by Linda Green
As far as I’m concerned, if your parents threaten to disown you, then they are not a family worth having. We are your family now Betty. Me and our baby. We don’t need anyone else in the world. I will take care of you both and I will be counting down the days until we can all be together. We must never look back, Betty, only forwards.
I want to see you one more time before they send you away. I want to take you somewhere special and treat you like the lady you are.
Please meet me outside Bettys in York at twelve noon next Saturday. I am taking my girl out on a date. We’re going to be in the tea rooms, not Bettys bar. I don’t care who sees us, though. If some of the other boys are in the basement there I will smile and show you off and tell them you are my girl. We will find somewhere quiet to sit together and we will not talk about being apart. We will talk about when we are back together again. We will make plans for the future and I will tell our baby that it has the most beautiful mother in the world. We will make memories to keep us going while we are apart.
I love you, Betty Braithwaite, and even though I did not think it possible, I love you a little more now. I will see you at Bettys.
Yours always,
William
20
James sat at the kitchen table, his face, usually so amenable, struggling with emotions I had never seen on it before. My words still hung in the air; the noise of the TV show the girls were watching played out in the background. How could I have brought my family to its knees like this? Ruined the happiness of the people I loved most in the world. The word ‘pig-headed’ came to mind. Although even that had unsavoury connotations following recent events. I reached across the table and took his hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I am so, so sorry for putting them at risk like that.’
James shook his head. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘You’ve got to stop saying that,’ I replied. ‘Because sometimes it is.’
‘You couldn’t have known. Your mum hadn’t told anyone.’
‘But I could still have checked him out properly, couldn’t I? I was that desperate to find a family member that I fucking invented one.’
‘Are you sure Ruby was telling the truth?’
‘Yeah. She’s never been any good at lying to me.’
‘To think that filthy bastard was going to lay a finger on her.’ James brought his fist down hard on the table. ‘I want to go up there now and see to him.’
The anger in his voice took me aback. He was the gentlest man I’d ever met, yet this was what he’d been reduced to.
‘I get that, I really do, but it wouldn’t do any good. It would simply mean you getting into trouble, instead of him. I’ll go to the police tomorrow morning.’
‘Why not now?’
‘He’s not going anywhere. Not with Olive being so poorly. That’s why he threatened me. And I want to go and see Mum first. I want to try to persuade her to report what he did to her.’
‘Do you think it was their baby?’
I shrugged. ‘If you join the dots, that’s what you get. But I don’t want to rely on doing that. I don’t want this to be guesswork. We need to get to the truth. And that needs to come direct from her.’
‘Go now, then,’ said James, pushing his chair back and standing up. ‘I’ll sort the girls out. I’m not leaving them until he’s locked up, so it’s best to get the ball rolling. I’ll cancel my job tomorrow, so you can take your mum to the police station. And we’ll get the bastard put away for good.’
*
When Mum answered the door she looked, if it were possible, even worse than she had that morning. All those years she had kept her secret and now it was out. She seemed to be unravelling from the inside. As if it was such an intrinsic part of her that to take the secret away meant taking part of her too.
I told her to go and sit down, made tea and carried it through to the living room where she was sitting on the sofa, staring vacantly at the wall. She took the cup and saucer from me, her hand shaking so much they vibrated noisily and she had to put them straight down.
‘Thank you,’ I said, after a moment. ‘For telling me, I mean. I know it must have been difficult for you.’
She twisted her fingers together and broke them apart again. ‘Are you sure he didn’t touch her?’ she asked.
‘No. Ruby wouldn’t lie to me about a thing like that.’
Mum gave a dismissive snort. ‘He would have threatened her, would have told her she’d get in massive trouble.’
‘And I made it clear to Ruby that if anything had happened, it would have been his fault, not hers. I told her I’d believe her. That no one would be cross with her.’
Mum nodded slowly and closed her eyes.
‘Did Grandma not believe you?’ I asked.
She shook her head.
‘So it was never reported to the police?’
‘No. You didn’t speak about such things in those days.’
‘People do now, though,’ I said. ‘All those cases on the news. It’s not too late.’
‘What, and have all that raked up in court? Have him leering at me and telling them filthy lies?’
‘It wouldn’t be like that,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t have to come face to face with him. And I’d be there to support you. You wouldn’t be on your own.’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I won’t give him the satisfaction of hurting me any more than he already has done.’
‘What if he’s abused other girls?’ I asked. ‘They might come forward too. That’s often how it works now. He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.’
‘That’s easy for you to say.’
I swallowed and looked up at the ceiling, struggling hard to compose myself. ‘I get that this isn’t easy,’ I said. ‘Believe me, I do. But he put a note through the door earlier, threatening to do the same to Ruby as he did to you. There were photos in with it too.’
I reached into my bag and produced them, laying them on the coffee-table.
Mum put a hand to her mouth to try to stifle the sound that came out. I went over and sat next to her, putting my arm around her. I could feel her entire body trembling.
‘I’m taking them to the police tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I expect he was behind the other notes and the pig bones. But he won’t get much of a sentence for that. He’d get a hell of a lot more for what he did to you.’
Mum sat forward, rocking back and forth. ‘I want to,’ she said, ‘I really want to, but I’m so scared.’
‘Then let me come with you and I’ll hold your hand while you tell them everything. That way, you’ll only have to tell it once.’
She nodded and wiped the tears from her face. I decided to go on while I appeared to be getting somewhere. ‘And you can let them take a DNA sample, and they’ll go and arrest him and take his. Then we can find out what really happened.’
I took her hand. She gripped it tightly, her fingernails cutting into my palm.
‘He got you pregnant, didn’t he?’ I asked.
She bit down hard on her lip and screwed up her eyes, then gave an almost imperceptible nod.
‘And did he kill your baby?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I still don’t know what happened to my baby.’
*
The next morning DI Freeman was waiting for us when we arrived at Halifax police station. I handed him the envelope with the note and photographs in. ‘We’ve got CCTV pictures of a man fitting his description leaving Todmorden Market with a large bag on the evening before the bones were left outside your house,’ he said.
‘You’re not bringing him here, are you?’ asked Mum.
‘Not while you’re with us,’ he replied. ‘But we will do as soon as you’ve left. Someone’s waiting outside his house just in case. Are you ready to make a start?’
I l
ooked at Mum. ‘Can Nicola come in with me?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘You’re allowed to have an emotional supporter, so that’s fine.’
DI Freeman led us through to an interview room, where a woman in her forties was sitting. ‘This is DS Lockwood,’ he said. ‘She’s a specially trained detective from our unit which deals with this type of offence.’
The woman stood up and came over to shake our hands. ‘Hi, please call me Julia,’ she said, smiling warmly. ‘I’ll be here for you all the way through this, and if you’ve got any questions, or there’s anything you’re not sure of, please let me know.’
Mum and I sat down and DI Freeman left the room. I took Mum’s hand. All this time she’d had to deal with this on her own. All this time I’d had no idea what she’d been through. It was so stupid, so ridiculously stupid.
I was vaguely aware of Julia running through what would happen. All the time I was trying to steel myself for when Mum would start talking. I had to be strong for her, however difficult that would be. I hummed inside my head. The same made-up tune I’d hummed lots of times when I’d been trying to block things out.
I heard Julia tell us she was starting the recording, was aware of her giving the time and location of the interview, and the names of the people present. And then I heard it: Mum’s voice, saying her name. Only it wasn’t her voice as it was now. It was the voice of a fourteen-year-old girl. Scared and traumatised by what had happened to her. I squeezed her hand again and blinked back the tears as she spoke softly into the microphone. It was the spring of 1972. John Armitage, a local postman, lived next door to her with his parents, Olive and Harold. In the house where Andrea now lived.
*
We sat in the car, around the corner from the police station, for a long time afterwards, neither of us saying a word. Mum’s eyes were red and puffy. I wiped my own eyes with my sleeve, the sodden tissue in my hand no longer capable of absorbing tears.
‘That’s why I never said anything,’ Mum said finally. ‘Because I fancied him. Because I was flattered when he asked me to go and see the sunrise with him. I led him on, you see. It was like he said, all my own doing.’
I shook my head repeatedly while I struggled to get the words out. ‘You were fourteen,’ I said. ‘And he was, what, mid-twenties? You did nothing to make him do it and could have done nothing to make him stop.’
‘They won’t see it like that, though, will they?’ she said. ‘Not in a court of law. They’ll try to twist it, make it look as if I came on to him.’
‘You were fourteen,’ I repeated. ‘That is all anyone needs to know.’
He never spoke to me again. I saw him from the house sometimes, on his way to or from work. He never looked up to my bedroom. Not that I would have wanted him to. I felt sick just seeing him. And as my bump grew ever bigger, the shadow he had cast over my life was inescapable.
Mum never spoke to me about him again either. She had obviously decided that it was all made up on my part: he was in the clear and I was the guilty party. The one who had to be punished. It was a proper confinement: I didn’t leave the house for four months and no one was allowed in. My condition was a shameful secret that no one spoke of. Mum had told Dad, but he never said a word to me about it. He didn’t have to: his face said it all. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at my bump. Mum wasn’t much better. Baggy tops and large trousers with elasticated waists appeared on my bed without explanation. Clearly, proper maternity clothes were out of the question, in case anyone spotted her buying them, so I had to make do with clothes that were too big for me all over and too small in the one area that mattered.
Most of the time, I stayed in my room. It was, to all intents and purposes, a prison sentence, served in the place in which the crimes against me had been committed. I could still smell him, however much I had the window open. I could hear his grunting, see that smirk on his face, feel his hands all over me. And if I managed to forget for just a second, the baby would kick, reminding me that I had been contaminated inside too.
The only thing I could do to pass the time was sleep, when the baby allowed it, at any rate. But when I did sleep, I had nightmares where I saw my baby for the first time and he was the spitting image of his father. In my dreams he was always a boy, and in my waking hours too. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him in the flesh. I wondered if it would be possible to give birth without seeing him. To shut my eyes just as I’d shut them when he’d been created. And then hand him over without ever having to look at him.
Mum had told me she’d found someone to adopt the baby privately. I’d asked who it was, but she said I didn’t need to concern myself with that. Once the baby was gone, I wanted to erase him from my mind. Pretend he had never existed, that the whole thing had never happened. Pretend I was the sort of girl whose idea of a bad day was when her socks fell down as she ran for the school bus.
All I had to do to get rid of him was give birth to him. I was scared, of course. Scared beyond belief. Especially the thought of doing it at home. I wished I could go to hospital and have him there, but Mum said that was out of the question: she didn’t want the authorities involved. She’d told school I’d gone away to stay with an elderly aunt who needed looking after. Apparently, they had accepted that, although it meant I was skipping school. Maybe they had worked it out and didn’t want to say anything, just like everyone else.
It was five past midnight when I woke up. I knew straight away. I’d been worrying that I wouldn’t recognise a contraction for what it was, yet when it came, I knew it couldn’t be anything else. I’d heard about contractions on TV. That was where most of my information about childbirth had come from. As far as I could gather, there was a lot of fetching towels, mopping brows, grimacing and screaming, but they never showed you what was happening at the other end. I could have asked Mum, I suppose, but we’d never talked about stuff like that. And, anyway, it was too late now.
I lay there on my own in the dark, gripping the sheets. Too scared to move or to go and wake Mum. The contractions hadn’t hurt at first: it had simply felt like the baby was doing weird somersaults inside me. But by the time it started to get light, they were closer together and stronger. So strong that I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that I was having them.
I didn’t get up, I think because I was scared it might get suddenly worse. I didn’t even call out for help. I simply carried on until my cries got so loud that Mum came in.
‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’ she asked, immediately rushing out and coming back in with towels and a flannel to mop my brow. It seemed the TV programmes were true – so far, at least.
‘I didn’t want to bother you,’ I said.
‘You daft girl. It’s not going to go away, is it? You’re having a baby.’
Her words shattered the pretence I’d managed to build up that this wasn’t actually happening to me. So much so, that I started crying.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘There’s no need for that. Let’s get this over with and then we can all get back to normal.’
It was a ridiculous thing to say, and I suspect she knew it as well as I did, but I decided not to take issue with it. She went off again and came back with a glass of water and two extra pillows.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I asked.
‘He’s gone out for a bit.’
It wouldn’t be a bit, I knew that. He’d stay out until this was all over. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
I let out the loudest cry I had yet, as a stronger contraction gripped me.
‘What about next door?’ I asked, once I’d recovered the ability to speak. ‘They’ll hear me.’
‘No, they won’t,’ said Mum. ‘Nothing gets through these walls.’
‘They’ll hear the baby crying when it’s born.’
Mum swallowed and looked past me out of the window. ‘Not all babies cry when t
hey’re born,’ she said quietly.
*
After all the effort, all the pain and fear, the baby came quickly at the end, not long after Mum told me to start pushing. It wasn’t only the baby I was pushing out, it was him as well. Finally expelling him from my body. Maybe that’s why the baby came out so forcefully.
I heard him cry before Mum managed to say anything. And I did what I’d promised myself I wouldn’t. I opened my eyes. He was lying on the towel on the bed, his body red and wrinkled, his face scrunched, his little arms and legs waving about. It was only when I looked at him more closely that I saw he was a baby girl. I gasped and sobbed at the same time. Mum was still sitting on the edge of the bed, tears pouring down her cheeks, seemingly unable to speak or move.
I reached down and touched the baby’s hand. I didn’t feel hate as I’d thought I would, or even indifference. I felt the one thing I hadn’t expected at all. Pure, unadulterated love.
I struggled to stretch forward to pick her up. She was still attached to me but the cord was so much longer than I had imagined that I was able to pull her up to my chest. I didn’t care about getting blood on my nightshirt. I didn’t care about the blood all over the towels or about any of the other things I’d thought I would. All I cared about was my baby. The one I would soon be giving away.
Maybe it was seeing me holding her that released Mum from her stupor. Suddenly she got up and left the room, returning a few minutes later with her dressmaking scissors.
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘please don’t.’
‘It doesn’t hurt them,’ she replied. ‘And I’ve sterilised them in boiling water.’
It wasn’t that I was bothered about, though. It was the fact that once the cord had been cut, I couldn’t stop my baby being taken away from me. But before I could do anything, Mum took hold of the cord and cut it near to the baby. I waited for her to scream but she didn’t, so I screamed for her. I screamed for both of us.