That's no fairytale, that's my life!


An ex girlfriend of mine, C, when we were still in our teens, got the full-on 'Cinderella Treatment'.


On her 17th birthday, her parents sat her down and kindly explained that she was adopted. She wasn't even properly adopted, as her birth mother belonged to one of the local grandee families, that her adoptive mother worked for as a skivvy. Having a child out of wedlock in Ireland in the 1960's was about as taboo as you could get. So, the whole thing was hushed up, the baby handed over, a payment or two made and that was it. The family's influence ensured that no awkward questions were asked. Because of the 'under the counter' method of adoption, C had no way to legally find out who her birth mother was. Her foster mother refused to tell, her hen-pecked husband was too afraid to give out the info and died a couple of years later without doing so. All she ever got was "Oh, your real mother is a very grand lady, well-known to the community at large and married to a successful businessman."

Prior to this revelation, C had been treated like a skivvy, at the beck and call of her two older 'sisters' and her mother. The parents gave all their savings to the eldest so that she could start her own hairdressing business and remortgaged their house so that the next sister could buy her own house. All this time C was told "Well, there's no point in looking out for your future as that will be one of looking after your parents for the rest of our lives." Despite being very bright, she was encouraged to skip school at every opportunity and not to take exams/qualifications too seriously as "There was no point was there?"

C had enough of this and left home before her 18th birthday. Her mother, in an attempt to get the police to take more interest, claimed that C had robbed the eldest sister's weekly takings as well as a pile of cash from the parents. I was dragged into it as well and accused of having plotted the 'robbery' as "C is too stupid to think up this sort of thing by herself" and ended up having to give a statement under caution at the police station. It came as a complete shock to me as she'd always praised me as being a good influence on C and her husband and I would chat away merrily for hours at a stretch.

Eventually, C was tracked down to London and the 'robbery' was shown to be a load of cobblers. Unfortunately, the stress of the whole thing gave her foster dad a severe heart attack. He was very ill for a couple of months before a second seizure killed him. About a fortnight after the funeral, C got a postcard from her mother "Your father is dead of a heart attack and is already buried. Everybody blames you. P.S. Don't contact us ever again." I was in London myself by that time and read the postcard for myself.

C and I lost touch around the early 1990's so I don't know if she ever got back in touch with her family.
(Fanta Menace Is tall enough to see over the fence, Sat 18 Aug 2007, 14:13, Reply)