My bags were packed when Mum and Dad returned from the hotel that night. I’m not sure how I thought my parents would react. Dad laughed when I told him and shook his head, amused by the absurdity of it all. But Mum glowered at me, hardly able to believe my stupidity.
‘Don’t call us again,’ she warned. Then she kissed the top of Callum’s sleeping head and walked away.
When Stuart picked me up that night he explained that he had taken steps to ensure Maria couldn’t get her hands on his money. It was all now safely locked away in Adam’s name in a company in Panama. He laughed as he bragged that she wouldn’t get a penny and I laughed along with him. We moved into the flat in Glasgow that he’d planned for us to live in after Callum was born.
From the word go, Stuart made it clear he wasn’t going to be a hands-on dad.
‘Don’t even ask me to change a nappy!’ he announced as he threw the baby bags down on the floor that evening. ‘It’s absolutely disgusting! That’s a mother’s thing.’ But I’d been coping on my own ever since Callum had been born; I was used to changing nappies and doing everything else by myself. I took it all in my stride as I took in my surroundings: our new home.
Our flat was actually very nice. Stuart had bought some lovely furniture from Heal’s, too. He impressed on me that we had to keep the place tidy because he was going to be bringing his business pals back from time to time. As I settled in, though, it became clear that he spent most of his days at his new pub.
In May I turned seventeen but, still, I couldn’t go into the pub because I was underage. So I stayed at home most days with the baby while Stuart went out into the world.
‘Once you’re eighteen, Dawn, we’ll get you into work,’ Stuart had assured me. ‘You won’t be bored at home all day, I promise.’
One morning, about two months after we moved back in together, he left for the day while Callum and I lingered in bed, listening to Madonna sing ‘Papa Don’t Preach’. For the first time in ages, I felt content with my life. So I lay back on the bed and lifted Callum above my head. Then I brought him down and blew a raspberry on his tummy to make him laugh.
‘Shall we go out for a walk?’ I asked him and he giggled some more. ‘Shall we . . . go for an ice cream!’
I placed him in his cot, took a quick shower and then we left the house. For a few pleasant hours, I pushed him round town. Now that Stuart and I were back together and he seemed to have sorted out his business problems, I was given money to spend on Callum, so that day I bought him a couple of new tops.
As I wheeled the buggy into our road, I was surprised to see Stuart’s car in the car park, but genuinely happy. Perhaps we could go out shopping together, I thought, or go out for dinner this evening?
I bumped Callum up the three flights of stairs, opened our front door, and then reversed into our flat, excited at seeing Stuart in the middle of the day. Then . . .
Bang!
The punch to the side of my head sent me reeling sideways. Luckily, Callum was still in the pram so he didn’t even see what had happened. I staggered for a moment, then righted myself and looked around. But I couldn’t see him anywhere. My head ached with pain from slamming off the door frame and, since the pain was so sharp, I checked my head for blood. Nothing. The swelling came up immediately; a massive egg on the side of my head, hidden under my hair, was throbbing. I was okay. I was stunned and shocked but I had more important concerns. Callum – was he safe? My instinct as a mother took over and all my pain was shoved to one side for that moment.
Where is he? Where is Stuart? Shit! What do I do now?
Carefully, and very quietly, I lifted Callum out of his buggy and put him down in the cot in the bedroom, wanting him to be safe. But the room offered no comfort: the wardrobe-door mirror was smashed to pieces.
My heart was beating like crazy now. The living room door was ajar so I knew Stuart must be through there; he must have punched me and then, while I was still reeling, gone through to wait for me. I stood outside the door for a moment, wondering how to behave. How is one meant to act after getting punched? I thought frantically. Do I storm in and shout: ‘What is your problem?’
No, no: I don’t have the guts to do that. Walk in normally and greet him with a kiss and a hug, ignoring the punch?
Or sneak in unnoticed? But that would be hard to do.
The TV wasn’t on, which wasn’t normal for Stuart. Shit. Shit. Shit. What’s he planning? I felt myself start to shake, so I made myself take a deep breath and then I counted to ten in my head: One . . . Two . . . Three . . . Four . . . Five . . . Six . . . Seven . . . Eight . . . Nine . . . Ten. Enter!
The bottle of red wine whizzed past my head and smashed onto the wall. I ducked just in time and looked around to see Stuart sitting in the centre of the blood-red chesterfield, his face like thunder. He glared at me, his chin resting on his hands, which were holding something, and his foot tapping away uncontrollably.
What’s that he’s clutching in his hands? I wondered. I looked closer. My knickers? Why is he clutching my knickers? I was lost now. What’s happened?
He got up and went to the bathroom. Then, without warning, he stormed back in the room and quickly punched me in the stomach. I doubled up in pain. He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me back down towards the ground, so that I was on all fours. And he led me like that towards the bathroom. The pants he’d been holding were now on the floor and he pushed my face towards them.
‘I brought a business partner back here today,’ he growled, his voice full of menace. ‘And he needed the bathroom, and guess what he found when he got there? Your filthy, dirty pants on the floor!’ And with that he smashed my head into the bath panel, then pulled my head up so fast I fell over backwards.
‘And what’s this?’ he bellowed. ‘WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?’
There was a dirty nappy that had been folded up and left in the corner of the bathroom.
‘ARE YOU TRYING TO EMBARRASS ME?’
Releasing me from his grip, with his head angled away from the smell he bent down and opened the nappy.
‘You want to act like a dog? Well, you know what happens to dogs when they mess, they get their nose shoved in it.’
Now he wrapped my hair around his hand so I couldn’t pull away and shoved my head into the dirty nappy on the floor, over and over again. I tried to resist, but he was far too strong for me. Callum was now crying and the contents of his used nappy were up my nose and in my mouth. Clumps of baby poo stuck to my hair and face. Over and over again, Stuart pushed my face into the nappy until eventually he shoved so hard that the nappy ripped and my nose scraped on the floor.
Finally, he let go, pushing my head away.
Ow! I felt a sharp kick in the ribs as he booted me while I lay on the floor.
‘You disgust me!’ he spat.
He knelt down and looked at me with utter contempt.
‘Look at you,’ he breathed, his face inches from mine. ‘Look at you, covered in shit! I don’t even want to hit you. You make me sick. You think you can embarrass me in front of my business partners? This is the last time I tell you. Understand? When you leave this flat it will be in showroom condition!’
Then he left, slamming the door behind him. I was so shocked and traumatized, I had forgotten how to cry. I hardly felt the pain from the blows he’d landed; it was the stink of the poo in my nostrils that I couldn’t stand. That wheaty, sweet smell which didn’t seem too bad from a distance was revolting in my nose and mouth.
I pulled myself unsteadily to my feet and washed the shit from my face; gargled some mouthwash. But no matter how hard I scrubbed nor how much mouthwash I used, I would smell nothing but poo for days.
That evening, I made sure the flat was spotless. I kept hearing Stuart’s angry words over and over in my head as I cleaned. They made me feel worse and worse. I’d embarrassed him in front of his business partners . . . I wondered if they were all talking about it now, in his pub. Dirty nappies, dirty knickers. On the floor? Sh
ameful! I cringed just thinking about it.
I had shown him up, humiliated him. I felt so bad; so dirty; so in the wrong. It was the first time Stuart had been physically violent – but I didn’t think any less of him for it.
After all, I had deserved it, hadn’t I?
I was too young to see then how wrong I was. It took many years before I understood that Stuart’s behaviour that day had crossed a line; a line no man should ever cross. But I was barely seventeen and I had lost my sense of where that line should be many years before, when my brother had taken me for my bath aged five and taught me that women are merely playthings for whatever a man may want.
As I vigorously cleaned the flat until it sparkled, I felt, alongside my shame at letting him down, a sincere determination that I would try harder, do better in the future. For, as I had always dreamed, for better or for worse, I was now firmly part of Stuart’s world.
As such, I was about to be taught a new way of thinking. I was about to learn Stuart’s rules for life.
I was truly out of my depth – but I didn’t know it. I knew nothing of the world, nothing about people and nothing about myself.
But worst of all, I thought I knew it all.
Chapter 11
A Cash Business
The girl who came to the door was in her early twenties. She had long, straight brown hair, and a soft, gentle smile that radiated genuine warmth. Even so, she was a perfect stranger and I wasn’t happy that she was going to be looking after my son all day long, taking my place in his world. Stuart had insisted that hiring a nanny to take care of Callum was the only way forward and, besides, he said it wouldn’t be all day, just 9 a.m. till 4 p.m.
‘Look, if you want to learn a trade and get on in life, you need to start work,’ he reasoned. ‘I’m giving you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so come on, buck up! Life isn’t a free ride.’
It did seem an exciting prospect, running my own bar at the age of eighteen, and I was definitely ready to get back into the world. The problem was that I’d really grown to love spending time with Callum in the past thirteen months and I knew it would be a horrible wrench to be apart from him. I would miss everything about him from the way he smiled to the way he smelled. I had breastfed him for the whole of that first year so the bond that had been missing between us in the first few weeks of his life was now firmly established.
Our new nanny, Hannah, was the daughter of a friend of Stuart and had worked as an au pair abroad for the past few years.
‘Don’t worry, Dawn.’ She smiled at me as I left for my first day at work. ‘Callum will be fine with me. I promise.’
I had no choice but to put my baby from my mind as I got to grips with my new job. It was a steep learning curve. Stuart had bought the lease of The Queen’s Head pub from the brewers and told me I was a joint partner (though he never asked me to sign anything so there was nothing official). I was too young to be the licensee, so Stuart asked his old pal Dave to show me the ropes and put his name above the door.
I’d had a small amount of experience serving the guests in my parents’ hotel bar, but this was different. Now I learned how to change the kegs, change the gas bottles, pour pints, pour the Guinness, arrange stocktakes, hire and fire staff, serve people and ban people. It was a busy pub – Dave said they were taking around £14k a week before Stuart took it over – so I had to pick it up as we went along.
Some aspects were fairly mechanical, like ordering and restocking the fridges. Other parts were administrative, such as learning about the licensing laws, banking, dealing with environmental health and the licensing police. Luckily, I was a quick learner and enjoyed the challenge of getting stuck into staff rotas, accounting and ordering. Though it felt like a long time since I’d used it, I’d always had a good brain on me: I may have left school with no qualifications thanks to Stuart’s intervention, but had I stayed and studied, I knew I would have done well. It felt empowering, now, to realize I could do this.
But there were some lessons that came directly from Stuart as the official owner of the bar.
‘This is my till,’ Stuart explained, pointing to a small green till at the back of the bar. ‘You put most of the takings through this till. And this . . .’ He pointed to the large till out front, which was hooked up to our ordering system. ‘This is the till for paying staff wages, stock and the brewers’ bills. Got it?’
In the first week, I saw how it all worked. We took in money and then, once a day, Stuart would come and empty his till, taking between £100 or £200 at a time. By the end of that week, he’d probably had over £1,000 in cash. I knew that this was ‘skimming’, not strictly legal because it was undeclared earnings, but Stuart argued that this was his rightful wage from his investment and, besides, it was a cash business. Everyone expected this kind of leakage in a cash business, he said, it was the way the pub trade worked.
But the problem with this system became apparent straight away.
‘I don’t have enough to pay the brewers’ bill,’ I complained to Stuart in week three, just as he was fishing handfuls of notes out of his till. ‘Can’t you leave some in there today?’
‘No!’ he said. ‘And don’t fucking challenge me about how I run my bar ever again. If you’re short, find the money! Why don’t you try working harder?’
It was a quiet afternoon in the pub but there were still enough punters for Stuart’s words to draw an audience. I felt the colour bloom in my cheeks as he raised his voice, louder and louder: ‘This is my fucking pub and if you don’t like it you can fucking get out! I didn’t put you here to complain or to give me fucking problems. Don’t ever, EVER defy me again in my own pub. If you can’t make it work, you can fucking LEAVE!’
Too embarrassed and humiliated to argue, I quietly backed down. It was the one and only time I tried to stop him taking money from the till.
So I had no choice but to cut staff hours, picking up the extra shifts myself, to free up enough cash to pay our bills. Very quickly, we lost staff and my hours increased further, so I was now at The Queen’s Head twelve hours a day. We invited Hannah to move into our spare room so she could look after Callum full time. After all, she was very loving and gentle with him and now we depended on her constantly. I didn’t call my parents and they didn’t call me either. Mum had warned me not to get in touch and I knew they weren’t interested in helping out with childcare. Still, it saddened me that Callum didn’t get to see his granny and grandpa.
So I struggled on alone but no matter how many hours I worked, we were always short and my life became a juggling act, putting off one bill after another to try and scrabble together the money to stay afloat. Nevertheless, I ploughed on, convinced that I could do a good job of running this pub. In fact, I was pretty good with the books, the ordering and the administrative tasks but I didn’t yet have the people skills to know how to deal with customers. Every time someone was rude or challenged me, I banned them.
‘You don’t like the food I serve? Well, you’re banned!’
‘You don’t like the way I run things? Banned!’
‘Did that woman just look at Stuart? She’s banned!’
I went power-crazy and within a few weeks, I’d scared off half of our clientele. The other half left of their own accord, muttering about how the place had gone downhill since ‘the stroppy teenager’ had taken over. Dave wasn’t much help – after midday, he liked to stand on the other side of the bar, drinking with Stuart, leaving me to do most of the work. Tired, irritable and fed up, my attitude with the customers only worsened.
One morning, I went in to open up and Dave failed to show up for work. Typical! I thought angrily as I restocked the fridges and changed the kegs. Dave had become completely unreliable over the past month. And on top of everything, money was going missing all over the place. The brewers’ bill was due today and the £3,000 I’d put inside the safe was now gone. Things were so tight we were barely making £5,000 a week. In the space of two and a half months, the business had p
ractically collapsed. After another slow day, I got a call on the bar phone.
‘Hi Dawn, is everything okay?’ Stuart slurred drunkenly.
‘Fine. Where are you?’
‘We’re in Portugal.’
‘What? What do you mean you’re in Portugal?’
‘Me and Dave – we’ve gone to Albufeira for a wee break.’
‘What are you talking about? And where’s the money for the brewers?’
‘We took it and we’re in Albufeira. We’ll be here for a week. Look, what’s your problem?’
What was MY problem?! Fucking bastard! I was too enraged to speak so I hung up. That was the first time I’d hung up on him but I was so mad I could have punched him. I mean, what was the point of putting me in charge of a pub if he was going to tie both my hands behind my back? I couldn’t run this place without cash.
When I finally got home that night, long after my son had been put to bed, Hannah asked if I was okay. I was upset; she noticed and offered to make me a cup of tea. Gratefully, I accepted her offer and as we sat together at the kitchen table that night, I told her what Stuart had done.
‘What a bastard!’ she cried out, outraged on my behalf. ‘Well, let’s teach them both a lesson. Let’s go away to Albufeira ourselves. Why not? If he can do it, so can we!’
I was so angry at shouldering the burden for our failing pub, I readily agreed. I had missed my son desperately over the past few weeks and resented all the hundreds of hours I’d clocked up in The Queen’s Head while Stuart just seemed to sit around, enjoying himself. His little trip to the Algarve had been the last straw.
The next day, I took £200 out of the till and bought flights for the three of us, due to leave on the day Stuart and Dave returned. Two can play at that game, I thought as I pocketed the tickets. Why should I be bothered with this crappy old pub if the owner is determined to skim it to death?
Of course, he was livid when he found out. He was back a day earlier than I expected so I informed him that Hannah, Callum and I were off the next day for our own ‘wee break’. It was our first proper big fight and he threatened to do terrible things to me if I got on the plane the next day.
I Own You Page 13