Prologue

          When the walls crashing down around you is all you can hear, the screeching banging into every recess of your subconscious, what do you do?  When life’s thrown at you everything within reach and you’ve fallen to your knees, battered and bloodied, how can you be expected to carry on?  That’s what I was asking myself last night, which is kind of what brought me here.  As hell descended upon my life once more, I took one long deep breath and let the horror of my past wash over me.  Three things immediately came to mind: get into the foetal position, an oldie, but a goodie, scream until I run out of breath and/or faint, likely to get me sectioned though, and the third – The third one is this: start a kind of diary of my life, sort of like a mental-colonic.  My nan suggested it.  Unfortunately, most of my life has been pretty messed up, so I may be at this for a while.

            I’m not really sure when all the problems started; I suppose I was quite a difficult child, everything from climbing out the windows in a vain attempt to escape evil babysitters to running through school corridors screaming, being chased by a horde of harassed looking teachers.

            My parents separated just before my third birthday.  Literally, just before; it was the day of my much-awaited party when my parents sat me and my sister down for a “quick chat.”  To give them their due credit, it was quite quick.  My dad looked as though he’d been crying.  I remember the way the corners of his eye glistened with tears, tears that by the end of our little chat had brimmed over and drenched his smooth, tender face.  My mum had an odd look on her face, odd to a three-year-old anyway, a sort of steely expression.

            “Alison, James.  Mummy and I need to tell you something.”  That’s how dad started.  It’s a little blurry after that.  I don’t think I quite understood what he was trying to tell us, although perhaps my older sister, Alison, had as I can remember her grasping my hand and whimpering.

I think mum thought dad was being a little long-winded as she pushed him aside and said in her brusque, business like manner, “Daddy and I are separating.  He won’t be living here anymore.  He’ll be leaving after the party.”  She stood to leave and said, perhaps as an afterthought, “Anthony?  Don't you think now would be the best time to say your goodbyes?  No need to drag it out.”

I cried throughout the party, even the magician mum had hired couldn’t conjure a smile onto my face.  Within five minutes of the party ending, dad had left.  Alison and I stood at the door as he and my mum had one last slanging match.  He gave us one final, fleeting smile before he walked out of our home and out of our lives.