Chapter One: The odd child...

I'd always been a strange person. Or at least that's what I had been told my entire life. I was strange and weird and I shouldn't be allowed be allowed to associate with anyone, let alone children my own age. My family shunned me, I didn't have any friends and I never really knew what it was like to be a child. I spent my days at home, cooking and cleaning for a bunch of ungrateful people and didn't even have the right to an education.

My mother said that an education was meaningless to a person of my intelligence. She said the strange things that happened when I was around could all be explained by my lack of smarts. The best I could hope for in life is someone deciding they needed a maid badly enough to hire someone as stupid and as ugly as me. Hopefully they wouldn't notice the strange occurrences that seemed to follow me, like light bulbs bursting while I was being yelled at, or people getting hurt when they would tease me. Not that I ever touched anyone or there was any proof. I was just weird and unattractive. If you hear something like that often enough it's easy to believe it. I knew no different.

To be honest I think the real reason my mum wouldn't send me to school was because of my father. I don't know my dad, I don't even think he knows I exist, but I do know he was a teacher at some fancy school in England. My mother told me this one night when she'd had too much to drink. She doesn't even remember telling me.

My mother was only 20 when she had me. She was raised in England and when she found out she was pregnant she flew out to live in Australia. She tells all her 'friends' that she left England to make sure my father couldn't hurt her. I don't believe that's true. I know I don't know much about him but I don't think he was a bad person. On the night my mother told me he was a teacher she also let slip that he was a young man who wrote her love letters and was madly in love with her. Call me naïve but I don't think a brutal man would do such a thing. Besides, if you knew my mother you'd know that there wasn't a lot of honesty in what she says.

Left alone as often as I was (my mother was rarely ever home) I taught myself to read. I would read anything. Most of the reading material in our house consisted of trashy gossip magazines and cereal boxes but they were all read the minute they entered the house. I had a real thirst for knowledge, I suppose you get that when it's denied you, and I was surprisingly a quick learner. I would watch documentaries when I was alone and I used to steal newspapers from the neighbours rubbish bins when they were at work.

Throughout my childhood my mother had a string of drop kick boyfriends who would come around with the sole intention of having a place to sleep and food to eat (although the house was often empty of food). When I was 16 my mother met a man called Rick who she married a few weeks later. He was crude and violent and despised me. I was used to this however with him it was worse. He used to make messes especially for me to clean up and he would tease me to no end. He'd beat me for the smallest things and took away the few possessions I had.

My mum was convinced he made her happy. Maybe he did. I could never understand her so perhaps a cruel, abusive lout was just her type. Either way I knew that when I turned 18 I was leaving, I was going to London to start a new life.

Sure London was far away but it was the only place I could think of ever wanting to go and, while I knew I was deluded when I thought I would get a chance to meet my dad, I harboured dreams of him finding me and taking me to live in a beautiful house. No matter what I wanted to be as far away from my parents as possible.