‘We . . . we did.’ I forced the lie out and a tide of self-loathing engulfed me. Impossible to sink any further.
‘I never wanted children myself. But I’m glad I could give you what Hugh couldn’t.’
He walked over to stand beside me. His finger brushed my hair back from my face. I stepped back. ‘I . . .’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ His laugh, like swirls of acrid smoke, smothering me. ‘Don’t worry. You’re not exactly to my taste these days. I think you ought to let me consider this for the afternoon at least. It is a big undertaking.’
Hope surged within me. I studied him properly for the first time since I’d arrived and I swore I saw it rising to the surface, a scratch of light glimmering in the black of his eyes.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
The very next day he came back with an offer to be tested.
No one is good or evil, I thought, not even Curtis.
Curtis was a match for Gabriel. I knew he would be. There was something inevitable about an ending I both wanted and dreaded.
The day after we received the results, Curtis summoned me to his office. I had spent the morning with Gabriel, held his hand and saw his eyes flicker as if he was summoning the strength to push them open. If only love alone could help him.
I wore my best smile, my smartest suit, a touch of gloss on my lips. Whatever it takes, I told myself.
‘Take a seat, Linda,’ he said. I tried to read the answer on his face. ‘This is a lot to ask.’ He sat back in his chair, let his statement linger. Curtis knew all about timing, how to use it to create drama. ‘There would be huge risks on my part, as I’m sure you are aware. There is also the chance you could wait and a suitable donor would be found.’
He’s slipping away. Doesn’t have . . .
‘Time. It all comes down to timing, doesn’t it? I understand and, as you say, he is my son even if I’ve never set eyes on the boy.’ He inserted another silence to torment me. ‘But I am willing to do it – save the boy’s life.’
The relief rushed through me, exploded into hope. With this, Curtis fed me oxygen, let me fill my lungs, before he threatened to cut off the supply once more.
A letter. Pushed across the desk.
It was from me, Home Secretary Linda Moscow, to Chief Superintendent Bill Joplin. The same one Henry had shown me.
I would ask you to consider the sensible use of police resources in this matter. Would they be better directed at tackling the spike in violent crime we saw last year or engaging in a witch hunt that will only serve to embarrass the force?
Yours sincerely,
Linda Moscow
The Rt Honourable Linda Moscow MP
Home Secretary
My signature. All that was missing.
Curtis handed me a pen.
My boy, the softness of his skin, the smile on his face, eyes set ablaze when the sunlight caught them, I thought of this. Also, the tubes and monitors, bones jutting out from his skin, the grip of his hand on mine, holding on, not wanting to let go, but slipping all the same.
Could I?
Would I?
Live with myself.
Damned if I do.
And if I don’t. Damned too.
I signed the letter.
No one is good or bad.
We are all of us capable of both.
1996–2013
Charlie
I stayed in London for two years after Bex left until one day, I finally cracked. The moment came as I was ladling chilli con carne on to a jacket potato at Stratos’. Outside, the sun danced on the street, but all I saw were the dirty marks on the glass, handprints that hadn’t been wiped clean, the scuffed paintwork, the sign on the window with a missing S and T, so it read R ATOS CAFÉ. I served the woman her potato and said, no, thank you, when she forgot her manners, and then I removed my apron. I told Stratos I was sick.
‘You look fine to me,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘God’s honest truth.’
I had waited long enough for Bex. I couldn’t wait any longer.
I cobbled together something that vaguely resembled a CV. I fancied somewhere exotic. Bex and I had come to London for opportunity and riches and the city had trampled on us, brushed us to its margins. It welcomed people from all over the world into its restaurants, theatres, designer shops but it wouldn’t even give us a seat on the Tube, never mind a big break. No money, no prospects, no entry. We were on the outside looking in.
I got ahead of myself, imagined a job in the Bahamas or Europe at the very least, a Greek island, the Balearics. But it seemed Greece and Spain had enough waitresses of their own. The only job I was offered was in Loch Lomond.
The Murray was a four-star hotel on the banks of the loch, owned by the Murray family for four generations. It had a spa and a swimming pool and a laconium (me neither; it’s a dry sweat room). I worked nightshift on reception, having majored on the customer services area of expertise during my telephone interview. After a few months, Mhairi, one of the daytime receptionists, said that with a little attention I’d be a shoo-in for the daytime role: ‘Carys is leaving – not that anyone’d notice the difference, lazy cow that she is.’ We were in her room sharing a bottle of cheap wine. I caught her staring at me.
‘What?’
‘When was the last time you had your hair cut? Auch, don’t look at me like that. I’m only this upfront with people I like.’
‘I’m honoured.’
‘A month, six, a year maybe?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Aye, that’d make sense. And the eyebrows?’
‘What about my eyebrows?’
‘When was the last time you had them plucked? C’mon, don’t tell me you haven’t, like, ever?’
I ran a finger over my brow.
‘Fuck me, tweezers are your friend, Charlie. Did you not know that?’ She marched to the bathroom, returned wielding a pair. ‘I’m not going to lie, it’ll hurt like a bastard first time.’ She topped up my wine. ‘Have another drink and we’ll get started.’
Halfway through the second bottle Mhairi told me she was a hairdresser too, although she wouldn’t be drawn on the specifics of her employment (here and there). ‘Honest to God, I can work magic on your hair. You won’t recognise yourself.’
The fake-tan application at midnight wasn’t my wisest move, but Mhairi insisted, ‘You’re too peely-wally’ (pale and sickly). But she was right about two things: I didn’t recognise myself in the morning and I got the job.
Unlike London, Loch Lomond greeted me with a smile every morning. In the summer, I’d rise early and go for a run along the banks of the loch, sit with a coffee afterwards and marvel at how the light painted the sky with a different palette each day. I dragged Mhairi up hills with picnics (‘Yer fucking joking me, aren’t ye?’) and pressed my fingertips against the clouds. I watched sunsets spill on to the water, set it on fire. The vastness of the space, its rugged beauty soaked through me, rinsing me clean of London’s smog and grime.
Mhairi, who subsequently admitted to having no hairdressing experience whatsoever, had a baby a few years after I arrived. A daughter, Iona, who became my godchild. ‘You have to say yes, all my other friends are headbangers.’ The baby’s father was an Australian barman called Lachlan, who was only supposed to be staying for the summer. They were still together when I left years later.
I worked hard, saved money. I was promoted to deputy manager, then manager. ‘And to think you had a face like a smacked arse when you came here,’ Mhairi said when I told her. ‘It was the eyebrows that did it, I’m telling you.’
I didn’t live like a nun exactly, but I was careful not to make any lasting connections. The closest I came was with a Spanish guy called Jorge who arrived in the summer of 2006 t
o run a youth hostel. He taught me some basic Spanish – ‘Me llamo Charlie’ – and I showed him the best walks. We had sex halfway up a Munro in the rain. ‘If we wait till it stops, it doesn’t happen,’ Jorge said in broken English.
Jorge wanted more intimacy. ‘Tell me about yourself. You are a mystery, Charlie.’ I couldn’t work out the exchange, what he was supposed to give me and I was supposed to give him. Mainly, I think, he wanted to make me come. And when he started on the performance analytics – ‘Eez this good? You like dis?’ – I conceded defeat and faked it. I’d always been a good faker.
Eventually, Jorge moved on. His mum was ill, he needed to go back to Spain, would I come with him? (No.) I think he was relieved. A mystery loses its appeal if it can’t be solved.
Still, I was happy. I had my job, my friends, my gorgeous goddaughter. I couldn’t imagine leaving Loch Lomond – until the news came, twelve years after I arrived, that brought my old life crashing into my new one.
Bex.
A body had been found in a flat in Brighton, having lain there undiscovered for a few days. A search of her bedroom revealed a passport. Did I know a Rebecca Alderly, they asked. She had put me down as her emergency contact.
I don’t know why that choked me so much. That after all those years she still cared enough to write my name on an application form, that I was as close as she ever got to having a family.
I arranged a few days off work, packed a bag and caught the train to Brighton the following morning. Hours passed as I scored through the miles that had separated us, thoughts of Bex cramming my mind. I arrived to the smell of the sea and the gulls squawking and swooping, and a line of blue where the sky met the ocean at the bottom of the road. Then I took a taxi straight to the hospital where I finally found her.
Afterwards, the police told me she was known to them, an addict, a sometime streetworker, one of those women who don’t count. I took all this information about her life, bagged it up and cast it out to sea. This wasn’t Bex. It was simply what life had done to her. Once she had had a bright future, fierce ambition crammed into that tiny frame of hers, and they’d taken it and stamped on it and destroyed her. And despite what she’d said all those years ago in Hyde Park, the insults she’d screamed at me, I knew she had wanted to be heard just as much as I had. Bex needed to know that we counted, that our experience mattered. It was the rejection she couldn’t take. The same rejection she faced every day and month and year that passed with no investigation, no arrests, no trial, no justice, no voice.
There were six people at her funeral. Me, the priest and a few assorted friends who had shared late chaotic hours with her. She was thirty-one years old. Not even a friend for every year.
The priest said dying so young was a terrible shame and that God would look after her now. Ironic, because he hadn’t given a shit about her when she was alive. Which got me thinking, why had I chosen a church in the first place? We’d stopped going as soon as we left Kelmore. And now here we were, sending Bex off listening to the drone of the priest’s voice surrounded by the Virgin Mary, Jesus on the cross, the candles, the statues, the gold, sitting on wooden pews as hard and unforgiving as life itself. Why did we need to ask to be absolved of our sins?
We had done nothing wrong.
They didn’t play a final hymn. Instead I had asked for ‘Fame’ (I’m gonna live forever, I’m gonna learn how to fly). The priest had protested, it wasn’t very appropriate, but I was glad I had insisted.
It was the only thing I got right.
Outside, the day took me by surprise. Spring had snuck up. The blue sky dazzled, a gentle warmth loaded the air and scented it with grass and tulips and new life. I found a bench to rest on and watched as a bird, a tiny fragile little thing, landed in front of me before lifting off on a gust of wind. The afternoon was glorious, blissful, and yet its beauty tainted; every colour and smell and sound, the sharpness and clarity of the picture laid out in front of my eyes, made me ache for my friend. This was all out of Bex’s reach now. No second chances, no dreams, nothing. I sank down to the ground, not caring who saw me, what they thought, and I cried ugly tears of rage.
I returned to Loch Lomond, but the moment I stepped out of the taxi I knew I couldn’t do it any more. Couldn’t find happiness in pretending it was all OK, in faking a life. My anger had a burn to it, an acid taste. All the strength I thought I’d built up crumbled in front of my eyes. My fury seeped into the loch, created a bottomless sea of black, dulled the sky, blunted the hills.
‘Fucking hell,’ Mhairi said when she saw me. ‘You look like utter shite!’ I would have laughed if I could. Instead I fell into her and cried and cried like a baby while she drew the truth out of me, line by line, until there was nothing left to say.
Mhairi found me Agnes, a therapist, because, she said, ‘This kind of shit needs professional help and I might be a convincing hairdresser but I’m no shrink.’
I went to visit Agnes once a week. A woman with a kind face and blonde hair that sprung out in curls and bounced with her when she walked.
‘We’re going to give this a name,’ she said during my first session. ‘It is rape. Abuse, yes, that too, but the bottom line is, this is rape. Rape is never OK, under any circumstances. Remember that. Always remember that.’
Mainly, Agnes would listen but she wasn’t averse to making suggestions.
‘You do whatever you have to do to make this better. You take control. If you think no one is prepared to write your story or print it, then why not do it yourself?’
By evening, her words had taken seed and flowered.
I started writing a blog.
If you’ve found this site, there’s probably a reason. One you haven’t told many people, or anyone. A secret that is grafted to your skin, become who you are. My own secrets have a pulse that beats through me day and night, runs at a different tempo, against my tide. They beat me down when I want to stand up, silence me when I want to scream.
Firstly, I should say I’m not here to give you comfort. This is about me and my story and finding a place to write it down because, when I speak, no one listens. I could reel off a list of people I’ve talked to: teachers, the police, a reporter who promised to out the truth. You didn’t read that story, did you? Neither did I. It wasn’t printed. There was a reason he had to drop it, but he never did explain what that reason was.
It’s hard not to be heard, but the toughest part is being heard and not believed.
So here I am.
I don’t know where this is going to take me or where it will end.
The chances are a few people will read it. People like me, searching for the pieces of themselves that were stolen years ago.
This isn’t about justice either. I believe in justice in the same way I do Santa Claus. Justice is for the rich and successful, the people who did this to me. The faces you might recognise from television, public life, voices that bring back memories from your childhood. Some old, some younger. They’re good people, they’d tell you. They smile and raise money for charitable causes. But most of all they are untouchable people. I might describe them or give their initials but I won’t name them. I can’t afford to be taken to court, to fight the power of their money. Their words are mine to the power of ten.
I called it www.whathappenedatkelmore.com.
After my first blog, I posted another three in as many days. It was a small step, but the process of organising my thoughts into a story and making sense of the jumble of emotions was helpful. I’m not going to say it was cathartic. It wasn’t. You can’t scrub your mind clean with a few pages of writing. It was more of a housekeeping exercise, tidying up and labelling my emotions to clear some head space.
At the end of the week I logged on to find my first comment.
Thank you so much for writing this. I too was abused and my abusers were never brought to justice
. I was at a care home not far from Kelmore and the set-up you describe is very similar. How can people get away with this?
The following week another appeared:
I was at Kelmore four years before you. I think the teachers knew, at least some of them did. That’s the worst thing. I think they knew what they were sending us out to do.
This was strange and new and something else that I couldn’t put my finger on. There were others? Of course there were. It was blindingly obvious when I thought about it. The other girls at the parties. Boys, too, on occasions. But the cruel genius of abuse made me think Bex and I were the only ones with our dirty secrets. Safer that way. For them, not us.
With the exception of the police and the interview with the reporter, this had always been an internal conversation. Bex and I never spoke about it. Why would we? In our own clumsy way, we were trying to move on, thought we could leave it behind and re-form ourselves. What we didn’t know was that it was as much a part of us as a leg or an arm. It was attached to our bodies, had taken seed within us. What had been done could never be undone.
When the comments on my blog began to multiply, and slowly those first few echoes grew into a chatter which turned into a chorus, I knew something was happening. It came one day, a year or so in, when I looked through the comments and saw a sea of people just like me. My secret had made me an outsider, cut me off. Now I had found my tribe.
Inevitably, with the power of a crowd behind us, the subject of justice came up. Was it enough to share our experiences and support each other? For some it was. But what if it was still happening, others asked. Wasn’t it time these men paid for their crimes? I knew what I wanted; I wouldn’t rest until these men were unmasked. It was then I made my decision to leave Loch Lomond and move back to London, for the very same reason I had left.
The city had beaten me, but this time, with the wind behind me, I would win.
Six months later, I was settled in London and exploring ways of getting our case wider coverage, when one particular email landed in my inbox.
An Act of Silence Page 19