The Girl Nobody Wants: A Shocking True Story of Child Abuse in Ireland by Lily O'Brien Page A

eat your dinner’, she said. I looked at her in shock; I couldn’t believe what she had just said to me.
    So in a panic, I explained to her what had just happened to Simon and she told me to stay at the table while she went off to look for him. I got up and followed her to the door and I watched her as she walked past Daisy, who was still outside the house. Daisy looked pale and I tried to go out to her, but another member of the staff dragged me back inside and closed the door, and then she told me to sit down and to eat my dinner; but I couldn’t, I was too upset. So I just sat and waited for the staff to come back and within a couple of minutes she walked back through the door saying that Simon was gone and that someone had taken him to hospital.
    I began to cry, saying that he was dead, but the staff told me to shut up and to eat my dinner; but I didn’t want the dinner and I told her that I couldn’t eat it, and with that she turned around and gave me a wallop around the head. She shouted at me that the food was not to be wasted and that she had not spent all day cooking it just for the fun of it. Then she screamed out loud at me, saying that I was an ungrateful child and that I could not see Simon until I ate all my dinner. I felt sick thinking about what had just happened to Simon, and each time I put the food into my mouth I gagged and I had to stop; but she said eat, and with the next mouthful I vomited the food back onto the plate and all over the table. She was furious and she made me spoon the sick up off the table and put it all back onto the plate; then she made me eat it all again, and she stood watching me until the very last spoonful went into my mouth.
    Then she told me to get back to school, and as she opened the door, she pushed me outside and I fell to the ground. I closed my eyes and put my face down against the dirt and I began to cry. I knew that I had to be strong for Simon, so I lifted my head and I looked around, and Daisy was sitting on the step next to me and she was still crying. I picked myself up off the ground, I walked over to her and then we cuddled each other and we both held hands as we walked off back to school.
    As we walked along the road, I told Daisy that it was just the two of us now and we had to be strong and stick together. But on the way back, we had to walk past Simon’s blood that was still in the road; and as we got closer to the spot where Simon had been lying, some people were standing there and they were talking about the accident. I walked up to the people and I asked them if Simon was ok, but they told me to go away and they just kept talking to each other. I walked back towards Daisy, shaking my head from side to side, and then we continued walking back to school; but we still didn’t know if he was dead or alive.
    When we got back to the classroom, I asked the nun if Simon was ok, but she just looked at me and said, ‘Sit down, you have work to do.’ And for the rest of the day, we just had to sit and do our work. We never knew if Simon was dead or alive and it was like nothing had ever happened; the nuns just got on with what they had to do and nothing else seemed to matter to them. They never showed us any feelings and they always made us feel bad if we showed feelings towards each other.
    After school, we had to walk back past Simon’s blood to get home and I was shaking with fear as we walked towards the spot of the accident; and as we got closer, I looked down at the road and the blood was still wet and sticky, and it had been splattered along the road, as cars drove through it. And I could see tyre tracks going up and down the road, where they had driven over the blood and spread the blood along the road surface, and I began to cry. Daisy held me tight, telling me that it was all going to be ok and that Simon was going to be at home when we got back, but I knew he wouldn’t be; he had been hit so hard by the car that he was dead. I walked along thinking