Below is the opening chapter of Belonging to Myself, in full. It starts where the memoir starts: age four, in a Liverpool garden, with an injury that turns out to be the smallest of the wounds in this house.
Coming 1 September 2026. Pre-order the e-book on Amazon →
1. The Eye
The big boy’s hands were on me before I could run. His dirty fingers dug into my arms, wrenching them up behind my back. Fire shot through my shoulders — a pain I’d never felt before.
“Twist ’em both up ’til ‘e stops wrigglin’,” he said to the smaller boy.
“Let go!” I screeched. “Let me go!”
“You London brat. You ain’t belong here. We’ll teach you.”
He twisted harder up my back. I thought my arm would break off as a surge of pain shot through my shoulders. The more I struggled to free myself, the more he forced my arms upward, and the more the pain burned. I gave up trying to free myself.
The big boy leaned in close. He was older than me; I was four, he must have been seven or eight. I could smell his sour, foul breath. From his pocket he pulled a stick with a sharp metal point shining in the sun. He pointed it at my face, his mean eyes focussing on mine.
“No!” I tried to turn my head away, but they jerked my arms even higher up my back.
I went dizzy with pain.
It was as if time stood still, endless pain, while that silver point came closer and closer.
“No,” I screamed. “No!”
But it came forward, aimed at my right eye.
A sharp, overwhelming pain surged through me, giving me the strength to pull free.
I bolted home, my cries piercing the air, while my trembling fingers shielded my throbbing, injured eye.
Mum must have heard me from afar, for she was at the gate clutching my little sister, shouting, “What’s the matter? What’s the matter? What happened, dear?”
“My eye!” I yelled. “They shot my eye.”
“Oh my dear,” she gasped, and took hold of my head.
She gently peeled my quivering hand away from my eye, red blotches on my palm. A warm wetness soaked my pants.
Terror struck me: would I ever see again? What had they done? Would Mum be angry with me?
Upon hearing the disturbance, Granny came out to the front garden. Mum asked her, “Will you ask Mr Cummins to take us to the hospital?”
Mum helped me change my pants. I felt dizzy and weak. She was next to me in the car and did her best to calm me down, holding me against herself. In the hospital, they rushed us along corridors to a room full of instruments and a man in white clothing.
“Look straight ahead,” he said, and peered into my sore eye. “Try to keep your eyes open.” He pointed a bright light into my damaged eye. “You must keep your eyes open.”
I feared he’d say I’d lose my eyesight, but he didn’t.
Dad arrived just as the doctor applied ointment to a patch of bandage, which he taped over my eye, saying, “I see no permanent damage. Bring him back in two days.”
I was relieved but confused by having to return as if there still could be a problem.
As we walked out of the hospital, I saw my reflection in a window. I looked like a pirate and straightened my back to look courageous.
Once we were on the tram, Mum reprimanded me. “I told you to never, ever, go out on the road. Those boys are nasty types. I knew you’d get into trouble. Don’t go near them again… their families… not our type.”
“It’s best to stick to the back garden,” Dad said.
But I’d grown tired of playing in the back garden on my own.
Mum took me back to the hospital where they confirmed there was no damage to my eye.
In retrospect, I wonder whether that was true, as my right eye has always been weak.
No one ever identified or punished the boys.
—
We were living in Liverpool with Granny, my mother’s grandmother. The post-war housing shortage meant my parents couldn’t find a home of their own and had no alternative but to lodge with Granny. We had the front half of the house and shared the bathroom and kitchen with her.
My bedroom faced north, making it cold and damp. Flowery frost patterns covered my window during winter. Our living room overflowed with furniture: table and chairs, a sofa, and a black piano, which Mum played when she had a break from feeding my sister and washing nappies.
I’d sprawl on the carpet with my toy cars, driving them on imaginary roads, until Mum stepped over me with a sigh. “You’re in my way again,” she’d say, not unkindly, but not warmly either. I’d gather my cars and retreat to the hall, only to have Granny shuffle past muttering about toys everywhere, saying, “I’m going to trip over them someday.”
So I disappeared into the back garden where I was free to build roads in the soil with my toy bulldozer and drive my cars on endless journeys. Despite my sense of being unwanted by both Mum and Granny, I found satisfaction in playing alone with no one watching.
Beyond the small lawn, climbing roses covered a trellis screening Granny’s fruit garden — rows of blackcurrants, redcurrants, and raspberries, and a gnarled apple tree. In summer, when the berries ripened, I helped pick them, my fingers stained purple and red. When she wasn’t looking, I’d slip the plumpest berries into my mouth.
—
One sunny day, my curiosity piqued when I heard voices in the garden next door. I tried to climb the fence to peer over, but I couldn’t get a grip. I searched for holes to peek through, but they only provided limited vision. Having a need for something to stand on, I went into the kitchen, picked up Granny’s footstool, and took it to the fence, placing it for a fine view into the neighbour’s garden. All I could see was a lawn, bushes, and trees. No one in sight.
I’d barely started to look around when Granny’s voice startled me from the kitchen.
“What’s happened to my stool?” she shouted.
“I haven’t had it,” Mum replied.
“Well… where’s it gone? If you haven’t had it, who has?” Granny complained.
I jumped off the stool but feared Granny’s rage if I took it back inside, so I threw it over the fence and went back to playing in the garden.
Minutes later, I heard a persistent ringing of the doorbell.
“Who the devil’s that?” Mum said, on her way to open the door.
The kitchen door was ajar, allowing me to see through to the front door where the neighbour stood waving her arms and shouting.
“Your boy… he threw a stool over the fence! How dare he! It landed on the pram. Almost hit my baby! You’re a hopeless mother… can’t keep control of the little brat!”
I couldn’t hear my mother’s response, but as soon as the woman left, Mum came looking for me. She yanked me by the arm and spanked my bottom — sharp, stinging slaps that shocked more than hurt. My chin quivered when I felt the guilt. She marched me to my room without a word. I climbed onto my bed, curled on my side, and sucked my thumb until the tightness in my body loosened.
When Dad came home that evening, Mum was in tears when she told him what I’d done and that the neighbour had said she wasn’t a proper mother.
Turning to me, Dad said, “How can you do a thing like that?”
He slapped the back of my calf, and it stung enough to make me cringe.
Looking back on that episode now, I recall feeling unwanted and in the way. I was happier in the garden, or in the shed when it rained — happier on my own.
—
In 1953, I was five and still troublesome. I wet my bed every night, disturbing Mum in her sleep, making her more exhausted and irritable. It made me feel worthless, even though I couldn’t help it.
Mum was so distressed that Dad spoke to the doctor, who prescribed her a tonic. He suggested that I should start school, presumably to get me out of the way.
In June, I started at Ryebank Preparatory School. Of course, school uniform was required, which meant going to a special shop in Liverpool with Mum. I tried on a white shirt with a red bowtie, a navy-blue blazer, and a cap. The shop assistant instructed me to remove my trousers, and then replaced them with the mandatory grey shorts and long grey socks that extended up to my knees. Peering in the mirror, I noticed a different boy, a big boy, neatly dressed for his first day at school, the school badge sewn on the blazer pocket and cap.
Mum walked me to school, wheeling my sister in the pushchair. That made me feel safe on the street. The school was in what once was a large house and garden. A sign above the entrance displayed the same emblem as on my badge. At the door, the headmaster and his wife greeted us. He led me into a dark classroom with boys and girls at wooden desks, two pupils per desk. He pointed to a free place next to a boy. Being near the end of the school year, I was the only new boy.
A teacher entered and asked us to stand.
“Let us pray,” she said.
I didn’t know what to do, so I just copied the other children. I had no prior experience with prayer because I’d never been to church. Because my family never brought up praying, I just gazed at the floor.
She asked us to sit and gave us sums to do, something I quite liked. When a bell in the hall rang, we filed out into the playground at the back. High, sooty black walls enclosed an expanse of black gravel. I went to go back inside at one point, and found the headmaster and his wife had blocked the doorway with a table covered with sweets, various sorts, all in rows. She asked me what I’d like. I chose a red bar of something, paid her a penny, and scurried back outside. It tasted horrible, so I didn’t buy that one again.
Smoke billowed over the playground wall, and my heart beat faster on hearing the chuff-chuffing of a steam train. I sprinted towards the wall, hoping to watch it pass, but the wall was too high. The soot poured into the playground and made me cough.
Ryebank was tough. Miss Scarlett taught us tables up to ‘twelve times twelve is a hundred and forty-four’. To drum the tables in, she asked us to recite them. But if we got stuck, she took off her red leather belt and struck our hands. After seeing that done to other children, I made certain to know my tables. Mum helped me practise at home.
In the year that I attended Ryebank, I didn’t make any friends because Mum picked me up at lunchtime, and in the morning break I was more occupied with sweets than playing with others. I didn’t learn the games the other boys played, didn’t know how to join in, and didn’t develop any social skills.
—
At home, I sensed the daily irritation between my parents and Granny.
Seeing Mum in the kitchen, I’d hear Granny raising her voice, “You’ve been in here two hours already!”
“I can’t just wave a wand,” Mum said. “I need to wash nappies and prepare dinner.”
Many mornings, when my dad was dressing to go to work, I’d hear him knocking on the bathroom door, followed by Granny’s sharp, “I’ll come out when I’m ready!”
She found me a nuisance, complaining about my manners and that I was rude to her. “He trampled mud all along the hallway again. Ruined the mat.”
“I’ll clean it,” Mum said.
“You let him run wild. Keep him under control. He needs a firm hand.”
Evenings, when my father came home, my mother gave him a rundown of the day’s disasters.
“He broke one of her cups… Muddied the hall… She says I don’t control him properly.”
Dad would sigh. His mood wasn’t good when he came home in dismal weather from a disappointing day at work. Finding a frustrated family made his mood worse.
Granny spent her days in the dark back room, always dressed in black, sitting in her armchair with the curtains half-drawn. Sometimes I’d peek through the doorway and see her there. She never called me in. Never kissed or hugged me. Never read a book to me. I was afraid of her and tried to avoid her.
My instinct was to retreat, to get out of everyone’s way, to avoid them complaining about me.
—
From reading my father’s diaries, I know he’d grown weary of living with Granny and was desperate to escape Liverpool.
“It’s a dismal, ugly place,” he wrote. “No green fields, no trees for miles around, except for our solitary sycamore in the front garden.” He couldn’t reconcile himself to the city of grimy people and squalid streets.
“Rather bad-tempered these last few days due to a lack of sleep… Very tired and depressed in the evening. I wish we were living in our own house somewhere in the South. An unsatisfactory week filled with bouts of depression. Unable to enthuse over anything, especially at work, and like a bear with a sore head at home.”
The main reason for his despair was always the same — no prospect of a home of our own, trapped living with “that cantankerous, ungrateful old lady.”
For a while, Granny needed to go into hospital. My father noted, “Gran continues to improve. She’ll probably soon be home again. We do not wish her harm, but there is no doubt that her return will be a bitter pill to swallow. Our freedom of the last ten days is precious. No interfering, no criticism, no nagging at Michael, no endless repetition of things said already, no asking why, when and where. May we be kinder to our children!”
Mum’s feelings toward her grandmother were more complicated as she’d never known her own mother. She’d loved Granny as a mother figure in childhood, but now found it difficult to put up with her constant complaining.
Our best occasions were when we went out, either to a park or the centre of Liverpool for shopping. My mother did her best to look attractive and well-dressed. Aware of the fashion of the day, she wore a hat, gloves, and a matching jacket and skirt. She was of average height with dark, wavy hair, dark eyebrows, green-brown eyes in a round face, and bright red lipstick.
Anyone seeing her would have thought her fit and energetic. She’d played hockey and tennis as a girl and loved long walks. Music, though, was her true passion. At school, she’d accompanied the choir on piano and still played whenever she found a spare moment. She didn’t spend much time playing with me, although she might have done in better circumstances. She showed her love when I went to bed — tucking me in and reading stories about Rupert Bear while I looked at the pictures.