by Jane Elliott
When I was sure he’d gone I went to a neighbour’s house and stayed there until late that night, telling them everything. In one way it felt good to be talking openly about my private nightmare, but at the same time I was still terrified that Richard would find out I had let our secret out of the bag. Eventually I felt it was safe to go home again.
My neighbours gave me a walkie-talkie and promised that if they saw his car or any member of the family approaching they would buzz me and I should grab Emma and run to their flat.
Shortly after Steve and I got back together I told him what I’d done and he bought me a mobile phone and told me that I should call the police if Richard tried to get near me. I was glad to have the phone, but I knew I would never ring the police. If I did that the retribution would be too terrible to contemplate. I’d seen what had happened to other people who had informed on my stepfather and I wasn’t ready to go that far yet. At the moment this was still just between him and me.
Everything was quiet for a few days. I felt much the same way a soldier in the front line must feel, waiting for the enemy to attack and never knowing when it’s going to come or from what direction. I tried to make life seem normal so as not to stress Emma, but I spent most of my time round with my neighbours as they tried to feed me up a bit.
One afternoon a friend came round with her daughter, who had just started crawling. It was a warm day. ‘Let’s sit outside,’ she suggested, ‘get a bit of sun.’
Not having heard anything from Richard for a while and being with someone friendly made me feel safer than usual and I agreed. We took a couple of chairs and sat just outside the door. I had my back to it, so I could see the entrance to my flat, and was talking to my friend as the kids played around at our feet.
Suddenly she turned white.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘Your dad,’ she said, her voice trembling, ‘he’s just picked up Emma and walked into the flat.’
I couldn’t believe it. How could that have happened in just a few seconds with us sitting right there? Along with the fear that I felt rising inside me, a surge of anger roared up at the thought of him taking my baby.
‘Go home quickly,’ I told her, and she knew from my voice I was serious. She scooped up her child and hurried away. As I went inside I wedged the door curtain into the door to keep it open.
Richard was standing in the kitchen with Emma in his arms, just waiting for me.
‘Give her to me and get out,’ I said.
‘I told you you’d have to watch her all the time,’ he taunted. ‘This is how easily I can get to her.’
I picked up the Stanley knife from the side where I’d left it.
‘Give her to me now!’ I screamed.
‘I’m taking her,’ he sneered. ‘There’s nothing you can do to stop me. If you try, I’ll be contacting social services and telling them what a bad mother you are.’
‘Give her to me!’ I screamed, refusing to allow myself to be intimidated any more.
He just smiled.
‘Give her to me or I’m calling the police!’
Still he didn’t move and I stormed back outside, relieved to be out from under the same roof as him, but frantic with worry that he might just walk away with Emma and there would be nothing I could do to stop him. I didn’t have the phone with me and I’m not sure I could have dialled the number anyway, the way my fingers were trembling.
‘Someone call the police!’ I screamed for all to hear. ‘He’s taking my baby! Call the police!’
Suddenly he was beside me, yelling and swearing at me. But at least he had put Emma down.
‘I’m gonna get you,’ he repeated over and over, and I thought he was going to hit me, but I didn’t care. What would one more beating matter after so many? This time I kept shouting back.
To my amazement, there was a look in his eyes I’d never seen before, as if he was worried. In seventeen years I’d never stood up to him, never challenged him seriously, and he wasn’t sure where to go next. He had already used every weapon in his arsenal. There was nothing that he hadn’t done to me already and I had survived it all. If he wanted to shut me up now, he was going to have to kill me.
The neighbours were beginning to come out of their doors to see what all the fuss was about. They too seemed to be emboldened by me taking a stand against Richard. It felt as if the tide was finally turning. He obviously wasn’t sure if the police had been called or not and so, after one last bravura rant, he turned and left.
I was boiling with anger and I needed to let it out somehow ‘Please,’ I said to a neighbour, ‘take Emma for a few minutes.’ The woman nodded, seeing that I was almost out of my head with rage, and picked Emma up, hurrying her away from the scene.
I stormed back into the flat and started smashing everything in sight, hurling plates and cups and glasses and ornaments to the floor, feeling better with every explosion of breaking china. I wanted to throw out everything Richard had ever touched or sold me or given me. I even managed to heave the three-piece suite he had made me buy off him out into the street — God knows how I found the strength, because it had taken several people hours of pushing and shoving to get it in through the door in the first place. But having been suppressed for so many years, my anger now roared out of me like a tornado, giving me super strength, and there was no point in trying to stop it until it had spent its force.
Eventually I had nothing left to break and I subsided onto the stairs to get my breath before going to my neighbour’s to retrieve Emma and bring her back to what was left of our home.
From that day onwards I spent my whole time hiding in my bedroom or in the neighbour’s flat, or sitting in Steve’s car. I kept all the curtains shut and the doors locked, with knives nearby in case Richard battered his way in and I had to protect Emma. I started sleeping with a carving knife under the bed, just like Mum. Even though Steve had changed all the locks on the doors, I still didn’t feel safe. I had seen how Richard would just smash his way into people’s houses and I couldn’t see how a few flimsy locks were going to be able to keep him out if he was determined to come for us.
After a few days the neighbours started complaining about all my furniture sitting outside and I realized I couldn’t just leave it there. It was when three blokes tried to get it back in that we realized just how powerful my anger must have been! Now that anger had subsided I could hardly lift the stuff. I still didn’t want anything of Richard’s in the flat and started asking around to see if anyone else wanted any of it. Whatever offers people made I accepted, just to get rid of it all.
Sometimes Richard would park outside the flat in his car, beeping the horn for hours on end just to let me know he was still out there and would never go away. The noise must have driven the neighbours mad, but they all knew better than to try to stop him.
Every sound was threatening and it was hard to sleep. When I did drop off I was attacked by dreams of stabbing and shooting Richard and him getting back up and coming for me over and over again, like some invincible zombie in a horror film.
I was so on edge my relationship with Steve was almost impossible. I couldn’t bring myself to respond to his advances in bed, even though I loved him, and he was becoming increasingly frustrated by my inability to give any rational explanation for my behaviour. He was trying to understand what was going on in my head, but he lacked the information that would have made the picture clear. He knew that Richard was a nasty, bullying piece of work, but he couldn’t understand why I allowed him to terrorize me in the way that he did. Nor could he understand why it had to affect our relationship so badly
Three weeks after the confrontation with my stepdad I realized that I was going to lose Steve, exactly as I’d lost Paul, if I didn’t do something positive about it. I had discovered I was pregnant again and I couldn’t face the idea of Richard defiling another of my pregnancies with his sordid demands. I just wanted us to be a normal family with Emma and the new baby, and I knew that if Steve
went I would have no protection against Richard when he eventually decided to come back for me. As my pregnancy progressed I would become more vulnerable and once I was looking after two small children I would stand almost no chance of keeping him at bay. I had to do something now.
Chapter Nine
It was two o’clock in the morning and Steve had finally reached the end of his tether. I was about to lose everything I loved again. If I didn’t do something to save the situation now I would spend the rest of my life alone and enslaved. I would never be able to break the cycle.
All I had to do was tell Steve the truth, but I just couldn’t bring myself to speak the words. It should have been so easy to do, but it was as if a part of my brain was paralysed, refusing to say the words that needed saying, to tell the story that would explain everything to the one person who could help me to escape. There had been so many secrets locked up inside my head for so many years that I’d lost the ability to say what I wanted, even when my happiness and the happiness of the two people I loved most in the world depended on it.
I felt frightened, guilty and embarrassed, all at the same time. I wanted to tell Steve everything, but I was afraid of the possible consequences. It seemed to me that he would be unable to understand why I was so frightened, that he would refuse to keep the secrets, that he would want to go to the authorities and seek revenge, and then we would all be in danger.
‘It’s not you,’ I kept assuring him. ‘It’s not you.’
‘So what is it?’ he wanted to know, his anger and frustration at our lack of lovemaking made worse by tiredness. He was such a kind and patient man and I was driving him away, ruining his life just like I’d ruined my other boyfriends’, and just like I was ruining my baby’s. It seemed that anyone who came close to me was immediately sucked into my terrible world of secrets and pain and fear. I had to do something to stop Steve from deciding that there was no future for us, to stop the relationship crumbling away to nothing, leaving Emma and me totally alone and vulnerable once more. I had to make him understand what had happened to me, why it seemed as if I was losing my mind, but I could no more find the words than jump from an aeroplane without a parachute. It was no good, I told myself, I was going to have to make the jump, I couldn’t put it off any longer.
‘There’s something I have to tell you…’ I said, but as I opened my mouth I saw all the terrifying ramifications of what I was about to tell him and my nerve deserted me again. ‘I’ve got to get Cheryl!’
‘What do you mean?’ He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It must have seemed as though he was living with a total madwoman.
I didn’t stop to explain any more, I just ran out of the flat in my dressing-gown, leaving him open-mouthed and confused at the window as I stumbled tearfully down the road to Cheryl’s house and hammered on the door to wake her up.
‘What is it?’ Cheryl’s head popped out of the window upstairs. I could hear her husband’s sleepy voice in the background asking what was going on.
‘Is she alright?’ I heard him say.
‘I really need you,’ I called up, my throat so tight I was choking on the words as I fought back the hysteria. ‘You’re going to have to come with me.’
Cheryl probably wasn’t too thrilled at being woken up and dragged out into the cold night, but she was the only person in the world who really understood what was wrong with me.
She bustled back across the road with me, tying up her dressing-gown cord as she went, probably eager to get me back indoors before I woke the rest of the street up. She was such a good friend I knew she would do whatever I asked of her without hesitation. I’d always been lucky with my friends — the ones I was allowed to keep.
Now I knew there was no going back. I had made the jump from the plane and was plummeting towards the earth. Steve was going to find out everything over the next few hours.
I was already regretting taking the plunge. Steve was such a straightforward bloke. Until he met me his answer to anything like this would just have been to go to the police and report it, but in my world things were far more complicated than that. I was so frightened I wouldn’t be able to explain to him how important it was that he guarded my secret as closely as I had guarded it all these years. I knew how much it was going to hurt him and I wasn’t sure he would be able to control his anger. I was terrified of what he would do and what the consequences would be.
He was waiting for us in the front room. His anger had subsided now that Cheryl was there, just leaving the puzzlement and an air of tension as he waited to find out once and for all what was going on. He must have known that he was about to discover something bad and it must have made him nervous. What secret could be so terrible that I had allowed it to almost drive us apart when we loved each other so much?
I’d already told Steve a bit about what had happened to Cheryl when she was a child, probably because I was trying to edge him towards understanding my world even before I was ready to tell him the truth, but I don’t know if he had completely believed it. People who have had safe, protected and loving childhoods find it almost impossible to believe what goes on in the sort of homes Cheryl and I come from. It takes them time to be able to imagine the sorts of horrors that are forced on children like us and even once they accept them as true I think they push them to the back of their minds. There are lots of things we all push to the backs of our minds, aren’t there?
I put on the kettle and made us all a cup of tea — it’s my answer to everything. I’ve always been a right old teapot. Also, the ritual of sipping from mugs would help to distract us from what we were going to have to talk about and it was only polite to offer poor Cheryl some hospitality after dragging her out of bed to do my dirty work for me. Emma was asleep in her cot, unaware of anything.
Eventually Cheryl and I sat on the sofa together with our mugs of hot tea, huddled like small children, while Steve paced round and round the room, unable to sit still as he waited to hear the explanation for everything that was going wrong in his life.
‘Listen, Steve,’ Cheryl started. ‘I know you know what happened to me when I was a kid.’
He didn’t answer. I could see that he was concentrating hard, trying to take in every word she said, making sure he understood it and didn’t miss anything.
‘Well, the same thing happened to Jane with her dad.’
‘With Richard?’
You could almost see the words sinking into his mind, taking shape, conjuring up images almost too horrible to bear.
‘When did this happen then?’ he asked, his voice shaking.
‘From when she was four,’ Cheryl said.
‘Until when?’
‘About two weeks ago.’
Steve paced faster as he thought about the life I’d been forced to lead while he’d been out at work. Cheryl kept talking, although I’m sure most of her words must have been washing over Steve by that stage, like trying to empty a bucket of water into a narrow bottle all at once. I sat hunched beside her, every muscle trembling, my mug and cigarette shaking in my hands as I rocked rhythmically back and forth, as I so often did.
‘I knew it,’ he exploded once the truth had sunk in. ‘I fucking knew it.’
‘What do you mean?’ I wanted to know.
‘Ever since I met you I’ve been getting these images of you and him in my head and I’ve always thought to myself, “You sick git!” But I never imagined anything like this.’
Cheryl put her arm around my shoulders to try to calm my shaking.
From being gob-smacked Steve became furious, shouting and raging around the room.
‘Stop being angry!’ I screamed, putting my hands over my ears. ‘You’re making me feel like I’ve done something wrong. This is why I didn’t want to tell you!’
Steve didn’t want to know the details, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking. As he heard them, and fitted them in with the things he already knew about my family, I could tell that he had grasped the full horror of the situat
ion. He could see that there was no way we could put right what had happened in the past, but that we had to think of ways to make the future better.
Once he’d got over the shock, his first thought was that we had to go to the police. I had to convince him that I truly didn’t want him to do anything about it and wasn’t prepared to go to the police or do anything else that would aggravate the situation.
After that, his only thought was that he had to get me away from the area. We decided to make a run for it, taking Emma with us and not telling anyone where we were going, not even Paul. It was going to be a hard thing to do, leaving friends and people who had been good to us without even saying goodbye, but we couldn’t take the risk of my stepfather going after someone he believed knew where we were. If he thought for a moment anyone had an address for us, he would beat them mercilessly until he got it out of them. Everyone knew that his rages were uncontrollable when anyone tried to stand up to him or frustrate him. It was even more urgent that we got away soon because I wanted to be gone before my family knew anything about my new pregnancy. I wanted my new baby’s life to be completely untainted by them.
The morning after he learned the truth Steve got up at the normal time, no longer willing to wake up before dawn in order to get away unseen. It was as if the gloves had finally come off. He was still in shock when he got into his car and drove to work. A few streets away he found himself in traffic and spotted his mum in the car in front. He flashed her frantically until she pulled over. Collapsing into tears, he told her the whole story.
‘We’re gonna have to move from the area quick time,’ he said.
‘Whatever you need, we’ll help with,’ she told him, ‘anything we can do.’
I’d known that Steve would have to tell his parents about what had happened to me, because that was the sort of relationship he had with them. But even that was hard because although Steve’s dad was a tough man, neither of his parents were young and I knew what my stepfather was like with his threatening phone calls, his notes through the door and the hours he would spend sitting in the Cortina outside people’s houses flashing his lights onto the windows and beeping his horn over and over again. He knew how to make people aware that they weren’t safe anywhere, especially in their own homes. He was always a master at making people’s lives a misery.