A CHILDHOOD GONE by Renae Naik (best thriller novels to read .txt) 📕

Dedicated to all those who feel like life is taking them for granted, I took the pain and the anger and just converted it into something that             might touch someone when they feel like giving up

 Writing this book genuinely brought tears to my eyes. At times you might feel like you are not good enough to be with someone, those are the times that you need to sit back , reflect and ask yourself if that person is good enough for you! You can change anything that You are unhappy about just by having a different mind set and a change of attitude. Yes, you will have to make a few sacrifices here and there and that's because no body said it was going to be easy, they just promised it would be worth it in the end!

IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY BELOVED SUPERHERO:

SHADEN RESHAUN PADAYCHY
12/12/2010 - 12/12/2017

CHAPTER 1

So this story begins with Neema, a gorgeous young Hindu lady who meets and falls in love with a fairly handsome Muslim man from the neighbourhood Yaseen, the thug, the ruffian who in his drunken state referred to himself as the famous mafia “AL CAPONE” is now sitting in a hospital somewhere in on 25th March 1990 looking at the soft, wrinkly and innocent face of a girl whom she named Sadie, Sadie is born to an unhappy couple that can barely keep their lives intact. A mother not only faces her new daughter but also now faces a difficult situation as after the marriage to Sadie's father, she’s been hurt once too many times, a child just didn’t seem like something she needed. At the age of 26 baby number two was clearly a mistake as she had just left her previous relationship that had blessed  her  with her first born, Elreshia (but everyone calls her Elly for short) who was already 8. Being in an abusive relationship Neema experienced many challenges with Sadie’s father, being a paranoid alcoholic and drug addict he was never really there for his daughter.

Sadie is now 4, lying next to Elly in a warm bed just had supper and like every four year old she hated sleeping she had this weird habit of playing with her mum’s or sister’s ears before falling off to sleep. As numerous times before, Late that night her father shows up at the door, in his usual drunken state, banging on the doors and windows disturbing the peace with his foul language and arrogant behaviour, demanding to see his daughter whose name he had recently tattooed on the left side of his chest, Neema always feared the safety of her kids especially since she knows that the neighbours are too afraid to intervene...typical of Indians though they love the drama, they hate helping.

After a few minutes of shouting an ranting, Everything goes quiet, she hears nothing and decides to peep through the window, there she’s faced with the man she loved sitting at the door, covered in blood after being beaten up, probably by some drunkard friends at the local shebeen, holding his head in hands and crying. What could have happened that night? What did he do? Who had beaten him up? While she asks herself all these questions Sadie sneaks the keys to her father through the kitchen window without giving a second thought, but wait...which four year old thinks before doing anything? He lets himself in swearing and calling Neema names while slapping her to the floor, Neema picks herself up from the floor and wipes the drops of blood from her lower lip and then locks herself up in the room to prevent a further beating. He then sits down on the lounge floor and asks Sadie to get him some water, she returns a few minutes later with a glass that she can barely carry,  filled almost three quarter way up and raised the glass to her father’s torn and bleeding  lips and as he took a sip he gave an agonising shout, and spat out the water, Neema comes in to see what the fuss was about and at that moment realizes that Sadie had mistakenly given her father a glass of white vinegar which she thought was water. At that moment Neema didn’t know whether she should laugh or scold Sadie as the Vinegar had worsened the pain in the wounds of Sadie’s father’s mouth that he had attained from the beating. After a few seconds, He quieted down and Sadie was sent to bed.

The next day Neema leaves Sadie with her dad and goes to see her mother who lived a few blocks away and returns with her brother, Rajeev to talk to her husband about his behaviour the night before only to find that she has been locked out of the house, she knows that he’s inside the house as she can hear  the loud  sound of glass breaking and Sadie is crying, she peeps in through an open bedroom window and sees him sitting at the edge of the bed, in his usual drunken state, breaking one beer bottle after the other on his forehead. At this point Neema is terrified as she witnesses that this man has anger in his eyes and doesn’t seem to be feeling a thing Sadie sees her mum and is screaming for her mum to get him to stop.

He turns to the window and looks his wife in the face with his blood shot while holding a lighter in his hand and tells her that Sadie is possessed and that he saw the devil or a demonic entity in her and threatens to burn the little girl alive in that house, Neema fears the seriousness of those words and Requests that her brother breaks down the door in order to save her daughter’s life. After a bit of a hassle they were successful in getting in the house. Neema rushed in the bedroom and grabbed hold of Sadie while Rajeev pushed the man to the ground and called the local police, was this man Crazy? Was he paranoid? What would push a father to the point where he would want to take the life of his only child?

So many questions were left unanswered.  Sadie’s father was sent to an asylum to reform and rehabilitate himself as the court found that not only was he considered a danger to his wife and daughter but to himself as well. Previously many rumours were spread around regarding his mother, Farida, who was accused of using black magic.  The famous one being that she used to go to the orphanage and take girls into foster care for the social grants that was paid. She apparently used to treat these girls as her maids. They were young and between the ages of 12 and 14. Sometimes neighbours used to say that they witnessed the girls taking baths outside with cold water in winter! What kind of human would do this?

It is alleged that one day the two girls ran away from Farida’s house while she was out shopping for the weekly groceries, when she returned she was furious and then used black magic and the girls’ underwear to somehow lure them back home as in just a day the girls willingly returned to that cruel life. In that same year Farida had experienced the death of her eldest son Ali who passed away through the excessive use of alcohol. She always blamed her ex-husband as after she gave him three children, Ali, Yaseen and Razia he had left her and opened up a shebeen with his mistress. The second incident was the fact that Yaseen was now declared insane. Was this her karma for all her bad deeds against the two girls? Or was it the black magic backfiring?

CHAPTER 2

Time has passed by and Neema now a single mum of two has managed to pick up the pieces of her broken heart and has moved on and is now pregnant with baby number three and has managed to find herself another abusive partner, i know what you think and it’s easy to judge from the outside but how many guys out there are willing to take a women that has two children from two different men and build a home for them?....exactly!

Neema did what she thought would put clothing on her children’s backs and food in their mouths something that any mother would do. 29 October 1995 and Neema is in hospital and history repeats itself all over again as she is now holding her first baby boy, Justin. She now feels like her family is complete. She has Elly, Sadie and Justin She has this feint hope that this baby will mend the relationship she has with his dad and it will motivate him to change his ways. Few months down the line, Neema notices that Elly is breathing very heavily and is gasping for air. She panics she has no phone and no car to even get Elly to the hospital she goes out and manages to get hold of a neighbour who rushes to see what’s wrong with Elly, she’s now worsening as they put her in the car and rush her to hospital. When they arrive they find out that Elly has asthma and she just experienced a fatal asthma attack. Neema is educated about the illness and is given the appropriate meds to give to Elly. Elly is discharged and the neighbour gives them a lift back home.

At home they find Justin in the hands of his not so happy father who is clearly pissed at the fact that when he arrived home Neema was not there, neither was Elly and Sadie and Justin was left in the care of a neighbour. Neema gets in the house and shuts the door behind and just as she is about to explain what happened to Elly and her where about, she was punched on the upper right side of her face. Being a brave lady she didn’t want to make it obvious to the kids that she was getting beaten,