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

by Victoria Spry

  And because Mother liked to keep us on our toes, sometimes she would believe one of us at moments like these, to the detriment of the others. Keeping us divided, that was what it was all about. It was Alloma’s turn to be in her good books, so she chose to believe her and she let her run off. My brother and I were not so lucky.

  ‘Get upstairs, filthy thieves!’ she screamed.

  We ran to obey her as she pushed us up the half-renovated stairs, hitting us as we went. We were thrown into one of the bedrooms, a room with bare wooden floorboards. There was barely anything in it, only an empty, white metal bedframe and a huge Victorian wardrobe with great big handles. Like most of the house, the room was falling apart; copper pipes showing through the plaster on the walls. Its sash windows rattled when the wind gusted outside, which sent a cold breeze blowing icily all through the room.

  She flung us in and stripped our clothes off. We both stood there, naked, shivering in the wind. Then she began kicking us round the floor. She kicked me over and over, right in my face, until my lips were hugely swollen and dripping blood. Blood was pouring from my ears, too, and from my nose. I put my hands up to try to protect myself, wrapping my arms around my head as her feet pounded my skull, but of course she pulled them down and kicked me even harder.

  When she’d had enough of kicking us, she ordered us into separate corners of the room. Christopher went in the corner on the right, while I was in the corner on the left, near the wardrobe. For a moment she disappeared, and when she returned she was carrying something. She marched over to me and roughly tied a scarf around my eyes, so my world went black. It was a blue scarf, and it stank of rats – I think it came from the barn. She blindfolded Christopher, too.

  ‘You’re on starvation, and I’m locking you in here,’ she informed us coldly. ‘If you put a rotten piece of fruit in a fruit bowl, it turns the rest rotten. You’re rotten, the pair of you. You need to be kept away from everyone else.’

  And with that, she slammed the door behind her, and we heard the clank of the heavy Victorian key as it turned in the lock, and then the scraping sound as she took it out. We heard her footsteps walking away, leaving us there.

  I sat naked on the hard floorboards, the blood dripping from my face. I listened out for Christopher – but I couldn’t hear a thing. Like me, he was accepting of our fate.

  We were too far gone to cry.

  My tongue felt like sandpaper in my mouth. I was so thirsty. My mouth was dry, and it hurt to swallow.

  I didn’t know how long we’d been in the room – time had taken on a strange quality as we sat quietly in the dark, our blindfolds so effective that we couldn’t even tell if it was day or night. From time to time, Mummy would come in with a tiny cup of water for us; her visits were very regimented, and she’d say: ‘This is all you’re having.’

  Sometimes, when we thought Mother wasn’t around or likely to come in, Christopher and I would sneak out of our corners and try to comfort each other. We’d crawl into the middle of the room and find each other with fumbling fingers stretched out before us, like some kind of cruel game of pin the tail on the donkey. We’d try to have a cuddle, more for warmth than love. We were so cold. The wind would gust through the room and our naked bodies would shudder – but huddling together, like penguins in Antarctica, seemed to ward it off a little. One of us would sit with their back to the other and we’d wrap our arms around each other. We used to argue about who would have their back exposed.

  Mother only really came in to give us the water, just enough to keep us alive, but occasionally she would pop in to tell us things, like she was taking our sisters to see Carmen. Just so we’d know what we were missing. She loved her mind games – and one of these was to leave the big Victorian key in the door from time to time, and the door unlocked. We’d have to weigh up whether or not we could sneak out for some food, or whether it was a trap.

  One day, we decided to risk it. Christopher and I slipped off our blindfolds and crept out of the room and downstairs. No one was around – they might have been out in the grounds, or at the supermarket, or even at George Dowty. We had no clue, but our food raid had a green light.

  Down the stairs we went, our bare feet scampering on the floorboards. We passed by the best lounge, where the Beauty and the Beast party was still set up, the over-the-top decorations at odds with the chaos in the rest of the house – and we paused. In we went, drawn by the glitter and the princess theme. I shuddered as I stepped over the threshold, though, because this was the room John Drake had died in, and that freaked me out. I hated the idea of death and dead bodies. Perhaps I’d come too close to being one myself, or maybe it’s just an ordinary fear.

  There, laid out on the table still, was the perfect princess castle cake. Christopher and I shared a look. Perhaps we were devil children after all, or maybe he was just perched on our naked shoulders that day, whispering in our bloody ears, because, with a greedy glint in our eyes, we snuck up to the table, and seized one of the tiers to carry upstairs. We might even have giggled a bit in glee: this really was getting one over on Mother.

  Back up to the room we went, where we devoured the piece we’d stolen. We were starving hungry – we hadn’t eaten in days – and our hands were like paws as we crammed the moist cake into our mouths, our taste buds in jubilation at the sweet thickness of the icing and the almond goodness of the marzipan. We devoured that cake, chunks of it dropping onto the floor as we ate, getting crumbs in our hair and on our cheeks as we munched it as fast as we could, conscious Mummy might come home at any moment. Together, we ate as much as our tummies would allow, and then I hid the rest under the floorboards, saving it for later, for a time when she hadn’t left the keys in the door and we couldn’t sneak out to scavenge.

  Perhaps the starvation, and the isolation, had driven us mad. Perhaps the gnawing hunger was just so intense we didn’t think. I have no clue what we thought was going to happen; how we thought we were going to get away with having destroyed the perfect castle cake. Of course it wasn’t long before Mummy came home, and she was straight up those stairs and into our prison.

  ‘Did you take the cake?’ she roared. She was so angry, that cake had been her pride and joy.

  As we always did, deceitful children that we were, we lied. ‘No, Mother,’ we said, eyes down on the floorboards. But it was obvious we were lying this time: we had fruit cake stuck in our teeth, for goodness’ sake; our guilt was as plain as day.

  ‘Out!’ Mother commanded. She took us out of the farmhouse and into one of the freezing outbuildings. Since Charlotte had inherited the farm she had so many places to beat us; really, she was spoiled for choice. In the outbuilding she beat us and beat us and beat us, until we begged her to stop – but our torment wasn’t over yet. Mummy’s endlessly inventive mind had devised the perfect punishment for the thieving, lying, greedy little pigs we were.

  She sent us into a garage and told us to wait. We did so obediently, bodies bloody and bruised, snot and tears running down our faces, simply from the pain. We waited in the dark for her to return.

  When she did, to our surprise she was carrying the rest of the enormous cake. She placed it before us, almost ceremonially.

  ‘You want to eat it, do you?’ she said, as sweetly as the yellow marzipan that curled on the plate. ‘Well, you eat it. You eat it all.’

  Christopher and I had already eaten almost a whole tier of this gigantic cake. We were stuffed full; our bellies, shrunk from starvation, smaller than most children’s. But no child could have eaten the monstrosity before us; no adult, either. We looked up at Mother, aghast, certain she didn’t mean it.

  But she did. ‘Eat,’ she said, her eyes narrow slits as she stared back at us.

  We had no choice and so we reached out our hands and began to feed ourselves the cake, the cloying sweetness that had seemed such a joy only a short time before now nauseating. I pushed fat ropes of marzipan into my mouth, forcing my teeth to chew and my throat to swallow. In went the thick w
hite icing, inches deep, sticking to my tongue as I tried to eat it. She gave us no water. There was just endless cake.

  It didn’t take long before it became too much for us. Our bellies ached to the brim and our noses twitched at the sickly sweet smell of the huge cake. It seemed to overwhelm our senses: the touch of it in our sticky hands, the sickening taste of it in our mouths, the sight of so much more cake still to go, the sound of our mouths as they masticated reflexively on the cake that never seemed to get any smaller.

  Inevitably, we threw up. We were crying and retching and vomiting, and the vomit was pure cake: icing sugar and marzipan and red cherries and black currants mixed in with our stomach acid. She made us eat, eat, eat, and she told us proudly, ‘You may win the battle, but I will always win the war.’ That still haunts me to this day: ‘Whatever you do, I will find out, and I will get you. You may win the battle, but I will win the war.’

  We ate and ate and ate: the cake, and the vomit, and the vomit, and the cake. We were locked in the garage all night, and the next day she made us keep going. We had to eat that cake day after day after day. Day after day after day, until it was all gone, and we were properly cowed.

  Then she threw us back in the room.

  ‘Three months’ starvation,’ she ordered.

  And the door slammed shut.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I was shivering hard, and my arms ached. They were pulled taut behind me – Mummy had tied me with a belt to the copper pipes in the wall. I guess she didn’t trust us not to get out again. I couldn’t see anything, for the blue scarf was once again wrapped painfully tight around my eyes. Every time I shifted my weight in my black world, my body protested, pain shooting through me from yet another beating. I could feel dried blood stuck to my face, trickles that had run from my nose and my ears, and eventually stopped. My blindness meant I couldn’t see my body, or the changes it had gone through, but I could feel them. I was now just skin and bone. The knobby bone in my bare bum was really, really sore from sitting for weeks on the hard floorboards. I tried to get up onto my knees, just for something different, but the bones in them protested, too.

  My mouth was so dry. It had been hours since Mummy had last come in with water, and I now had a pressing sensation in my bladder.

  Of course, Mummy wouldn’t let us out to pee. Chained against the wall, I had no choice but to wee in my corner, right onto the floorboards where I was sitting, like an animal.

  The stench of ammonia filled my nose. I knew Christopher, chained up across the room from me, would be able to smell it. I could smell it when he’d had to go. Mummy had left us nothing to go in, so we had to do it on the floor.

  Understandably, Mummy was disgusted when she came in and the reek of it hit her, the damp stains showing her exactly what I’d done.

  ‘Revolting child!’ she hissed at me. She grabbed my bony shoulder and forced my face to the floor, right into the wet patch. ‘Lap it up.’

  I stuck out my dry tongue and pressed it to the wooden boards. The taste of it made me want to vomit, but there was nothing in my tummy to throw up. The only benefit of the starvation was that it meant we didn’t have to poo. She’d have shoved our faces in that too if we had.

  But I wasn’t lapping fast enough, or something. I felt her fist seize me by the hair and my face smashed into the floor, right into the wee. She rubbed my face in it. I could barely breathe; the stink of the ammonia went straight up my nose. Eventually, after what seemed like a long while, she threw me back down on the floor, my arms twisting awkwardly as the belt held them tight behind me. I could feel my wet fringe on my face, damp with wee, dirty and smelly.

  ‘Nanny’s come round,’ she told us. ‘It’s Sunday. She’s made us all a Sunday roast.’

  My stomach lurched with hunger.

  I heard my mother leave the room, and the disappointment settled on my shoulders, a heavy cloak upon my nakedness. But then I heard her footsteps returning, and as she came through the door, an incredible smell came with her. My stomach lurched again and my dry mouth was suddenly slick with saliva. I could smell my nanny’s roast dinner. Oh my, oh my! Mummy had brought us up a dinner. All my senses were suddenly alive.

  I felt her fingers loosening the blindfold. Light spilled in, and I squinted against the sudden glare. And there, set down upon the floorboards, were two plates of the most exquisite food I’d ever seen. My nanny made a mean roast dinner, and she had gone to town on this Sunday. There was the meat – chicken, my favourite – swimming in gravy. Roast potatoes, golden yellow and crisped at the edges, just the way I liked them. Green peas, bright and beautiful, were nestling amidst the rest of the dinner and coated in meaty juices from the gravy. Fragrant steam rose from the plates: the piping hot food would help both our hunger and our frozen bodies. Mummy loosened the belt and my arms fell numbly to my sides. I wiggled them, getting the feeling back into them, excited I was going to use them to eat this delicious meal. I loved my nanny’s roast dinners. My sunken eyes were out on stalks, drinking in every item of food on the plate, anticipating each mouthful to come.

  Mummy stood in the doorway, and she turned to look at us both, crouched down on the dirty floor, physically leaning towards the plates; hunger writ clear on our faces.

  ‘I’ve counted up every single pea on that plate,’ she told us, in a low voice, ‘and if you touch so much as one of them, or any of it, I will beat you to a pulp.’

  Calmly, she turned away and shut the door gently. The key turned in the lock. She headed back downstairs, where presumably she told Nan that we’d been sent to our bedroom for misbehaving, and would have to eat in our room. She brought the food up so Nan would think we were being fed – and then she used it to make us suffer.

  We had to sit and watch the food until she came back up. Watch as the gravy congealed on the plate, a skin forming on its surface. Watch as the hot steam gradually subsided, and the food became stone cold. Watch with our stomachs hurting so bad, yearning for the forbidden dinner. But we were so weak now, Christopher and me, that we obeyed our mother, and we didn’t touch a single pea, just as she had said.

  The punishment continued. As time went on, there came another day when the keys were left in the door, and the skeletal children in the bedroom came out to play. We’d been in there for so long that Mummy had to give us some food now and again. She would bring three crusts of bread for the two of us; that was all we had to eat. So, when the opportunity to scavenge was laid out before us, I knew I had to take advantage of it.

  I crawled to the door, feeling blessed not to be tied up, not thinking maybe that had happened for a reason. My little hand reached up and turned the knob, and the door swung open.

  Alloma was standing outside the door. We nodded at each other, but we didn’t say anything. I went downstairs, walking stiffly on my cold, bony legs, and I stole some cornflakes from the kitchen. I took them back upstairs, and Christopher and I shared them out and hungrily ate the dry flakes, before hiding the rest under the floorboards. And we thought we’d got away with it.

  What we didn’t know was that Mummy had made a deal with Alloma. ‘You watch them,’ she had said, ‘and if they come out for food, you tell me, and you’ll have a meal tonight.’

  When I’d seen Alloma outside the room, I didn’t know. She didn’t say anything to us. Sometimes we’d all be united and other times not, so it was always hard to know if we could trust each other. I don’t blame her; I’d probably have done the same in her shoes. We all did the same when we were in the good books, trying desperately to keep Mummy on side, and food in our own tummies. We all knew what it felt like to starve, and the human survival instinct is a strong one.

  When Mother came home, Alloma told her all about the cornflakes, and Mummy came and washed our mouths out with a bottle of bleach. Bleach was so much worse than washing-up liquid. I couldn’t breathe as she forced it down my throat: my whole head felt as if it was on fire, even the inside of my nostrils burned, my nose and eyes running as I
choked on the caustic flow being poured down my searing throat. It burned all the way down: lips, gums, tongue, throat, gullet, stomach. It was so scary. I was sick for days on end, chronic stomach pains doubling me over with pain, as I lay naked on the hard, wooden floorboards, spasms wracking my body. She did the same to Christopher, but to be honest my own pain was so intense I don’t have a clear memory of him then. My brain was set on fire by the bleach and it burned out everything else.

  Still, the punishment continued. In time, my brother left our little prison. I don’t know why he left first. Perhaps Mother thought I should have been more responsible, as the older sibling, and shouldn’t have let him steal the cake. Perhaps Christopher was weaker than me, being younger, and she was worried she’d pushed him too far. Perhaps she just hated me more than all the others, the devil child who had turned her bad, who never, ever learned her lesson, whom she’d tormented since I was ten months old.

  It was even lonelier in the room after Christopher left. I was lonely, and bored, and cold. Most of all cold. I’d sit on my bony bottom and shiver non-stop, my arms tied behind my back, fixed to the copper pipes, and my eyes blinded with the blue scarf. I was very, very quiet; I had no energy to do anything else. Starving hungry, dry-mouthed, I sat in my dark, wintry world, and still the days passed by.

  One afternoon, I heard the key turn in the lock. I braced myself: I’d weed on the floor, in this pit of a prison, and I was worried Mummy was going to make me lap it up again.

  But it wasn’t Mummy who turned the handle and walked into the stinking room. There was a beat, a shocked beat, and then I heard: ‘Torrie, are you OK?’

  It wasn’t a voice I knew. Yet it was unfamiliar for another reason, too. It was a kind voice, a voice so caring I could almost see the care in it, as it reached me through the dark, through my tight blue blindfold.

  It was Becky: the prodigal daughter had returned.