The Twisted Way by Jean Hill Page B

hyperactive and suffering from an attention deficiency disorder and she would be offered medication or counselling. The theory that her condition could be hereditary would have been considered and her family helped to discover the best way to cope with their difficult daughter. Anne did not have the benefit of accurate assessment, helpful drugs, counselling or internet information to fall back on to help her child. She felt responsible, guilty and inadequate and often drank a swig of whisky or gin when she could afford it to drown her feelings of incompetence. Felicity continued to cause her parents much grief and her younger brother Ronald had a difficult time dealing with his sister’s behaviour. He was too young to understand, indeed nobody understood her behaviour and Felicity knew it. She could not control her mood swings and erratic actions but craved reassurance, love and help.
    When Felicity was six years old Anne and her mother were killed in a car crash. Felicity and her younger brother Ronald were sent to live with Richard’s Aunt Dolly in Northumberland. Janet and James were asked if they would have one or other of the children occasionally to give Aunt Dolly a break. Janet was not really keen.
    ‘I will have them for a week or two during the school summer holidays Richard, but we are both working and can’t have them here for long.’
    A week would be more than long enough, she decided. Richard was too eager to ditch his responsibilities.
    ‘Well,’ James had retorted when she told him about Richard’s request, ‘they may be my niece and nephew but as far as I am concerned they are a dead loss. You can entertain them, I’m not going to stay around and put up with that silly Felicity. Ugh, kids ... Richard is too keen to get rid of the little brats. He should have made more effort to stop his wife from drinking, especially when driving that old car. She was unhappy. It was probably his fault anyway.’
    Janet agreed and regretted her generosity. Richard soon obtained a job which entailed working abroad for an oil company.
    ‘I won’t be able to get home as often as I would like to see the children,’ he had bleated at the time but Janet knew he really did not want to see them.
    There were no grandparents to help and Richard’s aunt and uncle in Northumberland, though really too elderly to take on two children, were the only relatives who had, though with some reluctance, agreed to help. Richard had jumped at their initial tentative offer to take the youngsters off his hands.
    ‘Poor little children,’ his soft-hearted aunt had said at the time. A statement she was later to regret.
    In no time Richard had a string of girlfriends who were far more interesting than his children. He didn’t want to get married again and enjoyed his freedom. He continued to doubt whether they were really his children anyway. Ronald might be but he was not a child he felt pleased to call his own. The boy was intelligent but had no spirit and was weak and useless, and probably wouldn’t amount to much anyway.
    The first holiday the children spent with Janet and James was a disaster. It was one year before James decided to leave Enderly and he was morose and miserable most of the time. Felicity at just seven years old was pining for her mother and hated living with her great aunt in Northumberland.
    ‘Can’t I live with you and Uncle James?’ she would ask every day.
    ‘Not possible dear,’ Janet had replied quickly. She knew that James would be livid if he thought he was stuck with ‘those children’ as he labelled them and for once she agreed with him.
    Ronald was quiet and subdued and he hardly uttered a word during the time he stayed in Primrose House. Janet was concerned for the boy and did her best to make him welcome. She feared he was afraid to speak and would benefit from speech training which could help him release his inhibitions but James thought that would be silly and Janet’s efforts to obtain a