Mum’s brother, Uncle Berto, and his wife, Auntie Emma, had a working farm in a small village near the city of Parma in Northern Italy. They kept a dairy herd of maybe twenty cows, some pigs, some chickens, and a good bit of land to grow crops and feed for the animals. The original stone family house had been converted into stables and a barn, where they kept the grain and the hay. They’d built a big modern, six-bedroom house up towards the village where they lived with their son, (my cousin) Rodolfo, and two retired Aunts Marina and Maria. Uncle Berto, Aunt Emma and Rodolfo were always good to me. They were nice, kind people and compared to the rest of my family, were quite normal. The holidays in Italy were my saving. They were the only periods of sanity in my life. The only time I felt alive, at peace, and safe, was when we went back to the farm. I was made to work, and I loved it. Digging the land, feeding the chickens, and the horse. I loved everything about it. The smells and the sounds. It was where I got to love nature.

I had to get up early for the cows and clean out their pens, and I learned to milk them by hand. I remember one time squirting Rodolfo with milk from the teat and both of us getting a proper smack across the face from Uncle.

Thwack! “Don’t waste the milk, it costs money!”

Never mind about the NSPCC with him. I had a hand mark on my face for four days! But I was happy because I felt part of a family.

Everybody always ate together; they did everything together. Being on the farm, with the animals, having my feet on the land, it was very grounding. Going out on the tractor in the morning, cutting the grass, stringing it, loading it and then heading back in the afternoon, it just felt so healthy. So right.

Around the middle of August, a combine harvester would come round to the village and harvest all the wheat crops. Then everybody in the village would help each other to fill all their barns. It was like a big family, a community.

In the evenings, the whole village congregated by the main fountain for a bit of music, wine, and talking.  There’d also be people over from England, being that it was the holiday season. Then on special occasions like the harvest, there was this big table full of food, fruit, and wine, and we all sat and ate together. There was music, laughter, happiness, and friendliness. Here, Mum was at her best. It was the only place where I ever saw her happy, where I saw her laugh and let go.

And then, the summer would end, and we would have to say goodbye and head home to London. I hated it, I hated leaving Italy, and I hated coming back to the nightmare of my normal life. Back to school, back to the meanness, the fighting, and of course, back to John.

In the autumn of 1974, I started at my new secondary school at a different location up on Highgate Hill. It was still St Aloysius, but we called it ‘Colditz’.  I would sometimes hang out with friends after school, on my bike down in the estates at Summerstown. Smoking fags up the Garages. I’d come in about six or when it got dark, when I knew mum and dad had already gone to work. I think they knew that they were not there for me and compensated by buying me stuff. They couldn’t give me anything emotional or loving, the way I needed to be loved. Mum could have done so much to make me feel loved, but I got the sense that it was always about her. It was never about what I wanted or what I needed emotionally as a child. It showed in what she bought for herself or for me. It was always what she liked. My opinions and choices were irrelevant. An example was once we were due to attend a New Year’s Eve party at the Café Royal, so knowing this, she bought this classic black velvet jacket and gave it to me for my Christmas present. I wore it to the party, and the next week she took it back to the shop and complained that it had a fault in it.  I was standing there in the middle of C&A, and she was making a big hoo-ha, demanding a refund.  She got one and then bought me clothes that she wanted me to wear.