‘Our house was wild and unpredictable... I was starved and cold and unloved’

Dr Katriona O’Sullivan was born in Coventry to Irish parents. She now works as a senior lecturer in Digital Skills in Maynooth University’s Department of Psychology. In this extract from her biography, Poor, she describes a childhood of poverty dominated by the spectre of her parents’ addictions, which included time spent in a care home.

My feet swung under my chair in the rhythm of a child getting fed, and as I chewed the sausages, I closed my eyes. This place was heaven.

“Stop looking so happy.” I was poked back to the room. It was [my older brother] James. He whispered the words out of the corner of his mouth. Matthew [my younger brother] made a run for the door and was returned to his seat by the staff. He kicked at them and told them to get their hands off.

[ Dr Katriona O’Sullivan: ‘I sat drinking in the knowledge, and for the first time in my life I felt alive’ ]

I shrugged and spooned the food into me for fear he would knock it off the table. I was a turncoat. I didn’t care. Walking into school, arriving there by taxi, with new clothes, clean hair and a fresh body, I felt like I had won the lottery. Even my school bag was new. The girls in my class stared at me when I came in.

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“Where’d you get that tracksuit, Katriona?” one asked me.

“None of your business,” I said.

“Her mum probably stole it,” I heard another one of them say. I didn’t care much. I was too busy thinking about what was for dinner at the children’s home that night.

I had such a sense of safety there, away from our house where things were wild and unpredictable, where I was fed to the lions by my parents who put their addictions before everything else, where I was starved and cold and unloved. I wanted these hot dinners. I wanted these clean clothes. I wanted the stories at bedtime.

When we were dropped off at the house by the black cab and we went in, my mother was strung out and starving and the house was a filthy cesspit

At night we would sit, all of us in the care home, around these round tables, and they would bring us good nutritious dinners and glasses of milk and a pudding.

“What is this?” I said to the dinner lady as she brought me a second helping. She told me, “Calves’ tongue,” and I noticed another child gurn at the thought. She put her fork down and pushed her plate away. I didn’t give a sh*t; it was the nicest thing I had ever eaten. The spoon couldn’t go fast enough into my mouth. It’s still to this day the best meal of my life.

Michael pinched me really hard. “Stop looking so happy, Kat, Jesus Christ.”

That night after dinner they told us we could ring our mum. I didn’t want to.

James gave me such a stare when I refused, so I gave her a few words, a “Hi, Mum, it’s me” before I stood away. They were all crowded around the receiver, standing in this little cubby in the foyer, with a member of staff sitting a bit away in the hall. I remember backing off and wanting the staff to see that. I wanted it to be noted, recorded, that I was not rushing to talk to my mum. I could play this system – I wanted to stay.

Later, I’d refuse to go on access visits; I remember crying and saying I didn’t want to. I just wanted peace, I wanted safety and the rights to my own body. My mum didn’t provide that. Our life with her was full of mayhem and pain.

Eventually our case made it to court, and my mum got us back. I told the court I didn’t want to go home, but I was sent back anyway. And when we were dropped off at the house by the black cab and we went in, my mother was strung out and starving and the house was a filthy cesspit, and there was nothing clean or new and everything was worse than we had left it, and I was devastated.

Every single one of us O’Sullivans is better than what we came from. We are clever, funny, spirited people. We deserved more

And word spread that we were home...

We must have been at the children’s home for six months, and for that whole time I was happy there. My brothers, however, were not. This is the difference between them and me, I think, summed up. They wanted to be at our home, out of loyalty and a sense of belonging. The underclasses have a culture of sticking with your own that runs deep. But I wanted better because I felt, I really felt, I deserved better than what we were given.

It’s something my brothers say to me even now: You think you’re better than what we come from, don’t you?

The truth is, yes. It was my answer then and it’s the same now: I do think that.

[ Dr Katriona O’Sullivan: ‘The only people I knew in Trinity were there to rob bikes’ ]

But they have one thing wrong. I don’t think I’m the only one. Every single one of us O’Sullivans is better than what we came from. We are clever, funny, spirited people. We deserved more.

I didn’t get my wish to stay in Keresley Grange [the state care home], and we were signed out of supervision completely three years later. The report said: “This family show a very strong emotional attachment to one another and although the children have been exposed to their parents’ ‘lifestyle’, they show very few signs of disturbance. This is a family that will experience one crisis after another by virtue of their unconventional behaviour, but appear to have the resources to override any difficulties and maintain a reasonable family life.

You could tell them on sight, which side of the system they were on. You’d know by the way someone moved if they were to be trusted or if you were to put on a show

“Given the above factors 1) their capabilities to manage their own lives and 2) expiry of the supervision orders 3) change of area and 4) probation involvement, it would appear that our intervention is no longer necessary or required.”

I don’t know what to say about the social workers who dealt with us because even now, with many years of experience and my education in psychology, I don’t know what to make of them.

I know it’s not part of the normal course of a childhood to have an assigned social worker, but for us it was as normal as day. Adults, usually middle-class women and men working for the social services, were in our lives as standard. There were lots of them and they were all the same, the civil-servant type, frowning and pursing their mouths as if you were a bad stain. Signing on to the dole, we met with people like that; going down to the council office, we met with people like that; in the classroom, our teachers were people like that.

Them and us.

You could tell them on sight, which side of the system they were on. You’d know by the way someone moved if they were to be trusted or if you were to put on a show. We were trained from birth to “say nothing” to these people. We knew they had power, to take our money, our house, us kids.

Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan is published by Penguin Sandycove