Automatically my mind flashed back to Mum, her sewing scissors snipping in her hand as she said, ‘You’ve got no figure, Victoria. You’re not going to be very pretty at all when you grow up. You’ll never be able to wear nice clothes like Charlotte. You’ll never be a proper woman.’
Well, well, well, I thought, staring in shock at my reflection, Mother was wrong.
I could see my scars in the mirror, too. They were unmissable, really; I had so many of them. Silvery lines criss-crossing my skin: my ravaged belly and my ravaged feet, and all the other places Mum had hit me. I used to be ashamed of my scars; I would think I was a waste of space and that they meant I didn’t belong anywhere. But, looking at them now, I just thought, They’re a part of me. In a way, while I may not have had any exam grades or letters after my name, those scars were my qualifications.
When the doctors talk about them in the future, I thought, from now on I will say, with my tongue placed firmly in my cheek, ‘Can you not diss my scars? I worked hard for them, you know.’
Sadly, the operation wasn’t a success. By which I mean, it quickly became clear that I was in excruciating pain most of the time, couldn’t eat properly and literally had to pull stools out of my body with my hands. They upped the dosage of morphine to try to help me cope – though, ironically, I found out later that high doses of morphine can actually make the reversal op more likely to fail.
It was evident that that silver-scarred young woman’s body I’d seen in the mirror wasn’t mine to keep. The surgeons were going to have to reverse the operation again, and bring back Colin. My body had been through too much trauma to do it straight away, though, so it was decided the reversal would happen the following spring.
My heart sank at the thought of another lonely hospital stay, with not one visitor to lift my spirits.
Little did I know that I was about to meet someone who would change all that … forever.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
It was a crisp, cool autumnal day, and the brisk wind was whipping pink roses into my cheeks. Pink roses – just like the ones I’d placed on Charlotte’s grave a few weeks before. Every year I still went to pay tribute to her and Judith on the anniversary of their deaths. Having never attended their funerals, I felt like I was still saying my goodbyes.
I was out for a dog walk in the fields behind my house, Ollie and Milly and Alfie running in exuberant circles around me, their tails wagging ferociously. One of the nice things about having a dog is that there’s a community around it, and I was strolling with a fellow dog-walker when a tall, tanned man lolloped up to us. He was wearing a green woolly hoodie and I noticed he had very gentle eyes.
‘This is my son, Ant,’ said the man I was walking with.
‘Hello,’ I said, my eyes barely meeting the stranger’s.
‘Hello,’ he muttered back, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the dogs.
Because the dogs were my family, I always watched very closely to see how people responded to them – and vice versa. I was a bit like, ‘If you don’t like my dogs, then I don’t like you.’ Ant loved the dogs. He was more interested in them than he was in me, I think – at least at first. Milly came up to his outstretched hand and within a few moments she’d rolled onto her back so he could tickle her tummy, his large palms smoothing down her fur. You little floozy, Milly, I thought. But it made me smile.
Ant was very shy, like me. He was also older than me, about twenty-seven, with big broad shoulders, which tapered down to two huge hands. Those gentle eyes of his were set in a clean-shaven face, topped by thick dark hair, and I thought he was very handsome.
After that first walk, we arranged to go out with the dogs again, just the two of us. His family had a spaniel at the time called Jack. We’d meet up to take the dogs out and we’d go round the fields, chatting about this and that. Ant was a very calm person to be around. He didn’t work – hadn’t, for a long time, and I think it had become too easy not to, especially as he lived at home with his parents so he didn’t have to pay rent – so he had a lot of spare time to spend with me. As we got to know each other better, we talked quite deeply about things, and I liked him for that. We’d meet up maybe once a week at first, then every day. He’d walk me back to mine afterwards, but I wouldn’t let him in the house. I liked him, but I didn’t trust him; I was a very guarded person.
One afternoon, however, when he’d walked me back to my door as usual, he hesitated on the doorstep and then said carefully, ‘Please don’t worry. If you let me in, I’m not going to do anything untoward.’ After that, he would come in for a cup of tea and a slice of cake after our walk, while the dogs lay at our feet, hoping for a stray crumb to fall to the floor.
I was very proud of my house; I kept it clean and tidy, and I found it was a pleasure to have somebody there to share it with. And I enjoyed our conversations more and more. In time, we became very close friends. I remember the first time he hugged me: he was so tall and broad-shouldered that when he wrapped his arms around me, I felt like I disappeared, and I loved that feeling. I used to call him my ‘gentle giant’, and I adored the feel of his big hands as he stroked my back or my hair. He had caring hands – nothing like Uncle Phil’s.
One time, Ant left his jumper behind after our cup of tea. I remember picking it up and smelling it; his scent was so reassuring. After that, I’d sleep with his sweater every night, spread out across my pillow so I could drift off to sleep with my senses surrounded by him.
Once we’d known each other for a while, I told him what Mum had done to me. He was angry, heartbroken; distraught. I found that difficult, because I felt guilty for upsetting him. Whenever anybody got close to me, I felt like my secret was this big bomb about to go off; that I was about to ruin a life. It was as if I represented to people the cruellest acts that humans can do to each other, and often they would go away and leave me because they couldn’t cope with that.
But Ant didn’t leave.
I told him about Uncle Phil, too. I was conscious that our relationship wasn’t very physical, and I was very nervous about all that because of what Phil had done to me. I said to Ant, ‘If you care about me, you’re just going to have to wait, I’m afraid.’ I was quite respectful of myself in that way.
Yet Ant respected me, too. He waited, with not a whisper of pressure or dismay.
I could see his love for me. I could see it in the way he would defend me in any family tiffs, in the way he would give me lots and lots of cuddles, in his open-mindedness and in his kind, caring nature. He was the best friend I’d ever had.
I spent Christmas 2009 at his parents’ house. His mum, Maria, was Italian and she kindly invited me into their home to spend it with them. It was lovely, though I felt a little as if two worlds were colliding. I found it hard to relate to them and they to me: that difference in my childhood ‘normality’ leaves a mark in so many ways. Nevertheless, not long after, Ant moved in with me. And he was just in time for a very special occasion: Milly and Alfie were about to have pups.
I was so proud of my girl. She had eleven puppies in total, all chocolate-coloured except for one black pup. Alfie was a doting father, but it was Milly who transformed herself. Overnight, this dizzy, scrumptious girl of mine turned into a fierce mummy, defending her pups if you picked them up, her eyes out on stalks, watching you. Ant and I saw all the babies being born, and it was an exceptional experience. We were both besotted with them.
Two days later, I went into hospital for my stoma operation. I felt for Ant about that. The nurse came out to talk to him about it beforehand and it could have been so embarrassing, but he took it all in his stride. It wasn’t even a big issue for him when he saw the bag for the first time. What really upset him was the rest of me: they’d had to open me all the way up again, and I had big staples all across my stomach; I was black and blue with orange iodine everywhere. Not quite the look I was going for.
He came to visit me every day in hospital, with such a smile on his face. He’d tell me all about
the puppies, how they were starting to open their eyes, and he looked so happy. Even in my doped-up state, riding the wave of morphine, trying to keep the sickness it caused at bay, I could see how thrilled he was. I couldn’t wait to get home to them all – and, when I did, it was one of the best times of my life, one of the happiest times in our relationship. Ant and me caring for the puppies: those energetic masses of brown and black fur that we played with and cleaned up after and loved.
One evening, we came back from the cinema and I went to let the puppies out into the garden as usual. One of the chocolate-brown pups, once she’d had her wee, leapt straight up onto my lap for a cuddle. She was licking me frantically with her little puppy tongue. She had a big wrinkle on her forehead and her ears were almost too big for her, like she hadn’t grown into herself yet. Her name was Berry and she was like a ball of love. It was extraordinary, that enthusiasm of love for me; I’d never known anything like it. There was just something she saw in me that she simply adored.
After that, whenever I came in, she’d be desperate to get to me. She’d whine and whimper until I picked her up for a cuddle. She wouldn’t do it with anyone else, and it meant so much to me that she cared that deeply for me and me alone. I’d never had that before in my life: she wanted me, for me. Her little tail would start going and she’d nibble at me with pure affection.
After a few months, the puppies started going to their new homes. In some ways that was lovely because I saw how they transformed the families and children they went to. I knew how much dogs had helped me in my life, and I cherished the idea of Alfie and Milly’s offspring spreading the love that they had brought me out into the world.
Ant and I hadn’t planned to keep any of the puppies; I already thought, if I was being honest with myself, that having three dogs was one too many. But I had reckoned without the affection of one special little girl. Berry became so attached to me – following me round at every opportunity, love writ clear across her wrinkly brown face – that Ant and I decided we would keep a puppy, after all. As I said to him: ‘Berry has chosen me.’
In that Christmas of 2010, it turned out that, so had Ant himself. It was a white Christmas that year, with the deepest snow I’d ever seen, and we took the dogs out in it for a walk on Christmas morning. I grabbed the camera and took snapshots of my family: the Labs looked so beautiful against the snow. Later, Ant and I went round to his parents’ house, their front room dominated by a picture-perfect festive tree, strewn with multi-coloured fairy lights and traditional baubles.
It was in front of that tree, as Ant and I were sat snuggled in an armchair, me perched in his lap, that he pulled out a diamond engagement ring. ‘Victoria,’ he said to me, those gentle eyes of his that I loved so much fixed firmly on mine, ‘you’re my best, best friend. You’re the only person who has ever understood me. Will you marry me?’
I said yes straight away, my insides all content, and he scooped me up in a classic Ant hug: all long arms and big hands and broad shoulders to bury my face in.
‘I don’t want to live my life without you,’ he whispered in my ear.
In the months that were to come, I could only hope he would remember those words – and abide by them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
My doctor, Jeremy, sat beside the desk in his GP’s office, trying to puzzle through my latest medical predicament. I’d been trying to come off the high doses of morphine I’d been on since my various operations, but the patches they’d switched me to just weren’t working. They made me sweat so much that the patches would slide off, and then I’d sweat even more from the pain and the withdrawal. I felt like I was being twisted inside; ripped apart from the inside out.
‘I’m going to refer you to the substance misuse department,’ he told me. ‘I want to make it clear, Victoria, that I don’t mean you’ve been misusing anything, but anyone who’s been as poorly as you have – whether in a car crash or through cancer, or some other health problem – well, there’s a risk they can become addicted to drugs, to the morphine. This isn’t your fault, understood? But let’s see if we can get you off it.’
Soon after, in the spring of 2011, I found myself sitting in the substance misuse clinic, which was wall-to-wall with patients who would fit your more traditional idea of a drug addict, all struggling with their own problems. It was quite frightening. I seem to have got myself in trouble, I remember thinking, but I don’t know how I’ve done it.
The doctor called me in. She was lovely and understanding. ‘So,’ she said, ‘we need to treat you for heroin addiction.’
‘What?’ I said, shocked.
‘Morphine is heroin,’ she explained. I was so distressed when I heard that; I’d had no idea.
She gave me a pill to put on my tongue and told me to let it melt there, and then go home. It had a really sour taste to it. I remember walking to get my bus and it was like an out-of-body experience: I was me but not me. I had to cross the road and all the cars were beeping at me but I couldn’t stop walking, even as I heard brakes squeal and angry voices shouting at me. When I collapsed onto the bus it was like all the energy had been sucked out of me; I felt so odd.
Somehow, I managed to get myself home and up the stairs. I fell onto the bed. Ant came in and looked at me quizzically. ‘Are you OK?’ he said.
I had no energy to answer him. He got onto the bed and just cuddled me. He put his weight on me, and with his weight and his warmth, I eventually fell asleep.
I was horrendously sick that night, the first night of many. That first time was the worst because my body reacted badly, but the withdrawal programme I was on was tough, very tough. I had to go to the chemist every three days to get more drugs, and I remember each time I did I felt so ashamed, standing in line to get my fix, desperately needing it. Ant’s mum would sometimes come with me – she was struggling to understand what I was going through, but she did try. She cared. I had stomach cramps, sickness, sweats and hideous shakes.
But the worst thing of all – the worst thing by far – was that, without the morphine to buoy me up anymore, I started feeling other pain, mental pain, which, unbeknown to me, the drugs had been suppressing for a very long time. The little pill on my tongue was to try to get rid of the physical withdrawal symptoms. But there was nothing to help me deal with everything that was fucked up in my head.
Emotionally, it was as if I’d just been hit by a bus or a train, or a 24-tonne truck – and, believe me, I know what that feels like. All of a sudden, I was thinking about my mum again, in a terrifyingly visceral way. I became really tearful, and I had vivid nightmares about the torture I’d endured for eighteen sodding years, and about Uncle Phil. I dreamt about the sticks down the back of my throat – maybe because I had to put the pill on my tongue, and it reminded me of that. To my dismay I even started wetting the bed again. Ant was very good about it, but it didn’t stop the shame creeping up my spine when I woke with that awful spreading dampness on the backs of my thighs.
It all felt so raw and frightening. I was awash with all these feelings. It was like my life up until now had been behind a filthy window screen, the morphine layering inch upon inch of dirt and dust upon it, until you couldn’t tell it was a window screen at all, and now someone had just come along and cleaned that window and I was like, Oh my goodness, I can see everything. I can see everything and it’s just awful.
Judith’s body in the crash. Mum’s screaming face and the sticks in her hand. The surface of the bathwater as she plunged my face right into it; the glistening cat food in its shiny silver tin; Uncle Phil’s bloodshot eyes and his big dry hands and his filthy, filthy cock. It hit me all over again as if it had happened that. Very. Same. Day.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. The pain.
I was in agony.
I didn’t know how to rid myself of these feelings. I was constantly picturing Mum, Phil; the abuse. I stopped eating, I stopped washing; I wouldn’t leave my room. I didn’t know who I was or where all this stuff was coming f
rom. It was as if I was that little girl again, frightened and so very, very alone. Like somebody had lit a match to the buried memories in my head and my brain was now on fire; it was a forest fire, that raged and burned and convulsed and ate up everything inside my mind, until all I could see were those licking flames, and each one contained a memory from my past that I didn’t want to see, I didn’t want to see, but I couldn’t put the fire out and so it burned and burned and burned and burned and burned.
And then, one day, I found a cool, clear liquid that dulled the flames. It didn’t extinguish them, not completely, but it suppressed them.
Its name was vodka: evil, evil vodka.
I don’t know exactly, now, what prompted me to try it. I had always been very anti-alcohol. I’d never drunk myself, not even when the younger Witnesses had urged me to try it, when I first escaped from Mum. I’d always been put off when I saw drunken people carousing in the streets, especially in my nasty street in Gloucester; and then, of course, there was my experience with Uncle Phil. That was enough to put anyone off it for life.
Nonetheless, I’d seen people use it here and there for pain relief: a bad toothache, say, or just a bad day. And I thought, I wonder … And so I went down to the corner shop and I bought myself some vodka. I tried just a few sips from a glass at first.
Ah … That first shot. It did the same thing the morphine had done, I realised. It stopped the mental pain, and the constant thoughts about my mum and my uncle. I felt normal again. I started with a little bit … and then another little bit … and then a little bit more. I would drink it and screw my face up. It was rancid, really, like drinking nail varnish. I’d hold my nose and drink it, almost forcing it down – but still I forced myself to do it because, to me, it was medicine. It was making me feel better.
Tortured: Abused and neglected by Britain’s most sadistic mum. This is my story of survival. Page 24