‘I didn’t,’ I reply, hugging her back. I cling to her for a few seconds: she probably won’t be hugging me again when she hears what I have to say. She’ll probably want me nowhere near her when she hears me speak. I have to do this, though. No matter who it hurts, I have to do this and lay it to rest. Roni would have wanted to come with me, but the police kept her for longer because they were talking to her about her uncle.
Besides, how can I trust her ever again? She lied to me. Even that night in my flat in Brighton, when she acted as though she had told me everything, she was still lying, still holding something back.
Both my parents are sitting in the chairs they’ve always sat in. I’m glad, in a way, that they’re in this back room, the room for everyday use, which is right next to the kitchen. Even before I left I avoided the front room, which was mainly for posh visitors. I always associate that room with the day Mr Daneaux came to convince my parents that the way he was touching me, the things he was making me do to him, were perfectly normal and I had got it wrong. Every part of that room reminds me of him drinking tea, eating biscuits and telling my parents I had the lead role in The Nutcracker. He fully raped me for the first time the very next day and told me he could do whatever he wanted to me because he now knew no one would ever believe a word I said.
‘Ralph! Babe!’ Sasha screams, most of the sound travelling straight down my ear. ‘Babe! Nika’s here!’
‘Nika?’ Ralph says. I hear him moving around upstairs, then he picks his way across the room and comes hurtling down the stairs. He moves quickly down the hall and comes to me, scoops me up into a hug. ‘Nika! My God, how wonderful to see you!’ he exclaims. ‘Sash has been over the moon since you got back in touch. Over the moon. And I am, too, obviously. Tracy-Dee can’t wait to meet you. She’s at school now, obviously, but later, you know?’
I don’t remember Ralph being so talkative, ever. Ever. Or ever being so pleased that I’m around. I try to scroll through my memory like I would with my music player, trying to locate a time when Sasha and Ralph cared so much about me. But Sasha was hardly ever around. She was out a lot with Ralph because she was mainly trying to avoid being home in the atmosphere we lived with.
‘Now if that doesn’t tell you how excited we are to see you, nothing will,’ Sasha says. ‘In case you’d forgotten, Ralph hardly ever speaks so much.’
My parents haven’t spoken. They’re probably in shock, to be honest. I’m still in shock, being back here, seeing this place, seeing them. Nothing has changed in all the time I’ve been away. Nothing fundamental, anyway. The carpets look newer but they’re a similar pattern to the old ones, the wallpaper is newer but it has the same flock look as before. The furniture is tired, and old, but it still reminds me of the furniture they had when I lived here, when this was ‘home’.
They look the same. My mother is perfect, as she has always been: she is very poised, her clothes always pristine, make-up carefully applied. I think Mrs Daneaux reminded me of her, when I first met her – a beautiful woman who held herself well, and always looked good no matter what. My father is comfortable, as he has always been: whenever he came through the door from work, he would change out of his suit into casual slacks and long-sleeved T-shirt. I guess for my father to be here he must have retired. I haven’t asked Sasha much about them; I haven’t had the heart.
‘You do realise the van is wide open out there, don’t you?’ I say to Sasha and Ralph.
‘What?’ Ralph says, trying to look at Sasha and out the door to where the van is parked at the same time. ‘Sasha!’
‘Don’t blame me, you’re the one filling the thing,’ she snipes back. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, let’s go and see if anything’s missing. Pillock.’
‘You’re the pillock!’
‘No, you are.’
‘No, you are!’
They squabble all the way out of the house and leave me alone with my silent, wary parents.
‘Veronika,’ my father says first.
‘Hello, Daddy,’ I reply. ‘Hello, Mummy.’
She remains silent, removed and aloof. I imagine I hurt her very badly when I left. She would have had to explain my absences at family gatherings; she would have had to explain away why I was all over the print media, famous for taking drugs and flashing my knickers, calling myself Nikky and doing nothing good with my life. My father would have found it easy to rise above it all, to ignore it – after all, he had a son who was important and worked in the City. No, the daughter was the mother’s responsibility. It was the mother who was meant to show her what it was like to be a woman, how to be good at what she does, by modelling modesty and dignity, decorum and intelligence. The younger daughter should be married with children by now. If she wasn’t, that was down to the mother. My mother. Everything I ever did was a reflection on her mothering abilities. I understand that now. I understand why she couldn’t accept what I was saying about Mr Daneaux – that would have meant she had failed. If what I was saying was true, then she had raised a daughter who didn’t know how to say no, she was raising a slut. It didn’t matter that he was forcing me; she didn’t want to be the mother of a daughter that anyone – and there would be more than one – who would question the girl’s role in the dynamic of her being repeatedly raped by a man who taught her ballet. All those years of going to the library in Birmingham taught me a lot. I read and reread every book I could find on what had happened to me, first as a child, as a teenager, then as a woman living with a man who slowly took her soul apart.
I read the different theories, the various thoughts, the myriad explanations. I know those theories so well and I can see why they are right and true, and how they could sometimes fit neatly over my life and experience like a snug cover. But after the thoughts, the intellectual understanding, there is this: my parents didn’t believe me. They believed a man who was working up to raping their daughter instead of listening to that very daughter they had brought up to tell the truth. They were convinced that it was a problem they could ignore away.
My parents didn’t believe me.
My mother returns to looking at my father. ‘As I was saying, I don’t think they will fit all those things into that one van. But, ah, what do I know? No one wants to listen to me about anything.’
I’m here for my mum’s sake, more than mine.
‘Why are you here, Veronika?’ my father asks.
In the background, I hear Sasha and Ralph’s footsteps as they approach. Good, good. I can tell them all in one go and they can all then take a moment to digest the news and then all decide how much I have disgraced the family name – again.
‘I’m here because I have something to tell you,’ I say. I suddenly, almost violently, wish that Roni was here, so I could reach out and take her hand, find the strength in her physical presence to do this. ‘I don’t know if you remember the other Veronica Harper? Well, last night she went to the home of our former ballet teacher, Mr Daneaux, ready to harm him for r-r—’ I still can’t say the word. I can barely think it, and I can’t say it. ‘She wanted to kill him for abusing her and me all those years ago.’
‘What?’ Sasha says. She moves into the room, stares at me through a deep, confused crinkle of a horrified frown. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I know you didn’t believe me at the time, but after last night he is now being investigated for historic child sexual abuse crimes. The police say he’s likely to have abused quite a few other young girls as well as me and Veronica, so it’s probably going to be all over the papers. They won’t print our names, but I wanted to tell you before that happened because they will print his name. You can have a chance to get your story straight or to decide to pretend that you vaguely remember the ballet teacher and don’t remember anything untoward going on with your daughter. Whatever. I thought you deserved to know.’
‘What is she talking about?’ Sasha says to my parents. When they remain silent, she turns back to me. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I can’t say it again, Sasha. I’ve talked and talked to the police about it for most of the night and I can’t say it again. I just thought you should all know because it’s going to be public and I’m going to go on record, I’ll probably have to go to court if it comes to that. And most people will know he lived and taught around here and that he mainly did those things to his star pupils, of which I was one.’
Sasha’s face starts to tremble – she looks like she might start crying. ‘Did you … did you tell them that you’d been abused by this man and they did nothing about it?’ she asks.
Todd, too, I want to say. Todd spent years sexually abusing and raping me but in a different, quieter way. In all my reading I found out that if it happened to you as a child, especially if you didn’t tell or no one believed you, you are likely to fall into a similar relationship as an adult. You are likely to end up with another person who will abuse you, too. It is the familiarity, being used to someone trampling over your boundaries, being used to always doing what others want, never expecting to be treated well, always being grateful when you are.
My sister spins towards my parents. ‘YOU DID NOTHING?’ she bellows at them. Her rage is so unexpected, I take a step back. I didn’t think someone would respond like that on my behalf.
Ralph puts a hand on my shoulder and I nearly leap out of my skin. ‘I’m so sorry, Nika,’ he whispers. ‘I had no idea. This shouldn’t have happened to you.’
Sasha comes to me, grabs me into a hug and clings to me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Nika? Why didn’t you tell me?’
We were never that close; we were never really how people tell you sisters are meant to be. And anyway, ‘I couldn’t handle you not believing me, either. Mummy and Daddy didn’t believe me – I couldn’t stand to share a room with you and have you not believe me.’
‘This is so horrible,’ she says. ‘It all makes sense now, why you just disappeared into yourself for all those years. I was so caught up in trying to escape the hideous atmosphere in the house I didn’t even notice properly. I never understood why you left and wouldn’t even think about coming back. That’s why I kept sending your letters on to you – I just wanted to keep in touch with you, let you know you had a link somewhere. I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t talk, why … I can’t believe they did nothing.’
Sasha believes me. Ralph believes me. Two people I know believe me the first time they hear what I have to say.
Sasha lets me go, turns to my parents. ‘I can’t believe I lived here all this time and let you look after Tracy-Dee when all along you protected someone who had raped your daughter. Well, no more. Ralph,’ she says over her shoulder, ‘pack up everything, every single thing you can because we’re not coming back here. I don’t care if we have to throw stuff in the bin, we’re doing this in one run.’
She slips her hand into mine. ‘Come on, Nika, you’re staying with us.’
‘No, no, I’m fine. I’ve got a life and a job and everything back in Brighton,’ I tell her. The world feels floaty right now, nothing feels real or touchable. I am like a helium-filled balloon – light and ready to drift away. If I close my eyes and let go of her hand, I will float away. Everything is a bit surreal because for once I have been believed straight away.
‘No, Nika. I’m overruling you on this. You need someone to take care of you for a while. She’s staying with us, isn’t she, Ralph?’
‘Yes,’ he calls from the corridor. He is moving quickly; the packing that was being done at a leisurely, almost languid pace, from what I picked up from the atmosphere when I walked in, is now being done almost frantically.
Sasha leads me out of the house and puts me in the front seat of the van, then returns to the house to join her husband in the frantic packing.
Mummy didn’t speak to me once, I think as I sit on the bench seat of the van, tethered there like Sasha has tied down an over-inflated balloon.
Even after all these years, my mother’s doubt about me can’t be put aside. I am not the daughter she wanted, I am not the girl she wanted to bring up. I wonder if she would have liked me, preferred me, if I had just shut up and put up all those years. Or is it that my mother has been there, too?
I remember that look in her eyes sometimes, the way she would glare at me as though she couldn’t understand what the big deal was. When I wasn’t eating, when I would sit and stare into space, when I would vomit before my ballet classes, I would sometimes see my mother looking at me as though I was making a mountain out of a molehill. Every girl has this happen to them, she seemed to be saying with that expression, why are you making such a big deal about it?
Quickly, decisively, I wipe that thought away. No one who had been through that would let someone else go through that, would they?
‘We’re going to look after you,’ Sasha says to me as she climbs into the van some time later. ‘Stay as long as you want, because for the next little while, this is going to be all about you.’
Roni
Brighton, 2016
They believe us. They believe Veronika Harper and Veronica Harper. They believe what he did to us; they have opened up an investigation into him and will be contacting all his current and former students to see if any of them will speak to them.
They believe us. And one of the police officers even apologised to me and to Nika (separately) for not believing her all those years ago. I don’t know what Nika said, or what she felt when they told her that, but I hope, hope, hope that being believed this time helps her. It can’t erase the past, but it can make the future a little better. At least I hope it can. She left the police station before me. I had to stay longer to tell them all about my uncle. They want to open up an investigation into him as well. Not only for what he did to me, but also the crimes against my brothers. They will talk to Brian and Damian to see what they want to do.
Mrs Daneaux will probably be charged with attempted manslaughter; her husband is expected to make a full recovery from what we heard and saw last night. I said to the police officer who questioned me that is a good thing, but part of me wishes it were different. I admitted that because I was confessing to everything. Everything.
I have finally confessed to everything. Everything that is inside me has been told and retold to another person. Not anyone who can tell me to say a number of Hail Marys, who will listen to my act of contrition, who will then absolve me of my sins, but someone else. I will go to confession, tell a priest everything at some point, reveal the true contents of my heart, my lapse in being able to put aside the vengeful thoughts, the unforgiving thoughts, and my inability to comfort a man who may have been dying. Yes, I might not be a nun any more, but as I explained to Cliff, being a nun is part of who you are, not a job. I still feel like a nun, I know that I should, for the most part, behave like one. But for now, what seems most important is that I have confessed.
I am unburdened and burdened at the same time.
Since I am here in Brighton, I have thought about visiting Nika’s flat, trying to see her so I can tell her again I am sorry. But that would be for me, not her. That would be another attempt by me to make her OK when she has every right to not be. I hope she has called Marshall, that she is curled up in his arms, basking in the adoration he so obviously feels for her. I hope she is not alone and she has someone to take care of her.
I hope this is the beginning of the next phase of her life. It’s certainly the start of mine.
I’m sitting here in the police station foyer waiting for Dad to come and pick me up. I pull my knees up to my chest, rest my head on my knees. I hope he doesn’t take too long.
21
Nika
Brighton, 2016
I have been away for nearly three weeks.
Sasha would not let me leave, and once she made that decision, I found that I couldn’t leave because I didn’t want to.
I slept in their tiny box room, which had nothing but the bed, a circular rug on the floor and a lamp that sat on the floor beside the bed. I s
lept a lot, would often miss whole chunks of the day from simply rolling over and going back to sleep. At night, I was often plagued by the past: worry would creep in with the darkness, crawling its way through my mind and keeping me awake with its half-formed remembrances and body-tremoring flashbacks.
My big sister called my work and told them. Just like that. I should have been angry at her for not checking with me first what I wanted them to know, but she thought I had nothing to be ashamed of, that I had done nothing wrong and she was going to fight anyone who dared to question if I had. Mrs Nasir was very understanding, apparently, and turned down Sasha’s kind offer to go and work in my place to make sure I kept my job.
I often heard Sasha and Ralph talking in the night, and I knew she blamed herself for not noticing. For being out of the house, for us not being close enough for me to tell her. ‘It’s not your fault,’ I wanted to say to her. ‘It’s no one’s fault but his.’
She also went to see Roni’s dad. To tell him that Roni had to stay away for now and to stop ringing me. ‘I felt so sorry for him,’ she explained afterwards. ‘Most of the time we just sat there in silence cos we didn’t know what to say. He looks like someone’s taken him apart, piece by piece. He seems so broken but trying to keep it together for Roni’s sake.’ ‘Like I am with you,’ she silently added.
I sent Marshall a text telling him I was away for a couple of weeks and I would get in touch with him when I got back. Which is now. I am back now. I am back at work, I have plans to meet Marshall, talk to him properly about all that he has read in the papers recently. He knows I knew Mr Daneaux, and that the story has completely shaken me, but he doesn’t know the full extent.
Planning to tell Marshall, I think, has brought Todd to mind a lot. Maybe because of how he used what I told him about my abuse to hurt me. He got some kind of sick pleasure from it, I think, and I was in a place where being treated like that was all I knew. I read all about it at the library, and I can look back and see it, but it’s only now I can feel it. Roni engaged in drinking, drug-taking and reckless sex with older men to treat herself in the only way she knew how. Todd did that for me.
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