‘Oh, I see,’ replied Denise dismissively. ‘So you’re scared, are you?’
‘No,’ I told her, desperate not to seem so.
‘Well then, let’s go.’
Moments later, we were in the lift travelling towards the top floor. We went up and down eight times, getting out every time someone else wanted to use it. We played around for the next half an hour, up and down, up and down. Gradually, every time I went up I began to feel dizzy, and every time I went down I felt sick. We stumbled from the lift and the block of flats into the road outside, and Denise propped me up as we staggered back home. Mum wasn’t at all happy when she answered the door, but one look told her something was wrong. She phoned an ambulance and the next thing I knew I was being whisked away to hospital.
The berries, it turned out, were Laburnum – highly poisonous. I was lucky to get to the hospital when I did. But it didn’t stop me from being as impressionable as ever.
As bingo became Mum’s life, she had to have regular trips to feed her obsession. I continued to accompany her to the bingo hall on the days she went, and I continued to be coerced into helping Bill make the sandwiches. More and more I found myself being asked questions that made me uncomfortable. ‘You’re very pretty,’ he would say to me. ‘Have you ever had a boyfriend? I bet you have.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I remember replying. ‘I’m too young for boyfriends.’ I tried desperately to steer clear of his questions, but he was persistent and continued to ask them. He seemed always to be fishing and prying for answers to questions that he had no right to ask.
‘How old are you?’
‘I’m eleven,’ I said proudly.
‘You look very grown up for eleven. I’d have thought that you were at least fourteen,’ he replied with a glazed look in his eye.
It was a look I would grow to hate, the look I now know and have grown to understand. It was the look of a fifty-eight-year-old man who was planning and plotting to abuse a child.
Three
WHY ME?
I have asked this searching question so many times in my life, but I have never found the answer.
Was it something I did?
Was it something I said?
Was I smiling too much?
Was I flirting?
What was it about me that attracted people like Bill?
If I could wish and have my wishes come true, I would find the answers to these questions. And then I would feel that I had regained some of my stolen emotions and pieced together the fragments missing from my heart.
One day, Bill approached my mum. ‘Would it be OK if Sarah helped me with the sandwiches a bit later? I can drop her home in the car if you like.’
Mum thought about it for a moment. ‘I suppose so,’ she replied. ‘Just make sure she’s not late for her tea.’
The afternoon bingo session finished all too quickly. Suddenly, Mum was saying goodbye, leaving me alone with this man I hardly knew but certainly didn’t like. ‘Come on,’ Bill said and smiled his greasy smile at me, ‘we need to go to the supermarket to buy the fillings.’ He led me out to the car and we drove to the shops in uncomfortable silence.
Once we had bought what we needed and returned to the car, Bill told me he had forgotten something he needed for that night, and he needed to pop home before we returned. Inside my body I felt my heart racing, as though I was suddenly running a marathon. I was so uncomfortable, but I didn’t know why. Throughout the journey, I felt so lost, alone and confused. Questions catapulted around in my head, making me feel dizzy.
Why was I alone with this man?
Why had Mum allowed this?
How well did she know him?
How long had she known him?
Was it long enough to trust him?
What would Dad say when I didn’t return home with her?
Didn’t she realise how afraid I’d be alone with this man who was, to me, still very much a stranger?
As we drew up outside his flat, he told me that the lady who lived in the house at the side of the flat was quite nosey. ‘If she comes out,’ he said, ‘like she often does, I’ll tell her you’re my niece.’
I didn’t understand. Why did he have to lie? Why did I have to pretend to be his niece? I certainly didn’t want to call him Uncle Bill. I had enough uncles. Uncles I knew. Uncles I liked. Uncles I’d known all my life.
Just as he said she would, the neighbour came out within seconds of our arrival and stood expectantly at the side of his car ready to talk to him. He chatted to her while opening up the front door to the flat. ‘Go upstairs,’ he told me. ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’
As I walked up the stairs, I saw something that I remember striking me as being very strange. On the top step there was a big jar of sweets – the kind of jar I was used to seeing when I went to the sweet shop. They appeared to be sitting there waiting for me, as if someone had known I’d be coming along soon.
The ‘flat’ was more of a bed-sit, with a chair, a television and a bed all in the same room. After a while, he came upstairs and through the door into the flat. He disappeared into the bathroom, then returned a few minutes later, got himself a drink and came over to sit where I was sitting. He put his hand on my knee, resting it there for a minute or two before standing up and going to get the sweetie jar. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you can have some if you like.’
‘No, thanks,’ I replied.
Ignoring my answer, he put his hand into the jar and took out four sweets, which he placed in my hand. I didn’t want them. I didn’t even like that kind. ‘Come on,’ he said after an uncomfortable silence. ‘It’s time to go. We’d better hurry or you’ll be late home.’
As I walked down the stairs, I felt his eyes watching me, burning into me. The intensity of his gaze made the eleven steps feel like eleven hundred. I wished, with all my being, that I was home.
I never saw that flat again. He moved shortly afterwards to a place where he said people weren’t as nosey.
I started high school for the first time that year. I was very proud dressed in my new uniform, and I felt so grown up. I was moving forward, leaving the junior school behind. I’d get to play hockey instead of rounders and have showers after games, just like all the older girls. It was going to be so good, and I could hardly wait.
Mum continued to play bingo all through the summer, which meant that I was forced to carry on helping Bill make sandwiches. More often than not, he would ask Mum if I could stay on a bit, then drive me home when we had finished. I didn’t like it, but Mum gave me no choice. She knew, if I helped with the sandwich preparations, he would continue halving the cost of her tickets. This was so important to Mum, especially as we got further into the week and money became scarce. One day, as we were finishing up and the sandwiches were all made, I said, ‘I have to go home.’
‘I need to go to my flat to get something,’ he said without looking at me.
‘Can’t you take me home first?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he replied, in a tone of voice that I could not refuse. ‘I need to go home first, it’s urgent.’
It made no sense. I lived four, maybe five minutes away by car; he lived twenty-five minutes away.
We arrived at the new flat and he parked outside. It was a large old house that had been divided up into six bed-sits. ‘It won’t take long,’ he told me as the engine came to a halt. ‘I only need to pick up my chequebook.’
‘I’ll wait here,’ I said.
‘No,’ he replied quickly. ‘It would be better if you came inside with me.’
I really didn’t want to go inside this big, strange, unwelcoming building; I just wanted to go home. As we went up to the first floor, I felt very uncomfortable, especially when he turned the key in the lock of his flat.
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I won’t be long.’
Inside, the flat was strange. It was a large room that had been divided up by a partition wall that had two recesses in it, making two smaller rooms. One was a small kitchen, t
he other a bedroom. The lounge had beige and cream flowery wallpaper, a small suite, a coffee table, an electric fire and a TV. It smelled funny. I didn’t know what the smell was, but I didn’t like it.
Bill walked around the flat moving pots from the night before and hurriedly shifting magazines that had ladies on the front covers without their blouses. I remember thinking, He must like to read a lot, given how many magazines there were. Everywhere I looked there were piles of them, all around the edges of the room. They all had ladies without their blouses on the front.
Eventually, he took a chequebook out of the drawer and put it on the table. He sat down beside me and started stroking my knee with his hand. I didn’t like it and I asked him to stop, but he took no notice. I felt scared and alone. He took me over to where the bed was and asked me to sit next to him. I remember counting the ten paces in my head, trying to focus on how to get out of the room and away from him before I became too frightened to move. ‘I think it’s time we went,’ I said quietly. ‘Mum will wonder where I am.’ But still he took no notice.
He continued to touch me. His fingers had long nails that scratched at my skin. Suddenly, he moved his hand up to the top of my leg and into my pants, pushing my skirt up towards my waist as his hand moved further up my thigh. ‘You’re very grown up for a girl of eleven,’ he said, as he felt the small, newly developing hair.
Inside, I cried out loud. I felt as if I was being swept up by a tornado, trapped and unable to reach for safety.
Why wouldn’t he do what I asked?
Why wouldn’t he listen?
Why wouldn’t he stop?
Why did he continue to touch me when I had said no?
Was a child’s ‘no’ no good?
Inside my head, I shouted, ‘I don’t want this or what you’re doing. I don’t want a man to put his hands on me. I want to go home.’ But the words remained firmly in my head: I was too scared to make a sound.
Eventually, I pulled away and started to object, clutching at my clothes and trying to straighten out all the new creases he had made in my skirt.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you home. Just give me a minute.’
On the way back home, I determined to tell my mum what had happened immediately. Suddenly, he broke the silence. ‘Don’t say anything about this to your mum. She won’t believe you.’
The words came out of his mouth, echoing into existence as I sat stunned and shocked by what he had done to me. I could not believe what I heard. Did he honestly think such a warning would make a difference to me? Surely Mum would believe me. Wouldn’t she? Now he had sown the seeds of doubt in my mind, what could I say, how could I tell her?
He repeated his warning. ‘No one will believe you.’
Every word he had spoken I heard over and over again, sounding out like a loud bass drum in my head. Louder and louder the words became, until they reached a pitch I couldn’t stand any longer.
I arrived home at a quarter past six, just as it was getting dark. I looked at Mum, and she looked back at me. I felt that she could see the desperation building deep in my eyes, but she never asked me if I was OK. She just looked away and carried on with whatever she had been doing before I came in.
Did she know then what had happened?
Did she have some idea before I could tell her?
Bill had followed me into the house. As I looked at Mum, he looked at me. ‘Same time tomorrow, Evelyn?’
‘Yes, that’s fine,’ Mum replied. ‘See you at bingo.’ And he left.
I felt lonely standing there in the kitchen, as if someone had placed me in a home that wasn’t my own. I went to my room and my sister was there. ‘Hiya,’ she said brightly. ‘Want to play?’
I wanted to tell someone. In that one moment, for a split second, I didn’t care about what he had said, I just wanted to tell someone. Gemma was the only one around, but she was younger than me. She wouldn’t understand.
And then my moment of confidence deserted me. Perhaps what Bill had said was right. Perhaps no one would believe me.
I cried into my pillow that night. Dad came in when he heard me. ‘Are you OK, Sarah?’
‘Just a bad dream,’ I lied, hoping Dad wouldn’t want to stay with me.
‘OK,’ he answered, and closed the door quietly behind him.
That night, I learned how to cry myself quietly to sleep. It was something I would get very used to over the weeks, the months and the tragic, lonely years that followed.
Four
AS AUTUMN TURNED to winter and the days grew darker and colder, Mum still played bingo as fanatically as ever. She was always desperate for a win. Sometimes when she asked me to go, I lied and said I had a tummy ache. She would get annoyed with me. ‘You were OK this morning, why are you suddenly ill now?’ But there were days when I had no choice, especially if Dad was working the afternoon shift at the mill. I had to go with Mum because she couldn’t leave me at home alone.
Bill continued to halve the ticket costs with Mum, and in return I got to go to the flat with him twice a week, lost, lonely and very confused. Every time he took me there, I wanted to run away from him, but I didn’t know for sure where I was or how to get home. I remember feeling that I had to get away and escape, but each time we drove home he went a different way to confuse me, so I could not remember the key places we passed. It was hopeless.
As the hours of Bill’s abuse mounted up in my young life, what he did to me become more distressing. To start with, he just used to touch me using his fingers, but soon enough something seemed to change. He became more purposeful, as if he did not want to spend the same amount of time taking me to the next level as he spent getting this far. One afternoon, back at his flat, he told me he wanted to show me what a penis felt like. ‘I want you to know how it will feel inside you,’ he told me. At first I didn’t know what he meant, but I soon realised when he removed his trousers.
He took off his underpants and stood before me, a weedy little old man with the funniest legs I had ever seen – I remember them to this day, although at the time, of course, I saw nothing funny about them – and a penis that resembled a shrivelled-up old prune.
‘You’re going to be a grown-up now,’ he told me in a quiet voice I will never forget as long as I live. ‘You’ll be a lady.’
He moved closer and closer towards me that rainy afternoon, saying he wanted to ‘enter me’. I remember crying, begging him to stop, but he paid no attention. ‘I knew we’d be perfect,’ he told me. ‘I knew we’d fit together perfectly.’
I was silent that afternoon as he drove me home. He tried talking to me; in fact, he continued talking all the way home. I stayed silent. I had nothing to say. I knew now that he had wanted to ‘enter’ me for weeks. He had just taken his time, and now my time had run out. I felt soiled, cheap, dirty and alone.
As he pulled up outside the house I got out of the car. ‘Bye, Sarah,’ he called breezily. ‘Thanks for your help.’
I went inside the house without even looking at him. I was glad nobody was around to stop me or speak to me. I went into the bathroom and scrubbed myself raw, making sure I cleaned everywhere he had touched me. I could even feel his touch under my fingernails. I used the hardest nailbrush I could find, the one Dad used after potting his plants, and the coal tar soap that I hated the smell of. Anything was better than his smell. It was a ritual I would continue each and every time I went home from Bill’s house.
As I look back on the events that changed my life forever, I feel as if I cheated on myself. Why? Because I never cried out or shouted out for help. It’s a small word, just four tiny letters. ‘Help.’ One day when I was alone, I wrote the word in big capital letters.
HELP.
But, when I read it out, it didn’t sound any louder.
In my heart I yelled, and my voice echoed as though it came from the Grand Canyon itself, echoing to everyone I knew. Every day he came for me, I yelled louder and louder inside. And yet, after Bill’s warning to me, I never dared
say that little word. And, if you don’t say it, no one will hear. His warning that nobody would believe me was attached to me, weighing me down like a huge boulder chained securely around my neck.
Why was I never rescued?
Why did no one hear me?
Why did no one come?
Why did no one stop him hurting me?
Why did no one care?
I saw Bill the very next day. He looked at me, smiled and winked. He held my secret, but he never let it show, continuing as if nothing had ever changed. I knew my life had altered forever; he just carried on regardless. He continued his conversations with my mum about how lucky she was at bingo; he continued halving her ticket costs; and he continued, with her unwitting support, taking me back to his home. There was never an occasion when he took me back to his flat that abuse did not occur. It was the only thing he seemed interested in, with the exception of the Saturday-afternoon football. It became a weekend ritual: he would wash me, abuse me, then sit down in front of the television to watch the match. I would have to sit there with him, watching, waiting, reliant on him to take me home. If it hadn’t been for Saturday football, I would have been home that bit earlier, washing Bill’s smell off me once again …
As the days and weeks passed me by, I felt that I was no longer living my own life but taking part in someone else’s, the life of a complete stranger, a person I knew nothing about. Everything I knew about being a child, a young girl embarking on the journey into her teenage years, became a blur, disappearing from my memory like fragile snowdrops melting. My life before Bill became a smoggy memory drifting out to sea.
I wondered what I had done to deserve this treatment. Why did another person, especially a grown-up, want to do such unspeakable things to a small girl? I asked these questions inside my head, listening intently for an answer, but no answers came.
Shortly before my twelfth birthday, I started my periods. I knew a little about what was happening, but no one had ever told me the facts of life, I never really knew what to expect. I didn’t know what was happening inside my developing body, I just learned as I lived.
Sarah's Story Page 2