by Anya Peters
‘Slow down,’ I plead to the driver, ‘please go slow.’
When we get there they lead me in from the car, but when we come around the corner there’s another car pulled up just before us. And he’s there, his hands behind his back, his head lowered, being led in handcuffs.
I won’t move. That clap of bright white light goes off again inside my head, and the hysteria that has been locked up in me all day starts to erupt. I cling to the black drainpipe on the corner, refusing to take another step. My uncle raises his head and for a moment holds my stare. It sinks deep down into my brain. I’ll get you for this one day, his eyes are saying.
Chapter 24
It was only a few seconds, but I feel as though he has been looking at me like that forever.
The police lead him away through the small side door into the station. I can’t move. They’re prising my fingers from the drainpipe one by one, but softening their voices, saying,‘It’ll all be alright.’
‘Your mum’s inside waiting for you,’ they say.‘Come on now, Anya, let go, it’s okay.’ I can hear impatience in the taller one’s voice.‘This is silly,’ he says, squatting down beside me.‘Come on now, we don’t want to force you. But you’ve got to come in with us.’
They promise that I won’t see him again; that he won’t do anything else to me. They say it was a mistake, that I shouldn’t have seen him, that the car he was in must have got delayed somewhere. They promise me that Mummy’s waiting for me inside and that they’re bringing me to her, not him. I don’t trust anything any more. They’ve tricked me; this is all a trick. I know they’re lying again.
Somehow they get me to go in. We stand at the end of a long, blood-red corridor, quiet and dark after the lights in the car park outside. There are doors along both sides, doors which could fly open any time and him leap out. It’s too quiet. I won’t go forwards.
‘Show me where she is,’ I say.‘Please, just let me see her first.’
One of them goes off reluctantly, his hat under his arm, his boots echoing loudly down the empty corridor. It feels like I must have fallen asleep for a moment standing there, because one of them taps me on the shoulder and says,‘Look, there she is.’
I drag my head up from my chest, my eyes flickering open, and see Mummy in one of the doorways right at the end. She’s like an apparition with the light fanned out behind her, frail and tiny, standing there with her beige mac still belted.
I stumble towards her, crying loudly, convinced that he is going to jump out from one of the other doors and get me. Poor Mummy. Her face is bone-white, her eyes bloodshot and swollen from crying, her hands shaking, wringing white tissues. I throw myself at her, burying my head in her chest, saying,‘Sorry, Mum, I’m sorry,’ as she puts her arms around me.
The interview room is empty apart from two white tables and some orange plastic chairs with cigarette burns. A window, with painted white bars on the outside, overlooks big steel bins under sheds opposite. Mummy’s grey leather handbag is on one of the tables, and cups and saucers and a half-empty bottle of milk are on the other one, next to some blank sheets of white paper. Another policeman sits down and shuffles them straight.
All I can think is that my uncle is somewhere in this building, and that I have told. After all his threats and warnings over the years, I told…That, and the way Mummy looks.
‘We’re just going to ask you a few things about what he did to you and you can answer them.’
I don’t want to. I can’t. All these years I have never put anything into words. Now I’ve said too much already.
‘It’ll be all right, Mum will be in the room. You just have to tell us what he did, then we can make sure he never does it again.’
How are they going to make sure? This is my uncle they’re talking about, my uncle who can do whatever he likes. I look up at Mummy to see if it’s okay but she’s turned to light a cigarette. I shake my head.
‘It’s okay, isn’t it, Mum?’ they say, and Mummy nods. She’s crying loudly into a tissue, refusing to sit down, pacing around, up and down the room, saying she feels sick.
‘I don’t want to, Mum. Do I have to?’
There’s a long silence.‘It’s all right. Tell them,’ she says.
I can hear from the way she says it that it isn’t all right. Nothing is right now. I turn back around in my seat and listen to her draw on her cigarette, her crying getting louder as a policewoman locks the door.
They’re easy questions to start with, about what time I got up that morning and what I had for breakfast, what time Mummy left, where everyone else was, how many brothers and sisters I have, their names…Then they start asking questions about him.
I don’t know how long it goes on for. The ashtray is full and Mummy is still walking up and down, chain-smoking, her face twisting in pain. I am not going to say any more; I can’t make Mummy hear any more of this. But they keep on.
‘Take your time,’ they say.‘It won’t be much longer. Just a few more questions then you and mum can go home.’
They carry on, asking when it happened and where everyone else was at the time. They want to know how many times, how many years. What did it feel and sound and smell like? What did it taste like?
I don’t know—nothing…dirty…disgusting…bad…it made me heave…I don’t have words for these things.
They push for descriptions, saying they know how tough this is, and they promise it will be over soon, but just try to tell them, describe it properly. Was there anything semen tasted like? How much of it was there? How thick was it? What did it feel like? Was it like anything else?
How do I know? I’m not even twelve…
I’ve got one ear on them and one tracking Mummy behind me, walking up and down at the back of the room, sobbing loudly. When I answer more questions Mummy doubles over, retching into the tissue. Nothing comes out, but she goes for the door, trying to unlock it, saying she can’t listen to any more of this.
‘Your mum’s going to stand in the corridor,’ they say,‘just outside to get some air. Is that okay?’
But I’m frightened of letting her out of my sight. I don’t know what she’s thinking—or where my uncle is.
This is all my fault.
‘Sorry, Mum…Please stay with me, Mum, please, I’m sorry.’
But she lunges for the handle, rattling it loudly, saying,‘No, I can’t stay, I can’t breathe…let me out. I have to get out of here.’
When she comes back in, a policewoman rubbing her back and plucking tissues for her from a box, they start again.
‘What else did he make you do?’
I swallow back the taste of sick from the back of my throat and look up at Mummy. I can’t get any words out. But they coax them out of me: about the things he made me push inside him while he masturbated—the handle of the yellow screwdriver or parsnips or the red plunger which I sat beside that afternoon inside the cellar door. I tell them about having to push it in until I was frightened he would rip open; about hitting him with his belt, his trousers around his ankles as he bent over the bed telling me to do it harder; or kneeling on the bed on his hands and knees, showing me how to push them in as he masturbated over opened-out page threes spread all over their double bed, or made me masturbate him.
They ask me about the pictures, but I always tried not to look at them or what he was making me do. I would stare outside into the trees as my hands moved, or his moved inside me, until he would turn around and thump me, saying,‘Watch what you’re doing; keep your mind on what you’re doing.’
They ask me why I thought he asked me to hit him with the belt, but I don’t know. I tell them that I was frightened of hurting him, that I didn’t understand why he would want me to hurt him, why anybody would.
The bald one is shaking his head, as tears fall onto the backs of my hands in my lap. I can’t lift my head to look at him. I am too ashamed.
Mummy leaves again and I hear her crying outside, moaning loudly like she did after some of th
e worst arguments. It sounds even worse here, echoing in the long corridor, with strangers sitting opposite me hearing her, and me the one causing it this time. They say they have to wait until she comes back again.‘No wonder you were frightened of coming in and bumping into him,’ one of them says.‘Don’t worry, this will all be finished soon.’
They sit there awkwardly, glancing up at each other and around the room, asking if I want a drink. I take a sip of the cold water and blow my nose with the tissue they hand me. I stare at a big Kit-Kat box sticking out of the top of one of the bins outside; I’m sure I see something move behind it. My uncle could be anywhere…waiting.
When they’ve finished, the bald policeman reads out what they’ve written down and makes me sign each sheet of paper. It’s the first time I’ve signed my name anywhere, and for years after, whenever I have to give a signature, memories of this day are there in my fingertips.
A lady with red shoes and long blonde hair to her waist like Marie’s arrives and we follow her downstairs to a room with a bed. While the blonde woman snaps on rubber gloves, the policewoman tells Mummy that the lady is a doctor and is just going to have a quick look inside me.
‘Why?’ I ask Mummy.‘I don’t want anyone to.’
I lie on the hard bed, feeling the feathery ends of her hair brush against my hands, my knees up. I have been crying so much my eyes are almost sealed closed but I feel everyone looking at me and burn with shame. She smells of flowers, and the cold she brings in with her clings to her jumper. I feel her long, sharp nails through her gloves. I can’t blink the lights straight. She asks me some questions, and when she takes off her gloves I watch her write some stuff down on a clipboard and then shake her head at the policeman who has come in from the corridor and is towering over me.
When she asks me when the last time he was inside me was, I’m silent for a long time because I can’t remember, and I don’t want to remember. I shrug and she scribbles something down. I never get to tell her it had been at least a couple of months. The last time he did it I bled, and I think it frightened him. Next time I told him that Mummy saw the spots of blood in my knickers and wanted to know where it was from. He makes me do things to him now instead. He says I’ll be ready soon.
Chapter 25
Marie met us outside the police station in a taxi. Suitcases packed with some of our things were in the boot, and somebody had lent her money for the train fares. Marie had arranged everything. We were not going back home; we went to King’s Cross to get the train up to her house in Leicestershire. Everything in my life had changed in a moment. The girls had gone ahead in another taxi with Peter, and were meeting us there. The boys had stayed behind somewhere in London with one of my uncle’s brothers.
Everything seemed to be outside our control. We were all unprepared for the fear and shock of what had happened, overwhelmed by it. Mummy and I were trying not to cry on the train so as not to attract attention or upset the girls, who weren’t being told what was going on, just that my uncle had been taken away for hitting me.
We had table seats to ourselves at the end of a carriage, but there were other people nearby and Mummy and Marie whispered over the girls’ heads. Mummy’s tears set mine off again and neither of us could stop. It was late and the girls were tired, but they had a new packet of felt-tip pens and colouring books, and I watched their blonde hair slide across the table as they filled in the same picture of a clown standing on a beach ball, juggling sticks. Marie put her finger to her lips and whispered to me not to cry because I was upsetting Mummy.
When Peter came back from the buffet car with bottles of Pepsi, and crisps and Mars bars and tea for Mummy and Marie, we were still crying. I glanced over at Mummy, trying to make her look up at me, but she wouldn’t. I felt cold inside and alone; ashamed that she now knew all that stuff. ‘Why don’t you go outside in the corridor with Peter for a bit, to get some fresh air?’ Marie said, putting her arm around Mummy.
I didn’t want to, but I went. Peter and I stood there for ages without talking, bumping together now and then and pulling away awkwardly as the train rattled on, both of us staring through each other’s reflection in the black windows as we tried to make out the dark shapes of the countryside speeding past. I knew Peter didn’t know what to say. But I didn’t either.
I wished somebody would hold me.‘Do you want one of these?’ he asked, taking another two Mars bars from the inside pocket of his leather bomber jacket. I nodded that I did, but when he passed it to me I threw up into his hands. He wiped his jumper at the small silver hand basin in the toilet, and I turned around sleepily to watch Mummy and the others through the sliding glass doors. It felt like a dream, seeing them there like that, watching their lips move without being able to hear them, seeing them all huddled together, Mummy’s white cigarette smoke streaming into Marie’s loose blonde hair, Jennifer in denim dungarees asleep across her lap, the little ladybird on the end of her gold hair clip sliding down past her ears, her felt tips rolling without lids across the sticky, map-blue table.
None of us had ever been to Marie’s house before—except for Mummy, on the day Jack was born. And although it was late we took our shoes off and lined them up at the back door the way she showed us. With our anoraks still on, we followed her in a daze from room to room as she showed us around. She pulled pillows and bedding from the airing cupboard at the top of the stairs, and made up the spare bed and a put-up bed in the back bedroom overlooking the long narrow garden. I could see through the dark that it had a badminton net across it and shuttlecocks lay on the black grass. Nothing else seemed to be there, and I tried to cover my jumpiness, but every movement and every unfamiliar sound felt like my uncle lying in wait for me.
The house was tiny and spotless, like a doll’s house, with everything neat and in its place. There were white panelled doors with brass handles and soft pink carpeting in every room and up the stairs. I had the put-up bed while Stella and Jennifer slept head to foot in the spare bed next to Jack’s cot, with its Winnie the Pooh covers to match the wallpaper. But I couldn’t sleep. What if my uncle had escaped?
I went downstairs to tell someone I was feeling sick again. I just wanted to be with them, suddenly frightened of being on my own. But I didn’t know how to make a fuss, or tell someone what I was feeling. I confused the hallway with the one in our house and bumped into the coats hanging on a stand by the front door, thinking it was someone standing there waiting to get me—my uncle about to pounce. I shivered and tried to blink away that look from earlier—the way he lifted his head slowly from his chest, and looked up at me sideways in the car park as he was led away in handcuffs. That look that was there when I closed my eyes for years afterwards.
Marie gave me a towel and the red washing-up bowl to put at the side of my bed in case I threw up during the night, and I went back up, hurrying past the coats without looking. I wished I was like the girls, the age when someone could pick you up and hug you. Grown-ups were always awkward around me; I was never the type of child people took to, my uncle’s treatment of me made sure of that. I was too withdrawn, too wary and distant, my eyes too full of secrets. Marie came up again later with a hot water bottle and said if I needed anything else to call down but I never did, not even when I woke up during the night and, forgetting about the bowl, threw up onto the new pink carpet by mistake.
The next evening our Uncle Brendan came over, which seemed to make Mummy even more upset.
‘What am I going to tell him?’
As I pressed Lego bricks into place on the breakfast bar with Jack, I heard Marie telling her she had nothing to be ashamed of, that none of this was her fault. I felt myself blush and look away, wondering if they thought it was all mine. There was lots of talking in the kitchen when he arrived. The others drank coffee with him while we were sent into the front room with a big glass bowl of crisps to share, to watch TV and play with Jack. Later, Brendan came in to say hello. He always shook my hand when he first arrived, but this time he just sat
next to me and said,‘Are you okay?’
I nodded.
‘I heard what happened,’ he said after a minute and I nodded again, staring at the TV, blushing bright red. I hated having anyone know.
I didn’t know what Mummy had told him—how much? How much she’d told anyone.
For nights and nights they were up talking, trying to make plans about what to do next. During the day there was lots of staring at me, until I looked up and then everyone looked away. Everyone was kind and treated me nicely, but nobody talked about it. I was left alone with my thoughts, having to force them all back down, push everything back in, like the girls did with the red jack-in-the-box in our bedroom at home.
Sometimes as I passed someone in the hall or took things into the kitchen they would ask if I was all right and smile, and I would smile back shyly, nodding, unused to being the focus of attention. I could see that everyone was uneasy around me. The feel of the room would change when I walked into it. But nobody was fighting or shouting and everybody was being nice to me, and when I woke at night pouring with sweat after bad dreams I was allowed to go and sit downstairs, and sometimes Marie poured me a cup of tea to bring back up.
But nobody talked about what happened. They never have, ever. Years later, when I asked Brendan why no one talked to me about it from that day on, he shrugged and said they thought that if they didn’t talk about it then I would forget it. They didn’t want to remind me of it, he said…they thought that was best. We were a family used to not talking about things, used to sweeping problems under the carpet.
We stayed at Marie’s for a couple of months in the end. None of us belonged this time, not just me, and for a change not belonging brought us together rather than set me apart. Everyone treated it as a bit of a holiday at the beginning—there was no school and none of the old routine to keep to—but it all felt a bit fragile, ready to shatter any minute. Every time a door banged or there was a sudden loud noise, I’d swing around expecting the peace to be ripped apart. There were no chores to do at Marie’s. Suddenly I was a child again, with just books and games and playing with our nephew Jack, who laughed at everything; and no men except for Peter and Brendan, neither of whom shouted or bullied. And none of the things my uncle made me do. All of that was over. Though it was years before I trusted that.