'I'll never let you go' Chapter 2

Much to my father's dismay, I survived the winter and the next one too. My mother scrimped and saved her pennies left over from her dresses to buy me extra food and rich milk to fatten me up. It worked. By the time she died from exhaustion when I was two, there was no way my father could claim I was weak, although I was still small. I can't remember my mother but I know she must have loved me a lot, because why else would my sisters have been so jealous of me? Certainly not for my looks. No, the only conclusion I can draw is that our mother had a special favouritism for me that they envied. Which didn't do me any favours, actually.
After Mum died, Dad let himself go. It was easier to drown his sorrows in gin and morphling than to acknowledge that he had six hungry daughters at home, waiting for him to return. Rose and Laurel stepped up to the role of housekeepers pretty well; they were bright enough to be able to ration our money enough to tie us over to Dad's next pay day. Well, until a letter from the factory came announcing that he'd been fired. When he came home that night, Dad was treated to a screaming row with Laurel, who accused him of dishonouring Mum by abandoning us and berated him for not working hard enough.
'How are we going to live now?' She shrieked. 'Rose can't go to work for another two years! What other job can you get? Hmm? You're not qualified for anything!'
Us younger ones were peaking at the scene from over the banister with dread crawling into our stomachs, when Dad looked up and saw us.
'One,' he slurred, 'is that you and your pretty sister,' he lunged at Rose who was standing in the doorway looking disgusted, 'can get over to the cathouse and give some poor bloke the what for. Or,' He raised the bottle he was clutching up to us, 'we could sell our little Clover.' He began to laugh, hysterical, manic laughter that made me run into my tiny box room and slam the door in an effort to drown out the sound. I heard him slump up the stairs and bang three times on the door. 'Hear me, Clovey? I'd sell you!' He raised his voice and yelled to my sisters. 'I'd sell all of you!' Then there was a retching noise and a thump as he fell, unconscious, to the floor.
As it was, he didn't need to sell me, or any of us. A few days later, we received a visit from a Peacekeeper who informed us that Mum's mum, our Grandmother, had died just a few weeks after her husband, leaving us girls everything.
'Because we're her last living relatives,' Rose snapped when I asked why an old lady I'd never met had wanted me to have all her money. 'Okay? Everyone else she loved is dead. Now shut up and go play with your doll, or else I'll take it back to the shop.' I hastily returned to my new doll, something I'd never had before. Toys had been luxuries we couldn't afford until the money came and now it was here I wasn't letting it go. Unfortunately, Dad puked on it three days later. Viola very kindly washed it for me but it was never quite the same. I can't even remember whether I named her.

I was christened Clover Nightingale, but no one ever called me that, apart from Dad when he was drunk. To everyone else, I was Clove. By the time I started school when I was four, I think everyone had pretty much forgotten that it wasn't my real name at all.
School wasn't easy for me, but is it ever easy for someone who is different? Sitting in the classroom with all the blonde little girls staring at me made me increasingly shy and withdrawn.
'Why's her hair so dark?' One would whisper to another.
'May be her daddy couldn't afford to dye it,' the other would suggest.
'Poor her. My daddy lets me get anything I want.'
'Mine too. If she wasn't so weird, I might invite her over to play.'
'Oh no! You couldn't do that! Didn't you hear? Her daddy got fired from the factory…'

When I was five, a kitten started to follow me home. He would wait for me at the butcher's then walk two feet or so behind me as I made my way home. Even when I popped into a shop to buy something Laurel had instructed me to bring home, he would still be waiting as I came out. I named him Scruff. One day, after Scruff had been following me home for about a month, I made the decision to take him home and hide him in the shed at the back of our house. I planned to secret a small piece of my dinner out to him every evening and tuck him up in the empty shoe box my new black strap-overs had come from with a handkerchief. Crazy, I know, but I was only five. My sisters were all out, Rose had started work the other week and the others tried to avoid going home for as long as possible. Dad would be at the alehouse, no doubt, as he usually was from nine to eleven every day. I would have the house to myself.
Snatching the shoe box and a half empty bottle of milk, I coaxed Scruff into the old shed then sat down on the floor to feed him the milk. He sniffed at it tentatively, and then began to lap it up eagerly. I gently combed the tangles out of his fur much to his protests and stroked his fur. For that one blissful hour, I felt both loved and needed. And I liked that feeling. But of course, like most good things in my life, it had to come crashing down.
Like a hurricane tearing through a village, my father threw open the door to the shed and glared in at us. Scruff mewed in panic and scrambled up my hair into my neck and I shuffled back until I was pressed against the wall.
'What,' Dad slurred, lurching towards me, 'is that?'
'A…A kitten,' I whispered, putting my hand up to stroke Scruff's soft fur.
'A kitten? A kitten?' Dad lunged for my neck and lifted Scuff away, dangling him in mid-air.
'Let him go!' I cried and tried to reach for him but Dad gave me a hard shove back onto the floor.
'You can't be soft, Clover,' he hissed as Scruff mewed pathetically in his grasp. 'Victors can't be soft. And you,' he moved his hands to the tiny creature's neck, 'are my little Victor, aren't you?'
I realised what was going to happen just a few seconds too late. Before I had time to blink, Scruff's little head was removed from his body and thrown to the floor in a pool of blood. I couldn't even scream, just gasped and tried not to sob. Dad dipped his fingers in the pool and lifted his hand to my face. I tried to writhe away but he held me tightly as he smeared the blood onto my cheeks and forehead.
'Now,' he breathed, covering me with the stench of ale and gin, 'you look like a proper Victor.' He kissed me hard on my bloody forehead, stumbled out of the shed and vomited in the grass. I pushed past him and ran to the huge beech tree at the bottom of our garden, where I climbed and climbed until I was higher than Dad could reach. And then I cried.

Something died inside me, I think, that day. I certainly never felt like the same little girl who brought home a hungry kitten again, although Cato tells me that he can see her sometimes. I became hard and closed myself off to the world. I spent most of my time at home in the beech tree at the bottom of the garden, tearing up the leaves and throwing them to the breeze. I spent so much time on my own that when a silver blade impaled itself into the wood beside my head, it shocked me so badly I nearly fell out. Dad was standing at the base of the tree, glaring up at me. Hatred for him had only recently replaced my fear, so I simply glared back at him.
'I figured it was time you learnt to use a weapon,' Dad said, nodding towards the knife. 'If you're going to be my little Victor.'
'What if I don't want to?'
'Then you'll die.' I knew about the Games now, but I wasn't scared about them. It seemed like years away before I would be in danger of going. At five, it was just a television show where people died and one person stayed alive. 'And I won't be able to help you.'
'You never help me anyway!' I said it a little louder than I'd intended. Dad scowled and I could tell that the whiskey bottle in the cabinet would soon be empty.
'It's a gift, Clover,' he growled, 'and believe me, it's the last one I'll ever give you.' He turned on his heel and stalked back up to the house. Suddenly, anger gripped at my chest. How dare he? A father was meant to love you and here he was just as good as abandoning me. Before I could even think about what I was doing, the knife was out of the bark, flying through the air and pierced the ground at my father's feet. The anger began to ebb out of me, only to be replaced by dread. What would he do? How angry would he be? But, to my surprise, Dad turned around slowly with a crooked grin on his face.
'Work on your aim, sweetheart.'