Nobody really noticed the small bonfire in the woods. It was dark and the shadowy figures moved slowly and silently around it. One of them, a young woman, stopped, and coldly and callously cursed the unborn child of one of her neighbours.

Several months later a little girl was born with the umbilical cord wound tightly around her neck, caused by her violent twisting and turning in her mother’s womb. Calmly, and without fuss, the midwife quickly hooked the cord over the baby’s head and cleared the mucus out of its mouth.

“It’s a girl! She’s perfect! Have you got a name for her?”

“Yes,” said the woman who lay back on the pillows, exhausted, “Her name’s Jennifer. Jenny.”

CHAPTER ONE
FORGOTTEN SECRETS

Huh! Almost thirty years later I wish to God that they were still forgotten. For there are some days, even now, when I think I would rather be dead than remember that which my mind chose to completely block out for so many years. The memories were to come back to me slowly, like deadly enemies released to torment and torture me, taking over my life like a fatal disease, affecting my every thought and action. Vile, nauseous secrets that made me sick to my stomach and wish that I’d never been born. O God! Why me? Why did You let it happen? What sort of a crazy world are you running down here?

I looked up at Aunty Lilly as I skipped along excitedly, holding on to her hand. I liked Aunty Lilly.

“Can I stay with you all day and play with Susan?” Susan was the younger of Aunty Lilly’s two daughters.

“Well, Susan is in school today,” came the gentle reply, “and mummy will be back home after lunch waiting for you.”

“Can I go to school with Susan then?” I pleaded.

“Oh Jenny, sweetheart, next year you’ll be old enough to go to school. Be a good girl with me this morning and if we hear the grocery van come round I’ll buy you some sweets. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

The next thing I remember about that day was the man in Aunty Lilly’s house. I was sitting on the lid of a record player beside the settee when he came and crouched down in front of me. Nobody had ever touched me there before and I didn’t like it when he showed me what my Daddy looked like. I had never seen that part of my Daddy. Then I was standing up and his hands held my head tightly. The big, warm stick was too big for my mouth and I couldn’t breath. He kept trying to push it in further and further, more, more, more, I can’t move, eyes tight shut, no movement, can’t breath, face covered, bad smell, going to be sick…

The grocery van didn’t come round that morning and so Aunty Lilly gave me bread spread with margarine and sprinkled with sugar, which I enjoyed. She read to me as well, and I was allowed to stand on a chair at the kitchen sink and play with the water until it was time to go home. I don’t remember her saying anything to me about what had happened and so I guess I must have thought it wasn’t important. Anyway, it was something nasty and secret. By the time I’d got home to mum it had gone out of my conscious thinking. My little mind had buried it because it just didn’t want to remember.