by Fox, Louise
Mummy, Make It Stop
LOUISE FOX
headline
www.headline.co.uk
Copyright © 2009 Louise Fox
The right of Louise Fox to be identified as the Author of
the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may
only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior
permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production,
in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2009
Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements with regard to reproducing copyright
material. The author and publisher will be glad to rectify any omissions at the earliest
opportunity.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN : 978 0 7553 1911 4
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Acknowledgements
Louise Fox lives with her partner and three children. This is her first book.
For my guardian angel and
my three beautiful girls
Chapter One
‘Louise … upstairs.’
The voice summoning me was cold and harsh. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry.
I looked at my brother and sister, who were sitting on either side of me on the sofa. The three of us had been staring at the television, but we weren’t really watching it; we were too scared. They nodded at me to go.
I wanted to run away. Run and run. Anywhere, rather than face what was coming. But there was no escape, and I knew I had better not be too slow. So I got up and walked out of the living room and across the hall.
As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I could see his shadow on the wall. The shadow of my stepdad, George. He was on the landing at the top, waiting for me. I tried to switch off my fear and make myself numb. It was the only way to bear it.
George was a big man, six feet tall, wiry and strong, with thick, wavy brown hair that he tried to control with dollops of hair cream, and a pasty face. As I got to the top of the stairs, his large frame towered over me. He was standing in his usual place, next to the small window on the landing. The light coming through the net curtains made me squint as I looked up at him. I arched my neck to see his face, because I didn’t want to look at his body. He was completely naked.
He looked down at me.
‘OK, let’s do the dusting,’ he ordered.
Without a word I dropped to my knees, and he did the same, before pushing his erect penis into my face and then forcing it into my mouth.
He grabbed hold of my hair and forced himself down my throat, pulling my head back so that I had to look into his cold blue eyes. As he thrust into me my head was thrown from side to side and my eyes watered, as I tried not to choke. I prayed that it would be over soon, and that he wouldn’t make me swallow the nasty, sticky stuff that came out of his penis.
I retched and tried to pull away, but he shouted at me to keep it in my mouth and swallow, promising me an ice cream. I did as he said; not for the ice cream, because there never was one, but because I was too scared to do anything else. His body juddered and his grip on my hair loosened, but he ordered me to keep ‘dusting’ with my hand until he was finished.
Finally, he let out a huge breath of air and it was over. ‘Go back downstairs,’ he ordered, before walking off towards the bathroom.
As I made my way downstairs I still had the foul taste in my mouth and I felt as if the messy stuff was stuck at the back of my throat. Sometimes George let me get a drink from the bathroom tap afterwards, but this time he had refused.
I could still smell him as I walked back into the living room and sat back down in my place. This time I didn’t look at my brother and sister. I simply stared at the television again, hoping that something on the screen would take my mind away for a short time, and help me forget what had just gone on. But nothing could. Nothing took away the empty, scared, sick feeling inside.
I was five years old, and George had been calling me up the stairs like this since I was three. My sister, Tanya, who was eight, and my brother, Jamie, who was seven, had to ‘do the dusting’ too, although I seemed to be his favourite. Our older brother, Paul, was twelve and he’d been sent out on an errand. George didn’t make Paul go upstairs with him - I suppose because he was older - but he treated him like dirt.
We should all have been in school, but on this day, like so many others, George had refused to let us go. While Mum was out at work, stacking shelves in a local supermarket, George kept us at home and made us sit in front of the TV - though we were never allowed to choose what to watch - while he called one of us, or sometimes all of us, one by one, up the stairs.
Although George was not my dad, I couldn’t remember the time before we lived with him. When my real dad left Mum with four small children, we had all moved into George’s house within weeks.
He lived on a notorious estate in a rough part of Manchester, where endless streets of ugly, grey council houses sat back to back, with only a few balding patches of grass here and there to break the monotony. Ours was a three-bedroom semi. The boys shared the smallest room, George and Mum had the biggest and Tanya and I had the middle one. All the houses looked the same from the outside, but ours was one of the better ones on the estate on the inside. Mum and George insisted on keeping things clean and tidy, with everything in its place.
The furnishings were very basic. The room Tanya and I shared had cream walls and a cord carpet and a big, old-fashioned, dark-wood wardrobe. We slept on old metal-framed bunk-beds, though we had them as singles, not bunks. My hair often used to catch in the metal frame and I’d have to yank it free. We weren’t allowed to put any pictures on the walls, and we had very few toys - just a teddy or two and a couple of dolls.
George had lived in the house with his wife and two children, and when his marriage split up, they left and he stayed on. He and Mum met in the shop where she worked, when he did his shopping there, and when Mum found herself on her own too, I suppose they kept one another company, and that grew into something more. But even though he made us call him ‘Dad’, they never actually married.
George, unlike my real dad, was not a drinker at all - he never went to the pub. He would keep himself to himself at all times, and everyone around us knew not to cross him. His voice had a quiet, menacing tone that no-one dared to question, including Mum.
George was quite a bit older than Mum. But although he was only in his mid-forties, he didn’t have a job. I’m not sure what they l
ived on, because Mum’s wages and child benefit can’t have been much. We certainly didn’t have much money - our clothes were always worn and tatty, and we had to use cut-up newspaper instead of toilet paper.
Although he very seldom left the house, George insisted on dressing smartly every day. He was obsessive about ironing his clothes - his trousers always had to be pressed with a crease, and his shirts perfect. He behaved as though he was going to work and had to be perfectly turned out, even though he wasn’t going anywhere.
He ran the house using rigid rules, and anyone who disobeyed him was thrashed. None of us was allowed to speak unless we were spoken to. We were taught what to say and when to say it. We never dared disagree with or question anything. We did as we were told, because we knew what would happen if we didn’t.
George spent most of his time sitting in his favourite chair in front of the TV, drinking endless cups of strong, sweet tea from his favourite mug, which no-one else was allowed to touch. If he kept us home from school, we had to sit in front of the TV with him, all of us lined up on the sofa. We were never allowed to watch kids’ programmes, so we were bored and restless, but we didn’t dare show it.
A short while after Mum left for work, George would get up and go upstairs, and we knew it was time. One of us would be called up to do the dusting. We waited, barely able to breathe, to hear who it would be.
Every now and then, when Mum was out, he’d decide to show us some films, to ‘educate’ us. They were porn films of the worst kind. He would sit us in front of one of them and he’d sit beside us as we watched. I didn’t really understand what was going on with all these writhing, jerking bodies. I felt bored and wished we could watch something else, but George insisted we keep our eyes fixed on the telly.
I always thought Mum knew about George and the dusting. He generally did it when she was at work, or on the two evenings a week when she went out to bingo. But sometimes he did it while she was in the house, downstairs. She would have had to be blind and deaf not to know that something was going on. At the time I just thought all this was normal - George making us do the dusting, Mum knowing about it - because George told us it was what all families did. He would tell us that this was what people who loved each other did. Mum did the dusting for him, and when she was at work it was our turn. Whenever I called for one of my friends and no-one answered the door, I imagined that they were upstairs with their dad, doing the dusting.
George was clever. I’m sure he called it ‘the dusting’ so that if we ever talked about it, people would think we meant housework. But we never did talk about it. Even though we thought it was what everyone did, we somehow knew George wouldn’t want us to mention it.
After we had spent a long, miserable morning sitting in front of the TV and being called upstairs by George, Mum would come home. At least then there was no more dusting, but in other respects things weren’t much better. Mum was just as hard on us as George was. She either ignored us or shouted at us. Neither of them ever showed any of us the tiniest bit of affection. There were no cuddles, smiles or questions about our day. Mum knew we hadn’t been to school, but she didn’t say a thing. George’s word was law.
Mum would make tea at four thirty each day. George, despite being at home all day, did no housework or cooking at all. Mum would come out of the kitchen with her plate of food and one for George, and they would settle in their chairs in front of the TV. Then she’d nod towards the kitchen and tell us to get ours. We’d take our plates and eat on our knees on the sofa. We had a drop-leaf dining table that stood in the living room, but we only ever ate off it on the rare occasions when George’s two children came to visit, or at Christmas.
We ate what we were given, whether we were hungry or not. There was trouble if anything was left on our plates. None of us would have dared to say we didn’t like the food, although Mum was no cook, so it was often pretty tasteless. Mostly we had sausages or egg, with chips and beans, though at weekends we had liver, which we kids all hated. Sometimes it was served with sprouts, which made Tanya gag. Afterwards, we kids washed and dried the dishes and did our chores - bringing in the washing or tidying our rooms. We were sent to bed at 6.30, even on long, light summer evenings, while Mum and George stayed in front of the telly.
Once a week it was bath night. The bath was run twice, first for me and Tanya and then for Paul and Jamie. I hated bath night. I was always at the plug end, and although Mum was in the house, it was always George who bathed us. He seemed to take pleasure in being cruel - especially to me. For some reason, he always had it in for me more than Tanya. He would wash my hair and hold my head under the water, or put loads of shampoo in my eyes to make me cry. When he held me under the water, my nose would sting and I’d start to struggle, getting more and more frightened, until he let me go, just as my lungs were about to burst. I soon came to dread bath night, and tried to get out of it, but there was no escape.
Goodness knows what kept Mum and George together. They didn’t row - I think Mum knew better than to cross George - but there was never any laughter or warmth between them. I think Mum liked being with George because everyone else was scared of him. Even though she was scared of him herself, being with a big, intimidating man like him gave her a sense of power. If people were scared of George, then they were scared of her too, and she liked that.
Mum never had any friends; she didn’t seem to know how to be friendly. She was always thinking that people were out to get her. According to her, all the neighbours were the enemy, and wanted to hurt us. Secretly, I didn’t think they seemed like the enemy at all. Some of them smiled at me in a friendly way, and I wished that we could be friends with them. But even if she managed to start a friendship, Mum soon fell out with them. She’d borrow money and not pay it back, or badmouth the person, or accuse them of something.
That’s one thing Mum and George shared - a hatred of the neighbours. Not that the two of them talked to one another much. Mostly they sat in front of the TV in silence. They may not have talked much, but they still had a sex life. They would go upstairs together sometimes and we could all hear them at it, grunting away, while we sat downstairs, too scared to move, even when they weren’t in the room.
It certainly wasn’t Mum’s looks that George went for; she looked really rough.
She was only thirty-one but she looked a lot older. She was short and very overweight - she must have been a size eighteen or twenty - with peroxide-blonde hair that she dyed herself, and her arms were covered with ugly scars from where she had cut herself. I hated to see them - I couldn’t imagine why she had hurt herself so badly - but she said it had been when she was younger and didn’t know what she was doing.
Mum was the youngest of four sisters. She was born on the estate and her parents still lived nearby, but her mother, who we called Nanna, was a long way from being a cuddly granny. Slight, with small features, she was grumpy and irritable. We never saw her smile, and she constantly had a cigarette in her mouth and a mug of tea in her hand and was often agitated. She worked in a clothing factory and spent her evenings at bingo. She was certainly never happy to see us. We never got presents or cards from her, and though most of the time she ignored us, she could lash out. Once she turned the rings on her fingers around before slapping Tanya, so that the stones in the rings cut her face.
Our grandfather was even worse. He spent his time fixing old cars outside their house, and Mum told us he used to beat her when she was a child. I thought he looked scary, but I never found out if he really was, because he took even less notice of us than Nanna did.
Most of the time, when she wasn’t at work, Mum lay around in front of the TV, eating sweets. She would buy herself big chocolate bars and I’d watch her eating them, longing for a little bit but not daring to ask. She’d look at me, grin, and then stick the whole lot in her mouth. She’d lie on the floor, with her feet on the sofa, and we’d have to rub cream into them, or tickle them, for hours at a time. Sometimes she’d make us draw with a pen on he
r back, because she liked the feeling, and then afterwards we had to wash it all off.
The atmosphere in our house was always tense and fearful. We felt we were walking on eggshells all the time. We crept around, trying as hard as we could not to upset Mum or George. No-one relaxed, or laughed, or chatted, or even spoke in a normal voice. George kept us all silent and permanently on edge with a chilling look that we knew meant ‘Cross me, and you know what you’ll get.’
We knew all too well. If we did anything wrong, like talking out of place, or dropping something, or not being quick enough to do a chore, or eating something we weren’t allowed, then George or Mum would order us upstairs for a beating.
Mum didn’t beat us herself - apart from the odd whack on the back of the head, or slap on the back of the legs. But she threatened us all the time. She used to put her clenched fist and her angry face right up against yours and say things like ‘Carry on ’n’ I’ll knock ya block off’ or ‘I’ll knock your fuckin’ head clean off ya shoulders’ or ‘I’ll hit you so hard you won’t be able to sit for a week.’ But she let George do the thrashing. She would sit downstairs in front of the telly, listening to whoever was being hit screaming in agony, and she wouldn’t react at all, she just carried on as normal.
As for George, he really seemed to enjoy it. It was impossible not to cry as you went up the stairs, knowing what was coming. We all tried to swallow back the tears, because if George saw you crying, he would beat you even more. He would be up there waiting, taking off his belt and flexing it so that it made snapping sounds, an evil glint in his eye.
For some reason he always punished us in Jamie and Paul’s little room. It stank in there, because Jamie wet the bed, and more often than not the sheets didn’t get changed. Jamie got beaten for wetting the bed, but it didn’t make any difference, he couldn’t help it. He stank all the time, and in the bedroom the rancid, sour smell of stale urine was so bad that most of the time the door was kept shut.