ESCAPE FROM EVIL
CATHY WILSON
with JEFF HUDSON
PAN BOOKS
Dedicated to the memory of my beautiful, talented but troubled mother Jennifer, for giving me life, to my grandparents for the stability they gave me, and my gorgeous son Daniel for breaking the cycle.
Also to my patient, caring and fabulous friends Gaynor and Maeve and partner Stuart who have endured my emotional roller coaster since the truth came out.
When I was a child I spake like a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child:
but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face:
now I know in part;
but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. XIII 11–13
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE This is Where it Ends
1 The Choices Mum Made
2 Toast with Margarine
3 The Eye of the Storm
4 Mother Knows Best
5 When Can I Go Home?
6 Don’t Touch Me
7 Did You Miss Me?
8 This is Normal
9 Trying to be Brave
10 I Was a Handful
11 A Charming Man
12 The Signs were There
13 I’ll Try Harder
14 Think of Daniel
15 And Then I’ll Kill the Kid
16 His Home is Here with Me
17 Another Thirty Seconds . . .
18 Help Me, Mum
19 All About Him
20 Turn Round! Turn Round!
21 The Terrible Truth
EPILOGUE This is Where it Begins
PROLOGUE
This is Where it Ends
‘Cathy, turn on the news – now!’
It was September 2006, a Saturday morning, and my aunt sounded anxious. I hung up the phone and flicked the flatscreen remote. A second later I screamed. Shock turned quickly to confusion.
It can’t be him. It’s not possible.
I don’t know why my teenage son, Daniel, was up at nine o’clock on a weekend, but as he ran into the room, I was glad he was.
‘Mum, what is it? What’s wrong?’
But I couldn’t speak – I just stared at the screen, shaking and pointing at the picture of the man they said was wanted for the murder of a young girl.
‘You’re scaring me, Mum,’ Daniel said. ‘Who’s that man? Do you know him?’
Until then I’d been able to protect my son from the poison of his past. Now it was time for the truth. I took a deep breath.
‘Daniel – that’s your father.’
Part of me wishes I’d never set eyes on Peter Britton Tobin. Part of me wishes he had never taken a single breath. I’m sure I wouldn’t have any trouble finding people who’d agree. Just ask the grieving families of Angelika Kluk, Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol. If I were them I would definitely consider death too good for the man who took my daughter’s life.
Just ask the two young girls he tortured, raped and left to die, the prostitutes who were hurt because of his excessive, brutal tastes or the countless others rumoured to have been his victims over a possible forty-year campaign of terror. Ask any of them and I’m sure they’d have nothing good to say.
But mine is a hideous, unique position. It’s why I can only ever partly wish he’d never been born. Because, like it or not, the serial killer Peter Tobin is the father of my only child, my beautiful son. And as any parent will know, there is nothing you wouldn’t do to protect your child. Unfortunately for me, Peter Tobin knew that.
With knowledge comes power and Peter knew without a shadow of a doubt that there is nothing stronger than the bond between mother and child. He played on that. That was how he controlled me during our marriage. One word out of place, one step out of line and he didn’t have to threaten me. He just threatened Daniel.
Our poor, innocent baby boy, from the moment he was born, was just a tool with which I could be manipulated. I see that now. He was a bargaining chip. A means to an end.
I was a wild child when Peter Tobin, twice my age, fell for me. A free spirit, confident, loud and independent. I was the sixteen-year-old with the world at my stilettoed feet. That’s how I felt and that’s how everyone saw me. Everyone except Peter.
He alone saw the confused, scarred girl beneath the veneer. The hurting, abandoned teenager desperate for validation, hiding behind her image of the life and soul of the party. To Peter’s expert eye, I wasn’t a wild child in need of taming. I was vulnerable, fragile, damaged – ripe for falling under his control.
That’s why he tricked me into getting pregnant. I don’t think he ever wanted a child. He just wanted leverage.
The day I made my escape from him was the scariest day of my life. It had to be timed to perfection. One error, one delay, and he would catch me. And he would kill me.
I knew in my heart that he would have no choice. In Peter’s eyes, I was no more than a possession, maybe even his most precious possession, but not a person with rights of her own. When I ran away, he didn’t feel abandoned; he felt like he’d been robbed. And I knew he would exact his revenge.
Smuggling my son out of Scotland and fleeing the five hundred miles to the sanctuary of my family in Portsmouth was the longest night of my life. I was convinced Peter would be following, waiting for the coach to pull over, biding his time before storming on and reclaiming his property.
Every set of headlights that passed my window was his, I was convinced. Every time we slowed, it was because he had caused it.
I told my family and friends that I thought I would die that night if he found me. They all said the same thing: ‘It can’t be that bad.’
But they didn’t know. I hadn’t told anyone about the abuse, the beatings, the violence, the atmosphere of terror he’d forced me to live under for three years. They wouldn’t believe me when I said he would have killed me to stop me escaping. But I knew.
Then, in September 2006, he was arrested for the murder of Angelika Kluk.
And then we all knew.
My son was so young when his life was in peril, but he has recovered. He has had his counselling, he has had his therapy and, more than a decade later, has emerged as a healthy, unscarred young man. I’m confident he’s found his closure.
This book, I hope, will be mine. I have never told this story before. Not even my closest friends know what I suffered as the plaything of Peter Tobin and no one has ever heard how the parallels with my mother’s short life led me into his clutches. I’ve gone to great lengths to rebuild my life, but I’ve wasted too much time running from the truth. Until I face my past, my escape from evil will always be incomplete. If I don’t share my story, it will always be there to haunt me. And I don’t want that anymore.
This is where it ends.
And this is where it began . . .
ONE
The Choices Mum Made
‘Who’s this, Grandpa?’
I was fourteen years old and sitting at the kitchen table in my grandparents’ house. In front of me, spread out in neat little piles, were dozens of small, square photographs. One had caught my eye.
Grandpa pushed up his glasses and studied the picture I was holding.
‘That’s you,’ he said, a warm smile lighting up his face.
I stared at the mop-topped little bundle in the duck-egg blue cardigan with navy trim. Was I ever so blonde and curly? And look at those chubby little legs!
Baby me, grinning towards the camera, looked so h
appy on the hip of the slim woman in the gorgeous, white, thigh-length A-line dress. If anything, she looked happier still. No prizes for guessing who that beaming lady was, but I checked anyway.
‘And this is Mum?’
Grandpa nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, a flicker of pride in his voice, ‘that’s your mother. Doesn’t she look beautiful?’
He didn’t have to ask me that. I’d never seen anyone look so stunning. With long blonde hair cascading over her shoulders and slim, tanned legs, Mum looked like a film star to me. At the very least, a model. And as for her amazing little white outfit . . .
‘I love the dress,’ I said. ‘She looks so smart.’
I noticed the smile fade slightly from Grandpa’s lips. ‘She does, doesn’t she?’ he said quietly. ‘But then people tend to make an effort on their wedding day.’
Wedding day? But I’m in the picture.
I don’t remember if I couldn’t work it out or I didn’t want to.
‘Grandpa, I don’t understand.’
As he handed back the picture, I’m sure I saw his shoulders sag a little, then he took a breath and pulled himself up straight. ‘I’m afraid, Cathy,’ Grandpa said, a steely tone to his voice, ‘there’s no other way to put it: you are a bastard.’
There must have been a dozen different ways to break that news to me, but it was typical of Grandpa to use the correct term. I was technically a ‘bastard’ and that was the end of it. That was him all over: Mr Correct, Mr Proper. He liked things done and said the right way – however much it hurt other people. As far as Grandpa was concerned, he was the one who’d been hurt most.
Admitting his daughter had had a child out of wedlock was still as shameful to him fourteen years later as it had been back in 1969. From Grandpa’s point of view, that wasn’t the worst part. The wedding took place on 26 May 1970 – my mother’s sixteenth birthday. I’d been born the previous November and that was the earliest she could legally marry.
Wow, I thought. Born out of wedlock to an underage mum. Not exactly the start a girl hopes for. Glancing at Grandpa, now furiously polishing his shoes, I realized it was definitely not the start he would have wanted for me.
Reginald Ralph Seaford Beavis was a proud man. He’d served as a major in the Royal Corps of Signals, the army’s intelligence division, and years after his discharge still conducted himself with a strong military bearing. He worked as a salesman for the Wills cigarette company, who made brands like Strand, Embassy and Woodbine, and enjoyed some success and the recognition of his peers without ever really rising to great heights.
Reg had met his future wife, Daphne, while still serving in the army. Granny was a hairdresser at the time and had once styled the hair of the wonderful Peggy Ashcroft, as she never tired of reminding us. Granny only worked for two years, but till the day she died she refused to let anyone else perm, dye or set her hair. ‘Why would I, when I’m a trained hairdresser?’ And so, in all the years I knew her, Granny’s hair never changed once. It was like she was stuck in a time warp.
My grandparents married in the late 1940s and moved from Bristol, where the Wills factory was based, to Peterborough. In 1950 they had their first daughter, Anne, and couldn’t have been happier. They were the perfect family unit. Grandpa was the warden at the local church, while Granny used to do the flowers. She didn’t work anymore, but his career was solid, if not amazing. They were both dependable, respectable people. Everything was just so. Everything, that is, except my mother.
Jennifer Mary Beavis was born in May 1954. By then Granny and Grandpa had settled into a nice routine with little four-year-old Anne. I’m sure they expected Mum to just fit into their schedule. From what I know of her, I doubt very much that happened. But for a while everything was fine. Church played a role in the family’s life, there were nice holidays on a beach somewhere, days out to Stonehenge, everything as it should be. Neither daughter wanted for much.
Both girls settled well into school in Peterborough. In fact, when Grandpa’s work moved the family to Saltdean, near Brighton, in 1960, he received a glowing report from Miss Franks, Mum’s headmistress. In it she said, ‘We shall be very sorry to lose Jennifer. She is one of our best scholars. Her reading is excellent. It is unusual for a child so young to be able to read so fluently.’
Reading the letter now is like reading about a stranger. Such potential . . .
Mum and Anne’s new school was Telscombe Cliffs Primary, after which they both qualified for the girls’ grammar school in Lewes, about a twenty-five-mile round trip every day. They’d catch the bus from Saltdean to Newhaven, then hop on a train to Lewes. Anne dutifully looked out for her little sister in the early years, but they were only together briefly before she left.
In short, each girl had a wonderful start to life. Most importantly, they had the same start. Same schools, same loving parents, same opportunities. So why did they take such different paths?
If Grandpa had plotted out the perfect blueprint for his daughters’ lives, I don’t think it would have been too dissimilar to the way Anne’s turned out. As far as I can tell, she did everything correctly. From school straight to nursing college. Aged twenty, she met the man of her dreams, but sensibly waited a year before tying the knot. After three years they had kids – one of each, obviously. The children were educated at grammar schools from the age of eleven, they both got fantastic degrees, have wonderful jobs and are now starting their own families. After a few years abroad Anne and her husband, Geoff, stayed briefly with my grandparents before moving to Portsmouth. They now live in a beautiful house on Hayling Island, mortgage-free. They’ve even got a dog. It’s the perfect family. Absolutely textbook.
And then there was Mum. It seems that when Anne turned right, young Jenny chose left. Again and again and again. We don’t know when exactly and we don’t know why. All we know is that eventually it cost Jenny her life.
It’s such a puzzle. What made Mum take the path she did? She had the same options, the same support network, the same genes. But it wasn’t enough. Nursing wasn’t for her. Academia seemed to be a waste of her time as well, although she was, according to her early reports, very bright. By the age of fourteen she was no longer interested in what Lewes Grammar School for Girls could offer her. And they, it’s fair to say, were running out of patience with her too.
I don’t have many of my mother’s possessions, but on my sixteenth birthday Granny and Grandpa gave me a box containing various letters and documents. For years I left that box unopened, too afraid of what I might discover. When curiosity did get the better of me, I felt sad that I hadn’t had the courage before. Wonderful new clues to a fuller picture of my mother’s life were hidden in letters, photographs and newspaper columns. It’s emotional stuff. I just wish Mum came out of it better.
One letter was a note to Grandpa from the headmistress of Lewes Grammar, Miss Margaret Medcalf. She claimed she’d gone to the café in Newhaven and discovered Mum and a couple of friends. Mum had sworn she was there with Grandpa’s blessing, but obviously she was playing hooky. In any case, the head wasn’t fooled and wrote to Grandpa, who replied, by return, saying he would do everything ‘to uphold the reputation of the school’. It all sounds wonderfully prim now, but at the time I’m sure it was mortifying for Grandpa. As a soldier, he’d been prepared to put his head above the parapet in the line of enemy fire. It was another matter in civilian life. All he wanted from his family was for them to keep their heads down. It wasn’t much to ask, was it?
It was for my mother.
The truanting school letter was dated 16 May 1968 – a week before Mum’s fourteenth birthday. I’m sure Grandpa hoped his intervention would be the end of it. Unfortunately, a few days later, things got worse.
A note from the school posted through my grandparents’ front door explained the bare bones: ‘Dear Mr Beavis, your daughter Jennifer was committed to the Victoria Hospital in Lewes today suffering from the effects of some pills she had taken. She is being kept overnight for some
observation. I’m very worried indeed about the whole matter and I would be grateful if you could come and discuss it with me at your earliest convenience. I do hope Jennifer will recover soon.’ It was again signed by the headmistress.
I can’t imagine how Grandpa must have felt. Obviously he was worried that Mum had been taken to hospital, but at the same time . . . the ignominy of it all! The knowledge that a daughter of his had taken some sort of overdose and ended up in hospital must have been so much for him to bear. The only saving grace was that, as far as he knew, only he and the head-mistress’s office were aware of the matter. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to last.
The case made all the local papers. They were fascinated by the story of three middle-class girls bunking off school to take, as they reported, ‘barbiturate tranquillizers known as Yellow Dollies’. Every report, while austere in its view, couldn’t help slathering over the fact that one of the girls was kept at Victoria Hospital for psychiatric tests. No prizes for guessing who that was.
Just when Grandpa thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. The story of the pill-popping teens went national. Most excruciating of all, it reached the offices, and the front page, of his paper of choice – the Sunday Telegraph. By coincidence, they ran their story on Mum’s fourteenth birthday.
Part of me feels the shame my grandparents must have felt over what would be, in today’s schools, pretty much ignored by anyone other than the head. But part of me is grateful for the national attention. Without the report from the Telegraph, for example, and without my Granny cutting it out and storing it so carefully, I would never have known about this phase of my mother’s life. I would never have known that she and her friends were found in the school science laboratory, thought at first to be suffering the effects of ‘intoxication’. I would never have known they were sent to hospital and given eight pints of water to flush out their systems. And I would never have known Grandpa immediately made plans for Mum to change schools.
Escape From Evil Page 1