Maureen Wood - A Family Secret: My Shocking True Story of Surviving a Childhood in Hell

Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect privacy.

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First published by HarperElement 2021

FIRST EDITION

Maureen Wood 2020

Cover layout design HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

Cover photograph Stephen Carroll/Trevillion Images (posed by model)

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Maureen Wood asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008441562

Ebook Edition March 2021 ISBN: 9780008441579

Version: 2021-01-13

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This book is dedicated to my angel baby Christopher and to all the silent victims of abuse. I hope it helps them find their voice.

No doubt about it, this was how the other half lived. Leaning back in my seat, feet up, sipping my drink, I felt on top of the world. Which, of course, I was.

Peering through the gap beside my seat, I watched my children, almost all my children, in the row behind, chatting and buzzing, intoxicated with a mix of holiday euphoria and that peculiar strain of exhaustion that travelling brings.

I cant wait to go to Harry Potter World, Naomi was saying. Imagine walking down Diagon Alley!

I smiled. They deserved a treat, that was for sure.

And then, with a sudden whoosh, like a wind beneath the plane, I was hurtling back through time, peering through another gap, watching another of my children. The one who had made all this possible. The one who was missing today.

It was already sunny at 5.45 a.m. that July morning when Louise arrived to collect me. I was ready, pacing the living room, my nerves stretched and taut. I didnt say a word on the journey there; it felt respectful to travel in silence. And then, as we pulled up, I saw the glare of floodlights and the white tent around my baby sons resting place. We had been given strict Home Office instructions that we were not allowed inside the cemetery. But there was no way I could stay away. He was mine, my boy.

We had been instructed to park across the road, so that we didnt draw attention to the cemetery. But I had a good view from out of the car window and I watched, appalled yet transfixed, through a gap in the cemetery railings as the digging began. Forensic officers in white space suits waited, like Martian pallbearers, for my Christopher, my baby, to surface. And then, there he was; his tiny coffin looked almost like a toy from where I was standing.

Mummy is sorry, I whispered. Im so sorry, Christopher.

As his coffin was lifted into a plain grey van, I remembered the innocence in his wide blue eyes, I smelled the newness of his skin, I felt his tiny, delicate fingers curling around my thumb. And I was overwhelmed with a tsunami of loss and despair. My poor bruised heart ached and wept to see him again. Off went the van, carrying my precious cargo. Carrying my hopes, my heartbreak and the distant promise of peace.

Christopher had saved me once, and now, twenty-five years on, I was asking him to save me again. My guardian angel was risen from the dead, bringing with him my chance for justice.

This, said my mother Maureen, is your new stepdad.

She took a step back on the station platform to admire him herself before singling me out for a glare.

Well? she snapped. Where are your manners? Say hello.

But I took one long look at his orangey-brown hair and his thin, mean face and I recoiled. My knuckles were white as I gripped my suitcase, my eyes staring, downcast, at the chewing gum ground into the platform tiles.

Hello, I mumbled.

My mother slipped her arms around him and smiled, and we all trailed behind them, dragging our cases with aching arms and aching hearts. Away from the station, away from all we knew, and off to yet another new life.

I could barely remember the last time Id seen my mother before this. She and my biological father, John Donnelly, had separated when I was just a toddler. And on Boxing Day 1975, Mum dumped my older brother, Jock, and me, with our paternal grandparents, William and Eliza Donnelly. She didnt visit us, as far as I know, and she didnt even check on us. I was just five years old. And yet I was quite happy without my mother; my grandparents were warm and kind and made sure we wanted for nothing. I have vague memories, too, of an aunt painting my toenails and playing house with me. Because I was the smallest, the whole family made such a fuss of me.

But later that year we were taken into care, to live in a Catholic childrens home called Nazareth House, in Glasgow. There we were reunited with our other two sisters, both older than me. It was nice to be back with my siblings, but I missed the easy affection of my grandparents home. The timetable at Nazareth House was strict, almost military. The home was run by nuns who, it seemed to me, chatted very little and smiled even less. We were up early every morning to say prayers, then we had to be dressed, fed and in chapel, on our knees, by 8 a.m. By the time we got to school I was already exhausted. After school there were more prayers, food, chores, then bed. We were woken at midnight for a last trip to the loo, to ensure we didnt wet the bed. Nobody misbehaved or stepped out of line there was simply no scope for it in a place like that. We were under the watchful, beady eyes of the nuns all the time.

I was in a large girls dormitory with my sisters. We had a narrow single bed each with a miserably thin mattress, and a small bedside cupboard to store all the possessions that we didnt have. The boys dormitories were along another corridor, and they sat in a different area of the dining hall, too, so we rarely saw our big brother, Jock. We saw Mum very rarely at the childrens home, nor our dad, apart from one single visit, who now seemed consigned to history. We wouldnt see him again for many years.

As I recount the facts now, it sounds like a pitiful and wretched existence, and yet it was quite the opposite. I liked being in the home. Perversely, I preferred the rigidity and the predictability there to the uncertainty and chaos I associated with my mother. At Nazareth House I was at least fed and warm. The nuns were firm and austere, but as I settled in there I realised too that they were always fair and reasonable. I never felt as though I was singled out in any way. I never felt picked on or ostracised or bullied. Life was tough, of course it was, but it was tough for us all. We were all in the same boat, and there was a comfort in the collective hardship. There was a togetherness and a camaraderie with the other girls, and though we didnt have birthday cakes or bedtime stories or new shoes we had each other. There were plenty of giggles; chasing each other down the long corridors, tickling each other when we were supposed to be praying in Mass, or telling ghost stories in the midnight gloom of the long dormitories to scare each other half to death. I really was happy enough, day to day, in my little routine. There was a security and a feeling of safety about the place that I clung to. And though I didnt know it then, the childrens home, with the chilly dormitory and the strict and distant nuns, would be the last place I would feel safe for a very long time. I knew where I was with the nuns. I knew where I was supposed to be at every hour of every day. And for a small child, such certainty is golden. I would only appreciate that, of course, after it was snatched away.