The dining room

 The dining room

One of the things I hated about the house is the fact that the bathroom was immediately in front of the front door with the toilet immediately in line with the front door so with the bathroom door open you see the toilet as the first thing As you came into the house. So that is step one on our journey through the house. on your left is a door into the dining room. 

In here was the round table and bookcase on which stood Arthur Mead encyclopaedias. these were clearly instructional moral Christian books in which  the pages with the entry for alcohol saying that you should be doing sports not looking up alcohol, which was not much use to me when doing my biology homework for school. 

in this room there is a big cupboard which stored pretty much everything set into one of the alcoves beside the fireplace, which of course was a working fireplace although it was not often lit, serving instead to provide cold and a draft only . The windows with the blackberry curtains and the metal frames looking across to the neighbours house. The telephone which was a red telephone with a turn dial for dialling the number and a big heavy receiver. Later at secondary school we would have just such a phone in art as one of our still life objects to draw, and I said to my art teacher that is the sort of phone we have at home and she was surprised by then dials on phone to large been replaced by press buttons on phones and voicemails would expect you to press a certain number on the dial to activate different options so A turn dial didn’t really operate the same or work with the modern world, but he said it is what we had. 

One time mum and dad won some money about £50 I think on the football pools for some shells I’ve put up here inside this room in the other alcove and on there amongst other things with the fish tank. This room gained a lick of paint and a lampshade On account of that money as well. And this was the only room to have any kind of carpet there was a big rug under the dining table. 

It is on the steps of this room leading down into the lean to kitchen behind the house then I remember my mother punching me in the head and I know that I was around three years old and how surprised and upset I was. she just didn’t want to be followed into the kitchen so she punched me in the head. and I don’t understand why anyone could do that why would you simply not share whatever you’re feeling or doing with your child because you were spending the day together, as I would with mine.

 It is in this room that I remember being immediately after the gang rape. I was in here with the words from the men who had gang raped me ringing in my ears that when they’re done with me I wouldn’t be able to sit down and here in this room I realised they were right as I could not. It is here in this room that I remember trying to dial 999 to call the police with the men in the house as they began to attack me because of course before the rape  there were many other assaults-  being held down, being stripped, having objects pushed inside me, the threats, “when we’re done with you you won’t be able to sit down”, the fighting them off, “ouch, the bitch bit me”. those and the threats that if I did call the police, as I was trying to, that my daddy would go to jail.