by Toni Maguire
So, there I was on my first day, walking into the school where the new girls were already in their chosen groups. Not much changes then, I thought when no one lifted their eyes, smiled and greeted me. Looking around, I recognised some of the pupils from my junior school, others I had not seen before. I suppose like some of my previous classmates, they had been friends in their junior schools. Most probably some had even known each other since their mothers met in antenatal classes and had gone to the same baby and mother groups – a group that Carl hadn’t wanted my mother to join.
‘What, at your age, Betty? You’ll look more like the boy’s grandmother! Don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?’
Of course, she didn’t – not after that remark anyway. It was not mentioned again. Nor was the subject of my having clothes that would help me blend in with my peers ever brought up. The long and the short of it was I wore another dark coloured plaid dress, well below the knees, and a pair of those sensible shoes I hated when I walked through those school gates for the first time.
* * *
All around me I could hear the chatter of how the summer holidays had been spent. The voices of the posh, confident ones, who with their deep tans and new clothes were the loudest. They were busy saying with much waving of arms and giggles how wonderful Spain, France or Greece had been. How their days had been spent on the beach, the food in the hotels was amazing and as for those Latin waiters, weren’t they just gorgeous? More giggles and eye-rolling would accompany those remarks.
Not much point in me trying to join in then, was there? Even if it wasn’t holidays they were talking about, it would be the new car their father had ordered, the latest music or how their mother took them shopping for new clothes because they had all grown so much over the last few weeks. I never heard any of those girls talk about their home being a council flat or how they had moved into a place that was just about falling down. Nor did I hear them moan about their mums choosing their clothes – I guessed they didn’t. From the snippets I overheard, they chose their clothes themselves and their mothers just whipped out a credit card. So even if I had approached them, just what could I have talked about anyway? Make-up and pop stars seemed to be the other popular subjects, but I doubt if housework, looking after my baby brother and how good I was at dusting would have been.
Or I could make a long list of all the things I had never done. Never gone on one single holiday and never eaten in a restaurant where gorgeous waiters took my order. Don’t think a teashop with my dad would count with them either.
It was the lunch break when one of those girls turned to me. ‘Nice dress,’ she said and just for a moment I felt a flush of happiness, thinking maybe they were going to be friendly to me. Big mistake for when I said, ‘Why, thank you,’ and smiled at her, her whole group rolled their eyes and snorted with laughter. Without saying another word, the girl turned back to her friends.
Was she happy that she might have made me feel crushed, a nobody not worth talking to?
But she was wrong for I had toughened up over the two years I had spent in junior school. I simply took out a book, found a wall and sat on it.
Ignoring them, I found, transferred the power to me.
When it came to lessons, I was surprised none of the girls I had known in junior school were in the same class as me and very few of those gleaming, confident ones either. I also noticed that there were more boys than girls in my class. I had been placed in what was called the A stream – one for future high achievers. The Head had explained to us that morning in assembly that although the exams that would help determine our future were several years away, it was still important that we kept them in mind. ‘Some of you will want to go on to further education,’ she told us. She went on to explain that there were scholarships available for children who had succeeded with high marks in their exams and the word ‘university’ was mentioned for the first time. This made my ears prick up – they were places students could live in, weren’t they? My 11-year-old self decided, I’d better work hard and go to one, or how else can I get away from home?
It was an ambition that I failed to confide in my diary, because that evening, I truly believed I had learnt about something that I could put in action far sooner.
Chapter 50
Dear Diary
A children’s helpline was advertised on television today. It’s all part of an organisation called Childline. You should have seen my stepdad’s face when it came on – never seen him move so fast to turn the TV off! But not before I had memorised the number. I just have to wait till I see Dad and get some money for the phone call.
Those people will tell me what to do and I can’t get in trouble if I talk to them. They promise that they won’t make a phone call and tell my stepdad or Mum what I plan to tell them – that he beats me really badly and when he comes into my room at night, he touches me in places he shouldn’t and I hate it. I hate the feel of his hands on me.
I’ve decided I’m going to run away after I speak to them. They won’t make me go back, will they? I already know what I will pack in my bag when I leave and one of the things will be you.
* * *
The evening that I shared those plans with my diary, my stepfather had switched on the TV to watch the news. He had already plonked himself down on his chair, a second or third tumbler of gin wrapped in his hand, before he realised that he had switched on a programme about Childline, a children’s charity – ‘Don’t want to listen to that rubbish,’ he said, jumping up to switch it off, but not before I had heard enough to understand what that organisation was all about. Their phone number, which I promptly lodged in my mind, had flashed onto the screen a second before he turned it off.
I felt Mum’s eyes glued on me – she had seen that number come up too. From the worried expression on her face, I saw when I eventually glanced in her direction, she was pretty certain that I had memorised it. Carl might refuse to believe that I could retain whole pages of books in my mind so storing a phone number would be pretty easy, but Mum knew I could. It was one of those things that made her uneasy around me. She would also have a shrewd idea that once in my room, I would mull over the words she and I had both heard – touching, inappropriate behaviour, frightened and the most important one, confidential.
Mum must have been scared stiff that I would find a way to make that phone call. She and Carl needed to find out fast if that was my plan. I mean, they could hardly ask me outright, could they?
Now, who might I confide in? Not a human – I had no friends because they had made sure of that. Not any member of my family either as Carl had manipulated their disappearance from our lives, so all that was left was my diary. He and Mum already knew about all my thoughts and the problems I had written neatly in it. They were right to think that as soon as I was in my room I would unlock it and out would come the pen my stepfather had given me – because that’s exactly what I did.
* * *
It only took me until the following day to discover there was more than one key to my diary. No wonder I had been given one each year. And there was I, thanking Carl for what I had felt was a thoughtful present – silly, naive me. When, after returning home from school and walking into the living room, the first thing I saw was the bright shiny key on the coffee table and next to it my diary – my open diary, the one with whom I had shared all my private thoughts.
It was pretty obvious that they were no longer private.
Sitting on a chair closest to it was Carl, wearing that mocking smirk I so detested. I glanced at my mother, noticed there was no smile on her face – if anything, she appeared listless, but then she was not someone who lived in constant denial as her husband did. She would have known just how serious it would be if I went ahead with the plan I had written about on those pages. Not only would there have been social workers asking questions and police arriving at the door to question my stepfather, she would have been implicated as well.
Not that I understood all of that
then. If I had, I might not have been so afraid of their reaction. Carl placed a finger on the damaged journal and turned it round so that the red lines and exclamation marks he had added were clearly visible. I could see my last entry had been torn out.
‘Well, Emily, I’ve just been doing a bit of correcting for you. If you’re going to write insults and rubbish like this in the presents I’ve given you, at least get the grammar and spelling right! Your mother gave me a hand with those corrections, didn’t you, Betty?’
‘Yes, Carl,’ she said in a voice devoid of any animation.
Still unaware it was them who should be frightened, I could hardly move, far less speak. After the journey home, I wanted to go to the loo – I didn’t want another accident like the last time my bladder let me down.
‘Got to go,’ I blurted out and before he could stop me, I managed to get my legs to work and rushed to the bathroom. Not that he let me have any peace, even for the short time it takes a young girl to relieve herself.
‘Don’t think you can hide from me in there!’ he shouted through the door and I felt those familiar fingers of icy terror returning.
Going to be bad, muttered Fear.
Best get it over with and try not to let him see how scared you are, said Reason.
The mistake I made was thinking that what I had written about him would make him angry. Wrong! He enjoyed knowing how much I hated what he did to me – it all added to his feelings of power. He had read everything, knew how much I hated his actions, how much I missed my family and how, without my old school friends and cousins, I was finding school difficult. He now knew so much about my doubts and my secret thoughts, but none of that was as bad as the last entry I had written, which he had ripped out.
‘When you’ve finished in there, you come back to the sitting room.’
He said it calmly through the door, for where else could I go and there was no lock on my bedroom door? The calmness of his voice frightened me even more – it meant that he had planned exactly what he was going to do and I didn’t know what it was.
‘Sit down,’ he told me when I walked back in. Cautiously, I placed myself nearer my mother than him. Not that I expected her to stick up for me, I was just a little further away from his fists there. ‘Now, explain what made you write all these insults about me and your mum that are in here, Emily.’
I tried to find some words that might work as an explanation, but I really couldn’t think of anything.
‘Cat got your tongue, has it? Well, let’s take the bit where you blame me for you not seeing your gran. What have you to say to that?’
‘I miss her, that’s all.’
‘Well, I doubt she misses you, especially after you ran off that day. You think she’s forgotten that?’
‘No,’ I agreed miserably.
‘Got that right! Now, you also wrote how you miss that smarmy Ben too. And you think he would want to see you again now? You made it clear that you didn’t want to speak to him too, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I murmured.
‘Now, you’ve written that you’re going to run away. Seeing as you’ve upset so many people, where exactly do you think you’re going to run, eh? Your dad’s perhaps? Where Lily doesn’t even want you playing with her daughter? Oh sorry, your half-sister. I don’t think so, do you? Have you forgotten he’s the man who chose to take the television rather than his daughter? No doubt he lied to you about that because that’s what your dad does – he lies. And you should know that by now. After all, you were the one who caught him shagging that scrubber Lily, weren’t you? And she wasn’t the only one!’
I tried to block my stepfather’s voice out as he went on and on, repeating all the insults about my dad I had heard so many times before. The sound of his hectoring tones was beginning to make me feel incapable of thinking for myself. He waited until he could see I had no defence left in me, that I was just about drooping with exhaustion, before he brought up the final part he had read – my plan to phone Childline.
‘So, let’s go back to your last entry, shall we? Now, I want you to listen very carefully to what I have to say. I’m the man who took in someone else’s child, put a roof over her head. Your mother could hardly afford to find her own place when I met her and your dad wasn’t helping, was he? It was me who sorted everything out for you both. I even helped your mum get that job. And look what I’ve paid out for you . . .’
He went on to list everything I had needed over the years since he moved in with us – clothes, shoes, books, bedding and . . .
The list seemed endless.
‘So, who do you think paid for all those things?’
‘You,’ I whispered.
‘And why have I sometimes had to smack you?’
‘When I did something wrong.’
‘Exactly! And when I come into your room and give you a cuddle, what have you written here? That I was doing something filthy to you! And that you were going to report me and get me into trouble. Well, let me tell you this, Emily, no one would believe I was anything but a caring stepfather. Mind you, they might suggest that a girl with your imagination and sordid thoughts should be put somewhere. No doubt you’ve heard of places where problem children are sent?’
I hadn’t, but I nodded my head anyhow.
‘Now, is that what you want?’
‘No,’ I said and I could no longer stop the tears cascading down my cheeks.
‘All right then, we’ll talk no more about this. Oh, and take your little journal with you – it reads better now.’
At this, I gulped – I had expected a thrashing at the very least, but he was far too clever to lay a hand on me.
Not that time anyhow.
I guessed no more diaries would be coming my way, not that I wanted one now. I felt angry with myself for being so gullible – why on earth had I believed that I was the only one with a key? I placed the ones I had been writing in for so long in a box. It wasn’t the diaries’ fault that I had been hoodwinked. Sharing my thoughts with each one of them had given me great comfort. What was I going to do now? Without a soul I could talk to, I needed some way of expressing myself.
It was about a week later that I had a brainwave. We had started studying French at school, a language that I had really taken to. I found it easy to master the accent and spent time learning new words every day from the French–English dictionary. I was pretty sure neither Mum nor Carl could read one word of it. All I had to do was find out – simply ask them if they could check my spoken French from a book because we had a test coming up.
First, I asked Mum: ‘No point asking me, Emily, I never managed to learn it at school. I thought it was a waste of time,’ she told me.
‘What about Carl?’ I said. Thinking on my feet, I then threw in a bit of flattery. ‘He knows so much, doesn’t he? I expect he learnt it at school and was good at it.’
She looked a little surprised – saying nice things about Carl was not something I did very often.
‘I’ll ask him,’ she told me.
Asking Carl if he knew something he clearly didn’t quickly put him on the defensive.
‘No, I don’t speak any French – that’s for Nancy boys to learn!’ he spluttered.
Meaning you were useless at it.
‘And what are you wasting your time for anyhow? Learning a language you’ll never have any use for. You’re not likely to go there on holiday when you leave school now, are you?’
Yes, I am.
‘No, of course not,’ I answered. ‘I agree with you, it’s a waste of time. Still, at least it’s not Latin, but’ – and here, I managed to look a little nervous – ‘I don’t want to get bad marks, do I?’
‘I suppose not, just don’t waste any more time than you have to on it. There are other, more important subjects, aren’t there?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I answered meekly.
Good, I thought, he can’t read a word of it!
* * *
The following weekend,
I was due to meet Dad and I would ask him to get me a couple of ordinary exercise books that I could turn into my private journal and a pen – I didn’t want to write with the one Carl had given me anymore.
When my stepfather snooped in my room and looked inside those simple lined notebooks, he would believe what I had told him – they were just school projects. Best make them appear to have been marked as well, I thought, placing a packet of gold stars on my list. Now, he’ll be completely fooled, I thought with a grin.
I put my plan into action the next time I saw my father – I told him I was in the A stream at school and needed some extra notebooks and a new pen. Apart from congratulating me on doing so well at school, he didn’t say anything more. He took me into WH Smith and told me to sort out what I needed and to choose a good pen. And if there was anything else I needed, just to tell him. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow at those gold stars when he paid.
I must say over the time I wrote in my diary, it really helped me come first in French.
Dear Journal
So good to have you back with me. I know you don’t look as smart as my diary but it makes no difference, I will like you just as much. You are my secret, the one he will never find out about.
The next entry in that journal, as I had now renamed it, was not so upbeat. I had gone back to the original plan the Head had spoken to the class about – getting to university. I wanted to see what Carl’s reaction would be. For some time, I had felt his continuous put-downs were because instead of being pleased with all my good marks, he was beginning to resent them.
I’ll put it to the test and if he doesn’t like the idea, he’ll have forgotten all about it long before I finish my schooling, I thought.
When I had the chance, I casually dropped in that my teacher had told me I was university material. I did wonder if he would appear pleased and then manage to take all the credit because of all those months of home schooling I had endured. But no, his brows lowered. A scowl appeared on his face as he questioned me relentlessly. The first question was ‘Who was the teacher?’