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Abandoned: The true story of a little girl who didn’t belong
Anya Peters
Separated from her real mother at birth, Anya grew up in terror of her drunken bullying uncle. Beaten, humiliated and sexually abused by him from the age of six, she thought her life couldn't get worse. But one day it did."I was used to Daddy screaming 'whore's child' at me, over and over again. But I couldn't get used to what he made me do."Anya was too terrified to tell anybody about what her uncle did to her. But then he got careless and started abusing her in front of the other children. When her brothers started calling her a 'whore', Anya cracked and all her terrible secrets came pouring out.Anya had always coped because there was one woman who loved her deeply, her 'Mummy'. But this time love was not enough. One morning 'Mummy' just left.Determined to make a new life, Anya buried her feelings and tried to move on. But when she ended up homeless, living in her car, she knew she had to face her past if she was ever going to find happiness and security again.Top 10 Sunday Times Bestseller, Abandoned is Anya's inspirational story of her fight to find love, acceptance and a place to belong.
Abandoned
The true story of a little girl who didn’t belong
ANYA PETERS
Copyright (#ulink_336ae78e-200c-5b5e-b1b3-92221f931a95)
This is a work of non-fiction. In order to protect privacy, some names and places have been changed.
HarperElement
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
HarperElement is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Limited
Published by HarperElement 2007
© Anya Peters 2007
Anya Peters asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007245727
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN 9780007348305
Version: 2017-06-08
Dedication (#ud1b86ba1-df2f-53fe-bcca-1346bbb136f8)
To Mummy,
whose love was always there
as the dock leaf to soothe the sting of him …
And to Brendan, for never letting go.
Epigraph (#ud1b86ba1-df2f-53fe-bcca-1346bbb136f8)
‘Although the world is full of suffering,
it is full also of the overcoming of it.’
(Helen Keller, 1880–1968)
Contents
Cover (#ubaa095d0-f84d-5f10-aefd-d9da9f4d8687)
Title Page (#ue4d417b5-9891-563c-80d5-c0f9fd1ee5d4)
Copyright (#u05dce46a-ea04-5408-a41c-af4560940024)
Dedication (#u77a2fd4e-25db-514a-a3cd-0612d832e419)
Epigraph (#u286dc284-4dd8-525b-93c7-35df15337106)
Chapter 1 (#u3b990ba0-f442-55d5-b5da-f06629fbfd91)
Chapter 2 (#u11d04ad0-dee3-5029-8954-833dd643ae0a)
Chapter 3 (#ube133115-d6f8-5824-8b5e-cb2026cba6f3)
Chapter 4 (#u89d7806b-f11d-5671-b3d3-0a6314937123)
Chapter 5 (#u3f9e8b09-f8a0-5ea2-b9cf-5dbba70e6bcf)
Chapter 6 (#uae2bf4d8-6f50-526b-ad51-5459088953ba)
Chapter 7 (#u0e97873a-79b1-51b4-9374-070ddf8571e3)
Chapter 8 (#u356faffb-11e0-5871-8c6a-891a8ba4b679)
Chapter 9 (#u68ac06f7-bf52-5b60-bda2-3dc0364ecc7c)
Chapter 10 (#u7832946b-9e62-5152-ad35-49ac81477395)
Chapter 11 (#u2cf507d2-9b5e-5af0-9ddd-2e425428c56b)
Chapter 12 (#u3a9ecf91-4996-5503-9f0f-0c3044757a4e)
Chapter 13 (#u4ba91269-d96e-5647-952b-b7e29830a4a7)
Chapter 14 (#u3ac09969-08d4-586f-a656-c337a11644e4)
Chapter 15 (#ud40bf3a3-6074-5d5e-b3bc-88ba5fe1bd6b)
Chapter 16 (#u4704be16-dfc2-5755-8e02-730cf7145f8e)
Chapter 17 (#u1b6eff67-84bf-5e82-aa90-592be6ea7208)
Chapter 18 (#uf185e615-cb87-5efd-a04e-51a892023b14)
Chapter 19 (#udfd3252c-126c-54c4-8799-63ec4cb39cf0)
Chapter 20 (#uc62c1585-0e1b-5dd3-8771-dc7b22eeb3d6)
Chapter 21 (#ue7e4f4c1-a0bb-5749-aab3-d63b95bd80ac)
Chapter 22 (#udfab514a-ac63-5b7a-ba1d-759f705ea0ef)
Chapter 23 (#u2d5f3f6a-4817-538a-a28e-0353da28d46a)
Chapter 24 (#u1756a401-29d0-5003-9d6b-7dc74b11ec4a)
Chapter 25 (#ua878f665-4272-57f7-b701-0eb9cad8588c)
Chapter 26 (#u15618abd-e267-50b4-8d28-4eb4a9c2db81)
Chapter 27 (#u57823e54-2fd0-5bb4-89c3-1ba4cbe2bc4a)
Chapter 28 (#ufc709945-71ba-565a-8929-b9d055b8558a)
Chapter 29 (#ud1a73460-f282-5a48-b947-461b90507582)
Chapter 30 (#ueb624877-6983-58a7-b2bd-8f0465ffdd74)
Chapter 31 (#uc8e0597f-bd1c-5b7d-abf1-71a0f417178f)
Chapter 32 (#uc8771bbd-acd3-5731-b50f-cfb378df4240)
Chapter 33 (#u542afae2-3713-564c-a280-58cd17acb78c)
Chapter 34 (#u0cc328c3-bf50-5bc5-80e6-003787c9b140)
Chapter 35 (#ub4b2d547-2125-53f6-b664-d3acae96225a)
Chapter 36 (#u8c34ae93-a475-52a0-b95f-2e0cf792526f)
Chapter 37 (#u83da3c25-6d9b-560f-b901-dfc38018739c)
Chapter 38 (#u09f842e9-fadf-58e2-aaa8-88b3ccf9bffc)
Chapter 39 (#uf91019ab-6853-50af-9955-ebfc154931f2)
Chapter 40 (#ud353af30-bfb9-50a2-aa7a-2c0947eaac32)
Chapter 41 (#u73bc7bb9-2fd9-56d3-a33a-15100113f8ab)
Chapter 42 (#ued021786-e517-50a0-856a-66ccd2011dd0)
Chapter 43 (#u9a6d30ad-2a33-57bb-b338-1fea4b218047)
Chapter 44 (#u1ebf131c-b995-5ac3-a7c1-4109af17244d)
Chapter 45 (#u37ff5418-9315-5c8f-a570-f2ee56e3ebad)
Chapter 46 (#u3196699e-745f-542b-8da5-1a7111411419)
Chapter 47 (#u5605624b-6ca6-5655-b7cc-ddc72087a023)
Chapter 48 (#uf136e5ff-1a93-5271-a0d3-834910bd5ed7)
Chapter 49 (#uf40ad5d9-f68f-59f2-93f7-4d29b639ecbb)
Epilogue (#ua0c46311-9b25-5521-b94e-70528f69714a)
Acknowledgements (#u5aaff56f-941c-5a9b-9b18-afadcb3cd8a8)
About the Publisher (#uf6bb574f-09e7-5c2d-a1a4-33eecdc839c1)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_e7a9203d-2110-5232-9fbe-3fcea2587926)
It’s after an argument. Mummy stands at the kitchen table counting out plates. It’s roast chicken, which means it’s a Sunday. And I know it’s after an argument because she calls Daddy ‘him’.
She runs through us all in her head, tapping out numbers against her palm, then slides that number of plates along the counter from the stack she has taken from the shelf.
‘Wait … who have I missed?’
I look up, nervous that it’s me. My two eldest sisters, Marie and Sandra, aren’t there that day so there should be seven.
‘Him, Michael, Liam, Stella, Jennifer, you, me,’ she says, counting us out again by name.
She always counts the plates out like that, in that order: almost by ages, except she puts the girls before me, and herself at the end. I like the way she puts me with her at the end, the way she says, ‘… you, me …’ Always like that.
Mummy never leaves me out; she treats us all the same, but every mealtime I’m waiting for the same thing, for there to be one plate short, or not enough of something to go around. And for my uncle, or even one of the others imitating him, to look around at me and say, ‘She can do without. She doesn’t belong here anyway.’
It’s what Daddy is always saying, screaming it out week after week in drunken arguments.
‘She’s not wanted here, right! She doesn’t belong here. I want her out.’
I feel my brothers and sisters stiffen on the settee beside me, rolling their eyes at each other. I know they’re all thinking the same thing: thinking that I’m the troublemaker; wishing I wasn’t there; that Daddy wouldn’t shout and argue half as much if I wasn’t, that they could watch TV in peace.
‘She’s not wanted. They dumped her over here with you because they didn’t want her over there and she’s not wanted here either. I want her out,’ he says, snapping open another beer, ‘she doesn’t belong here.’
I hold my nose to stop the tears, trying to lean back behind the others on the settee so he can’t see me, staring hard at the wires at the back of the TV, not daring to watch the screen in case something on it triggers my tears. He’ll hit me harder if he sees me crying. He always does.
