Tony Birch

It seemed to me, even as a child, to be a house without affection because I don't remember these people talking to each other, really.

They weren't cruel to me or anything.

They didn't punish me in any physical way, but they hardly spoke.

They were very formal.

And it was just a sense for me of hollowness and I suppose of prejudice against the suburbs.

I felt that I was in this place that was completely devoid of people, of emotion.

So there was nothing there that I wanted.

I spent two weeks with them.

I don't remember much about what else we did except that Father organised a spelling bee, which I won, which they were very disappointed in because both the kids and the family went to private schools.

And...

The other aspect of it, which was very troubling, I didn't understand that my mother had only allowed for them to take me for a week and I was supposed to be coming home and at the end of the week I didn't come home and toward the end of the second week I still had not come home and she got very worried and contacted the church.

And in the meantime, in the house, I remember the woman repeatedly saying to me, do you like it here?

Would you like to stay here?

And each night when I went into bed and each night when I went into the bedroom, I would just ask her after she asked me the question, when am I going home?

And because I'd shared a bed with my older brother, Brian, and didn't until I was 10 years old, I just, the notion of sleeping in a bed without my brother was terrible.

I didn't want to have a big bed and be on my own.

I wanted to sleep with my older brother because he was a sort of a,

He was very much a protector of mine and quite a hero of mine, and I missed my brother desperately.

And I got really anxious and really worried, so I devised a plan of escape, but it included me remembering the address of the house, which I seared into my consciousness because I had this idea that I was going to escape the house, find a policeman and tell him that these people were...

were trying to kidnap me.