The 1984 diary had even more references to soiled sheets, the state of Emma’s clothing and what she thought they were doing to each other. “Ripped tights. Just the thought of him using his grubby, groping hands to rip her tights off and then putting his thing inside her makes me sick.” The next entry said, “She’s had her legs open for him again; dirty marks on her dressing gown this time and more on the carpet. It’s repulsive.” These and other insulting and offensive comments particularly upset Emma. Her mother thought Emma was “depraved” and even though she was eighteen at the time should, “be staying away from men, they’re all driven by one thing,” and she said of Kevin, “He’s the same as the rest, he’ll take what he wants and then dump her.” She twice referred to Emma as, “my loose daughter,” she described her as being, “soiled goods,” and stated, “Men can’t help being animals but we can.” Emma was reduced to tears as she read the vicious outpourings of her mother’s twisted thoughts. Seeing this dark side of her mother for the first time was extremely shocking and distressing but now at least, she was beginning to realise why her mother had changed towards her.
It was obvious from the entries in her diary what she thought about Kevin but it was also clear from many other entries, that she had a very poor opinion of men as a whole. In particular she was very critical of some of the men she worked with and of some in the walking fraternity. Her remarks were usually belittling, frequently insulting and more often than not included some generalisations about men that indicated a profound bitterness towards them. Emma began to wonder about her mother and father’s relationship and what events in her mother’s life had triggered such resentment and bitterness. As she had this thought it dawned on her that her mother had rarely ever spoken about her father and even when asked specific questions about him she tended to avoid answering them or would quickly change the subject.
As she read on it was mostly the same sort of upsetting stuff until she came to one of her September entries. It said, “My slutty daughter is over two months pregnant. Shit.”
In total disbelief she threw the diary on to the floor and shouted, “How could she have known? It’s not possible, no one knew and why call me that?” then cried inconsolably for a very long time. Some hours later, having cried herself out she finished what was left of the bottle of wine from the night before then opened another one. She was getting drunk.
After just managing to climb the stairs without falling down she struggled to get herself undressed and into her pyjamas but she did it. When she awoke next morning she had a thumping headache, a very dry mouth and she felt sick but after a few glasses of water, a piece of toast and a couple of painkillers she was feeling a little better. By lunchtime she was well enough to pick up the diary she had thrown on the floor the night before and turn again to that entry in September. Out of the blue, a thought struck her; if the date of the entry was accurate then it meant that her mother somehow knew the results of her pregnancy test several days before she found out herself from the doctor. It also meant that her Mother knew she was pregnant before Kevin left for university and that thought began to worry her deeply.
As she read on she was afraid the diary might contain more shocks or revelations that would upset her but she knew she had to continue. Already her thoughts and feelings towards her mother had totally changed. She felt anger, she felt betrayed and she was beginning to realise that her mother was a very different person from the person she thought she was. Her eyes had been opened and she sensed there was far more to come. She was also afraid that the feelings she had for her mother would turn into something far stronger than anger or betrayal.
The diary contained more disparaging remarks about various men whom Emma had never heard of and an increasing number of positive comments about a woman named only as B. It appeared that B had become a very close friend of her mother’s and had gone on a number of walking weekends with her. Emma always thought her mother had gone with a fairly large group of walkers when she went away for days at a time but it would seem from the diaries that often, she only went with B. As time went on there were fewer references to her or Kevin but when she did find them amongst some of the very wordy and long-winded entries about other people they were direct, hurtful and very disturbing. In the last week of September she wrote, “He rang to ask about E. Will have the phone number changed. Will speak to his parents again.” The week after that she revealed, “Still have his letters, not sure what to do with them. Will have a think.” Then, another shocking entry came when she wrote, “She’s had a miscarriage; Thank God. Will tell his parents it’s all over.” What now angered and upset Emma most of all, was that her mother had known where Kevin was all the time and must have prevented him from getting in touch with her. He had phoned and written but her mother kept it from her, she had even been talking to Kevin’s parents so they must have been in on it too.
By this time she was distressed, she was in a state of total confusion and not able to comprehend what had happened but one thing was becoming clear to her, she was beginning to hate her mother. Needing help, she rang Rachel, the only person she still felt close to and within a few minutes Rachel was on her way round to see her. When she arrived Emma threw her arms around her and sobbed.
In The Village: Part 3
The letters and postcards:
Over the next hour or so she told Rachel everything including some intimate details about her relationship with Kevin, her pregnancy, her miscarriage and the upsetting, hurtful and incomprehensible entries in her mother’s diaries. Rachel as usual came up trumps. She was a practical, down to earth young lady with a huge amount of common sense and because she could look at Emma’s problems from a ‘little distance’ was able to start giving her the advice and support that she really needed. That evening she calmed Emma down, made her feel better about herself and promised to help her find out what had really gone on. It was obvious from the diaries that many things had happened around the time of Emma’s pregnancy that she had no idea about and the more they both read that night the more they became determined to find out the truth about the events that took place in the late Summer and early Autumn of 1984. Before she left, Rachel put her arms around Emma and hugged her tightly. Then, once again, she promised they would get to the bottom of things and if possible, actually find Kevin.
The next day Rachel was knocking on Emma’s door early in the morning ready and eager to start. She had taken a couple of days off from the stables to help her and could always take more if needed; for Emma’s sake she was determined to find out the truth behind the diaries. Already she had made some notes, put together a few thoughts and prepared a list of questions that she felt needed answering. Rachel’s infectious optimism helped raise Emma’s spirits to the point where she almost felt able to face the reality of what had gone on even if it transpired that Kevin had no longer wanted to continue with their relationship. It was five years since Kevin turned the corner waving his last goodbye and Emma, now nearly twenty-four, was beginning to realise that life had to move on. Her life had been on hold for far too long.
The thoughts, notes and questions that Rachel had jotted down over night provided a structure for the task ahead as well as summarised what may have gone on at the time.
It was clear from the diaries that Emma’s mother was very much against the relationship with Kevin as were his parents, especially after they knew she was pregnant. It also appeared that once Kevin left for university, his parents and Emma’s mother worked together in some way to keep them apart. And, whilst the diaries had given them quite a lot of information, they tended to raise more questions than they answered. Some of the questions that Rachel thought needed answering included, “How did Emma’s mother find out about her pregnancy before she knew herself and who told her about the miscarriage? What happened to the letters from Kevin that she mentioned in the diary and what was in them? Why did Kevin’s parents suddenly move and where did they go? Did Kevin know Emma was pregnant or that she had a miscarriage? Who was B?”
Those were just a few of the questions Rachel had written down but when she read them out Emma’s shoulders dropped and once again her face reflected the hopelessness she felt inside. Rachel, though aware of what Emma was feeling, pushed on and explained how she thought they should tackle the questions and the issues she had identified and drew up a list of initial tasks. She was hoping that by getting Emma focussed on doing something constructive that she might be able to put aside the anguish she was feeling and that any successes they had would spur her on to want to do more.
After making two mugs of coffee Rachel suggested that the first thing to do was to look through everything that was in the green suitcase that hadn’t already been looked at. So far they had concentrated only on some of the diaries but there were quite a number of postcards and letters, all of which were still in their original envelopes. They had all been stuffed into three shoeboxes and hadn’t yet been read. Rachel felt confident that the shoeboxes could contain some of the answers they needed and may even help them find a way to solve the whole mystery of what had happened to Kevin and why.
They were surprised as to how many letters and postcards fit into three shoeboxes; there were hundreds and they were in no obvious order although some letters had been grouped together by having been put into thin brown paper bags before being added to the shoeboxes. The brown paper bags with their letters in were put to one side to be looked at later and then the postcards were separated from all the other letters. After another mug of coffee they decided to put the letters and the postcards in to date order as far as they could, using the postmarks. The earliest ones dated back to 1970, the year Emma’s father died, and the most recent ones to about a month before her mother died in 1989.
After first putting the individual letters and secondly the postcards into date order they then grouped them by year and put an elastic band round each group so that after about two hour’s work they had twenty bundles of letters and twenty bundles of postcards. So far not a single letter or postcard had been read and they hadn’t even started to sort out the letters in the brown paper bags. At that point they both needed a break so they decided to go for a walk and end up at the pub for lunch before getting on with the task later. Their ‘scenic’ route to the pub took them past Emma’s old house where she had lived with her mum since she was four or five and also past the house that Kevin and his parent’s had lived in. Emma’s old house had been extended to the side above the garage; the driveway had been freshly covered with tarmac and the front garden had been transformed from a fairly scruffy lawn into something of beauty with a range of different borders bursting with Summer colour. In marked contrast, Kevin’s old house remained unlived in, the garden was totally overgrown, the weeds had taken over, the garage door was hanging off its hinges and the whole place looked a wreck. Clearly it had not been lived in since the day Kevin’s parents left and though Emma had walked by it many times before and seen it in an increasing state of decay, the sight of it still brought tears to her eyes.
Over lunch they talked about other things. Rachel talked about horses and the stables, she talked about her mum and dad and she talked about her non-existent love life. Rachel explained that over the past few years several men had asked her out but she only saw them as friends and nothing more. As far as Rachel was concerned there were many more things to life than men although she did admit to Emma that at some stage she hoped to find someone she could share her life with. When it came to ‘satisfying her natural desires’ she whispered over the table that she could see to that herself when she needed to but didn’t elaborate further. After a while they decided it was time to get back to the job in hand so they left the pub and took the direct route back to Emma’s house.
To save time, Rachel suggested that rather than read through letters and postcards that went back donkey’s years they ought to concentrate on those written between 1983 and 1985 as they were most likely to contain the sort of information they were looking for. She also suggested that Emma should start reading whilst she sorted out the letters in the brown paper bags and once that was done they would have everything laid out in front of them. Within minutes Rachel opened one of the bags to find four letters inside, three of which were addressed to Emma at the address she had lived at with her mother in 1984. Written at the top left hand corner of each envelope was, “Please forward to Emma.” Two of the three envelopes addressed to Emma had never been opened. Rachel passed the letters to her. Very tentatively Emma took the letter out of the opened envelope and silently began to read. Her face went pale, then after just a few seconds she clasped her mouth with her hand and began to weep. As expected, it was from Kevin.
Though Kevin’s letter was only short he told Emma how hectic things had been in his first week at university, he told her how much he missed her and asked her to write back as soon as she was settled in at Durham. He finished by saying, “more than anything, I can’t wait to see you. I’ve got lots to tell you. Love you. Kevin.”
It was all too much for her to deal with. She was reading a letter full of excitement and hope that she was meant to have read five years earlier. Kevin did love her, he did try to contact her and he hadn’t just stepped out of her life. The letter she held tightly in her hand confirmed everything she feared after reading her mother’s diaries. Her mother had kept the letters from her. That cruel action had changed her life completely and had probably cost the life of her unborn child. So much was going through Emma’s mind that she couldn’t hold on to a single thought for more than a second. It was hard work, but after a little while and another mug of coffee Rachel calmed her down and she was ready to look at the other letters.
The second letter, which had remained unopened all these years, was posted a week after the first one and though it was a little longer it said very much the same things but the third letter was quite different. The third letter was posted just four days after the second one and started off by asking, “What has happened, why don’t you want to see me again? I rang your mother yesterday to get your address in Durham and she told me to forget about you. She said it’s time we both moved on. She told me that you had changed your mind about me and that going to university had opened your eyes. What did she mean? What has changed?” Again Emma cried but this time Rachel could find nothing to say that would console her. For more than an hour tears were shed then Rachel rang her dad and told him to bring round a bottle of wine, some chips and an overnight bag that her mother could sort out. Forty-five minutes later he was there, armed with everything he was asked to bring and more. Instead of chips he brought fish, chips and mushy peas and the overnight bag was more like a ‘long weekend’ suitcase; her mum had left nothing out. As usual Rachel’s mum and dad had done more than their bit and she was grateful and as he left she gave him one of her big hugs to say thank you.
After drinking a glass of wine Emma went to bed leaving Rachel downstairs with the rest of the wine and a hundred and one thoughts. The first thing she did was to look at the notes and questions she had made the night before then read Kevin’s last letter again. Clearly there had been a concerted effort by his parents and Emma’s mother to keep the two of them apart and to prevent them from contacting each other. Kevin’s letter was searching for answers that he would never get.
Rachel poured herself a glass of wine and with a great deal of sorrow and a little satisfaction began ticking off some of the questions she had written down and wanted answers to. As she sipped her wine she knew they were making progress but she was worried about how Emma was coping with things. Before going to bed for the night in the spare room, she decided to spend some time reading through more of the letters and postcards from 1983 to 1985. She began with the fourth letter from the brown paper bag that was addressed to Emma’s mother; it had been opened and was postmarked St Albans.
The letter, which was very neatly written, was from Kevin’s mother. It was dated 15th November 1984 and at the top was her address in St Albans. Rachel jotted down the address in her
notebook before reading on. After a few minutes she put the letter back in its envelope and, with somewhat of a worried frown on her brow, thought deeply as she sipped more of her wine. The exact details of what happened were a little sketchy but it appeared from the letter that Emma’s mother told Kevin’s parents about the miscarriage. A few days after being given the news, Kevin arrived to visit his mum on her birthday. Apparently he was en-route to Durham to look for Emma and that sparked a massive row between Kevin and his father and, “things were said to him that were lies and should never have been said but it’s too late now to put things right. Kevin has gone, he’s left university and I don’t know where he is.” The letter finished by asking that if Kevin ever turns up looking for Emma or contacts her in any way to let him know his mum is desperate to hear from him.
After deciding it might be worth going to St Albans to visit Kevin’s parents if indeed they still lived there, Rachel turned her attention to the postcards. Again she concentrated on those years she felt would most likely provide answers. By two in the morning her glass was empty, she was very tired but in front of her was a little pile of twelve picture postcards mostly of Whitby, they were all signed B. Rachel had a lot to talk to Emma about but it would have to wait until morning.
The next morning, over coffee and toast Rachel explained what she had discovered from the letters and postcards the night before and to her relief Emma did not breakdown or start to cry, instead she was upbeat and eager to make the trip to St Albans. Just after lunch they set off using the Range Rover from the stables, taking with them their overnight bags and some of the letters, postcards and diaries.
He Stole Her Virginity Page 3