The Little Prisoner

by Jane Elliott

  ‘No, I’m only your half-sister.’

  ‘Oh.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘Well, I called him a liar and he was saying stuff about you and I wouldn’t have it. I said we love each other.’

  ‘Still got your wobbly ears then?’

  ‘Yes.’ He laughed at the memory.

  I was very pleased to have got in touch with him again.

  After the sentencing had been announced the local papers asked if they could report it. I was happy to agree. I knew how helpful it had been to me to read A Child Called It. If just one child read an article about me and realized that they too could do something about what was being done to them then it would be worthwhile.

  A journalist was sent to interview me and at the moment she arrived at the house the mobile phone I had used to talk to Tom went off. Somehow the rest of the family had got hold of the number and now they were all screaming down the phone at me, telling me on the one hand I’d torn the family apart, that I’d taken away someone they loved and that they were going to do the same to me, and on the other hand that I had brought them all together for the first time in years. It seemed that family members who hadn’t spoken to one another for ages had suddenly come together to confront the common enemy: me.

  ‘We know where Steve works,’ one of them was yelling. ‘We’re gonna fucking kill him. We know where his parents live, they’re gonna end up fucking burned alive in their beds.’

  Buoyed up by the successful verdict, I was giving as good as I got, screaming that they should be grateful that I’d put Richard away and that he wouldn’t be able to hurt any of them any more, but none of them were having it. Families, apparently, should stick together and protect their own, even when their own have been proven to be monsters.

  A woman I’d never met came on the line, hurling abuse at me for taking away her kids’ grandfather. She was married to one of my brothers and would still have been a kid herself at the time I left home.

  ‘I’m gonna beat the fucking shit out you!’ she screamed. ‘Do you know who I am? I’m well ‘ard. And we know where you live.’

  Alright then, if you know where I live, I’m on the doorstep, come and get me. Don’t forget I know where you live too,’ I said, naming the street.

  Some other bloke I had never met in my life then came on telling me how he was going to cut me open.

  ‘You don’t even know me!’ I said.

  ‘We know where your husband works, so tell him to keep checking the brakes on his car.’

  Then Silly Git’s sister came on the line and was trying to convince me that the boys were heartbroken at losing their father.

  ‘So do you think I should have let him get away with it then?’ I asked.

  ‘All I’m saying is that I’ve just had to run round the block with your brother who’s being chased with a knife because of this.’

  ‘That’s it,’ I thought, ‘this lot are loving it. They’re never happier than when they’re winding someone up. Any day without a good fight story to tell is a wasted day to them.’

  In the background I heard my mother’s voice shouting over the rest. ‘What’s the matter with her then? Is she missing his cock?’

  I hung up the phone. There was nothing left to say really.

  The poor little journalist couldn’t get out of the house quick enough.

  Now it’s all over and Steve and I can concentrate on bringing up the girls in a normal family atmosphere. I feel I’ve done what I had to. Now I’m Mrs Elliott, a normal wife and mum, taking my children back and forth to school, running the home and walking the dog, but there will always be a hole where my past should have been.

  Some old schoolfriends contacted me through the Internet and invited me to a reunion in a pub near the old school. I wanted to see them all, but it was hard to travel back to the area where my family still lived. In the end I summoned all my courage — after all, Silly Git had been taken off the street and I reckoned I could deal with my brothers. I used to change their nappies, for God’s sake!

  ‘Oh my God!’ the girls shrieked when they saw me coming into the reunion. ‘It’s the nutter herself.’

  I gave a joyful laugh at the sight of all their familiar faces.

  ‘Ah, you’ve still got that terrible laugh!’ they cried.

  As we got talking they started to tease me about my accent. ‘You’ve started putting “t”s in the middle of words like water,’ they laughed. ‘You’re getting posh.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ I laughed, ‘because where I live now they think I’m dead common.’

  When I finally decided to write this book and I told the children, Emma wanted to know why I wasn’t going to use our real names.

  ‘Well,’ I took a deep breath, ‘there may be people at school who will read about the horrible things that happened to me when I was young and will tease you about it, and I wouldn’t want that.’

  ‘Well, I would just tell them to shut up,’ she said, with a look of puzzlement, ‘and I would tell them my mum was really brave and I was really proud of you.’

  Epilogue

  Once Richard was behind bars I started to become more confident about going back to the area where the family used to live to visit a friend or go out. I always travelled with someone else and stressed that no one should tell anyone in my family that I was there, but I was beginning to feel safer. Even so, I was always anxious not to push my luck. Although things had gone well at the school reunion I’d attended, when I was told about another one I was reluctant to go. It seemed to me that I was tempting fate to go back for such a public event.

  Several friends, however, who had found me through Friends Reunited, were bombarding me with e-mails saying that I had to come. The girls were telling me that everyone was going to be there and they all really wanted to see me, and the blokes told me not to worry because they wouldn’t let anything happen to me. It felt really nice to think that they all wanted to see me so much and since Steve was going to be away on business for a few nights anyway, I decided to take my courage in both hands and go.

  I booked a train ticket and took a taxi to Tanya’s house. The plan was for us to meet at a pub and then go on to a club afterwards. It was a sunny summer’s evening and although I was nervous about being back in the area, I was looking forward to a good night out.

  As we got out of the car outside the pub I saw a group of our friends already sitting at one of the tables and at the same moment I spotted some of my cousins coming out of the pub with drinks. One of them was Tracy, the girl that Silly Git had made me fight with all those years ago.

  ‘Janey!’ the table of old schoolfriends shouted at the tops of their voices. ‘Over here, Janey!’

  The moment I saw the expressions on my cousins’ faces I knew that I was in danger. I remembered the phone call with all of them screaming abuse and telling me how I’d managed to unite the whole family against me and I realized I had made a terrible mistake. They were already reaching for their phones. I went straight up to the table of friends and spoke to Al, a big guy who works as a club bouncer.

  ‘You’ve got to get me out of here now, Al. Get the police over here.’

  ‘What?’ he looked puzzled.

  There was a police station right next door to the pub. It would only have taken a few seconds to get someone over.

  ‘Calm down, Janey,’ Al said. ‘You’re quite safe here.’

  I could see that I wasn’t going to be able to convince him and I didn’t think I had much time to spare. I ran into the pub, already breathless with panic. If I could get into the kitchens maybe I could find a back way out.

  ‘I’m sorry, you can’t go in there, that’s the kitchen.’ A girl barred my way.

  ‘You’ve got to help me!’ I was shouting. ‘You’ve got to get me out of here and call the police! They’re gonna kill me!’

  She obviously thought I was mad and there was no way she was letting me through those doors. Tanya and Al were with me now and were beginning to catch on to
the urgency of the situation, while trying to calm me down at the same time.

  The girl showed us to a room and said she would go and talk to her manager.

  ‘Lock us in and call the police!’ I shouted at her, but the more hysterical I became, the less seriously I could see she was taking me. I would have dialled the police myself, but my hands were shaking too much to even hold a phone.

  The girl was back a few moments later. ‘My manager says you have to leave,’ she said. ‘You can go out through the back door to the alley and round to the street.’

  ‘I can’t go round to the street, that’s where they are!’ I shouted, but she was already ushering us out into the alley amongst the bins. I could see the police station from there and in a church next door a couple were getting married. It all looked so normal, but such a long way away.

  ‘Let me wait here a second,’ I pleaded.

  ‘I’m afraid my manager says I have to shut the door,’ the girl said and I saw it closing as if in slow motion.

  ‘Nooooo!’ I screamed as the lock clicked and I heard the screech of tyres in the road.

  ‘Oh my God, they’re here!’ Tanya shrieked and I saw a gang of six men coming up the alley towards us. The one at the front was brandishing a broom handle. They all looked familiar, but in my confusion I couldn’t work out who was who. Later I was told that the man with the broom handle was my brother Tom, the one who had told me that we loved each other. In my mind he was still a little boy, just like the others. I couldn’t believe that my brothers had turned into this mob of men. They all looked like Richard as they poured into the tight little alley.

  Al walked forward with his arms stretched out, trying to block their way, but they smacked him to the ground and just kept coming, trampling over his prone body. The one at the front picked me up by the arms and threw me to the ground. Tanya, who was running out into the street screaming for help, heard the crack of my skull hitting the pavement. For the next few moments everything was a blur as I drifted in and out of consciousness. The man they tell me was Tom was kicking my head and bringing the broom handle down with all the force that I remembered from my beatings as a child. As he hit and kicked, he shouted the same furious obscenities that I remembered coming from Richard’s mouth so many times before. Another man was kicking my head from the other side. I could hear crunching inside my head. Others behind were kicking at my ribs and legs with all their strength. Through their legs I could see two men laying into Al as he lay on the ground.

  ‘You’re gonna kill her!’ I heard one of the cousins shouting and they began to struggle with one another as some tried to pull others off me, but they kept on kicking.

  One man I went to school with had responded to Tanya’s shouts for help, but when he looked into the alley he changed his mind. ‘Fucking hell!’ he exclaimed. ‘They’re fucking nutters. I’m not getting mixed up in that.’ Another guy from school did try to intervene, but was headbutted and on the ground in seconds.

  By the time the police had made it across the street my family had finished and run away. I lay on the ground, unable to see or hear anything. I knew that I had wet myself. Someone had opened the door to the pub and they started pulling me back into the room. I couldn’t stop myself from screaming and crying, terrified that they would make me go back out the front where I was sure my family would be waiting for me. The girl who had shut us out in the alley was almost as hysterical as I was, but I found it hard to be sympathetic, having begged her for help and received none. I was more concerned about who was waiting for me outside.

  ‘Janey,’ someone tried to reassure me, ‘half the police force are out there now.’

  Eventually they managed to calm me down enough to get me out to the waiting ambulance, but the first thing I saw was some of my cousins circling around on their mobile phones, reporting what was happening to the ones who had run away. There was also an abandoned car outside the police station, surrounded by policemen.

  Later, I fitted the pieces of the jigsaw together. My attackers had arrived in such a hurry they had driven straight over the roundabout outside the police station and the police had been called out to deal with the dangerous driving before they had known anything about what was happening to me. When my attackers had run back to the car, leaving me for dead, they were unable to start it and had to scatter on foot, leaving the abandoned car with their mobile phones buzzing for the police to pick up the calls.

  Later that night two of my brothers, realizing that their phones had given them away, turned themselves in to get their phones and car back.

  As I was loaded into the ambulance I saw the wedding party groom on the steps of the church, trying to enjoy the day, and I felt so guilty. It seemed that it was all my fault that their day had been ruined. I was also afraid I’d ruined the school reunion, but I discovered later, as I was being X-rayed and patched up in hospital, that they had kept the party going and gone on to the club as planned. I felt terrible that Al had taken such a kicking on my behalf, but apparently he was able to keep going for the night.

  I called my dad, hoping that he would come down to the hospital and give me some moral support, but it turned out he’d had a few drinks and couldn’t drive. I rang Steve’s parents and they were at the hospital by the time I arrived and sat with me throughout the night. The staff wanted me to stay in, but I wanted to get out of the area as soon as possible and back to the kids. I didn’t want them to have to spend Sunday without either of their parents around.

  For the next few days, whenever I looked in the mirror, I was reminded of all the times that I had seen my mother with her head swollen out of shape, her eyes closed up and the bruising coming through.

  But despite everything I know I was right to speak out.

  About the Author

  JANE ELLIOTT is a pseudonym. The author first decided to tell her story to the police after taking inspiration from Dave Pelzer’s powerful memoir A Child Called It and becoming convinced that she could no longer remain a silent victim of the stepfather who had kept her a virtual prisoner for so many years.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Copyright

  HARPER

  First published in Great Britain in 2005 by HarperElement, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  THE LITTLE PRISONER. Copyright © 2005 by Jane Elliott.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © JULY 2010

  ISBN: 978-0-062-04724-3

  FIRST U.S. EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-06-156131-3

  08 09 10 11 12 OFF/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  About the Publisher

  Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)

  Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

  Canada HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

  New Zealand HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1 Auckland,

  New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

  United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

>   United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 7325e859-8cb5-4067-a0b9-3a3cca116aff

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 9.3.2013

  Created using: calibre 0.9.21, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software

  Document authors :

  About

  This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.

  (This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)

  Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.

  (Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)

  http://www.fb2epub.net

  https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/