Suddenly I heard Wolfie say, ‘Go on, Stuart, take her clothes off. Let’s see what this girl has that is so special. Let’s see why you are prepared to lose half your wealth and give up your family for this girl. What’s she got that is so great?’
Stuart turned to me idly and said, ‘Take off your top and show them your tits.’
I was mortified. I didn’t want these men ogling me. I shook my head, begging Stuart silently not to make me do this. But then he exploded. ‘Fucking take it off and show them!’
As I looked out into the bleak day I lay my head on the coldness of the window, the sleet making it even colder. I gulped. The rush-hour traffic was at a standstill. I lifted off my top and undid my bra and closed my eyes.
‘Great tits. Great tits!’ said Wolfie appreciatively. Then he spoke to the driver. ‘Open the window, Pete, so she’s cold and her nipples go hard.’
Then, totally out of the blue, Wolfie leaned towards me and twisted my nipples until they were sore. I flinched but I didn’t make a sound. I was freezing cold now as the icy air chilled my bare skin and, at the same time, I felt myself freeze inside. I knew I was powerless in this situation and there was nothing I could do, so I had to just endure it.
‘Okay, Stuart, take off her jeans!’ Pete called from the front seat. ‘Come on, mate! Give us a proper show!’
I looked at Stuart in fear. My eyes filled with tears. Please don’t make me . . . He just nodded and I knew I had no choice. I had to obey him or there would be hell to pay. I knew from my experience in Rhodes that I couldn’t afford to piss him off. Cold wasn’t as bad as hunger.
So I slipped off my jeans. The cold wrapped itself around me completely now, since all the car windows were open. The only protection against my modesty was the cigar smoke that swirled around me as both men sitting in the front kept turning around, jeering. A young man in a Vauxhaull van in the next lane thrust his hips in approval and shouted, ‘Go on! Don’t stop now!’
Wolfie was so excited now, he got his dick out. ‘Move in the middle, darling, so we can see. Fuck! Stuart, she’s so hairy!’ Then he thrust his hand between my legs and I nearly screamed in shock. His rough, aggressive hand felt so alien.
‘Dry as fuck!’ Then he spat on his hand and rubbed me. ‘Right, my old son, you gonna just look at her or fuck her?’
Stuart laughed, then he pulled his hard cock out and lifted me on to it. Straddled on him, facing the two men and with an outside audience, Stuart fucked me, quick and hard. I bounced up and down, and closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see them watching me, watching me and wanking. Wolfie squeezed my nipples and shouted, ‘I’m next!’ At that Stuart came.
‘No you’re fucking not, Wolfie,’ he growled as he zipped himself up. ‘You can watch but you don’t get to fuck her.’
I wriggled off Stuart and hurriedly put my clothes back on. As I did so, I looked over to see the van driver wiping himself with a Kleenex. For the rest of the journey I curled into the corner, trying desperately to forget what had just happened. Later, at the hotel, Stuart warned me not to give him any shit for ‘that little performance of yours’.
‘I could have let them fuck you, you got that?’ he snarled. ‘I could have let them all have a go, but I didn’t. I protected you. So I don’t want any fucking moping around from you. You’re mine and you’ll do as I say.’
Could I possibly go back home? I wondered now. Have I burnt my bridges with my family? Stuart had lured me with promises of riches and a life of idleness. He had been so kind and warm at the start, and had made me feel like the most important person in the world. Then, as my teenage crush faded, and as my friends and family all fell away, he had changed. I was his now. I had to obey him and do everything he said. And that was true because he was all I had. I chewed my fingernails, turning my situation over and over in my mind. What if I wanted to start again? Was it possible? I knew that it would take a lot for Mum to forgive me but I hoped that Dad, with whom I’d always had a good relationship in the past, might be able to see things my way. At the very least they might let me back in the house so that I could sit my O levels. After all, I’d left school with no qualifications whatsoever.
But just as I was beginning to think of how I could try to recover some of my old life, I got a shock. And now I knew there was no going back.
‘I think I’m pregnant,’ I told Stuart one day in October.
‘How do you know?’
‘I did a test. It was positive.’ I was strangely numb about having a baby. I should have expected it; after all, Stuart had stopped using condoms months ago.
‘If you and I are going to make a go of this, you have to get pregnant straight away,’ he’d told me. ‘So you can forget using contraception from now on.’
It hadn’t been my choice but I was getting used to the fact that I didn’t have choices anymore. Stuart had said that’s what we needed to do in order to make the relationship work so I just went along with it at the time, never really considering what it meant. At that time, too, I would have done anything he said.
‘Well, that’s good,’ Stuart now remarked in a businesslike tone. ‘That’s what we wanted, wasn’t it?’
‘Hmm . . .’ I responded noncommittally. Was that what I wanted? I wasn’t sure anymore. Stuart smiled at me then and gave me a hug. I grabbed him back, tightly: it was rare now that he gave me much affection, though we still had sex as regularly as ever, so when he threw me a bone, I lapped up his hugs and kisses like a dog.
‘I hope it’s a boy,’ he said into my ear. He pulled back, kissed me once on the cheek, briefly, and squeezed my shoulders just a touch too hard. ‘It had better be a boy.’
Chapter 8
Showdown
I lay on my bed and stroked the small bump between my hips. It was hard to believe I was now five months pregnant, but that’s what the doctor had said when Stuart had finally allowed me to see a GP. At first he had kept me away from the medical professionals.
‘Look, the truth is we don’t know when you got pregnant,’ he’d reasoned. ‘If you got pregnant when you were fifteen then that’s me in prison for sure. Is that what you want for me? No? Right, well, let’s not go to the doctors just yet, shall we?’
I didn’t mind at first, but after a while I began to worry. I needed to know that the baby was okay, that everything was normal and so, finally, I’d managed to persuade him to let me see a doctor. Since I was living in Edinburgh now there was no reason a doctor would connect me to Stuart and I wasn’t about to tell them who the father was.
So I went along on my own for my first GP appointment. He measured my tummy and said I was five months gone which meant that I was due in April. Relief flooded my body – so I had definitely fallen pregnant after I turned sixteen in May. I was pleased that I had some good news for Stuart. He’d been so grumpy recently, so hard to please.
‘You’d never guess,’ the doctor had remarked. ‘I mean you’re barely showing at all.’
It was true; I was as skinny as before. If anything, I’d lost weight in the past few months. And that’s the way I wanted it. Stuart had warned me early on that if I got fat he would leave me. Besides, he planned for me to give birth in Guernsey so that our child would have Guernsey citizenship and that meant I couldn’t look obviously pregnant.
He had explained it all to me one morning: ‘Adam and I have talked it over and the way we see it, if you give birth in Guernsey, we can open a bank account for the child and we can keep doing business there once dear old mum pops her clogs. But they won’t let in female tourists who are obviously pregnant, otherwise everyone would be at it, wouldn’t they? So you’ve got to stay slim, got it?’
I’d felt honoured that Stuart and Adam already had plans for my baby; it made me feel important and seemed to cement my place in Stuart’s world. But now, as I lay in bed in the grotty flat in Edinburgh, I felt lonely and desperately sad. Stuart hadn’t been to see me in weeks. I kept hoping he would turn up but these days he didn’t even g
et in touch himself when I needed more money; he usually sent one of his cronies to drop off some cash. They’d hand me an envelope with £30 or £50 in notes and that would have to last me for as long as possible. Once it ran out, I had to call Stuart again and then he was moody and cross for making him spend all of his money.
Apparently, things weren’t going well with the business and this was why cash was tight. So I tried to make it last as long as possible. No wonder I was so thin. I barely ate! I didn’t even go out much – what was there to do? I knew no one in Edinburgh and I got tired of wandering round town. Without money, it was no fun going into shops. So I spent most of my time just lying on my bed, watching TV.
Where’s the fairytale I was promised? I wondered, as the now-familiar tears welled up behind my eyes. This flat was a hellhole, with broken, boarded-up windows, stained carpets, peeling wallpaper and no furniture except the TV and bed. I’d trusted Stuart to whisk me away to a life of luxury and love, that was all he had talked of as his hands had eagerly roamed my body, but there was none of that here.
More to the point, I thought, and more importantly to me, where is Stuart? I wanted him to stay with me – I was lonely and I missed the happy times we’d used to share – but these days I barely saw him. He kept telling me he was out there, fighting fires, trying to shore up his business so that Maria didn’t fleece him in the divorce, but I didn’t understand why he had to stay out every night. He said he was sleeping in the office, just to make sure she didn’t try to break in and steal the files, but I was beginning to have my doubts.
Money was so tight he’d even asked me to sign on, something I would have considered unthinkable and degrading a year before. But now that Stuart was struggling to hang on to his assets, he said I had no choice: I had to try to support myself. I gave in and went to the benefits office to beg for a state hand-out. After getting a ticket and waiting on a blue plastic chair with half a dozen other miserable-looking people for ages, I was finally called to speak to a woman through a plexiglass window. Even though it was barely 10 a.m., the woman looked exhausted and harassed as she tapped on her computer.
Finally, she stopped typing and peered at me over the half-moon glasses perched on the end of her nose.
‘Dawn McConnell, is it?’
I nodded.
‘Your parents own a hotel, Dawn,’ she said to me with a frown.
‘So?’
‘So you could go home, darling,’ she sighed, rubbing her forehead.
‘I can’t go home,’ I muttered.
‘Right, well, can you tell me who the father is?’
I just shook my head and walked out. This was too humiliating.
‘You what?’ Stuart had growled after I related this encounter on the phone. ‘Why the fuck did you walk out?’
‘They weren’t going to give me any money!’ I insisted.
‘For Christ’s sake! I don’t need this. I’ve got a family to take care of. I don’t know why I need to give you cash as well! You better not give me a hard time because I’m getting sick of all your demands. I could leave, you know, and then you’d be totally alone. Is that what you want? You want me to leave?’
‘No,’ I’d said. ‘No.’ And ‘I’m sorry’. ‘I’m sorry.’
I said that more and more these days.
And I was sorry. Sorry for myself; sorry for this whole depressing situation. Now I stared bitterly at the Artex swirls on the ceiling, wondering: how on earth have I got myself into this mess? I couldn’t believe how much I’d screwed up. Here I was, five months pregnant, and the man I’d thought was going to love and support me for the rest of my life barely wanted to know me. I couldn’t go home now even if I’d had the courage to call Mum and Dad. I was too ashamed and embarrassed about my situation – and Stuart knew it.
All I could do was wait: wait until the baby arrived and hope that everything would get better after that.
I’d never expected to hear from my mum ever again so when Simone mentioned that my mother wanted to visit me, I was unsure. It was a bitterly cold winter day when they had bumped into each other in Glasgow town centre. Mum had heard the rumours and asked Simone to confirm if I was pregnant with Stuart’s baby. Simone saw no reason to lie and that’s when Mum had asked to see me.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said to Simone. ‘I can’t say I relish the idea of seeing my mother right now.’
‘Look, she’s your mum. She seemed genuinely worried about you,’ said Simone. ‘I think she just wants to make sure you’re okay. Where’s the harm in that? Just meet her once, okay?’
So I reluctantly agreed to lunch at a little Italian restaurant near Queen Street. I didn’t want to take her back to the flat; I was too embarrassed at the state of the place. I wanted her to think that everything was okay, that I was fine.
When she walked in that day, nine months after I’d last seen her, she looked exactly as she always did when she was going out: smart suit, leather gloves, elegant heels and all wrapped up in a fur-trimmed coat. Her golden hair had been recently styled and set at the hairdressers and she wore a slick of red lipstick across her lips. Bundled up in my thick woollen jumper and parka, I couldn’t help feeling like a child again in her presence.
‘You look well,’ she remarked as she sat down opposite me. ‘You’re pregnant?’
I nodded.
‘Well, you wouldn’t know it,’ she said coolly. Over lunch we spoke generally about the hotel, about Dad, his drinking and how well Susy was doing in London, studying design.
‘So, you’re with Stuart now?’ she said primly, dabbing at the corners of her mouth with her napkin.
‘That’s right,’ I said, with a confidence I definitely did not feel. Simone had reported that he’d been seen out and about recently with Maria and it made me worry that they had got back together.
As if she could read my mind, Mum followed up with: ‘Are you sure he’s left his wife?’
‘Of course!’ I retorted.
‘Are you sure he’s going to support you and the baby?’
‘Yes, Mum.’ I sighed. ‘You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to come and bother you and Dad for money.’
She looked up at me sharply, one eyebrow raised, then she put down her cutlery and fixed me with one of her most scrutinizing looks.
‘Dawn, are you happy?’ she said carefully.
‘Yes, of course I’m happy, Mum,’ I insisted and then, with tremendous effort, I grinned for her. I really hoped it looked genuine. I had too much pride to admit when I was wrong.
‘Well, that’s all good then.’ She smiled too, and picked up her cutlery again. Here we were, both of us pretending, for appearances’ sake, that everything was fine. It seemed so false, so unreal.
Isn’t a mother supposed to know when her sixteen-year-old daughter is struggling? I thought. What’s that thing they call it – ‘a mother’s instinct’? Ha! So much for that! But there was too much water under the bridge for us to be honest with each other. Looking back now, even if she had fought to help me (which would have been very out of character) I probably would have turned her down flat, my foolish teenage pride stopping me from accepting what I so desperately needed.
I know the real reason you’re here, I thought next, angrily, with my defences rising like hackles. You just want to make sure I won’t embarrass you any further. Well, don’t worry, Mother dear, I won’t be darkening your door again.
My face betrayed nothing of these thoughts. I nibbled sedately at a side salad as she rambled on about her financial problems at The Drayton Arms. She said it helped that they didn’t have any more school fees – naturally, with that comment she gave me a pert and meaningful look. I wanted to leave then and there, but I was too polite for that. She kissed the air either side of my cheeks when we finally got up to leave, brushed my collar and told me to look after myself.
She didn’t invite me back home to visit or mention bringing Dad to see me. No, to her mind I was definitely better off out of the pictur
e, away from the neighbours and all the gossips in Glasgow. I could see how it would have embarrassed her: the sixteen-year-old private-school dropout, now a single mum. The shame of it all! It was very convenient for her that I was out of the way in Edinburgh. I wasn’t her responsibility anymore and that suited her just fine. I watched her walk away, the click-clack of her heels fading as she went out of sight.
That night, I felt more lonely and isolated than ever before. Nobody wanted to know me, not even my own family. And Simone had more bad news for me – she’d heard through Fergus that Stuart and Maria were back on and now running a pub together in Glasgow. Fergus was telling everyone at school how embarrassing it was that his parents were like a pair of love-struck teenagers again, smooching and holding hands in public.
Of course, Stuart denied it all when I confronted him. He said it was lies, utter nonsense and I should know better than to listen to idle gossip. But the rumours simply wouldn’t go away and my confusion and misery grew by the day. So, finally, I decided to find out the truth for myself.
It was raining heavily on Valentine’s Day 1986 as I stood in Princes Street to hail down a taxi – the kind of horizontal rain that hits you from every angle. Within minutes I was soaked, but I held tight to the wad of notes in my pocket. I had been saving my money for weeks now, only spending £20 a week on food, and now I handed over the lot to a taxi driver so that he could drop me at the pub in Glasgow that Stuart denied even hearing about, let alone owning.
For two hours, we drove through the beating rain and hazardous fog and I fixed my mind on Stuart, on the father of my child, on the man I had given up everything for. Christmas had come and gone while I stayed home alone. Now it was Valentine’s Day: he should be with me, I thought. He hadn’t called or contacted me recently at all – so where was he? One way or another, I knew I needed to know the truth, as painful as it might be.
I Own You Page 10