Mummy Knew

by Lisa James

  ‘And Lisa,’ said Mum, in the hard tone I was used to, ‘I don’t wanna see you here again. Just do us a favour and make someone else’s life a misery for a change. You’ve been nothing but trouble since the day you were born.’

  Although I hadn’t expected a loving goodbye hug, Mum’s words still hurt. It was Boxing Day, 1984. In a few days I would be eighteen years old. My whole life stretched ahead of me and I ran towards it without looking back.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I lived in Shepherd’s Bush for a few weeks, until I discovered a family of mice living behind the wardrobe, and then I found a place in Chiswick, sharing with two other girls. The rent was more expensive and money became a problem. I had to find a better paid job. I signed up to a few temping agencies and began working at various media companies around London. It paid well and the nomadic nature of the work suited me perfectly because it meant I never got too close to anyone. I would make friends at one job, and then move on to another a few months later. I tended not to keep in touch. This left me feeling rootless and very lonely at times, but I was desperate to hide my past and I thought it was a price worth paying.

  I also took a job as a waitress at a well-known casino on Park Lane. All I had to do was serve coffee and sandwiches to high-rollers and they would throw a hefty tip on my tray. The waitresses earned more money that the croupiers, and some weeks I was taking home hundreds of pounds in tips. During this time I had quite a few good-looking, wealthy boyfriends but the sticking point always came when they asked questions about my past, because I just didn’t want to talk about it. One or two relationships progressed to a more serious level, and I found myself travelling round the world as a guest on private planes and yachts, but along with words of love came more probing questions about my past.

  ‘Why can’t I meet your parents, Lisa? I’d like to ask your father’s permission to marry you.’ Or ‘What are you hiding?’

  When this happened, I knew it was time to move on.

  I found intimacy difficult and often used alcohol as a prop, but I had very little tolerance for it and invariably I would become over-emotional. All the pent-up anguish and pain would come flooding out, leaving me a sobbing wreck. Since I wouldn’t explain what was wrong, boyfriends quickly lost patience and I became known as ‘an enigma’.

  I found Christmas particularly depressing. My housemates went home for the festivities but I would stay in the house alone. To avoid awkward questions I’d pretend I was going home too, and once or twice I even bought my own Christmas presents to put under the tree because I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone feeling sorry for me.

  On the morning of my twenty-first birthday, I was alone in the house with no plans to celebrate when there was a knock at the front door. I opened it and was astonished to find my sister Diane and Aunt Jenny standing there. I couldn’t believe it. How had they found me?

  ‘Is Lisa in?’ asked Diane, narrowing her eyes. She obviously wasn’t sure whether it was me or not because we hadn’t seen each other for ten years.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it, Lisa?’ said Jenny recognising me at once, with tears in her eyes.

  I was so overcome that I almost collapsed. ‘Yes, it’s me, Jen. It’s me, Di,’ I stammered, choked with emotion.

  It turned out Diane had used a contact at the tax office to trace me through my employment records and date of birth. After we’d all recovered from the shock of seeing one another again, I hurriedly packed a bag and set off in the car to Diane’s house. She was having a big party for New Year’s Eve and the whole family would be there. I was overwhelmed and it was on the journey there that I began to worry. I didn’t know how I could tell them about what had happened with Dad, but I knew it had to be done. I couldn’t lie to my own family.

  ‘Have you seen anything of Mum?’ I asked Diane.

  I detected a slight hesitation before she said, ‘No, not since the last time I saw you when I was pregnant. I had a little boy–he’s nine now and I just had another one four months ago.’

  That night we stayed up until the early hours. Cheryl and Davie turned up and both gave me the biggest hugs. We were all so happy to see one another again. Like Diane, Cheryl now had two young children, and Davie had been living with Aunt Jenny since he left home. Many tears were shed as we remembered old times, all of us careful to avoid any mention of Mum and Dad. Once or twice I entered a room and got the impression they had been talking about things they didn’t want me to hear but I was so happy I brushed it off as my paranoia.

  The next night was New Year’s Eve and while friends and family did the conga round the room, I sat with Cheryl in the corner. I had always loved Cheryl. Although she was nine years older than me, she had looked out for me as best she could back in the days when we shared a bedroom. I remembered the times she used to sing me songs such as ‘There’s a Tiny House’ and I felt a fresh wave of love for her. I couldn’t bear the fact that I hadn’t told her about what had happened to me after she left. It was now or never. I took a deep breath and said ‘Things went wrong after you left. Dad…Dad…did things he shouldn’t. He touched…’

  Cheryl flinched. ‘Don’t, Lisa,’ she said urgently, slurring her words slightly. What she said next literally took my breath away. ‘We know all about it. Mum told us. We saw the washing machine in that flat.’

  Saw the washing machine? I stared at her, trying to decipher what she’d said to me as a young boy in front of us attempted to break dance to ‘Pump Up The Volume’.

  ‘What do you mean?’ was all I managed to say.

  ‘Mum showed us that flat. But it doesn’t matter. We still love you, Lisa. We love you.’

  I dropped my drink in shock and watched as the red wine soaked into the carpet. But Cheryl wasn’t finished.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said gripping my arm and shouting above the music. ‘We still love you.’

  The words ‘still love you’ echoed through my head. She was saying that no matter what I’d done they were prepared to forgive me. What had Mum been saying? How could they possibly believe I’d wanted to sleep with my own dad?

  ‘Honestly, Lisa,’ she went on, ‘I understand ’cos it nearly happened to me.’

  Things were becoming more confusing, and by this time I was nearly hysterical. I had to make her understand.

  ‘No, Cheryl,’ I shouted above the music. ‘He abused me. I was raped for years.’

  I could hardly see through my tears. The injustice of it was too much. People were starting to stare, and suddenly Diane appeared and marched me out of the room with Cheryl staggering along behind.

  ‘You’re showing us right up,’ she hissed, echoes of Mum coming through. ‘What’s it all about?’

  ‘Dad abused me,’ I hiccoughed through my sobs. The word ‘abused’ sounded odd because at that time nobody spoke about it. It was still hidden, rarely reported in the press.

  ‘Don’t give us all that,’ said Diane. ‘Mum’s told us all about it.’

  ‘We don’t blame you,’ offered Cheryl. ‘You were only young.’

  I started to get angry then. ‘What is it with you people?’ I screamed. ‘How can you think that one day out of the blue, I looked at Dad and thought “Yes, I’ll have him!’’’

  Cheryl and Diane stared at me with their mouths open.

  ‘He was my dad since I was a baby, for god’s sake,’ I went on. ‘I wasn’t some hormonal teenager taking a fancy to Mum’s new boyfriend.’

  Cheryl reddened as if I was implying that about her, but I wasn’t. I knew she hadn’t invited Dad’s perverted behaviour, any more than I had. I watched as her face crumpled and felt sad that I’d brought back such horrible memories for her. I thought back to all the tensions at home when Cheryl was around. It was clear Dad had tried it on with her too, except she wasn’t a defenceless child, manipulated and beaten into submission over years like me. Cheryl was older, with a network of support, and was able to get away just in time. I hadn’t had anyone to turn to. Diane wa
s looking at me as if she hated me, in complete contrast to the way she’d kept hugging me in the car the day before. ‘Mum would never let that happen. You were a consenting adult.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ I demanded. ‘The only consenting adults in this were Mum and Dad. I was a child. I can’t believe you didn’t bother to hear my side of the story at the time.’

  ‘What, and risk going near him again?’ she exclaimed. ‘We had our own lives.’

  ‘Well, thanks a lot, Diane,’ I sobbed. ‘I’m lucky I had the help of a virtual stranger because my own family couldn’t have cared less, by the sounds of it.’

  I became desperate to get away but Cheryl blocked my way, sobbing as if her heart would break. ‘Please stay,’ she begged me. ‘Don’t go off like this.’

  There was one more thing I had to know. ‘Mum swore to me she didn’t know where any of you lived. Were you really in contact all the time?’

  I could see Diane’s eyes well up with tears then. ‘No. She always had the address but we only heard from her that once, when she told us that you and Dad had moved in together.’

  ‘We couldn’t believe it,’ chipped in Cheryl. ‘So she offered to show us the flat as proof while you were out.’

  ‘And that was enough for you, was it?’ I said. ‘You didn’t think it was weird?’

  ‘Course we did,’ said Diane, ‘but Mum looked us all in the eyes and told us it was what you wanted. So we believed her.’

  ‘And do you see her now?’

  ‘No,’ said Diane sadly. ‘She hasn’t see any of her grandchildren. But we love her and she knows where we are.’

  There were more tears as I told them all about how Mum had known I was being abused for years and had simply let it happen. I could see from Diane and Cheryl’s eyes that they knew I was telling the truth but they just couldn’t face it. I agreed to stay the night, and when I left the next day Diane hugged me and told me to put the past behind me. ‘He’s in Spain now,’ she said. ‘Just leave it, eh?’

  But as I sat on the Tube home, I felt as though I had come to the end. My life was a mess. I had no real friends and now I didn’t even have a family to fantasise about. I knew I would never be able to visit any of them again. There was no way I could sit and have tea and cake with them, knowing they had all been convinced I had seduced Dad for the hell of it. I didn’t want their ‘forgiveness’; I wanted their understanding, and sadly it wasn’t there.

  When I got home, the house was empty. My housemates were still away visiting their families. I sat in the middle of the living room floor and wailed. I knew I shouldn’t sink into self-pity, and most of the time I didn’t, but at that moment I felt that everybody I had ever loved had betrayed me in the most vile way. I had been abused by my dad and, on many levels, Mum too, but nobody thought my pain was worth acknowledging because that might involve them in actually having to do something. I didn’t matter. They didn’t love me.

  I found a bottle of Bacardi in the cupboard under the stairs and proceeded to drink myself into a stupor. Then, feeling totally distraught, I decided the only solution was to kill myself. I broke open a disposable razor and held the blade in my trembling hand. At that point I truly wanted to die, and if it was a case of simply pushing a button, I would have done it without question, but as it was, I lacked the courage to pull the blade across my wrists. Instead I slashed my right arm deeply three times near the elbow. The cuts gaped like mouths and blood began to pour down my arm. The blade became slippery but I hadn’t finished yet. I made a final slash on the back of my hand, exposing veins and tendons beneath the skin.

  It was as if I had been in a trance, and suddenly the sight of my wounds bleeding copiously brought me round. I sobered up immediately and was horrified at what I’d done. I used towels to try and stem the flow of blood which pooled on the carpet, but the wounds were so deep that I realised I would have to go to the hospital for stitches. I called a cab, feeling dizzy and sick.

  When I reached A&E it was clear they were used to dealing with people like me.

  ‘Not another one,’ muttered a nurse to her colleague.

  A kindly doctor stitched my wounds–fifty stitches in my arm, and fifteen in my hand. I cried throughout the process, not because of the pain but because of the hurt I felt inside. Hurt for the loss of a life I could have had without Dad, hurt for the loss of every person I had ever loved, and hurt for the overwhelming disappointment I felt. I couldn’t even kill myself properly.

  The hospital staff were concerned about my mental state, and it was only because the duty psychiatrist was already occupied with someone else in crisis that I managed to slip away without them insisting I stay in for observation. I spent the whole of the next day desperately trying to scrub spots of blood from the carpet and the sofa before my housemates came back.

  Once I’d sobered up, I was horrified at what I’d done to myself. When it was time for the stiches to come out, I was too embarrassed to go back to hospital so I locked myself in the bathroom and removed them myself instead.

  I didn’t visit my family again but sometimes, especially when I’d been drinking, I would ring Cheryl or Jenny and simply cry on the phone. Sometimes Davie would answer the phone at Jenny’s because he was still living with her, and it became clear that he didn’t have a clue what was wrong with me. Diane, Cheryl and Jenny had decided he must never know, because they feared it might make him confront Dad, and he would get hurt or else end up in trouble with the law.

  ‘I don’t understand what’s wrong, Lisa,’ he said. ‘We lose touch for years, and then get back in touch and you’re crying down the phone. Why aren’t you happy? I don’t get it.’

  Usually Jenny, the woman I’d idolised as a child, would snatch the phone from him at this point in case I told Davie what was wrong. ‘Put the past behind you, Lisa,’ she always advised.

  If only it were that easy.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  When I was twenty-five, the landlord announced that he was selling the house I lived in so I would have to move. I scoured the small ads looking for somewhere suitable and went to view a flat in Fulham. A guy called Neil, who was already a tenant there, showed me round. I wasn’t too keen on the room but Neil was another matter. Straight away we started chatting as if we’d been friends for years. It all felt completely effortless and natural. I knew I wanted to see him again, and could tell he felt the same way. He was completely different to the men I’d met in the past, who tended to be highly successful workaholics who liked having a pretty young girl on their arm in restaurants. Neil was around my own age and worked with his family in their building firm. He was funny and kind and I recognised something special in him. He was like nobody I’d ever met before. I took the room, and almost immediately we became an item.

  We connected on many levels, which was surprising because we’d had vastly different life experiences. Our sense of humour was the same, and we spent hours laughing together, but beneath that we understood each other on a deeper level. I found it easy to open up with him. There was none of the inhibition I’d felt with previous boyfriends–and it didn’t take long for Neil to discover everything there was to know about me.

  Naturally he was horrified when I told him about my upbringing, and he helped me see for the first time ever how crazy it was for me to feel any sense of shame about it. With his help, I was finally able to shed the burdens of guilt and shame I had carried for so long, and truly move on in my life. But there was still something niggling.

  ‘I want to report him to the police,’ I said, ‘but I don’t feel strong enough. I don’t know whether I’d be able to stand in a courtroom full of strangers and talk about it.’

  We debated the subject for hours, but in the end I still felt too raw to seek justice. All I wanted to do at that stage was forget the past and forge a new life.

  Within a year, Neil and I were married. We had a registry office wedding followed by a small party for a handful of friends and Neil’s relatives.

&nbs
p; We spent our honeymoon doing up a cottage we’d bought in a village on the northeast coast of England. It was a fresh start and we were blissfully happy. Within a couple of years I was expecting our first child and, with my hormones all over the place, the past came back to haunt me once more. At the ante-natal clinic I’d see girls surrounded by their sisters and mums. Neil was great but I really wished I had a family to lean on. I began having nightmares about Mum and Dad again, and all the old feelings of shame came flooding back, but this time I felt anger as well. I became outraged that my parents had shattered our family and not only robbed me of my childhood, but taken away the rest of my family too.

  Neil spent hours reassuring me that everything would be alright, and when the baby came, I was consumed with love for her. I was determined not to dwell on the past any more; life was about the future now.

  I surprised myself by taking to motherhood quite naturally. Throughout the pregnancy I had been worried about how I would cope, especially when I had been set such an appalling example of motherhood, but it turned out to be easy. I just did everything Mum never did and threw myself into being the kind of mother I’d always wished I’d had.

  Both Neil and I wanted a large family. For my part, I couldn’t bear the thought of our children ever being alone in the world. There would be strength in numbers. I wanted them to always have one another for support. I had experienced first-hand how lonely the world could be without a soul to call on in times of need. Things would be different with our family. Over the next few years I had five more children before we decided our family was complete.

  As I held our sixth child in my arms, I started to wonder about Kat. She had been nine years old when I left home, and even though I hadn’t been able to contact her since, she had never been far from my mind.

  ‘I just want to know she’s alright,’ I said. ‘I should have got in touch before.’

  ‘Please don’t beat yourself up about the past,’ Neil urged. ‘You’ve always done the best you can. And at least she didn’t have to grow up with that monster around.’