A Family Secret Page 15

  I had been single for two and a half years when I became friendly with a woman named Josie. We had mutual friends, so I knew she was gay and was going through a rough patch with her partner. I supported her when I could; we’d have coffee together or go for long walks with my dogs. To start with, there was nothing between us but friendship, but then her relationship ended, and she began tentatively flirting with me. To my amazement, I found myself flirting back. Since the very brief dalliance with the girl from school, back when I was a teenager, I hadn’t given my sexuality much consideration. I’d just imagined I could bury it, like I did everything else.

  I didn’t want a relationship, with anybody; I had resigned myself, quite happily, to being single for the rest of my life. But over time I grew to really like Josie. It was as though something inside me had just clicked. One day we were having a coffee at her house, and, without any planning at all, I inched closer to her and kissed her. To my amazement, she kissed me back. And afterwards she laughed and said:

  ‘About bloody time!’

  The awakening inside me that day was extraordinary. I realised I was gay and I always had been. Just admitting it to myself made me so happy. I felt comfortable in my own skin, content with who I was, complete as a person. I was a gay mum, with five wonderful children, and one beautiful angel. Right from the start, I was honest with my children. Crucially, I didn’t want them to hear my news from anyone else. Early on in our relationship I gathered my children together and explained I had fallen for Josie. To my surprise, it was no big deal for them at all; they were very laid back and supportive.

  ‘A happy mum makes for happy kids,’ they told me. ‘Really, it’s fine with us.’

  But Josh, especially, struggled with the revelation that I was moving on. He idolised his dad, and for him anyone who was not his father, male or female, just would not do.

  ‘Your dad and I will never get back together,’ I told him. ‘I’m sorry, Josh, but that’s a fact.’

  Mick was very supportive and had Josh over to stay with him for a while, while he got used to the idea of me and Josie. And as time went on he became more open and accepting. Josie and I didn’t live together but we were partners and we were gloriously happy together. I felt fulfilled. At last, I was becoming who I was supposed to be in life. The children were all doing well, and we had no real problems. There were no obvious cracks. Life was good. And maybe it was too good.

  By December 2007 I was just six months into my relationship with Josie, and I had to pinch myself each day with how well it was going. We seemed to be a perfect fit for each other. And there were none of the usual niggles and insecurities that I’d had with previous partners. It was meaningful without being too serious, fun without feeling too casual. Josie understood, without taking offence, that I didn’t want a live-in partner. She was neither possessive nor insecure. Similarly, she enjoyed time on her own and I respected that. I was very relaxed and carefree, looking forward to the days ahead, knowing there were no obvious challenges waiting for me.

  It was a novel feeling. It was like taking in a deep breath and exhaling evenly and smoothly, leaving my lungs empty and cleansed. For the first time in my life I wasn’t putting up walls, making excuses or running away from someone. Instead, subconsciously I was breaking down the walls that had both imprisoned and protected me for so long, slowly yet surely chipping away at the blocks. And in doing so, I was digging down towards the buried memories. I no longer filtered every thought, every word, like an airport scanner. In my new happy place I was letting my guard down, and the consequences, like a rock thrown into a pool, would have ripples that would wash right over my head, and leave me unable to breathe.

  One night I’d invited Josie to stay over, and we’d spent the evening uneventfully, discussing our plans for Christmas and making last-minute shopping lists.

  ‘I’ll have Mick here for Christmas dinner,’ I reminded her. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Not at all,’ she smiled. ‘You and I can do something on Boxing Day. That’s fine by me.’

  That was how it was between us. It was so harmonious, so straightforward. We went to bed as usual, with no warning at all of the way my world was about to topple.

  During the night I woke myself up, screaming in terror. It took me a few seconds to work out that the wailing I could hear was in fact coming from me. I was aware too of a sharp, stinging pain down below, as though someone had forced themselves on me. And then the realisation smashed me in the face. I had just been raped. It had just happened. I was nine years old and John Wood was looming over me, the sickly smell of Old Spice on his old-man pyjamas, the stench of stale beer on his breath. I felt his scratchy beard. I saw his dead-fish eyes. I saw it all.

  ‘Maureen, what the hell happened?’

  It was Josie, shaking me, trying to jolt me out of my trance. But all I saw was John Wood. Wicked John Wood. I gripped the sheets until my knuckles were white and I was soaked with sweat.

  ‘He raped me,’ I gasped. ‘He attacked me.’

  ‘It was a dream,’ Josie kept saying. ‘Just a dream.’

  But I knew it was so much more than that. As my breathing gradually began to get more regular, I swung my legs out of the bed to go for a glass of water. But as I stood up I felt the rawness of the rape between my legs. I was reliving the horror, physically and mentally. It took about an hour for me to become fully aware of my surroundings and to realise this was not the bedroom with the flowery curtains and the pink bedspread. There were no posters on the wall, no rosary beads on my drawers. And I was not a child. At first, I said nothing to Josie. I couldn’t verbalise what I had seen. More than anything, I felt embarrassed and awkward, and tried to make light of it.

  ‘I’ve obviously been watching too many scary films,’ I said. ‘I had a nightmare, that’s all it was.’

  But Josie was unsettled, I could see that.

  ‘I’m worried about you,’ she said.

  I was determined to put it behind me, to lock it back in the box. And for a few days nothing happened, and I allowed myself a sigh of relief. But then, without warning, another one struck. It was the same routine, where I woke, mid-rape, screaming in terror and pain, pleading for him to stop. I was on my own this time, but my yelling woke my children, who ran into my room in the early hours in alarm.

  ‘Mum, what’s wrong?’ Naomi asked. ‘You sounded as though you were being murdered.’

  But I was not Mum. I was a nine-year-old girl and I was being held down in my bed. I heard the slap of John Wood’s belt buckle. I saw him smooth down his ginger goatee before he left my bedroom.

  ‘I’ve had the snip,’ he said. ‘You can’t get pregnant. Look it up.’

  ‘Mum!’ said Naomi again. ‘What the hell is the matter?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I mumbled eventually, scrabbling to gather my senses. ‘I had cheese before bed. Bad nightmare, sorry. You get yourselves back to bed.’

  But after that there was no stopping them. I could not keep them out. My dreams were like gremlins, burrowing into my thoughts, turning my life upside down, threatening my happiness, my sanity, my very being. They were chaotic and sporadic, with the memories flooding out, in disordered and jumbled horror. One night I dreamed about the start of the abuse, when I was a little girl, huddled in my bed, seeking refuge in the place I was least likely to be safe.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone. I’ll kill you. And remember, I’ve had the snip.’

  The words chased each other round my head, muddling together, tripping each other up, until I felt I could take no more of it. The next night, I was sixteen years old, pinned down on the staircase, with John Wood looming over me like a slimy reptile.

  ‘You’re my wife this week. You’re mine.’

  When I woke, my heart was hammering, and the blood was pulsing so loudly in my ears I could hardly even hear my own screams. I’d thought he was going to kill me. That was
the night. I thought he would rape me until I lost consciousness and then he would kill me. I was so scared, I was shaking. I wanted to get out of bed to make a hot drink, but I was worried I might meet him on the landing. I could not bring myself back to the present, no matter how hard I tried.

  ‘Come on, Maureen,’ I said to myself. ‘You can’t let them beat you, not like this.’

  But I was powerless to stop the nightmares. Each time I awoke I was convinced that I was back in my bedroom as a child. I saw the wallpaper and I could feel the pink bed cover between my fingers. I could smell John Wood’s cheap aftershave and I could see the disgusting droplets of sweat on his forehead. The scenes were incredibly and chillingly accurate. I recognised my old pink nightie. I could see my rosary beads, lying piously, indifferently, on the bedside table, like polished raisins. I saw the posters on the wall; Abba, Blondie, The Police. It was like a video tape running in my head. Each foul, stomach-churning detail was included. Each sharp pain. Each crushing drop of despair. And much as I tried to press pause, stop, eject … I could not. After one horrible night, where I woke weeping and shaking, Josie told me she had tried to talk to me, but to her amazement I had a different, girlish voice, and my mannerisms were like that of a child.

  ‘It was absolutely unbelievable,’ she told me. ‘I was talking to you, yet you didn’t even seem like you. You were like a little girl. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I replied. ‘I really am.’

  I had no memory of it, but I could tell I had freaked her out. Much later, a counsellor would tell me this behaviour was a symptom of borderline personality disorder, and that it was my way of coping. Of surviving the abuse. I tried, in broken segments, to confide in Josie. But I found it almost impossible.

  ‘It’s not something I really talk about,’ I told her eventually. ‘Forget it. That’s what I’m going to do.’

  I wanted to pull her closer, but instead I was pushing her away. All the memories focused on John Wood at first. But one night my dream began on that hot summer’s day in 1979, and, as I stood in the bathroom, I heard the door opening behind me. And then Jock was bearing down on me, his hand in my underwear. I could see him clearly; the white T-shirt, the skinny jeans, the black clumpy boots. The next night I was at Black Bank and it was so clear, it was astonishing. I felt the itchy grasses on my legs, I saw the sunlight through the long ferns, and I felt the agony and revulsion as Jock forced himself on me. I woke up, sobbing.

  ‘Please no,’ I wept. ‘Make it stop.’

  I didn’t even know if I was referring to the rapes or to the nightmares. Everything was muddling and merging into one. I was bombarded, night after night, and it was like being battered. It got to the point where I was too afraid to sleep because of what the night would bring. I began to dread going to bed. And yet I still had to function as a mother. Michaela was only six years old and I didn’t want this trauma to spill over into my children’s lives. More than anything, I didn’t want them to suffer. I believed they had been my subconscious motivation for burying the abuse in the first place. For it to surface now and damage them as a result would be too cruel.

  ‘It has to stop,’ I told myself.

  I tried to push the nightmares away; I thought perhaps I could squash them back inside. I had always known there was a box but I did not, could not, admit to myself what was inside. Each night, before bed, I gave myself a strict lecture. I was like a schoolteacher telling off my errant subconscious. Yet it was impossible. I was exhausted, confused and afraid. I became snappy and anxious with everyone around me. I felt like I was losing control completely and I worried where it was all going to end. But try as I might, I could no longer suppress what I knew were not nightmares, but actual memories. They were coming out and blasting into my reality, whether I wanted them to or not. The lock had been smashed off, without a key. It was almost as though it had blown up, from the inside. I now recognised and accepted beyond all doubt that John Wood and Jock had sexually abused me and raped me throughout my childhood. It was not a shock. It was not a revelation. But it was a truth I would rather have ignored. I had never allowed my children to spend time alone with my parents, but I had never allowed myself to wonder why. I had blocked Jock’s visit, ‘one for old time’s sake’, out of my mind. I had chased away the flashbacks and the reminders, as though they were annoying wasps, buzzing around my consciousness.

  Naomi was reaching puberty and it hit me, like a sledgehammer, just how vulnerable she was, how painfully young. I was tormented by snippets of my childhood, of images of John Wood and his foul beery breath, but I did not go any further. I could not say it out loud. The memories were like rats, clawing at the inside of my brain, trying to escape. I shoved them firmly back in their cage and shook my mind free of them. As a parent, I had always been totally confident and sure of myself, and safe in the knowledge that my own children would never suffer at all as I had. I knew abused people struggled to bond, I understood that some became abusers. Yet I knew it would never happen to me. I could break the cycle and it would not be a problem to do so.

  For me, this was where it had ended. But now, with the nightmares, this was where it all started – yet again. Mum did not figure at all in my dreams or in my thoughts. The nightmares, I realised, were a form of self-sabotage. Deep down, I felt I didn’t deserve happiness. I had found contentment with my children and with Josie, and my life had reached an equilibrium. But for me, that was not allowed.

  ‘Get her back in the gutter, where she belongs.’

  The phrase dominated my thoughts. It was my own contentment, ironically, which had been the trigger for the flashbacks. This was payback for daring to try to enjoy my life. Punishment for wanting to move on. Retribution for going through my days with a smile on my face.

  Chapter 12

  When the nightmares first began I was on quite amicable terms with Mum and John Wood. At weekends I would usually visit them with the children. Our conversations were always necessarily superficial, but I began to find that even the simplest exchanges were becoming unbearable for me. I could not bring myself to look at John Wood, or to walk into his house. Yet I was wary of breaking the routine, terrified that Mum would ask questions and confront me. I was in such a state, I could not even think of an excuse not to visit them.

  Typically, they did not notice that I was pale and quiet, and quite obviously preoccupied. Or if they did, they didn’t ask what was wrong. John Wood was never usually very friendly, and he generally stayed in the living room watching TV whilst I went into the garden with Mum and the kids. He had never been a communicative man, but as the nightmares intensified I noticed he was becoming more offhand, more withdrawn. On one visit he didn’t bother coming out of the house at all. He didn’t even speak to me or the children.

  ‘What’s got into him?’ I asked Mum.

  But she just shrugged. She wasn’t interested. I wondered if he had noticed a subtle change in me. Had he after all picked up on my disquiet, had he realised that I was troubled and drawn? Perhaps then he was worried the truth might be about to burst out, and with it his dirty secret. Could he see what was coming, even before I could? It was impossible to tell whether he was withdrawing for reasons of self-preservation, or whether he was just an unpleasant and bad-tempered man who did not like me or my children.

  By February 2008 the nightmares were becoming so vivid that I was able to piece together months and months of abuse. During the day I would remember more details, and there seemed to be triggers everywhere I went. I could be washing the dishes, singing happily, with the kids around me, when a brutal flashback would propel me back almost thirty years and I would be left shuddering with fear.

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ I snapped at the kids.

  I cursed myself as they shrank back in alarm. I was pushing them away too, hurting the people I loved the most. The flashbacks were worst when I visited my parents. Sometimes just
a grunt from John Wood was enough to instigate a flashback, and in my mind’s eye I could see him raping me and hear him grunting into my hair. I had to stop visiting. I was frightened of how Mum might react, but I knew, for my own well-being, that I had to stay away. I wrote to her, explaining vaguely that I had stuff to deal with and I wasn’t well.

  ‘I’ll let you know when I’m feeling better,’ I wrote. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  I ought to have known she would not leave it there. She had never been the sort of woman to follow orders or even polite requests. And soon afterwards she turned up at my house, demanding to be let inside for a proper explanation. Again, I insisted I was ill. Which was, of course, quite true. The stress was physically and mentally draining.

  ‘I’ll be in touch when I’m back to normal,’ I said wearily. ‘I need some time on my own. I can’t visit you at the moment. I’m sorry.’

  Perhaps she stared hard at me before she walked away. Perhaps there was a shadow of fear, of uncertainty, in her eyes. But I was too wrapped up in my own angst to notice. I could not bear to have anyone around me, and my relationship with Josie, lovely as it had been, slowly fell apart. I couldn’t blame her at all; my behaviour had been bizarre.

  ‘You need to get some help,’ she told me. ‘Whatever is going on, you can’t deal with it on your own.’

  But we remained friends and she did her best to support me. She persuaded me to see my GP, who prescribed anti-depressants, without asking me about the source of my terrors. I walked out of the surgery feeling completely desolate. I knew tablets would not help. I had tried those before, after losing Ben, and they had not worked then either. Deep inside me, my secret bubbled and festered, like a tumour waiting to burst. The pressure was immense. With no outlet for my unease, I started self-harming. In the quiet of my bedroom, late at night, I began cutting at my legs, high up on my thighs, so that the children wouldn’t see. The relief was all too temporary, followed by a wave of guilt and shame. I had more nightmares; this time I remembered the scene from Christopher’s funeral, where Mum had punched me as I lay in bed, crying.