Nothing sad about it.

'I was about six I think. I used to run the streets in knickers and a vest. Running around, free at all hours.

It was christmas and Auntie Chetta saw me sitting on a doorstep on my own. It was about midnight. She said, “Come on, you can come to midnight mass with me.”

I said, “Ok.” I had nothing else to do.

By the time mass started I was getting sleepy. The chairs in the church had these holes in them. Chetta was very religious obviously. Of course she was, this was Malta. I fell asleep and wee'd through the holes in the chair. Then Chetta woke me and said, “Come on, its time to take communion.” So we go up, the priest puts the wafer on my tongue and we go back to our seats. But I am falling asleep again and the wafer, it falls from my mouth and in to the wee! The priest was horrified. He starts putting barricades around the wafer. He says to Auntie Chetta,”Why did you bring her? She's supposed to be in bed!” Chetta starts crying.

As we are walking back, about one o'clock, we see Don Doffi – the priest – he's stood outside this door, looking around. He knocks quietly and a woman answers and he goes inside. She was one of those 'undesirable' women. A prostitute, but who only works from home. Auntie Chetta sees too and she says, “And he thinks he's holy.”

She takes me back to her house and gives me cake and some hot drinking chocolate. The following day she's talking to my mother about what happened. Mum is of course oblivious to the fact that I have been out all night and gone to mass.

In Malta they have the “Blessing of the House” once a year. It involves a big spring clean, everyone trying to make their homes look perfect and free from sin. You have to give them money for the blessing. Obviously. When the priest arrives at the door with the little boy - they always bring a little boy with a bag on a stick to collect your money – my mother goes to the door and says, “Why don't you go to number 40. She probably needs it after you've been in there.” That was more or less the story. When I told Ziu Joe about it a year later..well you know he turned it in to a big play. Then it became a television series. And then all those actors got death threats and had to move to Australia. And Ziu Joe had paint thrown at his door. He made the story so that the woman comes in to the church during mass and says to the priest “How will you redeem yourself of this sin?” whilst pointing at her pregnant stomach. It was very controversial.

I was always running the streets. My mother caught me one day and took me home. She said, “You're having a bath.”

I said, “What? No!”

She had already filled this big tin bath with water and she washes me. Then she puts me in this new dress. Its pink with a bow at the back and little flowers on it. She puts me in these white shoes – which I'd never had before.'

“You'd never had white shoes before?”

'No, I'd never had shoes before. I was always barefoot. Running the streets. Then she gives me a boiled egg. I was very surprised. I was thinking; where did she get that from? She was never at home to feed us. We ate at other people's houses. I would climb in their windows and they would feed me. I knew which houses would give me what. One house cake, another pasta. You know the president, Mintoff? Well, when he was a teenager I used to climb in his mother's window and she would feed me also. And try to brush my hair. He didn't like me.

Anyway, then my mother, she puts rouge on my cheeks.

“Make up?”

'Yes.'

“What on earth for?”

'I was malnourished, very thin. She says to me, “I'm going to talk to you. I'm going to take you to a big house, a palace. You will live there with rich people. An when you grow up a knight on a white horse will come for you and you will be a princess. Would you like that?”

“Yeah!”

We got on the bus to Valetta and were met by a big man called Pullu. He said nothing. He walked ahead of us and we followed. We come to a blue door and he knocks on it and keeps walking. We wait. A small dark woman lets us in. Its a big house, huge staircase. She and my mother are whispering to each other and the woman gives her some money. Then, my mother, she went to go and I went to follow her. She says, “No. You live here now.”

The woman, Nana, says to me, “What's your name?”

“Chettina.”

“Well from now on your name will be Rhoda.”

“Why?”

“Because I had a baby girl called Rhoda and she died. So now I want you to be called Rhoda.”

“Ok.” It didn't make any difference to me what I was called.

Her husband, Ziu Joe, came back and she told me to hide behind the door. She wanted to surprise him. He came in and she said, “I have something to show you.” She pulled me from behind the door. Joe made this face – like a rabbit twitching its nose.

“Look what I got,” she said.

“What are we going to do with her?” He said.

“Bring her up.”

“Ok,” he said. And we sat down for lunch.

Her fourteen year old son came in and Nana says to him, “Look, you have a sister.”

William, that was his name, he got a jar off the shelf full of sweeties and offers them to me. I take a whole handful and Nana says, “No, No! You must only take one.”

“Why?”

“Because its polite.”

So I took only one. William laughed.

In the afternoon we sat in the lounge and Nana made me a nightgown on her sewing machine. Because I only had what I was standing in.'

I remember something Mum has told me before and interject, “Your mother must have missed you. She used to come and stand outside your school behind a tree and watch you in the playground didn't she?”

'Yes but Nana told me she was a witch and if she caught me she would kill me. So if I saw her I would run away.'

“That's not what I'm saying. She must have missed you though, to come.”

'I don't think so. She never seemed sad or bothered.'

“Maybe she just didn't want you to see her upset.”

'Maybe. I wasn't sad. Everything to me was a bloody adventure. I missed running the street though. But, you know, the comfort counterbalanced it. But...It was like putting someone in a cage. I missed the running.

You know, six years old is not too old to start a new life. I never liked Nana. Defying her, retaliating, that was my victory. I always did more of what I couldn't do. What I wasn't allowed to do. As much as I didn't like her I knew I had nowhere else to go. Children that ran away were put in homes then so I knew I had to bide my time. I was never a sad child though. There was nothing sad about it.'