Handstands In The Dark: A True Story of Growing Up and Survival by Janey Godley

the child he never got to be in front of the gang he hung around with. We always talked about my future, never his. He would tell me that I could be a really good artist and encouraged me to keep going to college. He often spoke about how we never had anything in common, but said he would miss me if I left him. He never tried to get me to drink alcohol and would shout down anyone who used peer pressure to wear me down. I did enjoy being with him. One night, as we sat huddled together in a cold hallway and the snow was deep on the ground and sensible folk were heading for home, he held my face, kissed me gently and told me: ‘I really, really love you, Janey, and I want us to get engaged.’
    I was 16 years old and he was 15. I looked at him in complete horror.
    ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I don’t ever want to be an East End wife sitting in Easterhouse or Shettleston havin’ your weans and wondering how I’m going to afford to redecorate the hoose some day.’
    He was crushed.
    ‘What’s wrong with that?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong with getting married and havin’ weans and staying in Shettleston?’
    But all I could see was my sister Ann, pregnant at 18, standing in our hall with her new husband, Jay, then being trapped by a baby. I did not want that – ever. I wanted something more. I wanted to see the world.
    Barra and I continued the relationship. I had already met his parents and they were not much different from my own: two people in Glasgow trying to do the best they could. His mammy had actually told me to get rid of Barra as she liked me and did not want me to end up like her, stuck in a violent family always visiting one son or another in prison.
    That New Year, after we had been together around four or five months, as we were stepping off a bus, Barra suddenly told me: ‘I’m no’ goin’ oot with ye any mare,’ and walked away. I never asked him why he dumped me, but I later found out that he had started seeing another tiny local girl – Lizzy. She and her pal Lauren were OK, but sometimes Lauren would bully me a bit and I was really scared of her. She threatened to beat me up once. It was the beginning of bad blood between us.
    * * *
    A few months before this, I had met my new best pal Maggie. She came from a big family in Shettleston. Her brother was already my brother Vid’s pal. Maggie had been in care for some reason which she never explained but, by the time I met her, she was free and unemployed. We became good pals so it seemed natural that she moved into our already overcrowded home. Mammy, Maggie and I all slept in the same room. Just after splitting with Barra, I had stopped the community work, so we were all claiming Unemployment Benefit and all just about scraping by.
    Maggie smoked a lot but never actually said much – I was the opposite – but I loved her strange sense of humour; she was very dry and sarcastic but simultaneously very childlike and, because I was one year older, I always felt very responsible for her. She always looked vulnerable – like a victim – with big brown puppy-dog eyes and perhaps I was trying to mother her. She had been through her own shit in life but strangely neither of us discussed our past problems. She did not know I had been sexually abused, but what she
was
appalled at were our washing facilities and so we both shared regular trips to the local ‘Steamie’ – an old Victorian washhouse much like a launderette which was housed in Shettleston Public Baths. While our washing was being done in the Steamie, we would buy a ticket to have a hot bath ourselves. It was great just to sink into it and get the smell of the city off your skin, even if it was for just one day.
    The next year, I decided to leave Glasgow.
    * * *
    One sunny May morning, Maggie and I packed the few clothes and belongings we had into one suitcase and headed for Glasgow Central Station. We caught a train to Redcar, the small town on the North Yorkshire coast near Middlesbrough