Sarah's Story

by Sarah Preston

  Thankfully, he started staying in his own room at night and didn’t venture into mine. I was so grateful. Was my old dad finally returning? I smiled a little smile when this thought pushed its way past all the others to get to the front of my mind. Had he realised what he had done was so wrong?

  Bill, however, was a different story. He would visit me three times in five days and, as much as I wanted to plead with Dad that I shouldn’t go with him, I found that, in my desperation, the excuses I came up with were not logical or believable enough. I remember saying that I had to water the plants in the garden and those in the greenhouse too. It had been such a hot day, and Dad had said they were my responsibility. I was stupid really – I should have realised that Dad wouldn’t have minded watering the plants in my absence.

  I told him I couldn’t go because my friend Paula was coming round to see me. ‘She’ll call back,’ Dad would say.

  I hesitated, taking my time looking for my sandals. I could feel Dad’s eyes watching my every slow, calculated move. I began to look for my sandals in all the places I knew they weren’t. ‘Just get a move on, Sarah. Bill hasn’t got all day.’ His voice carried a threatening edge with every word he spoke.

  I remember thinking I was glad Bill didn’t have longer to spare than the stolen two-hour slots he so very kindly devoted to me. I just wished he would give them to a charity shop instead.

  The first time I went with Bill that week, he had wanted to ejaculate over me not once but twice. He made the same request on the other two visits. Each time I objected, saying I wasn’t feeling well, but he just went ahead and did it anyway.

  The next morning, as I opened my eyes, Dad was there, pulling back the bedclothes and scooping me up. I started sobbing loudly. ‘No, Dad. Please, Dad …’ Although I was complaining louder than ever before, he continued to carry me into his room. I kicked him as he put me down on the bed. I knew I had hurt him, but he told me to be quiet. I tried to jump out of the bed but I couldn’t get past him – he was too strong and he pulled me back down. He held me down with the weight of his body and I was just too small and too weak to fight back. There was no way I could lift a grown man off me.

  There was no hope. I knew I had to stay put and tolerate his pleasure and my pain. I was conscious that I had to do something, anything to stop this happening again. I couldn’t be a victim any longer. I was not going to give in. Not this time, not again.

  I cried hard and I cried loud – as loud as I thought was safe. Safe enough that the neighbours didn’t hear, yet loud enough that Dad would think they might.

  He was so shocked by the noise I made. I cried out again, but this time I used words, not just sobs and tears. ‘Get off me, Dad! Leave me alone!’

  It worked. He moved, but as he did so he spat out the most hateful accusations to me, in a voice that made me shudder with fear. ‘I suppose you don’t say no to him, do you, Sarah?’ he hissed. ‘It’s not my fault! I want it to stop!’ I cried out

  with a gentleness that made my voice so low it was barely audible, but I know he heard my words. ‘I want it all to stop,’ I pleaded through the stinging tears that were now wetting the pillow. I hoped that he would realise I wasn’t just talking about what he was doing but Bill too; if he did understand, he never confirmed it. He just looked away from his twelve-year-old daughter lying on his bed with her nightdress up around her waist.

  Dad never returned to my bedside any night after that. At last I had freed myself from one of my abusive tormentors. I was safe in my home once again and I hoped I always would be.

  At the end of the week, Mum came to see Dad. They talked for a long time alone in the lounge with the door shut. A couple of hours later, Mum called me into the lounge and told me she would be coming back home the next day.

  I was so glad. At last I wouldn’t be alone any more.

  I was growing up. My body was developing and inside I had emotions that I could not understand. No one talked to me, or explained the changes that were taking place. I had picked up key words by listening to girls talking in the showers after games at school. But I knew that, without the knowledge and understanding of what they meant, these words would be no use to me. I didn’t know what to expect as my body grew and changed, but I felt that I knew more than most of my friends about the development of a man. Things I knew I shouldn’t have known until I became a great deal older.

  I only knew that sometimes I felt funny inside when I was touched in different ways. Bill made me feel funny and I despised it, but I couldn’t understand why I felt like that when his fingers touched certain places.

  I didn’t like it.

  It wasn’t right.

  Why give me these feelings when I don’t want them?

  I wished I could lock them up in a box and take them out when I felt it would be safe to handle them, although I imagined I’d probably never be able to. I asked so many questions then, not just questions about my body – which I usually asked a friend about – but also questions about the exploitation I endured. But the latter questions were always silent ones, spoken inside my mind and never, ever aloud.

  By the time I was thirteen, I had done everything I could think of to try and escape from the world that Bill and my dad had created for me, but the more I tried, the more trapped I became. If I said I was unwell and couldn’t go with Bill, he just came an extra night the week after, as he would after I’d had my period. It was his way. He was sly and sneaky and well practised in the art of paedophilia. There was never any escape. Every corner I turned, I knew all too well that he would be there, watching, waiting, ready for his reward.

  This man I loathed so much had become more devious and cunning than he ever was before. He seemed to want more and more each time he got me alone in his flat, while I found his need to be with me unbearable, nauseating and beyond belief. He constantly wanted to spend time alone with me, so much so that his desires to see me more began to make me feel weighted down. His needs were making my whole, poor weary body plummet to the bottom of the deepest ocean. Bill really was becoming overly obsessed with me. He had a power over me that had the unique strength of storm-driven waves crashing against unprotected, eroding chalk cliffs. I felt like I was tied to a jealous boyfriend whose obsession was spiralling way, way out of control.

  I wanted so much to be free, yet every thought I had about becoming so was blown away like small, inconspicuous specks of chalk on each fresh, newly initiated breeze, heading towards the mightiest of hurricanes in some faraway place.

  I was so tired of trying to break free from both of them. I had had the hope drained from me, and I began to feel as if Bill and my father had captured everything from me that there was to capture, and more besides. I felt like they had bottled my willpower and sold the last bit of soul I had to the highest bidder.

  One day, when I was feeling especially low, my friend Lucy asked if I would like to go to a disco near to where we lived. It was on Saturday night at a local church hall, St George’s, and everyone, she said, would be there. By everyone, she meant all the nice, good-looking boys. Guys she knew I would fancy if I ever saw them. The problem was, Dad didn’t like me going out, especially to places he knew I would meet boys.

  Lucy was a lovely girl. She was slightly taller than me with blonde shoulder-length hair that hung straight around her slim face, and blue eyes. She was so pretty. She had a radiant smile that was filled with warmth and caring, and just being in her company made you feel alive. She loved the disco, and she loved the attention boys gave her as her figure began developing curves in all the right places. Lucy spoke with such enthusiasm about the disco, and I knew this was just the distraction I needed, a distraction I hoped would take me back into the world I had long since left behind.

  Up until that point, I had had no experience of boys my own age. I was still very much a little girl, content to read Enid Blyton books in my every spare moment. I didn’t think about boys much. I just wanted to be a part of the world I knew my favourite character
s were in. I would have given anything to go out on a sailing boat on my very own Sea of Adventure. At least if this dream came true I would be out of the clutches and touches of my tormentor forever.

  There were boys I came into contact with each day at school, but I was always very quiet and shy in front of them. Because of this, the boys always called me names. I can’t remember ever doing anything that would encourage their name-calling, it was something they just did. Every year at school, someone always became the bullies’ victim. I don’t know why they chose me. I had a little bit of acne – a few spots on my chin and two on my forehead. I think at the most I had six pimples – nowhere near as many as some of the other, popular girls – but it was me they called names and me they all picked on. These boys never seemed to pick on the popular girls who I often thought were quite mouthy, uncouth and not really very nice at all. They were everything I wasn’t.

  I always felt alone at school, but Lucy helped. She always listened to me and usually advised me with her pearls of wisdom whenever I spoke to her about a problem I had. ‘Not to worry,’ she’d often say, ‘they’ll stop picking on you eventually. You just have to ignore them.’ So I never retaliated. But, when they were supposed to get fed up and stop, they never did. Ignoring them just seemed to fuel their need for more.

  I was their new pawn in a game they insisted I took part in.

  I couldn’t escape.

  That Saturday night, as we left home giggling and excited, deep inside I felt a bit apprehensive and anxious about going out to St George’s, but Lucy made me feel better by telling me that the majority of the boys who went there were from the Catholic school, not ours. I remember my heart feeling lighter that night, for the first time since all this began. Up until then, I hadn’t really noticed boys before. I was just a girl who liked to read and I enjoyed being alone. After school, I played in the street with other kids who lived near us, but after dark I was usually indoors. I didn’t socialise or go anywhere with other girls or boys my age.

  Dad had insisted I be back home by nine; Lucy was allowed to stay out until ten. I decided to go, even though I knew it would take forty minutes to walk home. For the first time in over two years, I felt free that night. I knew Bill couldn’t interrupt this moment. He wouldn’t be coming to get me, not tonight – no one could take this time away from me.

  The church hall was very busy that night. There were lots of teenagers there, people I didn’t know, and I felt shy. The boys looked at me, moving their eyes up and down, and I felt embarrassed. The heat around me seemed to raise my temperature. I began convincing myself that they knew all about me, even though that was impossible. No one else knew because I hadn’t told them yet. I felt like I was at an auction waiting to be sold to the highest bidder.

  Lucy knew lots of people because she had been here before. She introduced me to some of her friends, girls as well as boys. We got into a little group and, after chatting, we all danced for quite a long time. It was late when I looked at my watch and my heart hit the floor: it was half past eight! I would never get home in time. I said goodbye to Lucy and the others and ran the three miles home. Dad wasn’t happy when I arrived home five minutes late and he sent me to bed. I was grounded for two weeks. Two miserable weeks.

  I lay in bed cursing the unfairness of it all when it suddenly hit me. I would be free of Bill for two weeks. My heart jumped for joy and silently I whispered, ‘Thanks, Dad’ to myself.

  I would be free of Bill for two weeks.

  I went to sleep that night smiling.

  I was silly, really. I actually thought that the grounding would include the daytimes too.

  Nine

  BILL ROLLED UP outside the house at 11.30 the next morning. Dad had told me to weed the front garden but I wasn’t allowed in the street to play. As Bill got out of the car, he said he was just going to say hi to Mum and Dad, then we’d be on our way. As I heard his words, my heart was leaping, yet when I answered him the rest of my body was shaking and trembling in terror. I knew he would not like what I said to him.

  ‘I can’t go with you,’ I said. ‘Dad grounded me last night.’

  He was so angry and it showed – if he could have spat feathers, he would have done so by the pillow load. He marched hurriedly to the front door, knocked and walked in. ‘Hi,’ I heard him call, trying to hide the undertones of anger from creeping into his usually cheery greeting to my parents.

  ‘Hi, Bill,’ I heard Mum reply. ‘Do you want a cuppa?’

  He accepted. He knew how to play this game – he had done it before.

  ‘Are you going to bingo, Evelyn?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Bill.’That usually meant she wanted to go but she wasn’t sure if Dad would give her the extra money.

  ‘Will it be OK for Sarah to come too?’ He paused slightly, before quickly adding, ‘I could do with a hand with the snack bar again.’

  I quickly ran into the room from behind the hallway door where I had been listening in on their conversation. ‘I can’t go, can I, Dad? You’ve grounded me.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Bill replied.

  ‘Oh, let her go,’ Mum said to Dad.

  ‘But, Mum, I’m grounded for being in late. I can’t go out,’ I told her.

  Dad looked at me, then at Mum. ‘OK,’ he said, finally.

  What had he done?

  Why was he doing this?

  Why was he punishing me in this way?

  I went with Bill again that day. He was all over me now. He was more intense. He poked and prodded me like stock at a cattle market. Every touch, every move, every kiss from his moving dentures and every immoral whisper he spoke into my ear made me feel sick deep inside. He made me feel as dirty as a mechanic’s oily rag so overused it was unpleasant to hold.

  Once upon a time I was better than this. Why had my life changed so much?

  This wasn’t the life I belonged to.

  This wasn’t where I should be.

  I didn’t want to be a toy for a perverted old man. I wanted to have a normal friendship with a boy my own age. I wanted to discover sex and all that goes with it with him, later.

  When I was older,

  When I was ready,

  When I said it was time.

  I didn’t want him to continue stealing my virginity. I wanted it back for the man I would grow to love, marry and be with forever. I wanted so desperately to become the child I never was, the child I never had a chance to become. I had lost the true me; no one would ever know that person or hear about her achievements. That Sarah had been cut down and left to die. She had been discarded like a fallen branch on a forest floor, already thick with hundreds of other fallen branches, useless to the tree that had lost it.

  I wanted to be set free. I wanted to fly away gently like a butterfly into a world where abuse never happened, where children could be free to be children.

  Where children were children.

  Is it so wrong to wish for these things? To want a life that belongs to you and only you. I had dealt with all of this by myself for such a long time. No one knew what had happened to me, apart from my dad, and he was too busy protecting himself instead of me.

  It was now almost winter and I was looking forward to Christmas. Dinah, a neighbour who lived across the road from us, had two young children under five. She and her husband Simon enjoyed going out at night and often had a babysitter in to watch the children when they weren’t there. One night, they were let down and their babysitter couldn’t make it. Dinah came across and asked Mum if I could sit for her. I had never babysat for anyone before, but Mum said I would be OK – I was sensible and I could always nip back across the road to get her if there was a problem.

  At seven o’clock, I went across the road to Dinah’s house. The children were both in bed and asleep, so she left to meet her friends and Simon met up with the guy from next door who he regularly went out to the pub with. I sat and watched TV for the rest of the night. Mum popped in twice to see if I was OK and at half past
eleven Dinah arrived home, thanked me for sitting for her and paid me two pounds.

  I was delighted. At last I had money of my own. When I got home, I hid it safely in my bedroom.

  I remember my thoughts that night; they remain in my memory as clear and as sharp as all the others. If I got to babysit again, and if they paid me, I could save the money and this could be my escape fund. I could go anywhere, do anything. I could get away from them all. I had already made plans to run away when I was old enough so that I could escape them all. The only problem was that I would have to wait three long years before I became sixteen.

  I babysat a few more times for Dinah and Simon and was paid each time. On one occasion, Simon came across quite late in the evening asking if I would sit for them. Dinah had arranged to go out and Simon should have been staying in watching the children, but his friends had called round for a beer and were going into town. Simon wanted to go with them too. He looked at me hoping I’d say yes. ‘OK,’ I told him, ‘I’ll be there in a few minutes.’

  Simon was delighted – he was able to go out with his mates. I gathered my homework and went across to their house. After he left, I locked the door and checked on the children – they were fast asleep. I got a drink from the kitchen and settled down to do my homework. It was so quiet and peaceful. It was nice to be somewhere I felt safe away from Bill.

  A few hours later, Simon returned. He was quite drunk and was laughing. After a few minutes, he got some change from his pocket and paid me my babysitting money – ‘a little extra tonight’, because it was short notice. Three pounds instead of only two. (I know Dinah would have only paid fifty pence more.) He followed me to the front door but it was still locked, so he fumbled in his pocket to get the key. He leaned over me to get to the keyhole, then lost his balance and stumbled. He fell against me. Suddenly, he pushed his stubbly mouth brusquely against mine as he straightened up; I tried pushing him away but he was heavy. ‘Simon, you’re drunk,’ I said to him.