Trafficked Girl: Abused. Abandoned. Exploited. This Is My Story of Fighting Back.. Jane Smith

just the way things were: my brothers sat in the living room watching television and eating their meals with our parents, while I sat alone in my bedroom.

      I spent many, many hours of my childhood on my own, sitting on the floor in the middle of my room staring at the walls. I wasn’t allowed to sit on the bed, move the furniture or play with any of the toys Mum arranged strategically on a shelf so that she’d know if I’d touched anything. I wasn’t even allowed to open the wardrobe or drawers until I was at least 11. Mum used to give me some clothes every morning and say, ‘This is what you’re wearing today.’ It was all about control, although obviously I didn’t realise that at the time. All I knew was that if I got so bored of just sitting there doing nothing that I managed to convince myself I’d be able to put something back exactly as I’d found it, she always knew. Then she’d shout at me and beat me, often with a half-smile on her face that reflected the enjoyment I think she got from punishing me.

      There must have been many reasons for Mum’s behaviour, some of which I partially understand now, and some of which will, I’m sure, be locked away forever in the murky depths of her own psyche. One thing I did eventually become aware of is that she has obsessive-compulsive disorder, which got worse over the years, but which was already apparent in many of the things she did when I was a small child – although again, I didn’t realise that at the time. Some indications of it included the way she used to line things up on the bathroom windowsill – bottles and plastic containers of make-up all placed just so, and woe betide anyone who moved them – and the fact that, later, she always chose a cake bar and crisps to put in my school lunchbox that had a colour-matched wrapper and packet, which I used to think was an indication of the fact that she did care about me after all. Even today, she puts what she calls ‘traps’ around her house – an ornament or rug positioned at a particular angle, for example, or little stones lined up by her wheelie bin so that she’ll know if anyone has moved it, although I’m not sure why anyone would.

      Not allowing me to sit on the bed after she’d made it, move anything or play with the few toys I had in my bedroom might have been aspects of OCD, if it hadn’t been for the fact that there were no such restrictions on my brothers. So I do think it was more of a control thing with me.

      Usually, she would bring meals up to my room and I’d eat them there on my own, isolated from the rest of the family. I used to sit on the floor in my bedroom for hours, anxiously watching the door, waiting for it to burst open and for Mum to accuse me of doing something wrong, even when I wasn’t doing anything at all. I would sit on the floor in the living room too, on the rare occasions when I was allowed downstairs to watch television with the rest of my family. Sometimes, I’d hide behind the sofa, hoping they’d forget I was there, because I didn’t ever know why or when Mum might launch an attack on me.

      In view of the way I was alienated and excluded from the family by my mum at every opportunity, it might seem odd to say that I’ve always had a strong sense of who I am, in some respects at least. The first time I think I ever became consciously aware of ‘me’ was when I was four years old and at nursery school. It was a very hot day and I was pushing a little lad around the playground on a toy tractor when he started pulling off his T-shirt. It seemed an obvious thing to do once he’d done it. So I took mine off too, and was startled when I realised a few seconds later that it was me the teacher was shouting at.

      I can still remember how indignant I felt. Why was she picking on me, telling me to put my T-shirt on but not saying anything to the little boy? How was that fair? Although I’d learned not to expect fairness from my mum – and wouldn’t have dreamed of defying her in the same situation – I must have expected it from my teacher, because instead of doing as she told me, I bent down again and was just about to continue pushing the tractor when I saw her grab my T-shirt and start striding purposefully across the playground towards me. I don’t know what the reason was for my uncharacteristic defiance, but before she was halfway across the playground, I had taken to my heels.

      Just a few days earlier, I’d watched an old black-and-white film with my brothers in which a man who was being chased slipped into the space between two buildings and his pursuer ran straight past. Although I was beyond the stage of covering my eyes with my hands and thinking no one could see me, I hadn’t quite understood how the incident in the film worked. So, as I was circling the nursery playground with my teacher in hot pursuit, I suddenly darted down the side of the building, flattened myself against the hot bricks and waited for her to run past. Then, a minute or two later, I resumed my game with the little boy, wearing my T-shirt and seething with righteous indignation.

      It was an insignificant incident in itself, but I’ve held on to it – and a few similar memories – all these years because sometimes, when I seem to be in danger of forgetting, it reminds me who I am.

      I don’t know what my dad was like before he married Mum. Maybe he was a completely different person and just got worn down by her until he began to accept her dysfunctional behaviour as normal. He was several years older than Mum and had been married and widowed for about ten years before they met. I think his first wife died suddenly and unexpectedly in her early twenties, by which time they already had a little boy, who went to live with Dad’s mum, apparently because that’s what his wife requested when she found out she was going to die.

      Perhaps the reason Dad didn’t look after the little boy himself was because he wasn’t a very reliable parent even before he met my mum. Or maybe his wife knew he would fall apart when she died, because I know he found it really difficult trying to deal with her death and was still working long hours so that he didn’t have to face it ten years later, when he met Mum. Perhaps that also explained why he made what turned out to be the huge mistake of ignoring the warning ‘marry in haste, repent at leisure’ and married her just two weeks later. She was still living with her parents at the time, so for her it was a means of escaping, which I now know she had good reason to want to do.

      I don’t know how often Dad saw his first son, Ian, after he and Mum got married, but she more or less put a stop to any contact they did have when Jake was born – and with the rest of his family too, who we rarely saw when I was growing up.

      Dad used to love singing karaoke at the pub and one day he came home with a karaoke machine he’d bought for a few pounds when they were throwing it out. Mum just sat there scowling when he took it into the living room and plugged it in, and after he’d sung a couple of songs himself, he told me to sing some of the nursery rhymes I’d just learnt at nursery school. ‘I’m going to record them,’ he said. ‘Then, when you’re an old lady, you can listen to them and remember what you used to sound like when you were four.’

      I was too young to understand the concept of one day being old, like my nan. But I can remember feeling really pleased when Dad said I had a nice voice, then laughed and added, ‘You must have inherited it from me,’ which made Mum scowl even more.

      The only other happy childhood memory I have is of another day when I was four and Dad took me to a big garden that was open to the public, where there was a lake and a real elephant that he paid for me to sit on and have my photograph taken. I can still remember how rough the elephant’s skin felt where it touched my bare legs.

      Maybe Dad did other things with me on other days as well, but I can’t remember any of them now. I just remember that I loved him and that although he didn’t often do anything positive to make my life better, he wasn’t ever violent or mean to me when I was a little girl.

      My nan was though – mean rather than violent – and I knew from a very young age that she didn’t like me. She and Granddad didn’t come to our house very often, but one day when they were there – I think it was around Christmastime when I was five – I asked Granddad to go upstairs with me because I wanted to show him something in my bedroom and Nan gave me a really cold look, then insisted on coming too.

      When we got up to my room, they both sat on the bed while I looked for whatever it was I wanted to show him. I wasn’t used to having an audience and I was chattering away excitedly when I noticed that Granddad was staring at me in a peculiar way. Glancing quickly at my nan for reassurance, I realised she was scowling at me, for some reason I couldn’t understand. I’d had a lot of practice reading