No One Wants You by Celine Roberts Read Free Book Online

for me to appreciate. While such a consideration was rare in my life up to that time, it was a concept that was to remain elusive in my life, right up to the present day.
    That Christmas, Kit and Tony had a television installed in their house. I had never been to the cinema and consequently had never seen a moving picture. The introduction of a television into the house was frightening at first. I treated it with suspicion. I could not feel at ease with a box, with live people in it, in the same room as me. But I got used to it very quickly. I soon wanted to watch it all the time. But there were no programmes until about six o’clock in the evenings. They used to turn it on an hour beforehand, and we would all sit around it, watching the unmoving test card, while it played the same music. It was all very exciting.
    On Christmas Eve we all went to midnight mass in the local church. When we came home I stayed up for a while, helping to make stuffing for a turkey, which we would have for Christmas dinner the next day. I had never seen so much food for three people.
    I went to bed that Christmas Eve night, as happy as I had ever been before. Early the next morning, the three of us assembled around the Christmas tree, and Kit gave out presents to Tony and me. Tony only got one present and all the rest were for me. I must have got about seven presents.
    There was a skirt, a blue one.
    There was a set of handkerchiefs.
    There was a pink cardigan.
    There were different bars of chocolate.
    There were some sucky sweets.
    There was a hat, a beret type.
    But my favourite of the whole lot was a handbag. It was fairly small and brown in colour, but in one corner, in gold letters was my name, Celine. I cherished that brown bag with my name on it.
    Once again, I thought I was in heaven.
    These people gave me so many presents, and made me feel so welcome in such a short space of time. Both of them were very kind. Even when I did something wrong like one time when someone gave Kit a lovely hairbrush and I sat on it and the handle broke. She was angry and snapped, ‘Nothing good ever came out of that place’, meaning my foster-mother’s house. I was scared but I knew she would forgive me and she didn’t hit me.
    But the experience of my short life had already taught me not to expect very much from anybody. Unfortunately I was right and my world was to be dashed again.
    About three months after Christmas, Kit and Tony said that they wanted to talk to me. The three of us sat down around the table in the kitchen one evening. I was drinking a mug of Kit’s strong sweet tea and just beginning to tuck into a jam sponge cake that she had made earlier. I had just taken a bite of cake when they told me that they could not keep me with them any longer.
    My world collapsed.
    I could not swallow the piece of cake. The mug of tea crashed to the table, as my arm was no longer strong enough to hold it.
    All energy drained from me. I was unable to speak. I could not even ask, ‘Why?’
    They told me that my foster-mother had died. I didn’t go to her funeral. Kit hadn’t told me at the time. I remember her saying, ‘Sure she’s no loss to you anyway.’ Even though in a strange way we would both call her ‘mother’ as she had also brought Kit up.
    They said that I had missed too much school. They said that I had to go to school again and that it was the law of the land. They said that they had no choice. They could not let me stay with them. They said that a neighbour of my foster-mother’s had complained to the ISPCC (Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) months ago about the ‘goings-on’ in that house and that I had to be sent away. The cruelty officer from the ISPCC had called earlier that day and told them that he would collect me and take me away to a school the next day.
    As they said the words, I could sense myself closing down. I had known that feeling of hurt before. My protection was to close down all sense of pain.