A Family Secret Read online

  ‘I’m really struggling,’ I confessed. ‘I keep thinking about the exhumation and what my son went through. I’m pleased about the charges, I think. But I’m worried about the impact on my children, Marie. I don’t know if or when or even how this is going to end.’

  Marie nodded understandingly.

  ‘This is a positive course of action,’ she reminded me. ‘You are showing your children that no matter who hurts you, and no matter how long ago it was, you must speak up and tell the truth. That’s such a valuable lesson, and it’s a brave one too.

  ‘You’re doing well, Maureen. You’re still standing. And that’s an achievement in itself.’

  They were wise words, and I knew she was right. I also knew it would be months before the case came to court and I had to stay firm. I could not afford to let myself slip or to question my resolve.

  ‘You’re still standing,’ Christopher reminded me. ‘One day at a time.’

  Chapter 14

  To give myself a focus, I began planning for Christmas. I put the decorations up in mid-November and started my Christmas shopping. Though I was a single mum and I was always short of money, I overspent every year on the kids. Nothing gave me greater pleasure.

  ‘If I don’t spend on you, who do I spend on?’ I grinned.

  One afternoon, Naomi and I went shopping into the city centre. She had nipped into Primark to choose new Christmas pyjamas for Michaela and I was waiting outside, because the crowds were unbearable. I wanted to catch my breath for a few moments. But as I gazed down the street, admiring the Christmas tree and the sparkling lights, I suddenly froze in horror. There, heading straight for me, was my mother. I went into panic, my pulse racing, my blood running icy cold. Frantically, I crouched down low, behind the brickwork of the shop façade, and tried to hide my face behind one of my shopping bags. Carefully, cautiously, I peered out – and there she was. She was just a few feet away. My heart thudded as she drew nearer. It was like waiting for an electric shock. It was all I could do to stop myself screaming. As it was, she didn’t even see me. She walked straight past. I had built myself up for a huge confrontation and it had fizzled away into nothing. But just the idea of her being on the same street, just the notion that we might cross paths, was enough to reduce me to an anxious mess. I was still curled up, trembling, when Naomi came out of the shop.

  ‘Mum, what on earth are you doing down there?’ she asked.

  ‘I saw her,’ I stuttered. ‘Your Nan is in town.’

  Our Christmas shopping day was ruined. I knew I couldn’t continue, knowing I might see her again.

  ‘Let’s get you home,’ Naomi said kindly. ‘We can shop another day, it’s fine.’

  But we still had to get back across town to the bus station. I felt hunted, peeping around each corner in case she was there. My head was swivelling like an owl, scanning like a CCTV camera. I was a bundle of nerves as we queued for our bus home, in case she turned up at the bus station.

  ‘Calm down, Mum,’ Naomi reassured me. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. She should be the one who is frightened of facing you, not the other way round.’

  I knew Naomi was right, but I couldn’t explain my fear and nor could I shake it. How the hell was I going to face my mother in court if I couldn’t even walk past her in town? In court, I would be meeting my maker. Literally. And it frightened the life out of me.

  Naomi celebrated her sixteenth birthday in mid-December and we had a family meal at home. I cooked up a storm and found I really enjoyed myself. I baked her a big birthday cake too. Once again, cooking gave me a sense of serenity and calm, just when I needed it most.

  ‘Happy Birthday to you …’ we sang, and, as I watched my children’s faces, glowing with happiness, I felt myself smiling too.

  We had a busy, chaotic Christmas, with wrapping paper and half-eaten mince pies scattered everywhere. The house was filled with giggling and bickering and noise and life. It was just how I liked it. I managed to laugh along with the kids, enjoy the Christmas films and push all my problems to the darkest recesses of my mind. In the New Year I began to feel more positive about the future. I was scared to death about the trial, but I could also see an end in sight and, with it, some closure for my family. I knew if I could just get through it I could start to put this whole thing behind me at last.

  The trial date was set for 11 May 2010, and I was both dreading it and willing it forward. To keep myself on track, I wrote reams of poetry, with my fears and feelings spilling out over the pages:

  Hopeless days, endless nights, constant battles, useless fights,

  Fretful dreams, heartfelt hopes, truths to be told, struggles to cope,

  A victim’s life, a survivor’s dream, nothing’s ever as simple as it seems.

  Future seems bleak, past is worse, middle of it all, finding new firsts;

  First time to cry without feeling fear; first time to tell someone you hold dear;

  First time to be totally believed; first time to feel utter relief;

  First time ever not to be judged; first time ever down your path you must trudge;

  First time to face your childhood demon; first time to believe you really are human;

  First time to let go of your awful past. It may be the first, but it’s also the last.

  At the end of January 2010 I was taken to see the court by a victim liaison officer.

  ‘It’s a good idea for you to look around and get used to the place,’ she advised.

  But even on a trial run, in an empty court, I was apprehensive. I had never been in a crown court in my life. When Ben came home I’d been to the family court to finalise the custody order, but that was nothing like this. As we walked inside, my stomach lurched and my mouth ran dry. The victim liaison officer kindly showed me where the defendants would be, and also the jury, the barristers and the judge. It was intimidating and harrowing just looking around me.

  ‘And this is where you will be,’ she said, pointing to the witness box.

  Special measures had been put in place so that I could have a screen to protect me. I had insisted on this, knowing that I would never be able to concentrate on my evidence with Mum’s eyes boring into me.

  ‘This is just how it will be for the trial,’ the liaison officer explained, showing me a thick, dark curtain, which went from the ceiling to the floor. I sat down in the witness box to try it out, and she pulled the curtain across. Immediately, I felt muffled and suffocated. I was trapped – I was imprisoned – and it was as though they had me exactly where they wanted me. Again.

  ‘No,’ I gasped, with my blood pounding in my ears. ‘I’m too closed in, I can’t bear it. I don’t feel like the victim, I feel like the defendant. I feel like I’m on trial here.’

  I suffered a panic attack, right there in the witness box. My heart was thumping so loudly it threatened to jump right out of my chest. I sat with my head in my hands, trying to slow my breathing and stem my tears. I knew if that happened at the trial it would be game over.

  ‘I’ll have to give evidence without a screen,’ I said to her. ‘It’s the only way.’

  Of course, it was a huge decision for me. I would have to face my abusers and my rapists, who also happened to be my mother, my brother and my stepfather.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked the officer doubtfully.

  ‘I can do it,’ I said aloud, more to convince myself than anyone else.

  Deep down, I wasn’t really sure at all. Was I bold, or stupid? We walked out of the courtroom, with my legs still shaking, and I sat down on a bench. Could I really go through with this? Could I put my own parents in jail? There was a strange dichotomy in my attitude to my parents and my brother. Whilst I loathed and despised them, I also felt an irrational but palpable sense of guilt. I knew the court case would destroy them, and also my siblings, and my wider family. I had to live with that. I was the black sheep. I was the one w
ho had thrown a rock and smashed open the glass house where my own family lived.

  Time seemed to slow down and almost stop completely as the court date drew nearer. Then, with one day to go, it was delayed for a further two days because Jock’s defence team said his DNA results were not ready. I was livid. He’d had months and months to get his case ready and this, I knew, was nothing more than an attempt to unsettle me and throw me off course. And to my annoyance, it worked. On the morning of the trial, I was outside the court buildings by 8.45 a.m., pacing the pavements and trying to pluck up the courage to go inside.

  ‘I’m with you, Mum,’ said a soft voice at my shoulder.

  Knowing I was not alone, I took a deep breath and pushed through the glass doors. After security checks, I walked into the foyer – and came face to face with Jock. He was sitting on the seats outside the witness support room, for all the world like an innocent bystander. I couldn’t believe it. I half thought I was hallucinating. I registered a look of surprise and alarm on his face and realised, with a jolt, that he wasn’t expecting to see me either. Mumbling and sweating, I managed to find a member of the court’s staff and I was shown into a waiting room and away from him. As I got my breath back, and sipped a cup of tea, I remembered the look on Jock’s face. I knew that he hadn’t been expecting me at all this morning. He had thought I would bail at the last minute. Throughout my entire life he had bullied and controlled me. He had presumed and assumed that I would always stay silent. And now, as the moment of reckoning approached, he was counting on me losing my nerve, as always, and letting him walk free.

  ‘Not any more,’ I said under my breath. ‘No way.’

  Sure enough, my barrister came to see me and said that Jock’s barrister was indicating a change of plea.

  ‘He waited to see if I was going to turn up,’ I said bitterly. ‘He’s only pleading guilty because I’m here, because he has no other choice.’

  My barrister nodded in agreement. We were called into court at 11.30 a.m. to hear Jock plead guilty to indecent assault, rape and incest. The trial was then adjourned for the CPS to prepare an updated case against my parents.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s it,’ my barrister explained. ‘You have another long wait ahead, until we get a new date.’

  My head was swirling with a maelstrom of emotions. I was relieved that Jock had pleaded guilty but also furious that he had waited until the last possible moment to do so. The evidence that he was Christopher’s father was irrefutable, but he had hoped – and believed – that I would not be brave enough to face him in court, and that my case would collapse. He had only told the truth to save his own skin, pure and simple.

  ‘Who’s the coward now, Jock?’ I said to myself. ‘Who’s running away?’

  In spite of myself, the smallest part of me felt some sympathy for Jock. He had looked white, like a broken man, when he saw me walk into the foyer. Gone was his usual arrogance and his self-confident swagger. Images flashed through my mind: Jock playing his music loud and Mum hollering up the stairs at him, Jock seeing my broken nose and going off to punish the culprit, Jock coming home from the barbers with a Mohican and sending Mum into a frenzy. He was still my big brother. I could not escape that.

  I was angry at myself for being so soft. The very fact that he was my brother should have guaranteed I was safe with him, I knew that. Yet empathy and affection were not taps I could simply switch off. This conflict, this misplaced loyalty, had blighted my entire life. It was, of course, the reason why I had waited so long to fight for the truth. And now, at the last hurdle, it threatened to eclipse my chance of justice completely.

  ‘Hang in there, Mum,’ breathed a voice at my side. ‘One guilty, two to go.’

  I was frustrated that now I faced yet another long wait, another agonising build-up before my parents could be dealt with. Everything was back on hold. And the wait for a new court date hung over me, like the gallows. For the next ten months I lived on my very frazzled nerves. I went from eighteen and a half stone to twelve stone. I seemed to burn calories away just through worrying. It was the sort of weight loss I would normally have been thrilled with. Now it served only as a harsh reminder of what was ahead. The new date was set for March 2011, and somehow I got through the days, one at a time. I celebrated my fortieth birthday in October 2010, and Mary and Louise took me out for a meal to celebrate. We had a party at home, too. But somehow it felt like the last supper.

  I got through another Christmas, another round of children’s birthdays, painting on a smile, baking cakes and wrapping presents. I tried hard to throw myself back into family life. But I was simply going through the motions and filling in time, like a woman destined for the electric chair. When it came around it was almost a relief, just to get it over with. Louise picked me up for the first day of the new trial. Ben and Naomi came to the court with us, and the younger kids stayed with Mick. Neither of us wanted the three younger ones to know the sordid details. I could count on Mick now even more than when we were together, and I was thankful for that. He had been shocked and outraged when I told him about the abuse, but supportive. The trial was listed to last for ten days and I was due to give evidence on the second and third days. I was warned I would be questioned by three barristers – the prosecution and one each for the defendants.

  ‘You can have as many breaks as you like,’ the witness protection staff told me.

  But that was little comfort.

  As I walked into the courtroom to take my seat in the witness box it was like walking from my bedroom into my parents’ room, ready for the fortnightly horror of abuse. I felt my feet shuffling slightly, as they once had in my slippers, reluctant to make the short trip across the landing. It was just a few steps, but it seemed to take years. And in some ways I didn’t want the walk to end. I didn’t want what was coming next. Yet I could not avoid it. Suddenly I was a little girl again; helpless, afraid and alone. I did not look at the dock, I did not look up at all. But I could feel their eyes boring into me. I could smell the Charlie perfume and the Old Spice aftershave. My heart pounded against my rib cage as I remembered the flowery curtains, I saw the depraved joy on Mum’s face, and heard John Wood grunting and sighing, his rancid breath damp on my ear.

  ‘Block it out,’ I told myself firmly. ‘Deal with it later.’

  My barrister questioned me first. Then Mum’s barrister stood up to face me, and if I had been attacked by a rabid dog I could not have felt any more traumatised.

  ‘Why are you telling lies?’ he snapped.

  ‘Why would I lie?’ I stuttered. ‘Why would anyone put themselves through this ordeal in a court?’

  He fired questions at me, demanding to know why I hadn’t reported Mum’s abuse at the same time as John Wood and Jock’s. He claimed my allegations were simply a figment of an over-active imagination.

  ‘You want revenge on your parents because your brother raped you – you blame them, don’t you?’ he insisted.

  Louise had warned me not to lose my temper, but it was so hard. I felt as though I was the one on trial, that I was the one in the wrong. She had advised me also to tell my story to just one person in the jury and concentrate on them, and nothing else.

  ‘It will calm your nerves,’ she said.

  So, as the barrister ranted and raved, I focused on a man in the jury in his forties, with greying hair and a kind, gentle face. I tried to explain how the memories had surfaced piece by piece, how they had to be coaxed out of the depths of my mind, because it was otherwise too painful and too overwhelming. I told him that I truly believed I might not have survived if the whole thing had come out at once.

  Mum was sat just a few feet away, and I sensed she was watching me. And pounding away in my mind the whole time was the knowledge that she could have saved me from all of this. She could have prevented the exhumation. She could have prevented the court case. Simply by telling the truth. The enormity of the betrayal,
of the rejection, by the woman who had given birth to me had never been more stark or more sickening. And it had never hurt more. I had been determined not to let my guard down, but the tears came and I sobbed uncontrollably, in front of the whole court.

  ‘We’ll take a break,’ the judge announced.

  During the break I walked outside for some fresh air and was dismayed to see Mum there too, having a cigarette. She looked blank. Totally without emotion. I called it her ‘pan face’. I had seen it so many times before. It was the same facial expression she’d worn when she battered me, at Christopher’s funeral. She gave nothing away in her face. Perhaps, I reasoned, that was because there actually was nothing to give away. Perhaps she was an empty vessel. A cold, unfeeling, unmaternal mother. I went back into court, shell-shocked as much by my mother’s lack of reaction as by the cross-examinations.

  ‘Tell me again why you lie so much,’ said her barrister. ‘Tell me why you can’t differentiate between dreams and reality.’

  My evidence, punctuated by frequent breaks, lasted for hours. Afterwards, I felt totally defeated; drained and squeezed out. I wasn’t at all sure I could do it all again the next day, at the mercy of John Wood’s barrister. Early the following morning I had some cereal, but threw it all back up. My stomach was churning. This was so much harder than the police interviews. The barristers in court were absolutely brutal.

  ‘They’re like professional bastards,’ I said wearily. ‘I feel like they really want to destroy me.’

  John Wood’s barrister focused on the fact that his client was an upstanding man, respected and valued within the community.

  ‘Not within his own home,’ I thought.

  But I said nothing.