A Mother's Story Read Online Free

and that Josephine would take my dad away from me.
    When Josephine first arrived, it was a huge adjustment for us kids. I’m old enough and sensible enough now to look back and see that it must have been just as difficult for her, moving in with three children and becoming a step parent overnight. But, over time, Josephine introduced some much-needed discipline and structure into our household.
    I started to ride horses around this time. At the end of school each day, I would go straight to the riding school. I’ve always had an affinity with animals. Whether it’s a consequence of having been raised in a rural setting or whether I gravitated to the company of animals to fill the void in my emotional life, I can’t say. All I know is, as long as I can remember, I have had a host of pets – rabbits, dogs, goats, cats, chickens and donkeys. There’s something uncomplicated and wonderfully straightforward about the love of – and for – an animal.
    Love for a different kind of animal reared its head in my early teens too: boys suddenly became far more interesting as I reached the ages of thirteen and fourteen. The timing may purely have been coincidental, but it was also around this time that I started to get into trouble at school.
    Looking back, I am sure becoming a troublemaker was in no small part in reaction to my unhappy home life. I was confused and scared, and I felt I was having to navigate it all on my own, so I acted up at school. At the end of my third year, I received a report that was so appalling I didn’t have the gumption to show it to Dad and Josephine. Instead, I began petitioning to become a weekly boarder.
    And so, for the last two years of my school life I spent the week at school and the weekends at home. It was the best thing I could have done. The sisters ran a tight ship, with Sister Winifred waking us each morning at the crack of dawn by ringing abig bell, whereupon we had to sit bolt upright in bed and start reciting the Hail Mary. Despite being an Anglican, not only had I picked up the arcane rituals of the Catholic Church with startling alacrity, but I threw myself into them, relishing the structure and certainty they seemed to provide. And while I wouldn’t describe myself as a religious person now, I developed a spirituality that I cherish and that nourishes and comforts me to this day.
    We would study before breakfast, then trot off to class. For reasons I’m still not entirely sure about, we were not allowed to shower mid-week, and were allowed only one bath a week, so my hair would become so greasy.
    Despite enjoying a marked rise in my academic fortunes, and starting to take home impressive grades, I nevertheless determined to leave school at the age of sixteen, having passed a handful of O levels. The declaration that I’d had enough of schooling went largely unchallenged as I had secured myself a good job.
    Not even Sister Winifred had the energy to oppose me, a decision made easier, I daresay, after she caught sight of my latest hairdo. Deciding it was time to up the fashion ante, I had gone off and gotten a perm at the local hair salon. They were very fashionable at the time, difficult though it is to believe now. My head turned into a frizzy mop. Dad didn’t recognise me the first time he saw me with it. Sister Winifred took one look and declared, ‘Batty, you look like a washer woman.’ It took a month for the perm to ‘settle’.
    Months later I started working as a junior bank clerk in nearby Retford. I probably thought at the time that I was the very model of a modern working girl, revelling in the independence and what I can only imagine now was a piddling weekly pay packet.
    Meanwhile, back on the home front, things were about to take a dramatic turn. Five years into their marriage, Dad andJosephine welcomed my half-brother, Terry, into the world. We all adored him. I couldn’t stop hugging him. I was seventeen