year’s Eve, which is Hogmanay, my Gran and Granddad, Dad’s parents, have a family get-together at their house.

They live in Hilltown in Dundee in a semi-detached three-bedroom council house. Gran is small, with dark permed hair and very smooth clear skin; she’s always cooking in the kitchen and calling all her grandchildren the wrong name.

Granddad is quite reserved. He has funny one-liners but doesn’t really say much. He goes to the pub and plays dominos and bets on the horses. He has dark hair and dark skin, and is bow-legged from his football days. Nowadays he’s only five foot three.

All my uncles and aunts on my dad’s side come to these get-togethers – Dad’s three sisters and their husbands; his brother Danny with his girlfriend; and me and my eight cousins (six boys and two girls). The parties start at seven and go on until midnight, though occasionally they last until four or five in the morning.

We watch Scotch and Wry on telly – it’s a comedy sketch show with characters like Supercop, a bungling traffic policeman who stops cars that turn out to be driven by people like Batman. But the character I like best is this minister who has his water spiked with gin just before he starts giving a sermon and then gets completely drunk. It really makes me laugh, but it’s a funny kind of laughter as it hurts, probably because it makes me think of Dad – and that makes it even funnier and more painful at the same time.

After that’s over we count down the bells to Hogmanay. As the clock hits twelve Scottish music comes blasting out of the speakers and everyone bursts into their rendition of the Highland Fling: ‘Da da da da da da da, di di di di di di di, na na na na na na na’. All us kids will be firing party poppers at each other in the kitchen.

The grown-ups’ll be singing Scottish songs, like ‘Flower of Scotland’ and ‘Scotland the Brave’, or ‘Mull of Kintyre’, or ‘Donald Where’s Your Troosers?’ Then of course we all link arms and sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and eat Scottish shortbread and dance, jiving to rock ’n’ roll and knocking everything over. The girls, my cousins, will be doing their own dance routines, and all the adults get drunk.

Dad tries not to overstep the mark in front of the rest of the family at Gran’s house. He’s lippy but not nasty. But although he always starts the evening on his best behaviour, he’ll end up fighting with Uncle Grant, who’s a Protestant and a Mason. Dad hates Protestants nearly as much as he hates Masons.

Then someone will say, ‘Where’s Gran?’ and then we’ll wander around looking for her, although everyone knows where she is. She’s hiding in the airing cupboard, drunk every year, and we’ll find her sleeping in there after a few sherries.

We kill ourselves with laughter but when I think about it I realise that she probably hides in that cupboard a lot – she could even be doing it every night as she may be hiding from Granddad. Dad was the oldest of all his siblings. He’s told me that Granddad used to beat him and Gran up, and I’ve heard this from other members of the family. I’m fond of Granddad and don’t want to believe he could beat up Gran or Dad in the same way Dad beats me up, but that’s what Dad tells me.

I’ve also heard that Granddad used to take the fuse out of the electricity box so that Gran didn’t have any heating or light and then he’d lock Gran in all night and leave her without electricity while he went out to the pub. I find it almost impossible to believe, but he might be as clever and cunning as Dad.

There’s a small bar in the corner that Granddad will sit behind, ringing a gold bell and shouting ‘Last orders!’ every time he serves a drink. He’ll hit me on the back of the head with some peanuts and then look away smiling as if it isn’t him. I think it’s funny but it does make me wonder.

Sometimes when Dad’s drunk he’ll go on about how Granddad would take him out into the woods away from the rest of his family and then beat him up – but he also beat him up in the house as well – and finally threw Dad out of the house when he was twelve. Dad had to scavenge for food – he’s never tired of telling me that.

I suppose Dad may say this to make me think it’s normal – what he does to me – and when he’s sometimes very drunk and self-pitying, even to feel sorry for him. But although of course I have no way of judging whether it’s normal or not, there’s no way I’m going to feel sorry for him when he’s battering and torturing me every other night. But that doesn’t stop him from dishing out his hard luck story.

‘Yir grandfather, yi think he’s the bee’s knees, don’t yi, but yi don’t know what it was like. Yi’ve got an easy life. Yi’ve got a roof over your head.’

I think, yeah I wish I was out of the house at twelve.

But even so, I always get on well with Granddad. He tells me stories about when he played for Dundee United and I really look up to him.

Dad had a chance to go with Dundee United too, but because he was stubborn he said he didn’t want any help from my grandfather and didn’t want to be known as getting a game with the club because of his father, so at one point he went to England and had trials for a few English clubs. He tells me he even played some reserve matches for West Brom, but I don’t know what to believe any more as my brain is controlled by his way of thinking.

Gran was a professional dancer in the Pally in Dundee years ago. She was Irish and Granddad met her in Ireland when he was playing football for Glentoran Football Club in East Belfast in the 1950s. Granddad was a Glaswegian. Then later he signed for United. After he had finished as a professional footballer he worked as a hospital porter but he was still involved in Dundee United, and the players used to come to his house for dinner sometimes – John Clark, Kevin Gallacher and many more.

As Dad now manages the Dundee West Under-14s football team, we go up to Glenshee in the mountains every year with my cousin Shane and stay at the Spittal of Glenshee Hotel. Shane is six months younger than me and absolutely bonkers and hilarious at the same time. He has the kind of personality that means he has to say exactly what’s on his mind – he can’t hold things in for more than ten seconds at a time, and his laugh is infectious. When he starts, everyone does too. Such a likeable person.

There’s loads to do apart from playing football – hillwalking, golfing, horseriding, shooting, mountain biking and even hang-gliding, but Shane and I just enjoy larking around.

There’s also this little goalkeeper in our team called Willy. He wears old, worn but ironed pyjamas with creases in them and National Health glasses with Sellotape in the middle – he’s a right little geek and he’s useless in goal into the bargain. He must have let in about 15 goals a game – he’s a crap goalie, but at the same time a dead nice wee lad. A bit like Walter the Softie out of the Beano but harmless. In any case Dad doesn’t care how good his team is, he’s more interested in where they live as he has to pick them up or drop them off after a game.

I’m seven on this particular occasion when we go to Glenshee and the news has filtered out of the radio on the way up here that there’s a murderer loose in the mountains who has been going around killing people. It must be about half nine at night and there’s a man sitting at the bar with a mack on and a big handlebar moustache and hat, and Shane and I whisper to Willy ‘That’s that murderer!’

Willy’s shitting himself. ‘No, it’s not?’ he says, alarmed.

‘Yeah, that’s him. We’ve just seen his picture on the news.’

Another guy sitting near us hears what we’re saying and knows we’re winding Willy up, and says, ‘Cut it out, lads.’

But we ignore him and go on saying to Willy, ‘No, seriously, that guy – he’s definitely the murderer. Look at that moustache. I’ll bet he’s got an axe under that coat!’

Just then the guy turns and looks at us and takes off out of the front door of bar. Even though I know it isn’t him, the man scares me. He couldn’t have timed it any better as he stares back towards us as he leaves.

Meanwhile Willy’s in a blue funk. He tears off petrified in his PJs, while the barman looks on in shock at this skinny little ankle-biter whizzing past him like a skeleton on Pro-Plus. Willy’s eyes are even bigger than normal as a combination of pure blind panic and his thick milk-bottle glasses make him look completely demented.

The bunkhouse we’re all sleeping in has a room on each side of a corridor with bunk beds in every room, so Willy crawls in there with sheets over him as he’s now terrified. But we crawl along the floor in the dark towards his bed saying, ‘The murderer’s gonna get you! The murderer’s gonna get you!’

Shane’s one of those people who after you stop he’ll keep it going. He wound up this little lad Willy for hours and hours. Maybe it’s something in the family genes. Shane just enjoys spinning out a joke, while Dad enjoys spinning out the torture.

Anyway, Willy’s in his bunk bed and Shane goes up and sticks a football sock over his arm and puts it over the top bunk of the bed and grabs Willy’s mouth with it.

‘Ahhhhhhhhhh!’ Willy screams. He’s only wearing his Y-fronts and terry towelling socks, and he goes sprinting through the corridor past a shocked barman for a second time.

‘There’s a murderer! Phone the police!’ Willy screams frantically at the women in reception. ‘He’s in my room. Phone the police!’

At that moment we stumble in after him, laughing our heads off, and give Willy the good news – it wasn’t the murderer after all but his twin brother. Willy stares from one to the other of us in disbelief and then finally realises we’ve been winding him up all along.





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