Escaping the Darkness

by Sarah Preston

  Chapter Seventeen

  AS MY SONS grew up and became less dependent on me, I found I had more time to myself. This wasn’t good because the bad memory box began to move around again. It wasn’t wedged as firmly in the back of my mind as it should have been. It was summer 2002, we were back in Cornwall, and I was never happier. We had met up with our friends and were completely relaxed.

  It was during this holiday, after only being in Cornwall for a few days, that I remember Sam and I lying awake talking late into the night. I’m not really sure what happened to prompt the words that Sam spoke at that time, but he said he wanted to ask me a question but didn’t quite know how to. I wasn’t sure what he meant or where he was leading, so I told him the best way was just to ask me straight out.

  He paused for a few moments and I tried to prompt him, but he said he didn’t want to hurt me. My mind started on a carousel, moving faster and faster as the ride built up speed. What on earth did he mean? How could he hurt me? What did he think I had done? Or did Sam have a secret I knew nothing about? It was then 12.45 am and he said nine words that I would never ever forget:

  ‘Sarah will you tell me what happened to you?’

  ‘What do you mean Sam? When?’

  ‘You know – when you were a child.’

  For what seemed like someone else’s lifetime, I just lay there, feeling the numbness sweeping over my body as the lid of the bad memory box lay tattered and damaged on the floor, the contents exposed to the world. Sam snuggled in close behind me, wrapping his arms around me as I curled up tighter into a position that resembled a defensive hedgehog.

  I knew Sam could feel the tension mounting in my body because he instantly started to apologise for asking the question that had left his lips just a few moments earlier. I loved Sam with all of my heart and wondered why he had chosen now to ask about my past. We were on holiday, we were relaxed, and it just felt so wrong to invade such a beautiful, tranquil place with the terrible secrets that lay hidden in my mind. I had always thought that Sam didn’t want to know about those things. How wrong could I have been?

  I thought about it for a few seconds more before I spoke in a whisper to him, ‘Why do you want to know?’

  He answered in an even quieter whisper than my own, ‘I want to understand you better.’

  ‘How do you mean, better?’

  ‘Well Sarah, when we’re in bed together, I’m always frightened that when I make love to you I may say or do something that may hurt you and I don’t want to do that.’

  ‘But you never have. I know I don’t talk when we make love, but you know that’s not a problem, right? And it never really mattered before.’

  Sam said in a whisper that was almost inaudible to my ears. ‘But Sarah I want you to talk to me, sometimes I need to know I’m doing the right things for you and that I don’t do anything you feel uncomfortable with.’

  As Sam spoke, all of my past memories hit me in the face full on. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought I had just been thrown through a windscreen at eighty miles an hour.

  ‘I don’t know if I can tell you Sam. It is just so painful for me.’

  Sam told me he understood how I felt and didn’t want to cause me pain. I thought about Sam’s words for a while before I spoke again. I knew that every word I uttered that night would be as painful as stabbing Sam in the heart over and over again.

  I took a deep breath and felt the cool night air enter my lungs, and a few moments later I began telling Sam my story. These were the hardest and most challenging minutes of my life. At first we both talked, and then for the next few hours Sam just listened and cried with me as I relived my past. Telling Sam about my abuse was the most difficult thing I had ever done. Even when I had first plucked up the courage to tell Dr Tranor, I never felt quite as insecure as I did on that dark, star-laden night in Cornwall.

  At first I tried leaving out certain details to lessen the blow, but Sam knew I wasn’t being honest with him and he asked me to be truthful. I was reluctant to do this. I knew he felt the pain of my memories as if they were his own. I started at the beginning, telling him how Bill had tricked my mother into believing he was a harmless man and then how, a few weeks later, his true agenda began to become clear. Although at that time I didn’t know what Bill was planning to do.

  It soon became as clear as a news headline during that first year. Sam said to me, ‘Why did your mum not stop you going with him when you told her what he was doing?’

  I cried out in agonising pain.

  ‘Shush, shush Sarah it’s okay, what is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not okay Sam, I didn’t tell Mum, not then and not now either. I’ve never told her.’

  ‘Oh no, Sarah. Why?’

  ‘Because I knew that when Bill told me that Mum wouldn’t believe me, I knew he was right.’

  I felt Sam’s eyes widen incredulously, even though I could not see him in the darkness that surrounded us both. He spoke once more, ever so quietly, ‘Are you telling me, Sarah, that this man who had done all these unforgivable things to you, actually threatened you, too?’

  ‘No Sam, he didn’t threaten me, he just made it very clear by his tone of voice that if I tried telling anyone what he had done then they wouldn’t believe me. I was frightened of him, Sam.’

  Sam pulled me closer to him and gently kissed my neck, making me feel warm and loved. I talked a little longer and fell asleep talking. I was emotionally drained. When I woke next morning, I felt drunk.

  The sun shone brightly and once again it was a lovely hot day. Instead of going off anywhere in the car, we all decided to have a relaxing beach day. We all knew full well the traffic would be mad, especially when the weather was so favourable. I was glad, because it meant we could just totally chill out, have a swim, eat the pasties we bought from the local pasty shop on the way to the beach, do some reading, doze, swim, and then doze some more. Sam didn’t really like the beach as much as I did, but that day he came with us and it was lovely to have him so close. Sometimes Sam would stay on the campsite to read or go off walking with a friend while I went to the beach. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to spend time with me; it was just that he wasn’t a lie-down-and-do-nothing person.

  We weren’t like other couples. Sam and I shared, and still share, a bond that is very strong. We loved each other’s company and when we were apart we couldn’t wait to be back together. We were just like lovesick teenagers, and we’re still the same today.

  At the end of the day when we went to bed, Sam asked me if I would continue telling him about my past. I told him that I didn’t think it was a good idea because he would end up being hurt. Sam told me that he wanted to try and take that pain away from me, and that the only way he could try to do that was by knowing the memories I held inside, sharing my secrets and understanding my past.

  No one had ever been as gentle and loving in my life before, and I felt truly blessed to have Sam by my side, but I continually worried. If Sam knew the full extent of my abuse, then I imagined he would feel repulsed every time he looked at me. I knew Sam would never feel this way, but it was how I felt and thought. I suddenly felt like it was my entire fault, as if the blame for what happened seemed to be mine. I was responsible; I should have been in control. I didn’t do anything. I should have told someone, but I didn’t.

  My past was once more the centre of my attention, stealing those good moments I desperately needed to help me stay in control of my feelings. Once again I felt like I was worthless. I wanted to be loved continuously by Sam and there were moments when I told him things that had happened to me and then instantly thought, who would blame him if he decided to walk away? After all, this was a whole heap of rubbish no one should be asked to face. But he was my Sam, strong, loving and reliable, and he stayed just like I always knew he would.

  I lay in bed that night, once more letting the bad memories out of the box just like the night before. Each memory slipped onto my tongue and then drifted from my lips into
the cool, dark night, ready to be swallowed by a welcoming waiting fog. I protested when Sam started to cry, that it was all too much for him and perhaps we should never have made a life together. I started to cry, too. Sam hushed me until I stopped crying and reassured me that no matter what I told him he would always think of me as his precious wife. Nothing could change that. He asked me to tell him everything, but I knew there were just not enough hours in the night to cover all that had happened. I did get to the part where I told Sam about Bill wanting to make me a woman after weeks of touching me with his fingers.

  Then Sam became very angry, begging me to tell him where this Bill lived. The truth was I didn’t know where Bill was. I no longer knew anything about him apart from the memories I had of him in my past. I had never seen this side of Sam and for a single moment I felt a little pang of fear hit me. A few moments later it was gone; it was just Sam trying to protect me. I know if Sam could have found him, he would have assaulted him, even though this was not something he would ever do in normal circumstances. ‘It doesn’t matter, he’s dead,’ I told him. I hoped he was, but at that moment in time I wasn’t sure for certain if Bill had in fact died. I just hoped he had. I made a note in my subconscious to find out for sure once we were home and our holiday had ended.

  Sam asked me again why I hadn’t told anyone, and did I know if Bill had abused any other girls? I told him I wasn’t sure, but that I remembered another girl who used to come to the bingo hall to wash Bill’s car while he worked. I remembered her being around the same age as me, and at the time I wondered if he was doing things to her too.

  She never spoke to me, just looked and smiled when she saw Bill approach me on one particular Saturday afternoon. I never saw her again, so no, I never knew if Bill was abusing other girls, but I deeply suspected that he was. I told Sam that I also remembered thinking that if he spent so much of his free time with me, then all the other girls he knew were safe.

  As that week continued, we spent each night talking once we knew that the boys were sleeping and I was sure no one in any of the surrounding tents could hear us. I told Sam everything from the washing sessions, which tended to happen every time I went to Bill’s flat, to the times when he made me look at pornographic magazines with him.

  Bill used to ask me to talk to him about the pictures in the magazines. I always refused, but he always kept on at me until I said something. He did this when he had me laid out on the bed, his fingers touching me in that all-too-familiar way.

  I now know that it was those sessions at Bill’s flat, and his constant pestering to have me talk to him while he did things, which have contributed to the fact that I don’t like to talk when Sam and I make love. I realise that most people won’t understand this, because surely being with Sam is not the same as being with Bill. I know this is hard to comprehend, but it was the way I felt. I never once told Sam about Bill ejaculating on my body, or the times when I went home and scrubbed myself clean with Vim scouring powder and a scrubbing brush. Neither did I tell him about the constant battle I had just to have a bath without being shouted at by Mum or Dad for wasting the precious hot water.

  And at that moment I hated every word that came out of my mouth. I despised what I was doing to Sam and wished I had never started this particular journey of recollections that summer. I tried to leave out the parts were Bill had forced himself into me, terrifying me and shocking my body with every movement he made. As I talked to Sam, I tried to cushion each word with a soft whisper so that it didn’t hit him quite so hard. I failed, because he was shocked to his core and it had been me who had upset him so much.

  The next day after our long talk we were both still emotional and very tired. We chose to spend the day together on the campsite rather than go out anywhere. The boys went off to the beach with all the other teenagers and the local kids to soak up more of that exceptionally glorious, Cornish sun. Sam and I sat around for most of the morning doing very little. He did a bit of laundry for me while I went and showered, and then we had a walk in the village. We spent about forty minutes wandering around the shops but I felt a little uneasy. I can’t remember why I felt this way, it was just something I remember happening at the time.

  We ambled back to the campsite and sat and ate the pasties we had bought for lunch. Afterwards we talked and Sam apologised to me. ‘I’m sorry Sarah I know this is hard for you. It’s just that I wanted to know about your past so that I could be closer to you. I wanted to find a way to take away your pain, although I know this is probably the most impossible thing for me to do right now. I wanted to protect you but I’ve failed.’

  I looked at Sam and saw the unhappiness in his eyes.

  ‘How can you say you have failed me?’ I asked him. ‘You haven’t, you can’t take the blame for not protecting me. You weren’t around when I was eleven. It was my responsibility, and I just couldn’t stop it happening. I was the one that tried and I failed.’

  ‘Oh Sarah, it wasn’t your fault, any of it, why don’t you believe that? It was your parents’ fault – your mum and dad should have protected you.’

  I suddenly felt a knot take hold of my stomach as each end of the rope tightened within me, and I became conscious of what Sam was saying. Then reality hit me. I realised that I hadn’t even got to the part where Dad had abused me, too. How was I going to deal with that bombshell, I wondered, or should I just not tell Sam? I felt every ounce of hope I had managed to cling onto drain from me at that very moment of indecision.

  In the early hours of the morning I lay still, listening to the rise and fall of Sam’s chest as he took each breath. I wanted to immediately wake him up and tell him everything, but how could I? Hadn’t the shock of what I had already told him so far been more than enough for him to bear? How would he react to the news that I still had so much more to tell? How do you tell someone that the person they call their father-in-law is a child molester?

  It wasn’t as if I had never spoken to Sam about it in the past – I had. Before we were married, I had told him that I had been abused, but this bombshell of news about my past pain had hit him so hard at the time that I just decided it was better not to tell him everything. It was a cross I had to bear; yet now I wish that I had continued talking to him all those years ago and told him all of it. Now my heart felt so heavy that it seemed as if I was sinking deeper and deeper into the ground.

  At that moment, I just didn’t know where or how to broach this terrible news of the incest in my family. It was something that I wished I had spoken to Bess about, but I hadn’t, so the prospect of telling Sam everything was something that I had never envisaged. I thought that if only I’d had Bess’s contact details with me, I could have rung her and discussed it. Would she still be there, I wondered, in the same centre, doing the same job? After all it was quite a while since I last saw or spoke to her. I imagined she might have taken early retirement, and I certainly didn’t fancy trying to explain to a stranger why I wanted to speak to Bess and Bess only.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE FOLLOWING DAY we woke early and decided to go for a drive to the viewing park at Culdrose Air Field. The boys loved to see the planes coming in to land, and today was a day when they also saw one of the Air Sea Rescue helicopters taking off. We stayed there for just over an hour, and then went into the gift shop and bought model aeroplanes and pens to take home with us. For the rest of that day we went to look at the shops in Helston and then ambled our way around Tesco, getting the groceries we needed for the next few days.

  It was almost five when we returned to the campsite. I opted for an early shower before all the beach dwellers returned because I knew it would be at least nine o’clock before any of the showers would be free again. While I was gone Sam started to make the tea – I so appreciated him doing this. I loved going camping and not having to worry about preparing the final meal of the day.

  In the evening, once most of the campers had returned to the site, the volleyball net was set up on the grass at the bottom
of a field in preparation for the game that night. It didn’t matter if you were young or old, everyone joined in and played. It was playing volleyball that secured the bonds that developed and remained over the next few years. Because of it, friendships were forged and endured, no matter how many years passed us by. These valuable relationships still bind us together today.

  As the stars became brighter and the night sky grew darker, we sat outside the tent looking up into the firmament for the first signs of the meteor shower that was due. It was beautiful and oh so exquisite. As always, just as in previous years, we weren’t disappointed. The celestial show was quite simply, amazing. We saw at least fifty shooting stars that night. Each one left a trail of sparkling dust, gently disappearing as the star became dimmer the closer it came to the night sky’s horizon. Some time after one that morning, Sam and I made our way to bed. It was late and every muscle of my tired body was aching.

  Once we were lying in bed, we spoke about the pleasures of that day, and then I moved on to reveal more of my shattered past to Sam, knowing full well that my history was what he really wanted to talk about. I wanted to pre-empt him, tell him about it before he started to ask, because that way I knew I would be in control of the words that I spoke.

  It often felt like what I would describe as a shattered past. I pictured the broken fragments of my life just lying around me in pieces on the floor. These fragments were desperate to be swept away once they had escaped from the box in which they had been trapped in for so long. I found I even had pieces clinging on to the sides of the box, and these were the worst nightmares imaginable: nightmares of a past I tried so hard to forget. But it didn’t matter how small each piece was, they all went back into the box, and each one formed a part of my past life. The abuse from my father and the things that Bill had done to me were far more degrading than anything else that had ever befallen me in my life.