Tortured: Abused and neglected by Britain’s most sadistic mum. This is my story of survival.

by Victoria Spry

  At last, it fell out, and I showed it to Mummy with an unfamiliar touch of pride, my blue eyes twinkling a little with delight. I loved the fairies so much; I was so excited.

  Mummy smiled – a narrow smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘Well, you can leave it under your pillow,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think your fairy’s very happy with you.’

  My heart sank. Of course, Mummy was right: I was a naughty girl, a liar, a thief, so disobedient I was punished every day. I had hoped that the fairies, being magical and so good themselves, not to mention so beloved to me, might see how very hard I was trying to be good and reward me, but Mummy’s words made perfect sense.

  That night, nonetheless, I put the small white tooth underneath my pillow, and hoped. Mummy let me sleep that night, and in the morning, when I woke, I lifted up my pillow with trepidation, and a shaky faith. Had the fairies come? Had they flown about me as I slept, their silken wings flapping over my face, making my blonde hair stir in the breeze? Had my love been returned?

  My breath caught in my throat. There, lying on the mattress, was a little blue card. I reached out and touched it, my fingertips searching over its surface for fairy dust. This came from the fairies, I thought, this is a special message just for me.

  I opened it up.

  We’ve taken your tooth, the fairies wrote.

  I glanced down at the mattress again. It was true! They had: the tooth had vanished, borne away by dozens of fairy wings, carrying their heavy load back to their woodland home.

  The note continued.

  We’ve taken your tooth, but you’re such a naughty girl, you’re not getting anything.

  My heart didn’t fall this time; I wasn’t even disappointed. Instead, I nodded to myself, sadly. I understood. So I tucked the little blue card back in its envelope and kept it safe, bound up with Katie and her blanket: my special things.

  The note was from the fairies, after all. It was still exciting, and magical, and I knew it wasn’t their fault they couldn’t leave me anything more: it was my fault.

  More than ever before, I knew I would have to try harder to be good.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I experienced another change at the age of six; another sign that I was growing up. We had gone round to my nan’s and I was enjoying being in her lovely-smelling home, as well as the chance to sit on her sofa, rather than the floor. Mummy always told me I didn’t deserve a chair to sit on, but Nan would let me clamber up onto the squishy couch without a murmur of disapproval.

  We even had a film on. We were watching The Sword in the Stone, and I was entranced by the antics of Merlin the wizard and the plucky heroism of young Arthur.

  A loud burp interrupted the animated proceedings on the screen. That was my uncle Phil, Mummy’s brother, who was sitting next to me on the sofa. He looked a little bit like her, but he had quite a big broad face, whereas hers was thin and drawn. He had bloodshot blue eyes and dark short hair and stubble that pricked his cheeks with a permanent shadow.

  ‘Come and have a cuddle, Torrie,’ he slurred at me.

  Uncle Phil was always slurring his words. Nan and Mummy didn’t talk about it, but I’d seen him drinking foul-smelling stuff constantly, stuff that smelled like the inside of my granddad’s hip flask, only worse. He himself smelled bad, too. Like Mummy, he rarely, if ever, showered or bathed, so every time he called me over for a cuddle, I’d have to brace myself for the stink of being near him, the stench of weeks-old BO and cheap alcohol.

  Obediently, my eyes still glued to the screen, I reluctantly shuffled over, responding to the adult command. Uncle Phil always wanted cuddles. Strangely, for a little girl so lacking in love and affection, they weren’t cuddles I enjoyed. There was something a little bit off about them; they didn’t seem genuine, somehow. Not like the cuddles from Nan and Granddad, where they would sweep me up carelessly in their arms and squeeze me tight.

  Uncle Phil cleared his throat, and I felt his stinky breath on my shoulder, hot and heavy and fast.

  ‘There’s a good girl,’ he said, as he put his arm around my shoulder and rubbed my skin with his big hands. Uncle Phil had the biggest hands I knew, with great thick fingers at the ends of them, meaty and wide. His hands were calloused and incredibly dry. It was like being rubbed with sandpaper as he ran his fingers up and down my skin. I tried to ignore him and concentrate instead on the special treat of the Disney film (I loved Disney films, but I only ever got the chance to watch them at my nan’s).

  Suddenly, I felt Uncle Phil lifting me up. Charlotte, her nose inches from the screen, the best seat in the house, didn’t move an inch as he scooped me up and carried me out of the room. I didn’t make a sound, either. I was a very quiet little girl. I had no confidence or courage to speak, and I certainly wouldn’t say a word to an adult, especially one who had Mummy’s ear.

  Uncle Phil took me into the bathroom in the bungalow. He set me down on the tiled floor and turned to lock the door. When he faced me again, he had a big bulge in his trousers. I looked up at him and he looked down at me, his breaths still coming thick and fast. I could see his chest heaving with them.

  Uncle Phil beckoned me over to him, and then he reached out and started rubbing me between my legs. Now I was confused. I knew this didn’t seem right, but I didn’t know what it was, or what was happening. I just didn’t get it.

  Uncle Phil put his hands inside my trousers, and groaned. He was trying to push his fingers up inside me. It wasn’t painful, as I remember, just humiliating and bewildering. What was he doing? It felt very strange.

  Suddenly, he released me to move his hand to his own trousers. He slid them down, along with his pants, and showed me his pink, dirty-looking willy, which was sticking straight out from his body and quivering.

  ‘Touch it,’ he said. He wasn’t slurring his words anymore. In fact, he looked more alert than I had ever seen him, his blue eyes burning with a weird intensity. ‘Touch it,’ he said again, more urgently.

  But before I did, he gave a cry and white stuff spurted out the end of it, and dropped stickily to the floor.

  Uncle Phil stood there for a moment, panting hard, and then he spoke to me again. ‘Mop it up,’ he said.

  Now that was an order I could understand. I went to the toilet and spooled out some loo roll, and scurried back with it to wipe up the gummy mess on the floor.

  ‘There’s a good girl,’ Uncle Phil said again, and he put away his willy and did up his trousers. And then we went back and watched the rest of The Sword in the Stone.

  After that, every time I saw him he would try to get me on my own to touch me or to wank his willy hard in front of me, my big blue eyes round and uncomprehending as he showed it off to me with evident pride. It was difficult for him because there were often people around. If he got me alone, he’d ask me to take my top off and then he would touch me, his big, dry hands on my white skin, smelly and unclean; the whiff of cider or whisky on his breath. But I didn’t really understand what was going on. I was lucky only in one sense: Uncle Phil wasn’t around much in our lives. He would dip in and out, like an evil cameo in the horror movie of my childhood; a bogeyman who was all too real.

  It was after these encounters with Uncle Phil, with those filthy fingers of his, that I longed to be able to have a good wash and clean the stink of him off me. But washing wasn’t something that happened very often at George Dowty Drive. Personal hygiene, for all my mother’s longing to be the best, didn’t rank highly among her list of priorities. While she believed herself to be spiritually clean, being physically clean clearly didn’t correlate for her. She would only have a bath about every three months, and I wasn’t ever allowed to have one, too.

  You’d think those rare baths would be welcome novelties – moments where my mother’s natural scent and bad BO was replaced by sweet-smelling perfumes and bath oils, or at least a smell of clean rather than dirt – but seeing the bath full of water obviously gave her an idea; she was, after all, endlessly inventive with her pun
ishments. And so, instead, bathtime became one of the most terrifying experiences of my entire childhood.

  I remember being stood on the landing, on that green carpet, hearing the bath fill up. And it was just the most awful thing: being stood there, hearing that water, ready for you. Just awful. I’d stand there crying, the tears rolling silently down my cheeks, knowing what was coming, and knowing there was nothing I could do to make it stop.

  I’d have to wait outside. When the bath was full, Mummy would call me in.

  ‘Take your clothes off,’ she’d say calmly, with almost a military tone, as though we were running through a drill and she was putting me through my paces. I’d slip out of whatever ragged clothes I was wearing and stand submissively beside her, the tears still falling, washing my face wet.

  That didn’t really matter, though, because it was about to get much, much wetter.

  Once I was nude, Mummy would seize me and force my head under the water. If she’d had a bath, it would be grimy with her scum and a bit warm. Much more often, though, she’d run the bath deliberately to drown me, and so then it would be cold. She’d hold me there, my face beneath the surface, her hand unrelentingly firm upon my head, her fingers tangled in my hair.

  In no time at all, my lungs would burn to breathe and my body would start kicking back, fighting to escape her unyielding grip. Of course, that was fighting back; that was being disobedient. My mother would hold me still, submerged in the water as my hands flailed and splashed with frantic strength. And eventually, too soon, always too soon, my mouth would automatically open with a desperate need for air and my throat would fill up with the bathwater. It would flood my mouth and gums and teeth and wash all the way down my airway, cutting off my breath until my brain felt as if it was going to explode. And just when I was on the point of blacking out, when my limbs had stopped thrashing and my body weakly slackened, giving up, giving up the fight, my mother would raise me up and throw me down on the bathroom floor as I gasped for air, my lungs on fire, the stale air of the bathroom the sweetest I had ever tasted.

  The whole thing took place in silence, apart from the splashes that might just as easily have been caused by any enthusiastic child having a bit too much fun in the water. That was why it was a perfect punishment for the suburban house on George Dowty Drive: no one can hear your screams when your face is buried in a bathtub.

  People always ask me: ‘What had you done?’ They want to believe there was some misdemeanour that set her off, some heinous act that provoked her to go to such extremes. Not to say that it was my fault, or that I deserved to be punished in that way, of course, but they want to plot the events, cause and effect: you did this, then she did that …

  But it could be anything, or nothing. I know that’s hard for people; they like to think something horrendous must have happened. It might have been that I’d not cleaned the animals out properly. Or I hadn’t cooked her tea exactly as she wanted it. Or I’d fallen asleep. Or I hadn’t played what Charlotte wanted to. Or I didn’t learn something quickly enough. It could have been any of those things – or just because I was there, and in the way.

  There is one particular bath that stands out from this time, though, from when I was six. It stands out because there was no drowning. Instead, my mother bathed us little girls in perfectly tepid water, not hot enough to scald, not cold enough to chill, and then dried us off and dressed us in flannel nightgowns that I’d never seen before. Mine was cream with Winnie the Pooh pictures on it. I remember standing on the landing, lined up with Charlotte as Mummy bade us both good night, and looking down in confusion at my cosy nightie, my body feeling so unlike mine: warm and clean inside a well-fitting garment.

  Yet there was a reason for Mummy’s sudden staging of the perfect childhood bedtime routine. For there was another little girl lined up with us on the landing that night. She had dark gypsy curls that tumbled down her back, green eyes that blazed with personality, and she was dressed in a matching nightgown to Charlotte and me.

  Mummy had found a new little soul to save.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The little girl’s name was Alloma. She first came into our lives as a temporary foster child. When her mummy went into hospital for an operation, and a foster parent was needed to look after her daughter, it was Eunice Spry who stepped into the breach. That first stay was short, and Eunice was on her best behaviour.

  But Mummy never forgot her new little charge. So when, a short time later, Alloma’s mummy was struck down with meningitis when she was five months’ pregnant with her third child, and she was once again taken into hospital, this time to intensive care, it must have seemed to Mummy like a gift from God.

  And to Alloma’s mother, Mummy herself seemed Heaven-sent. Here was a woman who already had four daughters under her wing, two of them fully grown and flying; a woman who was a trained nurse and a foster parent approved by social services; a woman who could sweep into her family’s life and through sheer force of personality make everything seem OK. Alloma’s granny had bumped into Judith at the supermarket shortly after the meningitis struck, just as things were starting to unravel; as Alloma’s daddy kept a bedside vigil and found childcare a challenge too far. Alloma’s granny wondered if Eunice was still fostering, and Judith said yes. And in no time at all, Mummy had bustled in and, in a private fostering arrangement this time, welcomed Alloma back to George Dowty Drive. Her little brother, Damon, went to a different foster family – for now.

  I remember Alloma arriving in our midst. She was only a year older than me, yet she wasn’t like any other little girl I had ever known before. She had a spark about her, and a confidence that came from having parents who loved her dearly; she was outspoken and high-spirited. I was too shy and quiet to speak to her much, but I watched her self-assured chatter with my blue eyes out on stalks, and I enjoyed having her around. Not least because – unbeknown to me – Eunice was on a charm offensive with Alloma’s parents, which meant that all three of us girls would be taken out on day trips. In addition, with more people coming and going in our lives, she had to be a bit more careful about where and when she hurt me, though the punishments didn’t stop.

  I can remember the three of us going swimming. I had bruises on my body, and my toenails were black from beating, but I was so excited to be allowed to go on the trip. Alloma and Charlotte ran off to play together; Mummy wanted Alloma to settle into her new home, and Charlotte was an unwitting player in making her feel comfortable and at ease. With both of them feeling entitled to the treats she was showering them with, they had a natural bond. I didn’t feel jealous of it. To be honest, outings like the swimming trip were so exceptional in my life that I wasn’t really with it. I just felt very confused.

  Alloma slept in Charlotte’s room, in the room with the Paddington Bear wallpaper and the bespoke bunk bed. And some of the happiest times in my childhood happened in those few months when Alloma first moved in. Mummy was still going over to the farm regularly to look after John Drake, whose health was in decline, and sometimes she would leave us at George Dowty while she drove the nine miles to visit him. Charlotte, Alloma and I would drag out Charlotte’s dressing-up box full of Mummy’s old clothes and put on ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina’, and we’d dress up in these funny outfits and dance around. Or we might go over to my nan’s house and watch Disney movies together. We all had our favourites. Mine was Beauty and the Beast – though I could never watch the scene of Gaston and the Beast fighting on the roof; it frightened me too much. I adored Belle, however, with her kind eyes and her good heart, and I guess the storyline appealed to me. If a wonderful princess like Belle could see the beauty inside the horrible Beast, maybe one day someone might just see a flash of beauty in such a horrible child as me.

  Alloma, in contrast, loved Jasmine from Aladdin, with her skimpy dress and her heavily made-up eyes. That was just one difference between us, but there were many. Alloma was seven, and she’d lived properly in society: gone to school, had a proper family li
fe. She was definitely what my mother termed ‘worldly’. It was strange for me, having her around, because I didn’t really know how to make friends. I just felt happy to have someone else in the house – and soon our little brood grew even bigger.

  Alloma’s mummy was still in hospital, and things had taken a turn for the worse. A lumbar puncture in her spine had gone wrong, and she required further long-term medical care in hospital, as well as facing the rest of her life in a wheelchair. I don’t know who it was that suggested Damon joined us at George Dowty Drive, but I can guess. At any rate, it wasn’t long before a happy-go-lucky three-year-old boy picked his way through the junk-ridden rooms of our house, and we gained a little brother.

  Damon was a boisterous boy. Like his sister, he had complete confidence. He was cheeky with it, and he was quite sweet. He too had inherited the family’s dark curls, and he and Alloma looked like two peas in a pod.

  With the two children firmly in her grasp, Mummy stepped up her campaign with their parents (Alloma would later say she groomed them). Mummy would suggest they weren’t capable; that she could give the kids a better life. She’d lie about the opportunities she could provide for them; she’d manipulate and charm and exploit. She played on their emotions – their guilt, their hope, their fear – and she kept her eye on the main prize: the unborn baby still growing inside Alloma’s mummy’s tummy. When Adam was born, in September 1992, he went straight into Mummy’s care. Such was the completeness with which she had manipulated her way into the family’s lives, she even saw him born.