It was almost time for school but my mother Bernadette Quirk was asleep in bed.
‘Come on, coats on,’ I said to my younger sister Catherine and brother Chris. ‘You don’t want to be late.’
I was only 14, but it was my job to look after Catherine, four, and Chris, three.
My stepfather Karl worked long shifts as a nurse. My mother worked at the same hospital as a care assistant. But when she wasn’t working, she would go out drinking with different boyfriends.
And while she was drunk and having affairs, it was left to me to do all the housework and look after the younger children.
We had no money at all. The house was filthy.
Chris would scurry out early in the morning to steal milk from the neighbours’ doorsteps. I would take soap from the school bathrooms to wash our clothes.
I knew it was wrong, but we had no choice.
My mother just didn’t seem to care. Often our gas and electric would be cut off for weeks on end. We had no refrigerator, no cooker, no hot water.
School welfare workers called to check on us, but we didn’t let them in because Mum told us not to.
One Christmas, we had to cook the whole Christmas lunch on a dilapidated sandwich maker. It was horrible – yet none of us dared to complain.
Soon Karl left and life got even worse. The rubbish piled up everywhere. Poor Catherine didn’t even have a bed.
When I was 15, I met my first boyfriend and fell pregnant. Mum was unsympathetic.
But as my bump grew, I began to look forward to my new baby. I was already acting as a mother anyway.
Then, five months into the pregnancy, I went into labour. Early one morning, I woke up bleeding heavily.
Later that day, I gave birth to a little boy, named John. He lived for just half an hour before passing away. My heart broke as he took his last breath.
But it was so beautiful to be a real mother, even for such a short time.
I struggled to cope after the death of my son. Nobody seemed to care. Mum never even mentioned it.
I kept myself busy, looking after Catherine and Chris, and trying to keep the house tidy.
One morning, in November 1987, I went into Mum’s room to clean and found a large bloodstain on the carpet.
‘I had a nosebleed,’ she told me.
I didn’t think any more of it.
The following year, I fell pregnant again. In December 1988, I gave birth to a little girl, Natalie.
I didn’t want to leave Catherine and Chris. But we had no running water and it wasn’t a suitable place to bring up a baby.
So I got my own place, just around the corner. I still saw them most days.
When Natalie was three, I had a second daughter, Samantha.
I adored my children, and I made sure that they were well looked after. I didn’t want them to suffer as I had.
Yet despite everything, I kept in touch with Mum. It was as if she had a sort of hold over me. I couldn’t explain it.
Mum continued to drink heavily. Sometimes, she would put on lots of weight. Then, almost overnight, she’d lose it all again.
‘Are you pregnant?’ I asked her once, half-joking. She shook her head.
My own weight yo-yoed, so it made sense that my mother was the same. Besides, she always wore big, baggy clothes, so it was hard to see what shape she really was.
On New Year’s Eve 1997, we went to a family party. As usual, Mum was drunk, holding court, surrounded by a group of men.
‘She’s so embarrassing,’ Catherine said under her breath.
Later, she took me aside.
‘Mum’s telling people she’s pregnant,’ she said. ‘Did you know?’
I just rolled my eyes and we both laughed.
Everyone knew what Mum was like. She told so many lies, she just couldn’t be trusted.
But a few months later, in May 1998, Catherine called me, sobbing hysterically.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
In between gasps for breath, Catherine told me there had been a bad smell in the house. ‘Mum told me it was rotten bacon,’ she said.
But the stench was so bad that, when our mother went out, Catherine had decided to investigate.
‘I went into her bedroom and the smell was in her wardrobe,’ she sobbed. ‘I found a shiny red bin inside. And inside the bin, there was a baby.’
I was stunned into silence. I collected Catherine and we sat in the car together.
‘It was a dead baby,’ Catherine repeated. ‘I put my hand inside the bin and I felt a baby’s head.’
We were both in shock.
I thought back to the New Year’s Eve party, when Mum had told friends she was pregnant. I knew I had to confront her.
Leaving Catherine at my house, I drove back to Mum’s.
I was shaking, terrified, as I faced her.
‘What have you done?’ I asked. ‘Have you had a baby?’
‘Yes, I have,’ she replied. ‘It was stillborn. It’s upstairs.’
Calmly, she explained she’d had a baby girl and named her Helen.
‘Please let me bury her,’ I pleaded. ‘She deserves a decent burial. You can’t just leave her upstairs.’
She shrugged her shoulders.
When I returned the next morning, as planned, Mum emerged from the house, carrying a canvas bag. She threw it in the back, as if it were a bag of shopping.
As she got into the car, a sickening stench hit the back of my throat.
I drove to St Helens Cemetery where my great-grandmother and my baby son were buried.
I dug a shallow grave with my bare hands, while Mum watched in silence. Passers-by hardly gave us a second look. They presumed I was planting flowers.
When the hole was ready, I laid the canvas bag gently in the ground, and covered it with earth.
When I got home, I was violently sick. I knew what I had done was so terribly wrong – and yet I felt I had no choice.
If I reported the death, Mum would go to prison. And despite everything, I didn’t want her to be locked away.
I was so frightened of her, too. I dreaded to think what she might do if I went to the authorities. I was frightened for Catherine and Chris, and for my own children.
Catherine and I found it hard to live with the burden of our secret.
Together, we cried for the little girl that we would never know, but Mum carried on as if nothing had happened.
The years passed.
Catherine left home and had three children of her own.
In 2007, Mum moved house. Catherine and I helped carry boxes and unpacked.
We were both in disbelief when we spotted the red bin in which we’d found Helen. Mum wouldn’t let us near it and told us she used it to store books now.
The months passed, but the image of the red bin niggled away in my mind.
‘I need to report Helen’s death,’ I confided in my friend Julie. ‘I can’t live with this.’
But I was worried that Catherine and I might get into trouble, because we’d kept the secret for so long. I thought of my own children, too. What would happen to them if I confessed?
In August 2009, with Julie’s help, I finally picked up the phone and called the police.
After initially thinking I was crazy or drunk, police finally agreed to search Mum’s house. And when they had finished, two officers knocked on my door.
‘We’re arresting you on suspicion of murder,’ said one.
My jaw dropped. I had been trying to help – and yet now I was being blamed.
At the police station, I was told Mum and my brother Chris had also been arrested on suspicion of murder.
My solicitor came and told me the officers had found three stillborn babies in the house – one in the red bin, and two others wrapped in bags in Mum’s bedroom.
It was like the plot of a sick horror movie – with my own mother as the monster.
Life went on hold while the case was investigated. I didn’t see my mother. Only then did I realise just how badly she had failed me.
She had stolen my childhood and left me to bring up my brother and sister. Then she’d watched me bury her baby with my bare hands. I had kept her secret and stayed loyal.
And now Chris and I were mixed up in this horrible mess.
I thought of my own children, of my unconditional love for them, and wondered how any mother could behave so disgracefully.
Eventually, Chris and I learned we would not be charged with any offence. It was a huge relief.
Mum admitted four counts of concealing a birth.
In September 2010, she appeared before Liverpool Crown Court.
The court heard that she kept her stillborn babies in a red bin with an air freshener. There was also a fourth baby – the one I knew about – buried in a local graveyard.
She had hidden the bodies for up to 20 years, wrapped in newspaper, sheets and plastic bags.
She said she gave birth to the babies between 1985 and 1995 when her marriage ended and she was drinking heavily – but she could not be more specific than that.
She claimed she had no recollection of the fourth baby, but forensic tests had proved it was hers.
Detective Chief Inspector Neil Bickley said my mother led ‘a chaotic lifestyle’ after the failure of her marriage in the late 1980s, and ‘had a number of sexual encounters’.
The court heard she had insisted all the babies had been stillborn and police were unable to prove otherwise.
Tests established three of the babies were girls, but extensive examinations by some of Britain’s leading forensic scientists could not establish whether the babies ever lived, or how they died.
DNA tests enabled police to trace three separate fathers. None of them knew Mum was ever pregnant.
In December 2010, she was sentenced to a two-year community order, under strict supervision.
After the court case, Catherine and I arranged a funeral for the four babies at St Helens Crematorium. It was important to us that they were given some dignity and respect at last.
From then on, I no longer wanted my mother in my life.
I will never understand why she hid the births, or why she carried the bodies around like that in a bin. It was utterly inhumane.
Mum died in February 2019. For the rest of my life, I’ll strive to be a better mother than she ever was.
My book ‘Silent Sisters’ is out now
As told to Ann Cusack
