Marianne Marsh - Helpless: The true story of a neglected girl betrayed and exploited by the neighbour she trusted

T ell us a story, my children used to say to me.

Where do you want me to begin? I would ask as I picked up a well-thumbed favourite book.

At the beginning, of course, Mum, and dutifully I would turn to page one.

Once upon a time , I would start.

But when that story is my own and I have more years behind than in front of me the question is: where should I start?

The tale that I try to keep locked away in the recesses of my mind; that haunts my dreams that started when I was seven.

My real story, though, started when I was conceived, or maybe even before, but it was not until I sat in my kitchen holding a piece of foolscap paper, with its small neat handwriting covering both sides, that I accepted the time had finally come to confront my past.

But where do I start? I asked myself.

At the beginning, Marianne, my inner voice replied. Your beginning, for you have to remember the years that came before to understand everything that happened.

So that is what I have done.

On every one of my birthdays, during the time I lived at home, before even a card had been opened or a present received, my mother told me how it had rained on the day I was born.

Not just showers, she always said, but great gushes of water that lashed the house and turned the country lanes into muddy paths.

The gutters, which my father never thought to empty of their dead leaves, overflowed. Rainwater streamed down the side of the house and then gushed noisily into already over-burdened drains. Over the years the outside walls had become stained a deep moss green and the blocked gutters had caused large patches of damp and mould to grow on the bedroom walls.

It was the early hours of the morning, before even the farmers cockerels had welcomed in the day, when I decided to enter the world. My mother had woken to stabbing pains and a damp nightdress and knew I was about to appear. Suddenly she was terrified.

She shook my father awake and he, grumbling at my inconsideration, hastily pulled on his clothes, tucked his trousers into thick boots, placed his bicycle clips over his ankles and rushed out of the house in search of the local midwife.

My mother heard the words womans business and no place for a man floating in the air behind him before the front door slammed and she was alone with only her pain and fear for company.

In what seemed like hours, but was in fact less than twenty minutes she always eventually admitted, the midwife was standing at the foot of her bed.

A sensible little square of a woman, she quickly took charge and tried to sooth my mothers fears by informing her that she had delivered hundreds of babies. After a hasty examination she confirmed my imminent arrival.

Then do you know what she said? my mother would always ask at this point of the story. Obediently I would play the game and shake my head.

She just said that there was nothing she could do until my pains were closer together, and that, and my mother would draw breath to put emphasis on her next words, all I had to do then was push! And then she asked where the clean towels she had asked to be left out for her were.

My mother then continued to tell me about the remainder of that long, pain-filled day.

Tutting noises had come from the midwifes mouth when she saw that my hungover father had forgotten to leave out all the items that she had requested, but with my mothers help she eventually found everything she needed.

The next thing she accomplished was bullying a neighbour into agreeing to come next door and help when the time came, but until it did there was little to do. My mother listened to the buzz of conversation downstairs as numerous cups of tea were made and the two of them exchanged gossip. Over the day drinks were brought to her room and her face was wiped with a cool cloth, but mostly she was left alone.

Call me when you need me, were the words uttered by the midwife that failed to reassure, far less comfort, before she took herself downstairs to sit before the freshly lit fire.

I sometimes wondered how my mother remembered so much detail, but she assured me she did.

All that day she lay on her back, her legs raised, her knees apart and her hands moist with the perspiration of both agony and fear clutching hold of the twisted sheet. Her bed faced the window and, as she watched the water streaming across the glass, her body was wracked by more pain than she had thought anyone could endure.

Her throat ached with the screams that had been torn from it. She was drenched in sweat; it ran down her face, plastered her hair to her head and dripped from her chin.

More than anything, she wanted someone who loved her there; someone who would hold her hand, wipe her brow and tell her she was going to be all right. But there was only the midwife.

Evening came, and still it rained. She looked out through the window and saw glimmering in its panes her own faces reflection, streaked with raindrops. It was as though, she thought, a million tears were running down her cheeks.

Eighteen hours after I had pierced my mothers waters she gave that final push the last one she thought her body was capable of and I finally entered the world.

Luckily as I slid out of the warmth of my mothers body I did not know how much my presence was resented. That took a few years to discover.

My father came home only once last orders had been called and heard the news that I was a girl.

I cannot think that he was very happy.

M y earliest memory comes to me: a time when, too young to walk far, I was sitting in a pushchair. I felt again the motions of its movements and the sudden weight of shopping bags thrown in carelessly on top of me. How I longed for the expected warmth of my mothers arms when she would stoop and lift me out. I heard the buzz of voices coming from the blurred faces above me, saw them peering down at me, but still I could not see myself.