by Fox, Louise
We were introduced to a lady doctor who was a lot older than Anna and not as nice as some of the other people who had helped us before.
The next forty-five minutes were a nightmare. The doctor took me into a small room, while Anna stayed with the others in the waiting area. Mum came with me, and she sat in a chair against the wall. There was a nurse there too, and she led me over to a high bed on one side of the room. I was asked to take off my trousers and knickers, before the doctor helped me up onto the bed. The doctor parted my legs and began to examine me, prodding and poking and sticking instruments inside me, scraping bits out and putting swabs onto small bits of plastic. The pain was almost unbearable, as she opened my legs further and further. It felt as though my insides were torn and cut, and she was making it all worse.
I cried the whole time and I kept looking over at Mum. I wished she would come over and hold my hand or smile at me, and tell me it would all be over soon, but she stayed in her chair and didn’t even look at me. The nurse was trying to calm me down, asking me about school and all sorts of other things that didn’t make sense to me, while holding my legs open with a tight grip on each knee. The doctor also ignored my tears; she didn’t look sympathetic at all, going about her duties in a very robotic way, as though I wasn’t actually a real child, but a toy that she was checking to see if everything worked.
When they finally finished, I was allowed to put my clothes back on. The nurse opened the door for me to go out, and ushered Jamie in next. His face was white and scared. Wiping my tears on my sleeve, I looked up at him quickly and then back down to the floor, before the door shut behind me.
Back in the waiting area, Anna put her arm around my shoulders and led me over to a chair next to her, telling me the worst was over now. If only that had been true. The test results would later show that Tanya, Jamie and I had all been sexually abused, though Paul had not. Jamie had been anally raped and had internal tears and infections, while Tanya and I had to have antibiotics and cream for the internal damage done to us.
We all came home subdued and shaken. But once again Mum said nothing to us, and over the following days she behaved as though nothing had happened at all. She went back to lying on the floor with her feet on the sofa, eating chocolate, and we all carried on as normal. She only referred to what had happened once, asking me and Tanya why we hadn’t said no to George, and why we hadn’t told her about it. We didn’t know what to say. She had always known how frightened of George we were.
I often wished that Mum would give me a cuddle and tell me that she loved me, or that she was glad nasty George had gone away, or that everything would be all right. But, if anything, the opposite happened - Mum was very distant and irritable and often made us feel that it was our fault George wasn’t with us any more. When we didn’t have something, or needed some food or money, she would say, ‘Now George isn’t here’ and look at us in a way that made us feel it was our fault he was gone. She often cried and said she missed him, and we all felt guilty for sending him away.
Looking back, I’ve wondered why Mum chose that moment to ask us if we’d been abused. Her sister had come round worried sick because something had happened to her daughter. Yet instead of supporting her and making sure Auntie Coleen and Emma were all right, Mum switched the focus to herself and her family. I’ve wondered, many times, whether she knew what George was doing, and chose that moment to expose it simply to go one better than her sister. If Auntie Coleen had a child who’d been molested, well, Mum could produce three, with a far worse story. It sounds bizarre, but it fits in with all Mum’s bizarre behaviour. She didn’t know how to really sympathise with another person; her only aim was to go one better. Whether or not this was what prompted her to ask us and to expose George, Mum seemed to regret it and blame us once he was gone.
Over the next few weeks, school was the only place where I was able to forget about what had happened and the trouble I felt I had caused - just for a little while. But although we went more than we had when George was there, Mum often kept us at home if she felt lonely, even though she didn’t talk to us much and would send us out to play.
The fear we’d felt around George had been replaced by uncertainty and fear of a different kind. None of us knew how to be around Mum, and even around other people. We knew we were the reason why George wasn’t there and Mum was always upset. We walked around silently, trying not to upset her any further. Sometimes she was so distant that she would only say ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘I don’t know’ to us for days at a time, and it scared us. We didn’t know how to make her feel better or put things right.
And to make things even worse, even though George wasn’t in the house any more, he was still in our lives. He was in prison, awaiting trial, and the worst thing of all for us was that Mum insisted we all visit him every week. We’d travel across the city on the bus and then queue outside the prison with the other visitors. Inside there were metal gates, warders in uniforms and bars on all the windows. I hated it. We’d be searched and then sent into the large visiting room, where men sat at little tables with chairs around them.
George would be sitting at one of the tables, wearing jeans and a jumper with what looked to me like a red netball bib over the top, as though he was in a sports team. It was very odd seeing him out of his usual neatly ironed shirts and trousers, and even odder to see him seemingly calm and relaxed.
Mum would make a big fuss of him, while the four of us sat beside her, and then, at her insistence, Tanya and I had to sit on George’s knee and tell him we missed him and loved him and wanted him back home. I would have given anything not to have to do it, but Mum had told us it would make her happy, and I wanted to please her. I was also afraid that George would soon be back at home - Mum kept saying that he would - and I was afraid that if I said no, he might be even angrier with me than I imagined he already was.
The whole thing made me feel so uncertain. The police and Anna Smithson had told us George had done wrong and that we wouldn’t have to see him again - yet now Mum was asking us to sit on his knee. It seemed that what they had said was all lies and I felt even more stupid and bad for telling.
All around us other prisoners sat with their families, some not saying anything, others shouting and screaming and crying at each other. I used to look around and wonder what all these people had done. Were they in prison because they had done the same thing as George?
I was always so relieved to get out of the prison and go home. But that wasn’t the end of it. Between prison visits, Mum made us sit down at the living-room table and write letters to him, telling him how much we loved and missed him and that we couldn’t wait till he was back home with us again.
She told us that he had admitted everything and was going to plead guilty so that we wouldn’t have to be interviewed over and over again and appear in court to testify against him. He did it for us because he still loved us, she said. I found it hard to believe that this was true. He didn’t show the least sign of loving us, and never had. But I would never have dared to say this to Mum.
It’s far more likely that his lawyer advised him that the evidence against him was damning and told him he would get a lighter sentence if he pleaded guilty. And making us sit on his knee in the prison was her attempt to show the authorities that he was really a loving dad who’d just made a slip-up.
It all left me very confused. I didn’t know who was actually in the wrong. Was it me, because I didn’t say no to George and fight him off, and because I told on him? Or was it him? I didn’t know, and having to write to him, and then sit on his knee as Mum smiled and chatted with him only confused me more. But our visits came to an abrupt end after several months, when George went to court. He was given a four-year sentence and sent to a prison at the other end of the country.
Chapter Five
Mum took it badly when George was sent down. She had really believed he would be let off, and had told us he would be coming home.
After he was sentenced, she cried
a lot and said she wouldn’t be able to go and see him, as the prison he’d been sent to was too far away. Then, one day, while we were at school, she slashed her wrists.
We didn’t know about it until we got in from school. Nanna was there and she told us Mum was in hospital and had nearly died. I was terrified. What would I do if Mum died? And why would she want to die? I knew it must be because she wanted George back, and it was my and Tanya’s fault that he was gone. I felt so bad and guilty and worried that I couldn’t sleep that night, even though Nanna had said that Mum would be all right and would be coming home in the morning. I didn’t know then that Mum’s cuts were only superficial, and she had phoned for help as soon as she’d cut herself.
Mum did come home, and we stayed off school so that we could see her. She looked pale and lay on the sofa with big white bandages over her wrists. We made her cups of tea and rubbed her feet and tried to make her feel better.
Mum did seem to feel better, very quickly, because after that day she hardly ever mentioned George again and she began to behave as though he had never existed. She started asking her eldest sister, Auntie Carol, over a lot. Nanna came too, and the three of them would sit for hours playing card games like crash and cribbage. They ignored us, except when they wanted a cup of tea or a buttie - then they’d ask me to make it.
They got so engrossed in their card games that they often told us to make our own tea, or go to the fish shop and get some chips. They’d tell us to get out of the house and go outside and play. Tanya would run off with her friends and I would wander about looking for someone to hang about with. Carol’s house was nearby and she had three children, but they were all younger than me and they were told to stay in their garden. So sometimes I’d stand outside their gate and talk to them. But mostly I was alone.
After George had gone to prison, some of the neighbours had jeered at Mum, saying that he’d got what he deserved and calling her names. Mum would go round to their houses brandishing a stick and stand outside shouting, ‘Come on then!’ We used to be so embarrassed we’d stay indoors, giggling nervously and hoping she’d give up and come back home. It got so bad that other kids on the estate would pick on us because of Mum. They said she was mad, and we must be mad too.
Even though I knew he’d been locked away, it took a long time before I began to believe that George really was gone. At first I didn’t dare to believe it. I thought Mum would still make us visit him, or write. And I was afraid that he would find a way to get out of prison and come back, and then punish me for telling. But as the weeks went past and there was no sign of him, I gradually stopped watching out for him.
One thing made me very sad. Soon after George went to prison, his mum, Nanna Gladice, died. I missed her - she’d been one of the very few people who were kind to me, and I was sorry that she was gone.
I was still quiet in school, often daydreaming my way through classes and retreating to the wall in the playground. And at home things were better without George, but Mum wasn’t an easy parent. Jamie, who was plump and dark-haired, and Tanya, who was slim and pretty with shiny brown hair and blue eyes, were her favourites. I got shouted at and hit far more often than them - though Mum didn’t use a leather belt like George had, so it didn’t hurt nearly as much. But for Paul, especially, life was still very tough. Blond-haired and skinny as a whippet, he slunk around the house, trying to avoid Mum’s wrath, and stayed away as often as he could. She used to trap him in the gap at the end of the bunk-beds in his room, and she beat him so hard and so often that I once heard him begging for his life. She kept a pool cue in the house, even though none of us ever played pool. It was what she used to beat Paul with.
All the rules George had imposed went out of the window with Mum in charge. She couldn’t be bothered with any of them. We had tea when she felt like making it and the house became a total tip, with mess everywhere. Every now and then she’d decide to have a big clean-up, then she’d let it go again and the mess would pile up. We didn’t have set bedtimes any more; we stayed up until we were tired. Mum would let us stay up late and watch adult films like A Nightmare on Elm Street, which had an 18 certificate. I was seven when it first came out on video. Of course, it scared me witless. Afterwards, Jamie played tricks on me when I was going to bed, jumping out from behind doors in the dark, with clothes pegs on his fingers to make them look long and scary. I screamed my head off, but they all just thought it was funny.
There were bonuses though. In the mornings before school we were allowed to have the radio on - we loved that, because George had never permitted it. Mum used to make a big pan of porridge every morning, and every single day she burned it.
We all had problems. Jamie was still wetting the bed, and although it happened less often after George left, he still stank of urine all the time, and so did his bed.
Tanya had a nervous habit of biting the knuckle of her first finger - it was always in her mouth. And she would repeat things people said to her, but silently, mouthing the words. As for me, I constantly played with my hair, running it between my fingers, while going off into a world of my own, so that I didn’t notice anything going on around me.
With Mum not working and George gone, money was tight. Mum went to social services almost every week, begging for handouts. We dressed in tatty, sometimes ragged and usually grubby clothes. There was no money for extras and we lived on a diet of egg and chips. Mum did make an effort sometimes - she knitted us all big chunky jumpers in the winter. We had a picture taken of the four of us wearing them - mine had a pink and white spotted pattern and was a bit tight. Paul’s was spotted too, while Jamie and Tanya had green jumpers with a pattern of stripes on them. In the picture, we’re standing in a row and Tanya and I have our hair tied back so tightly that we look as though it hurts.
There was another change after George went - social services became part of our lives. The person who came most often was Anna Smithson, who would visit us about once a month. I grew to like Anna. She had soft hands and kind-looking eyes, and she was always nicely dressed and had a smile for all of us.
Mum’s reaction to the visits varied, depending on her mood. Occasionally she was all smiles, and we’d sit around the table and chat and Mum would say how well we were all doing.
But more often Mum would lose it, shouting and swearing at Anna, yelling a stream of obscenities, while us children cringed in the next room.
Sometimes Anna couldn’t even get in through the door. Mum would ignore the bell and tell us all to hide, or we would all go out when she was due to come round. Or Mum would shout at her from the living room to ‘Fuck off and leave us alone’. Anna would leave, but she always came back, and despite Mum’s appalling behaviour, she was always nice to us and polite.
As well as Anna’s visits to us, we had to go to the social services offices once a month for family therapy sessions. We’d all have to sit and talk with Anna or another social worker, and sometimes they talked to each of us alone for a few minutes, just to ask if everything was OK. We always said it was.
Life seemed to be settling down, and if it wasn’t great, then it was certainly better than it had been.
And then Terry arrived.
I didn’t notice him move in across the road, but it wasn’t long after George was sent to prison. He was in his late forties, stocky, with a shaved head. He wore grubby jumpers and a big belt tied round his trousers, which were pulled up high over his hips.
Terry lived alone, so it was odd that he’d been given a three-bedroom house. He did have a grown-up son who visited from time to time, so perhaps that was why. He also had a dog that went everywhere with him - an old mongrel called Barney. I loved Barney; he would always come up to me to be petted when he saw me in the street. I would stroke him gently under his chin and he loved it when I tickled him.
I never knew what Terry’s job was, but he seemed to work funny hours and was often around during the day, usually walking Barney. He seemed to be a bit of a loner, because apart from his so
n no-one ever visited his house. But he was always very friendly when he saw us playing outside. He would smile and let me play with Barney for a while before he went back home.
Mum soon got talking to Terry. She had alienated so many neighbours that there weren’t many people who would pass the time of day with her, so she homed in on someone new. She asked him over, and before long Terry was round at our house most days. He would bring cans of beer for Mum and she would make his tea for him after work. He was a bit of a replacement for George, although he and Mum were just friends. They would sit and chat together over cups of tea and when he offered to babysit for us while Mum went to bingo or round to see one of her sisters, she was delighted.
Terry made us all feel special by talking to us and taking a real interest. We kids all liked him and we were glad that he seemed to make Mum happy, because if she was in a good mood we wouldn’t bear the brunt of her bad temper. So when he offered to have me and Tanya over at his house for a bit, we all thought it was a good idea. Mum jumped at the chance to let someone else have us. We often seemed to irritate her and she was always looking for ways to get rid of us, so she didn’t ask too many questions.
Terry’s house was pretty horrible. There was no carpet on the floor or the stairs, and the walls were bare and undecorated. The kitchen was filthy and stank because Barney peed on the floor. And the battered furniture was covered in dog hairs. On top of the dirt, the place stank of the Old Spice aftershave that he wore all the time. But Tanya and I didn’t really mind any of this, because we had fun with Terry. He’d buy us treats and get videos for us to watch and we had a much better time than we had at home.
It seemed a bit odd that Terry used to lock the front door once we got inside, putting the key on a shelf out of our reach, but we weren’t worried, because he was our friend.
Before long, the two of us began going over to Terry’s almost every day, while Mum played cards with Nanna and Auntie Carol or one of her other sisters, Auntie Colleen or Auntie Claire. I was glad to be out of the house, because when I was there Mum was forever ordering me to make cups of tea and chip butties for everyone. I cooked and cleaned and ran around doing all the housework, while they made jokes about me being slow or ugly or stupid. I never felt wanted or included, so going to Terry’s house was a bit of a treat.