Mummy Knew
Page 21
I couldn’t go back to work after that. A few days later Dad decided that they had diddled me out of some pay I was due and marched me down to the phone box to call and ask for it. He stood with the door open as I spoke, poking me in the ribs if I didn’t say the right thing.
First I spoke to the managing director’s secretary. ‘I don’t want to be awkward,’ I said, trying to explain to her telepathically what was going on.
‘But you are being, aren’t you?’ she replied. ‘I’ll put you through to Ros.’
Ros, who was older and wiser, said ‘I don’t think this is you, Lisa. I think someone is making you do this.’
What could I say with Dad’s foot holding the door open to listen? I was relieved she didn’t mention the car or what had happened in the car park.
‘You’re a good worker,’ she said. ‘Don’t let that boyfriend ruin any more chances for you. Take care.’
I was jobless now but Dad was keen for me to get more work as he missed my wages. Since I didn’t have any qualifications my options were limited, but I got a job at a fashionable tanning salon in Mayfair. At first I was an assistant to the controller who operated the machines and took the money, but I quickly proved myself and was promoted to a more responsible position. I even had to cash up, lock up and take the takings to the night-safe round the corner when I was on evening shifts.
One good thing was that it wasn’t so easy for Dad to meet me all the time as it had been when I worked at the record company. He still phoned me at work at least once every day and he would pick me up after my evening shifts. If nobody else was around he would ransack the reception, scattering leaflets and spilling bottles all over the place. He’d grab the keys to old lockers where lost clothing was kept, convinced that this was where the ‘kinky’ outfits were kept. I’d be petrified that the owners would pop by on their way home from dinner, as they sometimes used to do.
There was a girl called Bridget who also worked there. She was very worldly-wise and had previously lived in New York, where she had owned a boutique. She liked me and took me under her wing. I think she could tell that something wasn’t quite right with the ‘boyfriend’ who she saw picking me up a couple of times. As we worked more shifts together, she began telling me about her violent first marriage and explaining how she escaped from it, but I was so guarded that I gave nothing away about my own circumstances. I was still riddled with guilt and shame that Dad was my ‘boyfriend’.
Meanwhile, out of the blue one Wednesday, Dad awkwardly announced that he and my mum had been granted a divorce. This was the first I’d known of it. Neither of them had mentioned it was happening, but then we were far from a normal family where such a discussion might take place. My spirits soared and I was careful to hide my jubilation in case Dad gave me a back-hander. Mum was finally taking action and was going to kick Dad out of our lives. I had hoped and prayed she would come through in the end.
Later, when Dad was out of earshot upstairs, engrossed in the racing on television, I had a word with Mum in the kitchen.
‘I hear you’re getting a divorce,’ I said grinning and doing a little hop of elation.
Mum frowned as she dunked a teabag in Dad’s mug before dumping it into a sink full of greasy plates. She turned slowly, her face set in a sneer.
‘We didn’t want to, but we’ve been forced into it now that Lesley’s lot have found out about you,’ she said pointedly. ‘They’ve been asking questions and we can’t have that, can we?’
A ripple of dread ran through me. This wasn’t going as I’d hoped. I felt my face fall as Mum went on.
‘It’d look mighty fucking odd if we all continued living here together forever,’ she hissed.
The rollercoaster of emotion I was on took an upwards turn. ‘You mean Dad’s moving out?’
Mum nodded. ‘Yeah, he is, and you’re going with him.’
‘No!’ I shouted, unable to contain my horror.
‘Shush,’ she said urgently. ‘He don’t want you to know until the last minute. Don’t you tell him I’ve told you.’
This couldn’t be happening. I spent the next few days in turmoil, wondering how I could save myself but I couldn’t think of anything. Dad had spent years making me believe that I was useless, worthless and powerless. I had no money because Dad took almost all my wages every month, no friends, and no family other than Mum. I was so beaten down I couldn’t see any options for a way out. Running into a police station and screaming for help didn’t even occur to me. It was a Wednesday morning when Dad officially broke the news.
‘Get your bags packed. We’re moving out on Saturday,’ he told me. ‘I’ve got us a flat up the road.’
‘But why…?’ I started to ask, but before I had time to finish, Dad had thrown his ‘World’s Best Husband’ mug in my lap. Scalding tea soaked through my skirt, running in rivulets into my knickers. I jumped up in pain, and the mug rolled off my lap and bounced on the floor, breaking the handle.
Dad leapt up from the sofa and scooped it up. ‘Look what you’ve fucking done, you good-for-nothing cunt.’
‘Sorry, Dad,’ I said automatically, backing away.
‘Stop calling me Dad! My name’s Frank. Call me Frank, for fuck’s sake.’
‘OK, but why do we have to move?’
‘I’m sick of you, with your “Why this? Why fucking that?”’ he shouted, slapping my face with the back of his hand. A dribble of blood ran from my nose. ‘Just do as you’re fucking told, got it?’
‘Yes, Dad.’ I said, cowering.
He slapped me again. ‘It’s Frank, remember? I’m not your fucking Dad.’
Over the next few days I stopped eating, unable to keep anything down.
‘You’re so fucking vain,’ said Mum, insinuating I was trying to lose weight. ‘He don’t care what you look like as long as you’ve got a hole he can poke.’
I broke down then, sliding down the wall in the dining room, until I lay curled up on the floor.
‘What a fucking actress,’ Mum jeered. ‘I tell you what, you should get a fucking Oscar.’
‘I can’t go, I can’t,’ I sobbed.
‘Tell him that, not me,’ Mum said coldly, an unlit cigarette clamped between her lips. ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s not!’ I bellowed so loudly that Mum jumped and I felt my temples bulge.
‘Keep your fucking voice down,’ she said, removing her cigarette temporarily. ‘He’ll be back in a minute and he’ll fucking scalp you if he hears.’
‘Where do Jenny and Diane live?’ I demanded.
‘I don’t fucking know,’ Mum insisted, ‘and you should be fucking grateful I don’t. Nanny’d be turning in her fucking grave, she would.’
I blocked my ears against Mum’s spite and ran up to my room. Not for the first time I lay on my bed and wondered if any of this was my fault. My mind strayed back to the days when Dad first came to live with us. I remembered his lewd and crude ways, the nudity and the surreptitious touching and I understood for the first time that Dad had a vile plan right from the very start. That much was clear to me; what I continued to struggle with was how to get out of it.
On the day of the move, Mum helped, laughing and joking with Dad, all chummy as usual–still the best of friends. When Dad said goodbye, he gave her a lingering kiss and pinched her bum.
‘See you later, Donna,’ said Dad. ‘About four o’clock should do it. Means I get a lay in.’
‘Jammy bastard,’ laughed Mum.
The plan was that every morning Mum would stop off in a taxi and pick Dad up so they could go to work together as usual. Nothing seemed to have changed between them. This whole move to the flat was a smoke screen, designed to make it look as though Dad and I were in a relationship. This scenario was hard enough for the family to swallow, bearing in mind how long he had been my father, but the alternative–that he had been abusing me since I was very young,and he and Mum were still very much together–would have been even harder and would h
ave stirred up all sorts of problems.
The flat was very small, on the first floor of a converted house, and about ten minutes away from Mum’s place. There was a tiny kitchen and bathroom, a cramped living room at the front and a dark bedroom at the back. There was no furniture, but Mum and Dad had thought about that.
A few days later, they marched me into various furniture shops, picked out what they wanted, and told the salesman that it was for their daughter’s first flat. I was made to sign credit agreements in my name for everything. I felt sick with fear the whole time but too terrorised to object to the new arrangement.
Once Dad had me alone in the flat, things went from bad to worse. Now there were no constraints, he was free to be as violent and sadistic as he wanted. He was drinking more and more and remained convinced that I was sleeping with all sorts of other men the minute his back was turned. I tried to explain that this would be impossible even if I wanted to, because he knew where I was at every minute of the day.
‘Oh, so you want to fuck every Tom, Dick and Harry, do you?’ he’d shout, his face twisted in fury. ‘You just don’t have the fucking time, is that it?’
There was no reasoning with him, ever.
He didn’t seem to worry about marking my face now. His new thing was to headbutt me in the face, giving me a nosebleed or a big lump on my forehead.
On quite a few occasions I thought he was going to kill me and I ran all the way home to Mum’s house, hoping that she would finally listen and try to help me. What mother wouldn’t help her daughter in a situation like this?
Once I arrived with a swollen eye and a cut lip, naked apart from my underwear and a coat. I knocked at the front door, and rang the bell for ages before she bothered to answer it. I could see the television flickering through the drawn curtains.
‘What do you keep coming round here for?’ she cried as she opened the door and I stumbled inside. ‘I’ve told you, he only gets the fucking hump with me.’
‘Please, Mum, he’s getting worse. You’ve got to help me.’
‘I ain’t got to do nothing,’ she snarled in my face. ‘Now why don’t you fuck off back to him. Or do you want him to wake Kat when he comes round and starts screaming blue murder?’
I felt I had no choice but to turn around and go back then. I didn’t want Kat to wake up frightened. The only good thing about us being in the flat was that Kat didn’t have to witness Dad’s rampages quite so much any more. Mum was right. What was the point? Dad always knew where I was, and always came to get me. I was seventeen now and the only thing I could think to do was to walk back to my abuser.
We hardly ever went out, which was how I preferred it because I imagined everybody could see the ‘secret’ and I was too ashamed. Dad was twenty years older than me, but years of smoking, drinking and unhealthy food had left him looking as though he was due his bus pass. His hair was thinning, and his eyes, like currants, were almost lost in the puffy bags that sat beneath them. The fact he hardly bothered to wash didn’t help matters. He looked unkempt, old and raddled compared to my baby-faced looks and the contrast between us was startling enough to provoke double-takes. Most people would think I was with my dad until he came out with a lewd comment or made a grab for me.
Despite his ageing appearance, Dad remained very strong and fast. Once I watched as he knocked down two young lads who were looking at me, so I always used to dread it when he insisted on an outing because I knew it would end in disaster. One day he took me to France on the ferry because he wanted to stock up on duty-free cigarettes. When we reached the port, it took two stewards and some other passengers to rouse him from his drunken stupor. All the way home he interrogated me about what I’d been up to with an imagined man while he was asleep. Inevitably he beat me when we got home, throwing glasses and ashtrays at the wall behind my head.
Once he took me to a disco off Oxford Street. I’d try to drink as much as possible because it helped me to cope with the shame of being with him, and this went some way to anaesthetise the pain. But unfortunately, it made me make mistakes. If he said jump, I had to jump–and fast. If he said lie down in the gutter, I’d have to do it without question. When I had been drinking my reaction times weren’t always quick enough to respond to his commands, or I would lack the power of logic needed to talk my way out of danger, as I’d had to do so many times. Inside the club that night he took a bite out of my lip. It wouldn’t stop bleeding and my clothes were covered in blood. A group of girls took me into the toilet and offered to get me home to my mum. How could I explain that she would be totally useless and there was no way I could escape from the pig outside? All the way home that night he beat me–in the street, in the cab–and no one helped. When we got inside he really went to town before once again raping me anally, which he did whenever he wanted to punish me. Luckily I passed out for most of it.
When Mum turned up at four in the morning to pick him up for work, I buzzed her up to the flat. For once, she had the good grace to look worried. My face was swollen, my lips cut and double their normal size, with caked-on blood; the dress I had been wearing was hanging in shreds from my waist and beneath it my whole body was covered in bruises, scratches and bite marks.
After tutting that she’d have to go to work on her own, she told me to be sure to come round to her place the next day when I got up. I wondered what protection she thought she was suddenly going to offer me? As it happened, I fell asleep again, only to wake up with Dad screaming that I’d managed to lose one of my earrings.
I was so petrified that I jumped out of bed and ran out of the flat and all the way back to Mum’s as passersby stared after me. She let me stay for a couple of days because I was in such a state and on this occasion Dad didn’t come for me immediately, as he usually would. When I tried to start a conversation about Dad’s violence, she didn’t want to know.
‘Change the bleedin’ record, will ya?’ she’d say. ‘What’s this got to do with me? It’s your fucking problem, not mine any more, thank fuck.’
Two days later, when Dad came round to fetch me, she ushered me out the door: ‘Off you go–and try not to upset him again ’cos I won’t open the door next time.’
One day, I got a cab home from the day shift at the tanning salon because I’d missed the bus and Dad had insisted I be home at a certain time. As I got out of the cab I noticed a brown envelope on the seat next to my bag and without thinking I picked it up. I could see Dad watching me out of the window.
After he’d inspected my knickers for semen and my body for love bites, I showed him the envelope. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that it contained about £5,000 in used notes. He was ecstatic.
‘Shouldn’t we hand it in to the police?’ I asked.
‘Don’t be so fucking stupid,’ he said, throwing handfuls of it in the air. ‘It’s a gift from fucking God, isn’t it?’
It’s very telling that at the time, I was so conditioned and beaten down that it never occurred to me that I could have hidden that money from Dad and used it to rent a flat and start a new life of my own. Dad was all-powerful and no matter where I went, I believed he would always get me in the end.
He lost most of that money at the bookies, and spent some on drink, but a hundred pounds went on buying me a fake diamond solitaire, which was his idea of an engagement ring. It made me sick to wear it and I used to ‘forget’ to put it on, but that made him mad. Usually I’d slip it in my pocket when I got to the tanning salon, but once Bridget saw it and asked me where it was from. I burned with shame as I told her my boyfriend had given it to me, and tried to ignore the worried look in her eyes.
I always thought people could see the truth and that they knew he was really my abusive dad, and I felt ashamed, as though it was my fault. I didn’t realise that what Bridget saw was someone stuck in a violent relationship, as she had once been, and too lacking in confidence and self-esteem to take action to end the situation. She could spot that a mile off.
Chapter Twenty
All evening I was frozen with fear, anticipating the moment Dad would arrive. When he did turn up, I could tell he had already been drinking heavily. He was totally out of his depth in the sophisticated environment and company. Later on I heard that my boss had warned everyone to watch out for him as he looked like trouble. People tried to make conversation but he would just glare at me and we ended up sitting in a corner while everyone else danced and celebrated the festive season.
I noticed Bridget watching me a lot, as did Dad.
‘What the fuck’s she keep looking at, fat-arsed cunt?’ he demanded.
He led me to the dance floor for a slow dance, so that he could get me on my own to give me a painful squeeze and a warning whisper.
‘What the fuck have you been saying to that slag? I can see her looking at us.’
He spat into my ear and dug his nails into my back through the soft material of my dress, so hard that they drew blood. The pain must have registered on my face, no matter how hard I tried to look impassive, because at the end of the dance, Bridget came over and asked me to go to the loo with her.
I could see Dad was absolutely furious but I went anyway, not knowing how to refuse.
‘Are you alright?’ Bridget asked once we were on our own.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I insisted, trying to hold back the tears.
‘Are you sure?’ She obviously didn’t believe me so I tried to muster a weak smile.
‘I’m sure,’ I said quietly.
When I got back outside, Dad announced we were leaving. As he marched me up the stairs of the club, hissing and spitting in my face, I suddenly felt in fear of my life. He had promised to kill me so many times and I really felt this was the night. I knew if I left the club with him, I might end up dead. He was completely beyond reason, consumed by rage.