Favourite numbers serve no purpose, yet so many of us have them.

Apparently, the most popular number to have as one's own is seven. Seven dwarves. Seven days in a week. It makes sense. Not one to follow a trend, mine isn't. It's six.

I looked it up and six has connotations linked to Christ, given the day He was created and died, and is a so called perfect number. That's got nothing to do with why I like it. Nothing at all.

I like the shape. I like drawing the number. Six was the age I was when I stopped receiving daily beatings from my father. When he left.

Of course, he didn't leave, not exactly. Six was the age when I finally had a little strength to fight back. Just enough to block the blows, though that enraged him. Just enough to push. Just enough to make him fall down the stairs.

I still don't know what my mother did with him. She made a couple of phone calls and told me to stay in my room. When she came to get me, he was gone. She told me he was fine and she'd kicked him out. I believed her, even though I saw the way his head was twisted. And the blood. Well, perhaps not 'believed' entirely, but I didn't question it.

Six was the age I was when my mother finally admitted she had no real clue how to bring up a child, and leaving them at home while she went out drinking and meeting new uncles was getting in the way of her life fulfilment. I was taken into care, and discovered that I wasn't a bad person. I was liked. I could say things and be listened to and be told that those things meant something.

Six was the age I became me.

Early years are often forgotten, trampled to dust by the stampede of Time. They become fragments that must be plucked from the air, disconnected yet still, somehow meaningful.

My early years were spared such a crushing charge. They stayed with me. The pain. The bruising. The sight of my twisted father's body.

The pleasure that gave.

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