He shrugged. It was a decision only I could make.
In the end, I chose Berry, because she had chosen me. It was very, very hard saying goodbye to Ollie in particular, because he was the one who had taught me how to love. I’d never known true love until I met him. He was mine and I was his; but Belroyd House was a tiny place with strict rules, and I was worried he would bark and get thrown out. Berry was still young enough to be taught new tricks.
And then they went. Belinda had a Jeep parked outside. She took them out the front door, and the three of them leapt into the car, very trustingly, just as I’d taught them. I didn’t watch them go; I couldn’t.
After they’d gone I lay down on the stairs, and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I don’t deserve dogs, I thought. I don’t deserve Berry. I am a vile piece of muck. I got myself my babies and I’ve not looked after them. I am horrible, worthless, evil scum.
I reached for the bottle, the bane of my life, and I swallowed and swallowed and swallowed, as hard as I could, until I couldn’t remember anything more.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Ah, I knew that sound. Bleating machinery reminding me that I was still, somehow, alive, despite all my best efforts. I opened my eyes. Hello, institutional ceiling tiles. Hello, hospital.
I didn’t know what had happened, but I could guess. I’d been found on the street outside my house, vomiting blood. In the few days since the dogs had gone, I’d drunk two litres of vodka every day, and my body had finally given up.
I looked around me. There was another patient in the room, a woman in her early thirties. She had a cloud of dark hair around her pretty face, but that face looked awfully sad.
‘Hey, are you OK?’ I called across to her. Whatever was going on with me, my heart still reached out to those in need.
She tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m just missing my girls, but they’ll be in later.’
She told me she had two little daughters. She was in for a heart condition, a problem she’d had since she was a girl herself. We chatted about this and that, trying to keep her mind off things. She was very well spoken and well educated.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked me at one point in our conversation. ‘You look so young.’
I burst into tears, too. ‘I’m an alcoholic,’ I confessed, ‘and I don’t know how in hell I’ve got here.’ And then I found myself telling her my story: about my mum, and the car crash, and the trial, and the dogs. She listened so carefully, and we talked for hours – until visiting time, when her husband and her two little girls arrived, with a rucksack full of things she’d asked for. It was lovely to see her with a smile on her face.
The porters came to move me to a different ward, but she stopped them momentarily, so she could hobble over to me to say goodbye. She was clutching something in her hand, an item from the rucksack that her husband had brought in.
‘I want you to have this,’ she told me. ‘I’ve had this for as long as I can remember. It’s brought so much love and happiness in my life, so much good luck. And if anyone deserves a bit of that, it’s you, sweetheart.’
And I thought, For her husband to have remembered to bring this in for her, it must mean a great deal. But she’s giving it to me…?
She pressed it firmly into my palm and wrapped my fingers round it. ‘You take it,’ she told me. ‘You will get there, I promise. I can tell you’re a fighter. You’re going to be absolutely fine.’
As the porters wheeled me away, I opened up my fingers. In my hand lay a rose stone, a sparkly pink stone about the size of a golf ball with a rough texture to it. It was very solid, and very real, and it gave me something to hang onto.
I had a visitor myself at the hospital, not long after that. It was Ant, loyal Ant: my best friend. He didn’t visit the hospital very much, but he came that day, because the nurse had asked him to bring me in some clothes. He brought me an envelope, too – an envelope that had been posted through my home front door.
Inside was a card: a card covered in cute coloured cupcakes. It was a note from Belinda, the woman from the Labrador rescue group, and it was the most powerful and beautiful letter I had ever read.
She told me the dogs were absolutely fine. She told me I was going to be absolutely fine. She said the dogs had loved me. ‘I go to so many places to rescue dogs,’ she wrote, ‘and, sometimes, the dogs don’t come out like yours did. Some of our dogs are terrified, and untrusting, but yours were clearly loved. They are quite clearly happy dogs.
‘Don’t listen to what anyone else says. You’re not evil, you’re not bad. They’re just dogs, at the end of the day, and they’re going to be fine.
‘You go off now, and you live your life. Be free. Love Berry. Be strong.’
I slept with that card under my pillow every night. It was as close as I could get to my babies.
I had a third encounter in hospital at this time. Not on the same visit, oh no – I went back to the house, and I couldn’t cope with seeing Ollie and Milly and Alfie’s things everywhere, so I fell straight off the wagon and straight back into A & E – but it was an encounter that, in the long run, changed everything for me.
Three visitations: the rose-stone woman, and Belinda, and my third mystery guest. If I was still religious, you might say it was like the three wise men at the Nativity, bringing precious, priceless gifts. If I was still a nursery nurse, maybe they’d be the three Billy Goats Gruff – but instead of skipping happily over the bridge, trip-trapping mindlessly on their way, this time they reached a hand down to the unhappy, ugly troll, and they brought him up into the sunshine and the fresh green meadows, and they taught him how to run again in the clean mountain air.
‘My name is Lauren,’ said the woman in the bed next to me.
And Lauren was the woman who would save my life.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Lauren had a Labrador, too. So that was it: we were friends for life. She also had a hilarious sense of humour, and she was a great listener. She listened to me tell my story, and I heard hers in return. And Lauren, well, she never gave up on me. She point-blank refused to. Sometimes you need a champion to show you the light through the dark.
We swapped numbers in hospital. And one day, after I’d been discharged yet again, and had returned to my lonely house with my bottle of vodka – for I was still waiting for the room at Belroyd to become available – there was a knock on the door and it was Lauren. She came in and she cleaned the entire kitchen; she even laughed about the mess. She was so relaxed and easy-going that I didn’t feel embarrassed about it. Lauren was one of those people who just accepted you for who you are. She already knew my difficulties, and she wasn’t there to judge: she simply wanted to help.
After she had finished, she came upstairs, to where I was begrudgingly swallowing down my ‘medicine’, grimacing at each and every shot, tears on my cheeks at how dependent I had become on this evil drink. Ant had just walked Berry and let her in to see me, so my little girl was there. I called her and she jumped up onto the bed and groaned and cuddled into me. I smiled my gappy, toothless smile, and Lauren said it made her happy to see me happy. She persuaded me to have some of the Fortisip the hospital had sent me home with, which is a special nutritional drink, and she patiently traded the booze for the liquid vitamins with me until she thought I’d had sufficient. Then she and Ant took Berry for another walk, and I guess they traded stories – there were certainly a lot to share.
I’ve said it before, but life isn’t easy. Lauren’s friendship wasn’t a sticking plaster that suddenly made everything A-OK. I’d swear I wasn’t going to drink again, but then I’d end up so depressed that I just started necking from the bottle. Countless times after we met I fell off the wagon, heading back into hospital with my tail between my legs, just like Berry after some mishap, but Lauren didn’t seem to care. So many times before, no one had visited me in hospital – and I accepted that, I thought it was what I deserved – but Lauren came in again and aga
in, bringing me magazines and fresh food and clothes. I thought I was such a bad person, so it was a genuine shock to see somebody who cared that much. What struck me in particular was that she had met me at the worst point in my whole life, and yet she saw something in me that she loved. That touched me. I started to believe in myself – but only because she believed in me first.
There came a day that turned out to be my last day in hospital. I was looking at Lauren, at her blonde curly hair and her gorgeous smile, trying to cheer me up, and I made a decision. People say that when you stop doing something like drinking, you have to do it for yourself. But I didn’t – I did it for her. Because she’d actually gone against the grain and was really loving me: she’d put her neck on the line and I kept on letting her down. Finally, I reached a point where I really, really didn’t want to do that anymore.
My empty house was a trigger for my drinking, and I was very lucky when Ant’s parents said I could move in with them until the room in Belroyd became available. Ant and I spoke a lot in the time I was staying there. He was still very raw about us losing the dogs – raw about everything. I attribute a lot to Lauren with my recovery, but that’s not to say Ant wasn’t there for me, too. It had been an incredibly fraught time, to say the least, but I felt, at last, that we could both see the light at the end of the tunnel now. I was going somewhere safe, where I could get the help I desperately needed. He was still my best friend, my boyfriend, my fiancé, and I still loved him. Luckily for me, he still loved me, too.
Two days before I moved into Belroyd, I went back to the house to pack up. I was surrounded by pictures of my babies, and their smell, and their blankets, and it was all too easy to find a stash of vodka and sample its sourness. But I didn’t drink it all. I knew there was help for me now, if I asked for it, so I called Lauren, and she came and picked me up. I was shaking, I felt I’d let everyone down, but she soothed me and bathed me and dressed me in a pair of pink fleecy monkey pyjamas, with little grey primates printed all over the legs, and she tucked me into bed. Her guest room had buttery magnolia walls and smooth wooden floorboards, and the bed was made up with thick cream sheets, with cosy red blankets spread over the top. I felt so blessed to be slipping in between those sheets, to have people who loved me.
Ant came with me, and he gave me a big Ant cuddle in his lovely, long-limbed arms before I went to sleep. That night, I finally dared to dream that everything would be OK.
I never went back to my house again. Lauren and Ant’s mum and my social workers packed for me. It was a massive job, because I was downsizing from a house to a single small room; but then again, material things had never been important to me. I trusted them to do it, and I was simply grateful for their help.
In August 2012, I moved into Belroyd House. Lauren drove me there. It was a large white building with arched windows, double glass doors and an office at the front. My room was a ground-floor studio flat, with a tiny bathroom off to one side. There was a cream carpet, and a single strip of lino in the kitchenette. I had a brown sofa, a table and chair, and a single bed.
My key worker, Faye, was there to greet me; a condition of the place was that you had to see a key worker every week. And she said to me, ‘Where’s Berry?’
‘I’m not having her,’ I said. I’d been told by people I didn’t deserve her, and I believed it. Ant’s family had been looking after her while I was in and out of hospital, and I thought she was going to stay with them: not my dog anymore.
‘What?’ Faye said in surprise. ‘Jeremy has fought tooth and nail to get that dog in here.’
‘But I’ve been naughty,’ I explained.
‘You’ve not been naughty,’ she replied, gently. ‘You just need a bit of help. And that’s our job, to make sure you’re all right, and to make sure Berry’s looked after. Give yourself a chance, Victoria. Berry is your dog. Don’t you worry, we’ll sort this out.’
And she did. The next day, Ant’s mum brought Berry to me. My little girl came bounding into the room; Maria had to let go of her because she rushed straight for me. Her lovely floppy ears became her happy ears and they just flew back on her head as she ran into my arms. Her soft velvety head pushed upwards for a cuddle, and she jumped up at me and licked me and loved me, as she’d done ever since she was a baby.
‘Welcome home,’ I told my gorgeous girl, barely able to believe my luck. ‘Take a good look around. This is our new home.’
It was a week later. Lauren had stayed the first night with me, Ant the next. They’d tag-teamed – but now I was on my own. It was selfish, I know, but I thought to myself, I’ve just been dumped here and now they’ve all gone.
It was overwhelming being in the new place. I wasn’t allowed to drink – in fact, it was a condition that I had to be sober to stay there – because it was a place for people with mental-health problems, and not alcoholics; as though the two could be neatly divided like that; as though the world was black and white and not a murky grey. I felt frightened and unsure of myself. When I’d first moved in, only the week before, I’d had a sense of a fresh start … but I wasn’t so sure now that I was quite ready for that. I felt that maybe my mum had been right all along – for look at who I was, and what I was, and where I was: an alcoholic, in a halfway house. The devil’s child, the scum of the earth. I’d turned out just as she had predicted.
Quietly, I slipped out to the shop, and then I came back home. Berry was on the bed, curled up asleep. I sat next to her on the mattress, careful not to disturb her slumbering form, unable to look at her. I unscrewed the bottle cap. I drank straight from the bottle.
There was a sharp tap on my door. ‘Come in,’ I called, tucking the vodka under the bedspread. Faye came in, and she shut the door behind her. There was CCTV at Belroyd House, and she knew exactly where I’d been on my little excursion, and what I’d brought home.
Faye paused, and she looked at Berry and me curled up on the bed. ‘That little girl thinks the world of you,’ she said gently.
I nodded, having no words, not trusting myself to speak.
‘Time to have a sandwich now, Victoria,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘Why don’t you get Berry out, too? She needs a walk. It would do you both good.’
I couldn’t believe it. Why wasn’t she shouting at me? Why wasn’t she grabbing my hair and pushing my nose in my filthy mistakes? But no, she was just really calm. It was like she understood and this, in turn, had a calming effect on me.
I reached out a hand, my dry, yellow, alcoholic’s hand, and I stroked Berry’s soft fur coat. I thought to myself, Faye is right. This dog loves you. That meant more to me than anything else. Stop thinking about what the world thinks of you, when she thinks the world of you. She chose you. Stop thinking you don’t deserve her, just because people have said it. People will always look down on others; they’ll always have opinions. You’ve got to be true to Berry, and be true to yourself. Just because you’ve made mistakes, it doesn’t mean you’re an evil person.
That was such a staggering thought I told myself it again.
Just because you’ve made mistakes, it doesn’t mean you’re an evil person.
I kept the sob in my throat inside, snug and tight. I wanted to prove to everyone who had doubted me that they were wrong; that I wasn’t just a waste of space, that I did have a heart.
That I could look after Berry.
My girl raised one eyebrow at my touch, and then lifted her heavy Labrador head and rested it in my lap, letting out a snuffly doggy sigh as she did so. A pink tongue briefly passed her lips to lick my hand, and then she fell back to sleep.
And I thought to myself, Enough’s enough. This has got to stop.
Once and for all, it did.
EPILOGUE
I lived at Belroyd House for a year. It wasn’t an easy year, but it was a year I had to live. In a way, there was something liberating about having lost everything: my home, my dogs; my dignity. It stripped me back to basics – but now I had a second chance.
Every
time I went to the shops, I was a bag of nerves; the colourful bottles lined up on the shelves a painful reminder of everything I’d been through. It had become so normal to me to cast one into my basket with a horrifying clang, like a jail door slamming shut, so imprisoned had I been in my addiction, that it felt like someone had chopped my arm off when I came out of the shops without buying booze. I would phone Ant and tell him: ‘I haven’t bought any vodka, I’ve been so good.’
Ant was brilliant. He didn’t live close to Belroyd, but he’d come over and stay regularly and – day by day, week by week – we grew stronger together.
Faye gave me an enormous amount of strength, too. Wary to the end, I didn’t trust her at first. I found I could talk to her quite openly about my past, about the bare-bone facts of what had happened to me as a child – but telling her how I felt inside? That was hard. Twenty years of being told your opinion doesn’t count makes it hard to volunteer that kind of information.
Berry was the key to our breakthrough; that dog really did save my life. Faye would let me bring her to the office for our weekly meetings, and as I sat and stroked Berry, and learned how to open up, the barriers between us slowly broke down. I started to let Faye help me. By the end, it felt like I had a big sister just down the hall in the office, a moment away if I needed a chat, or someone to help me sort out train tickets, or respond to a formal letter. It was lovely. I’d never had that before: someone to look after me. Faye helped me to tackle my debts; she got me back on track.
I made another friend, too, in Belinda, the woman from the Labrador rescue group. I was struck by how she had seen good in me at my lowest point; she’d known nothing about my childhood when we met, she simply saw an alcoholic who was giving up her dogs, but, nonetheless, she had seen something in me that had made her write that incredible note, and that meant a great deal to me. I tracked her down through the charity, because I wanted to say thank you, and she became another of my champions, just like Lauren.
Tortured: Abused and neglected by Britain’s most sadistic mum. This is my story of survival. Page 26