I'll Love You If.... (Hardcover)

Matthew was seven years old when his mother told him that she wasn't making his father happy. That was why she had a new man called Kevin. At first it worked like magic. But Kevin drank. 'I could smell stale beer on his breath; he would speed home in his white van with us in the back, our bodies shaking with the dodgy vibrations of the vehicle in sync with his screaming like a crazed monster on a suicide mission. He thought it was funny. The more I got scared, the more I cried, the more he would laugh and call me a wimp. He became a thug at these times; shouting inches from my face his breath a weird mixture of cigarettes and beer that would make me feel sick, each spit from his mouth a shot to the heart of whatever dignity I had at that age. I would be punished for any arguments or fights with my brothers. He would beat me hard whacking without any care for what he was doing to me and then leave me alone; my brothers would be cuddled up on the sofa watching a film with him while I was crying in my room. When Mum called home to let him know what time she was leaving work I would scream and shout for her, desperate for rescue'. But there was no rescue. So Matthew eventually set fire to the sofa Kevin was snoring on and ran away. He tried to throw himself off Southend Pier. Kevin survived! Matthew got taken into care where he faced a series of problem or 'challenges' as social workers like to say these days. Matthew spent 5 years in endless foster homes (one foster mum promised to take him to New York if he would let her medicate him) and in three institutions where he was restrained, sat upon by security guards, exposed to unwanted sexual advances and endlessly had to confess what he was feeling. He kept on running away.