Toni Maguire - Daddys Little Girl: A picture-perfect family with a terrible secret

Toni Maguire (Author)

Toni Maguire has published four bestselling books, including two which covered her own story, Dont Tell Mummy and When Daddy Comes Home. Her success encouraged others who had kept their childhood secrets hidden to approach her and she has so far co-written five memoirs. Toni lives in the UK and has lived in Ireland.

Lynn Murray (Author)

Lynn Murray works with young autistic adults, teaching them how to use computers, as well as general life skills, with the aim of showing them how to live life to the full, increase their independence and take pride in their achievements. Lynn has a young daughter, Katy.

In loving memory of my brother Andy.

This world was too hard for you. Loved and always and forever in our hearts.

This book is a work of non- fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author. In some cases names, places, dates and the detail of events have been changed to protect the privacy of others.

I thought my life was settled then but that did not stop me wanting to find the root cause of the lingering fear that still disturbed my dreams all these years later. Like most people, I had anxieties I attempted to label as being rational.

My daughter disappearing from my sight for a nanosecond.

The ringing of the phone during the night when someone I love is in hospital.

Or a friend who left me to drive a long distance and has forgotten to let me know of their safe arrival home, despite all their assurances.

Yes, those are the ones I saw as normal.

Then there were the irrational ones, the ones that made me angry with myself. For after all I had achieved, I was still frightened by the dark and the creaks my old house made as it settled down for the night. And should I have been woken by the sound of soft footsteps or the click of the landing light being switched on, even though my rational mind told me it was just my four-year-old daughter seeking the warmth of my bed, my irrational one said something quite different. It was then that the sweat broke out on my forehead and my knuckles turned white as my fingers clutched the duvet tightly for comfort.

One thing I was sure of was that I was not born with that fear. No baby is, not when the world is brand new to them and they have not yet been faced with the cruel reality that fate may hand them. Much as I had tried to force it, my mind refused to take me back to a time before I was four years old, though the memories of what began to happen then were still clear in my head unfortunately, all too vividly.

For almost all of my life I believed my story began the day I was born.

It was not until I reached my forties that I discovered it had started much earlier. The day I learnt about our familys secrets was the day I searched for the photograph albums that, when small, I had watched my mother filling painstakingly with our collective memories.

Had they been thrown out, I wondered, as I frantically went through the boxes my father had brought down from Scotland and left for me to look through.

One by one, I opened them, impatiently tossing out shabby old clothes, a couple of dented saucepans, a few kitchen utensils and, surprisingly, some books by well-known authors I had never seen him read. Just as I was thinking they were not there and becoming resigned to accepting that he had not saved those albums, my fingers touched several firm oblong objects at the very bottom of the box: I had found them.

Blowing off the fine layer of dust, which over time had dulled their shiny red covers, I sat cross-legged on the floor, pulled them onto my knees and started putting them in order.

There were two dating from the three-year period before I was born and ten after that: one for each year before my mother knew that she was going to disappear from our lives. As I examined the images I had not seen for so long, I decided I did not want to leave what appeared to be the only record of my and my brothers early years in those albums plastic pockets. I guessed there might be some I would want to make disappear and Katy, my inquisitive little daughter, would be certain to ask about the empty spaces I would have created. Instead, I opened each of those pockets and then carefully removed every photograph.

I had an idea, which could make showing them to my daughter easier for me: keep the ones I wanted and turn them into a video. She was still young enough to take delight in us watching it together, but also old enough to have started asking questions about her grandparents. I think she was the only child at school who did not have any. Or rather, any that I had been prepared to let her meet. She needed answers. Using the video, I would be able to tell her stories of all the people she would see on it, although not necessarily totally truthful ones.

Luckily, Katy loved the stories I made up more than the ones in the books I bought her. Ever since I had written about how our cat grew wings, which took her to a magic place called Cat Land, she had pestered me for more.

There were two people in the video that Katy had developed close bonds to. A little bit of embellishment would also be needed on their childhoods, I thought ruefully.

Of course, the question What are you doing, Mummy? was asked by her repeatedly. Each time, I answered with a smile, Youll just have to wait and see, sweetie. Not that waiting patiently was something my daughter was good at. But I was determined she would not see it until I had made the sequence of the pictures look as attractive as possible.

I watched them flitting across the screen carefully, but they did not, I realised, give the impression that they were the loving record of my brothers and my childhood. Definitely, for Katys sake, a little bit of tweaking would have to be done to make it appear so. Still, at her tender young age, hopefully she would not understand that. For what the albums contents showed was a well-put-together deception. Every photo my mother had chosen to place in them was designed to show unsuspecting eyes images of the perfect family.

A quick click and I was transported back inside the immaculate house I had spent my early years in. There was the lounge, as my mother called it, where cushions were always plumped to perfection, curtains tied back with gold-edged tassels and fresh flowers sat in sparkling crystal vases. The difference between that room and the ones my friends with children have is that not one childs toy marred its polished perfection. But then we were not allowed to play with ours anywhere outside our bedrooms. They might have just made the house look lived-in in my words, or untidy being the sentiments voiced by my parents.

No doubt guests imagined that we had all spent the morning before they arrived frantically tidying up. But they were wrong: that is how our home always appeared.