We kept moving from place to place, just in case the police were looking for us, and I stayed in touch with Stuart by leaving messages on his pager. Eventually, after two weeks skiing in Switzerland, he came to London. By now, Simone was due back home so on the day I turned sixteen, I waved her goodbye at London’s King’s Cross Station.
‘When are you coming back to Glasgow?’ she asked.
‘Never, I hope!’ I grinned as I gave her a big hug and then saw her off.
If I sounded confident, it was more than I felt. Inside, I was a mess, not knowing where my future lay or what I was going to do. Stuart had promised me everything would be different once I turned sixteen and I clung blindly to this belief, but in my heart I didn’t feel at all certain about it. He had been cold and distant since everything blew up, despite this trip to London. My confidence in him was shaken and I didn’t know if I could trust him anymore. Bit by bit, the perfect future I had dreamed of for us seemed to be drifting away. And the more I reached out to it, the further it seemed to get.
‘We’re going to Guernsey,’ he announced that night when he met me at the Sloane Square Hotel. I had been anticipating a happy reunion, but Stuart was moody and distracted. We’d had sex very quickly after he arrived, but it felt almost perfunctory and didn’t cheer him up like it used to. I expected so much more from him now that I was sixteen. I expected him to be so happy that we could now be seen in public without people staring at us, wondering if I was of age. But now he was distant; he didn’t even appear to fancy me. People had warned me that as soon as I was sixteen the attraction would wear off, but I never believed them.
Afterwards, we went out for dinner in Chinatown.
‘It’s Maria,’ he said sullenly. ‘She’s chucked me out and now divorce is on the cards. I’ve got to secure the assets or she’s going to take everything and leave me with nothing. So I have to go to Guernsey and now that you’re sixteen, you can come too.’
‘Why? What’s in Guernsey?’ I asked innocently.
‘Well, for one thing, my mother’s there. And for another, Adam and I have got business interests in Guernsey. If we can get those sorted out quickly, I just might be able to walk away from this marriage without losing my shirt.’ He spoke through mouthfuls of sweet and sour pork balls.
I just sat there, trying to work out where I fitted into all of this. Where is my life heading now? I asked myself. I wondered, too, why Stuart’s attitude towards me seemed to have changed so much. Wasn’t this what we always wanted? Him getting divorced so we could be together?
‘Are you going to eat that?’ he asked gruffly, as he grabbed a pork ball from my plate.
We got the train up to Edinburgh the next day and, from there, we met Adam at the airport, where we all took a plane over to Guernsey together. The two men discussed business all the way while I kept quiet and looked out of the window. I got the impression that Adam did most of the talking while Stuart mainly listened and agreed with him. He was a genius, that’s what Stuart had told me about Adam, a master in business, and he had learned a lot from his older cousin. ‘You could learn a thing or two from him,’ he said. ‘Trust me, Adam knows what he’s doing!’
Once we got to Guernsey, Stuart hired a car and drove us to a small estate just outside of the main town. I was surprised because it looked like quite a poor area. After all, Stuart was such a successful businessman. He owned tons of properties in Glasgow – so what were we doing in this run-down, council semi? It made no sense.
I was even more surprised when I finally came face to face with his mum, Gladys.
‘Hello, dear!’ said a gnarly old voice as she opened the front door. I had been expecting a well-dressed, elegant woman but Gladys wore a stained, shabby housecoat; she was short, and skinny as a bird. Her leathery hands clutched the handles of her Zimmer frame and she seemed to wobble precariously as she looked up at us.
‘Mum.’ Stuart bent down and pecked her on the cheek before going through to the lounge, followed by Adam.
‘So this is her!’ Gladys exclaimed as she saw me hovering behind the men. ‘Come in, dear, don’t just stand there! Well now, you’re a lovely-looking thing, aren’t you? Close the door. That’s right.’
She hobbled to the lounge, every step a massive effort, and there she eased herself into a dilapidated floral armchair. The whole place looked like it had been decorated forty years ago and there was a damp, musty smell, as if the windows were rarely opened.
‘Ohhh!’ she sighed gratefully as she sat down. ‘Don’t mind me, dear, I’ve got terrible arthritis so I’m not very good on me pins. Now, let’s look at you. Yes, she’ll do! Much better than that silly old bitch Maria.’
The swearing shocked me, but I pretended not to notice.
She sighed and rubbed at her legs. ‘Oh, my legs are killing me. I don’t suppose you know how to make a pot of tea, do you, dear?’
I felt sorry for her. The poor woman seemed in terrible pain so I jumped into action and made tea while the cousins got on with their business. They pulled out several documents and rested them on the little laptray in front of Gladys.
‘Here, sign this, Mum,’ Stuart ordered, producing a fountain pen from his suit pocket. ‘And this, and this . . .’
She seemed to have trouble holding a pen but with a great deal of grunting and groaning, she managed to sign her name on several blank cheques, a dozen sheets of headed notepaper and a few official-looking documents.
‘Here,’ Stuart said, pointing to each place in turn. ‘Here . . . Here . . . Here . . .’
‘Is this part of your business?’ I asked Adam as he sank into the sofa next to me and drank his tea, while we both kept our eyes on Gladys as she slowly and carefully etched her name on the documents. Canned laughter from an afternoon quiz show blared out of the TV next to us.
‘It’s like this, Dawn. Guernsey is a tax haven,’ explained Adam patiently. ‘Here, you’re not subject to the same taxes as you are on the mainland – but there’s a catch. You have to be resident here to open a bank account, so that’s where Gladys comes in.’ He took a big slurp of his tea as he nodded at the feeble old lady in front of us.
‘Gladys is a resident and she’s got a bank account so, basically, we put all our business through her. And that way we don’t have to pay tax on the profits we make. It’s a loophole. Everyone would do it if they could.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What happens to all of the money in Gladys’s bank account?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t stay there!’ laughed Adam indulgently. ‘Once it’s gone through her account, the money gets transferred into a couple of companies based in Panama, another tax haven. These companies invest in properties, cars and other items like antiques, first-edition books, fine wine . . . that sort of thing. They’re our companies, of course – we own the shares – but on paper it doesn’t look that way. On paper, we have no assets. So nothing’s in my name, nothing’s in Stuart’s name. Again, a little loophole which is designed to protect us both from losing it all to the taxman, or thieving fucking wives like Maria.’
We didn’t stay long – just a couple of hours – enough time for the cousins to get all the signatures they needed. Then, as we were leaving, Stuart handed Gladys an envelope stuffed with cash.
‘Here you are, Mum,’ he said. ‘A little something to keep you going. Don’t spend it all at once!’
The old lady’s eyes lit up – it was clear from the economy packets in her fridge and the old furnishings in her home that she was only just getting by. I was glad Stuart had given her some money because she obviously needed it. But as the door closed behind us, Adam muttered, ‘She’s only going to waste it on booze, the degenerate old cow!’
It was a shock to hear him talk that way about her. After all, she was doing them both a huge favour, letting them use her bank account.
‘She seemed really nice to me,’ I offered limply.
‘Ha!’ barked Adam.
‘Well, Dawn, you don’t know he
r very well,’ said Stuart bitterly. ‘What that nasty old witch got up to in her day would make your hair stand on end. Put it this way – she couldn’t stay in Glasgow any longer; she’d exhausted every avenue she had. Sucked all the good will dry from every single person she knew. Honestly, that silly bitch could cause trouble in an empty house. We did her a favour, getting her out and into this place.’
‘So you moved her over here?’
‘Yeah; not that she’s grateful. Complains all the bloody time, doesn’t she, about how she doesn’t see anyone and how lonely she is. Well, she’s got no one to blame but herself for that!’
‘She’s pleased you’re on the scene,’ Adam said, smiling at me.
‘Yeah, fresh blood for her to sink her fangs into!’ laughed Stuart. I was taken aback but I tried not to show it.
For the rest of the day, we holed up at one of the hotels in town and Stuart and Adam drank the bar dry. It seemed so strange to me, the way they talked about Gladys, as if she was some kind of mother from hell. I’d been brought up to respect my elders and it never occurred to me that someone who was a grandmother could be a sinister character.
Well, I didn’t care what they thought. Right now, she was my future. I wanted her to love me, to be my new family. I decided to do everything I could to make sure she accepted me.
For the next two months, Stuart and I lived in a small, unfurnished flat in Edinburgh; one of Stuart’s empty properties. Stuart told me that I had to keep away from Glasgow while he got everything sorted out with Maria and that I had to stay put. But the same curfew didn’t apply to him; I felt increasingly uneasy about the many nights he failed to come back to the flat.
‘Where are you staying when you’re not here?’ I demanded, paranoid that he’d gone back to his wife.
‘It’s none of your fucking business,’ Stuart shot back. ‘A man is where he wants to be, got it? So if I’m here it’s because I want to be here and when I’m not here, I’m also where I want to be.’
‘Are you seeing your wife again?’
‘Don’t talk stupid! Why the fuck would you even ask me that? After all this shit I’m dealing with, I could do without the third degree from YOU!’
I hated him shouting at me. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. But he was my only future now. I didn’t have any choice in the matter – I had to trust him. Stuart was all I had left in the world. My family was gone, my education was over and everything rested with him.
Now that we were back together as a proper couple, I thought my life with Stuart – the one he had promised me at the start – would begin. And when he announced that he was taking me away for a holiday to Rhodes in September 1985 I was so excited. This was a ‘boys’ trip’, he warned, so I wasn’t to embarrass him. Of course I agreed. Now that my family had well and truly turned their backs on me I knew I had nobody but Stuart, so I would do everything in my power to please him. It was to be our first holiday abroad as a real couple, and I thought I knew what to expect: fast cars, nightclubbing and expensive jewellery. I thought it was the start of my glamorous new life. I thought wrong.
When we arrived at the hotel, Stuart asked me to show him what I planned to wear for our first night out. I pulled out a pair of turquoise culottes and a stylish white blouse.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ he exclaimed, shaking his head. ‘We’re going out to a club afterwards, not a fucking school disco. Come on, let’s go get you something to wear.’
Upset at Stuart’s rejection, I let him drag me downtown where he bought as many clothes that made me look like a hooker as he could find. There were short PVC miniskirts in black and red, sheer blouses in an assortment of colours to wear with my two skirts and a white PVC minidress with zips up either side. Two pairs of high heels, one white and one red.
Yuck.
‘You don’t need to put on underwear,’ he grinned, as I squeezed myself into my new, uncomfortable plastic clothes. ‘Not tonight.’
I felt a jumble of mixed feelings as Stuart led me down the stairs and out to the poolside bar to meet his friends: excited about making my appearance, but also nervous about my new attire which made me feel so awkward.
My boobs bobbed about for the whole world to see under the sheer blouse, my miniskirts rode far too far up my legs and I could barely walk in the towering stilettos. I clutched onto Stuart’s arm like a baby giraffe as we entered the bar, but then he suddenly pushed me aside and headed off in the direction of raised pint glasses and the sound of his name being chanted.
Approaching the bar I noticed the four men were accompanied by five women. Five, I wondered. Why five? Stuart barely glanced in my direction as he handed me a Malibu and pineapple and he failed to make any introductions either, so I was left in the dark as to who everyone was. These women seemed sophisticated and elegant. One now had her arms draped around Stuart and was nibbling his ear as he flung his head back in laughter at what she had just whispered to him. I tried to look away, pretending I hadn’t noticed, but I felt the sting of tears behind my eyes as I realized with shame that they were lovers. Why had he brought me here? I wondered, as I watched them flirt in front of me. I felt humiliated but trapped by the situation.
Finally, after the fourth Malibu and pineapple I wobbled over to a seat recently vacated by a young couple and kicked off my horrendous shoes with relief. Nobody had batted an eyelid when I left. It was as if I had become invisible. As ‘Reet Petite’ started to blare above my head from the large black speakers, Stuart and this woman took to the dance floor.
‘Hello, darling.’ One of the women from our group had come over and was smiling at me sympathetically. ‘My name is Pippa. I can see you’re new to all of this. Why don’t you let me fill you in a little?’
Nice as she was, Pippa clearly enjoyed furnishing me with all the sordid details of the last six years of the boys’ trips to the Greek island. Every man was married and every woman here was his ‘holiday friend’. Stuart had been seeing Susan for all this time, and she really loved him but knew he was married.
‘We’d heard about you, doll,’ drawled Pippa, trailing her finger in her cocktail then sucking it. ‘But you’re not quite what we had expected. Nice girl from the suburbs, expensive private school, all jolly hockey sticks . . .’ Her voice trailed off as she looked me up and down. No, I didn’t look very impressive, did I? I was a teenager in cheap PVC who resembled a hooker.
I sat alone and watched them all until it hit midnight, then I went back to the hotel room alone. Stuart stayed out and when he arrived the next day his first words to me were, ‘Don’t even fucking start!’
So I didn’t. In fact, all I wanted to do now was go down to the beach and start soaking up the sun, but when Stuart looked through my daytime clothes, he just shook his head. Finally, he grabbed my peach one-piece and a short beach dress and flung them at me.
‘Right, put these on,’ he commanded. ‘So we are going down to this beach where we always go. There is this bar where we will eat lunch. But not you, well, not yet. When the boys are seated and the girls have joined us you will walk towards the beach shower and start showering. What you are going to do is start peeling down your costume to your waist and start washing your tits, rubbing them for about two minutes. You’re then going to take your costume off totally, ring it out and walk up to the bar, lean on the bannister where I’ll be sitting and ask if there is any moussaka going. This is going to make the boys so fucking hard through their speedos it will be so fucking funny!’
I nodded. I wanted to please Stuart, I really did, and I thought this would make him happy. So when I got down to the beach and saw Stuart sitting having lunch with his pals, I started the show. I pushed the costume down to my waist and that is where it ended. I saw them all watching me, jaws dropping. I just couldn’t take it off, I just couldn’t, so I pulled up my costume and ran over to where Stuart was sitting and asked him what we had rehearsed.
He looked at me with cold eyes, then he took off his shirt and turned his back
on me to show me the aftermath of his night with Susan. Bite marks and scratches covered his back, then Susan bent over to him and kissed his shoulder, promising that tonight she’d go easier. I was mortified and, without a word, retreated to my sunlounger with no moussaka. Ignored again, I spent the whole afternoon on my own, and eventually walked back to the hotel alone and cried myself to sleep. I didn’t see Stuart again for the rest of the week. I only ate crisps, as that was all there was. There was no money. Staring at the sign above the bathroom sink, which informed me not to drink the water, I realized that I could not disobey Stuart again. I would have to do exactly what he asked of me, otherwise I wouldn’t even have food, never mind the riches he had promised me. He would just starve me. I wouldn’t even survive.
Meanwhile, during our trips to Guernsey, Gladys became more and more demanding. I wanted to do everything to help her so that she loved me and thought of me like a daughter, but quickly I realized that she was taking advantage.
At first she asked me to do simple things like put the Hoover round or wash the dishes and I was happy to oblige because I could see how much she struggled on her own. But, gradually, her gentle requests morphed into commands: ‘Put the TV on!’
‘Clean the car!’
‘Weed the garden, Dawn!’
There were no ‘pleases’ or ‘thank yous’ with Gladys. She treated me like her personal slave and I soon got fed up with being ordered about.
In fact, I was getting fed up with the whole situation. I knew from telephone calls with my friend Simone that everyone was asking about me in school and they all had their plans to go to college. I was jealous. Their lives were moving on and I was getting left behind.
On one particularly awful business trip to London, Stuart had done something so horrendous I can’t even think about it now without feeling sick. We had been on our way to see an antiques dealer in north London, someone who apparently dealt in stolen goods, and I was sat in the back of Stuart’s Bentley with him on my left side. In the front was Wolfie and another of Stuart’s associates. They were talking about girls in that way they had – like they weren’t even human beings – and I tried not to listen, instead looking out the window at the new and unfamiliar scenery.
I Own You Page 9