A Family Secret Page 4

  I was sleepy and just wanted to slip back into bed, but I knew better than to refuse. I went downstairs and flicked the kettle on; black coffee for him, black tea for her. When I took the drinks into the bedroom, Mum nodded at the TV and said: ‘Come and watch this with us.’

  I looked at the small TV at the foot of their bed, where a Hammer House of Horror film was showing.

  ‘Don’t want to, I’m tired,’ I mumbled.

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ she snapped, her tone suddenly sharp.

  Gingerly, I got into the bed, feeling uncomfortable and on edge. Mum was not at all tactile or affectionate, and this just wasn’t like her at all. I couldn’t remember ever having been in bed with her before. The mixed-up smells of Old Spice aftershave, Charlie perfume and stale, sour booze made my eyes water. I didn’t feel safe. And yet I didn’t know why.

  The horror film was frightening, and instead of looking at the TV I looked around the room at the chest of drawers, the bedside cabinets, the greeny-blue carpet and the yellow flowery curtains. They had a matching quilt, too. Unlike us, they had a duvet – the very latest invention. I remembered feeling envious when they bought it. Now I was under it I couldn’t wait to get out. The greeny-blue carpet was spotless, which was no surprise. Part of my rota was to clean their bedroom. But it didn’t look the same, not in the dark, not with Mum and him on either side of me.

  I must, eventually, have dozed off, despite myself. And when I woke later I had a horrible, scratching feeling down below. Suddenly, horribly, wide awake, I realised there were fingers inside me.

  ‘Please stop,’ I begged. ‘Please.’

  I looked at Mum, pleading with her, hoping she would tell John Wood to stop. But she just smirked and said:

  ‘No. You’re enjoying it.’

  And I realised, as I took in the scene, that the fingers inside me belonged to my mother. The bile rose up my throat and I recoiled in disgust.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I shouted. ‘Please stop.’

  But neither of them took any notice. John Wood was watching, his long, thin face rapt with concentration, like he was watching a great film.

  ‘You have to do the same to your mum now,’ he ordered.

  I shook my head and tried to wriggle back from him, but he grabbed my hand forcibly and took two of my fingers, along with two of his. Mum began moaning loudly and the sound made me retch violently.

  ‘I don’t want to do this,’ I sobbed.

  Mum stared at me for a few moments, and then she said to John Wood: ‘If you want to have sex with me, you have to do it with her first.’

  And so that was what they did. He raped me whilst my own mum watched. I could hear her groaning and murmuring her approval. I bit down on my hand, with my eyes tightly closed, and my other self, floating away across the room, disassociated and divorced from my broken little body. My other self sat down quietly on the chest of drawers, reading a book and swinging her legs, until it was finished.

  Once it was over, Mum said: ‘Get back in bed and keep your mouth shut.’

  I lay awake all night, and the next day, numb with shock, I expected an announcement, a revelation of some sort. But Mum didn’t refer to it at all. She stayed in bed late on Sunday morning, as usual, and then chased me out to play with my siblings in the afternoon.

  ‘Back at 5 p.m. for tea,’ she told us.

  Everything was just as normal. I even questioned whether I was going mad, whether I might have dreamt the whole episode. The weekend came around again, and nothing happened. I tried to tell myself it had been a one-off, as I had with Jock. But somehow I knew that just wasn’t true.

  Sure enough, two weeks on, Mum crept into my room and shook me roughly by the shoulder.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered loudly. ‘Wake up and come with me.’

  As I trailed obediently behind her, the tears splashed down my nightie and onto my bare feet. It was just a few steps from my room to theirs. In some ways it felt like the longest walk, as though I was walking to the gallows. But at the same time, it was over too soon. I wanted to walk forever. The scene was surreal. Mum wore her winceyette nightdress and John Wood had his paisley pyjamas on. They looked for all the world like a run-of-the-mill middle-aged couple, in any suburban bedroom. Yet they could not have been more abnormal, more depraved, more inhuman. I longed to escape. I longed to be another little girl, to join a different family, where I was loved and wanted. Not for sex. But just for me.

  It became a fortnightly horror. Every other Saturday, Mum and Jock Wood would rape and sexually abuse me in their bed. I was made to endure unimaginable horrors, which, though I tried to block them out, burned through the lining of my soul and ravaged my very core. I hated too that my body reacted to their touch, and I felt like my own body was betraying me. I hated this, so why was my body saying otherwise?

  I had no idea why they did it every second Saturday, except perhaps that it fitted in with John Wood’s shift patterns. But I dreaded the allotted suffering, the alternate weekends of misery and despair. One of them would steal, like slime, into my room in the middle of the night to wake me. They slithered into my dreams like vile slugs, dragging me out of sleep and into the devils’ den. It got to the stage where I would not, could not, sleep on those designated Saturdays. Instead, I waited, wired and anxious, dreading the forthcoming meeting with my nemesis. If there was a purgatory in Stoke-on-Trent it was here, in my bunk bed.

  At first I was terrified. I would protest, struggle even, against the wickedness. But as time went on I became resigned. What could I do? One Sunday morning, after a night of abuse, I woke up in such pain that I could barely move.

  ‘I can’t take any more,’ I thought miserably. ‘I can’t go on.’

  I had no plans to run away, but I found myself at the front door, heading off up the street, without any plan at all of what I was going to do. I didn’t take any money, I didn’t even take a coat.

  And though it hurt to walk, the pain somehow propelled me forwards. I focused on the pain; it almost helped me to keep going. And I was so desperate, I would have walked away on two broken legs if I’d had to.

  Later in the day I found myself outside a local school, not my own. I climbed over the perimeter fence and wandered around the playground. I realised I was starving with hunger, but it was not enough to send me back home. And the longer it went on, the harder it got. I imagined my mother’s wrath and I could not face it. When darkness came, I managed to loosen a trap door on a coal store and creep inside. It was dark and dingy but warm, because I was up against the boiler, and rather cosy, too. Strangely, I was not at all scared. This was not nearly as frightening as being in my own bed at home. I fell asleep much easier than I’d expected, and the next thing I knew, there was a man’s voice invading my dreams.

  ‘She’s just a kid,’ he was shouting. ‘We need to ring the police. She’s filthy, covered in coal.’

  I scrambled to my feet and he helped me outside. I blinked against the bright light of the morning. It turned out he was the school caretaker and he was about to open up the school for the children to arrive.

  ‘You should be at school yourself,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you home and into a hot bath.’

  The police came and they were not so understanding. Clearly they knew I had run away in the past and they had me down as a delinquent and a time-waster.

  ‘You’re putting your parents through all this unnecessary pain,’ said the policeman harshly. ‘Why can’t you just behave yourself?’

  Dad was at work, but Mum was home when we arrived. She was all smiles with the policemen, but the moment they left she gave me a belt.

  ‘Don’t try that stunt again,’ she shouted. ‘Now get your school uniform on and get out of my sight.’

  I was packed off to school with a hollow feeling inside that was about much more than me missing my breakfast.

&nb
sp; Two Saturdays on, it was business as usual. I could see no way out. I had tried running away, I had tried to object. If I cried, Mum gave me a slap and told me shut up.

  ‘Nobody likes to listen to a snivelling kid,’ she would say.

  My only defence against it, as their beery breath bore down on me, was to leave my own body and watch it happen, high above the bed. Detached and separate, I could remain impassive. Untouched. Unhurt.

  It got to the stage, if I concentrated very hard, where I could actually physically leave the room whilst I was being raped. I would hover over the bed, before floating down the stairs and into the living room. I could sit for a while at the dining table, or even have a nosy around the kitchen, just to keep my mind focused. I didn’t go back to my own body until it was done. And so, in my child’s mind, it wasn’t happening to me. And yet, in the lonely hours after it was over, I would lie in my own bed and wonder why.

  I wondered whether maybe this was how parents showed their love for their children? Or was it because I had done something bad? I was not a particularly attractive child – could this be a form of punishment? Or was it because they loved me the most? Had I done something wrong – or right – to be targeted in this way? I couldn’t work it out. It was a warped rationale, but I was so desperate to be loved. I wanted to believe that the abuse stemmed from something good – that I was loved and wanted and cherished. Yet each time my mother laid a finger on me, each time she watched her husband raping me, it was another step into the jaws of hell. Her abuse, more so than any other, destroyed me. It was the ultimate betrayal.

  She had carried me, given birth to me, pushed my pram and held my hand. And now, day by day, she was ruining me. This horror laid the foundations for a complex relationship with my mother, which would alternately threaten my sanity and give me hope. She was both the disease and the cure. I hated her and yet I could not help loving her, perhaps in equal measure.

  After they had finished with me, I would tiptoe back to bed and, incredibly, over time, I learned to shut it out and I was able to sleep. It was a coping mechanism. A way of keeping my head bobbing above water – but only just. The following morning I would retch with revulsion as I cleaned my teeth, battling to shut out the monstrous scenes that played, constantly, at the periphery of my mind. And the anticipation was almost worse than the event itself.

  Every other Saturday morning the panic would build inside me like a furnace, until it was boiling hot. To me, it was monumental. All-consuming. And it floored me that nobody else seemed to even notice. Life carried on around me, just as normal. My sisters would giggle and bicker. We’d eat tea at 5 p.m. Mum would get ready for work. She was always well turned-out and respectable, and so were we. Was that pride in her own appearance and pride in her family? Or was it her way of making sure that nobody asked questions, that nobody suspected that she was a witch in a Marks and Spencer dress? And all the while, the tension bubbled and bubbled.

  All evening I would either play in the street or read my books with the anxiety hanging over me like a noose – a noose just big enough for a small girl’s neck. And in the bedroom, whilst my sisters played music or read teen magazines, I would stare at my book, sometimes fixed on the same page for hours, as my stomach churned and my brain shuddered.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ they’d ask. ‘You’re a bit quiet.’

  I couldn’t believe that nobody had cottoned on. If there were any near misses, I never knew. Did any of my siblings ever find out? Did no one get up for a wee or a drink on those hideous Saturday nights and wonder why my bed was empty? Were there no relatives or neighbours or teachers who noticed there was something wrong? I wondered again whether maybe it wasn’t wrong after all. Whether perhaps this was what all families did and that it was just a part of growing up, a rite of passage. Or, I realised sadly, there was a possibility that people knew what I was going through but they turned a blind eye. They just didn’t care.

  So, with no other choice, I learned to stay quiet, I learned to accept it. I was a child caught in an adult web of evil. ‘Sex with the parents’ became an item on the rota, like ‘hoovering the bedroom’ or ‘cleaning the kitchen’. It was as much a part of my routine as dusting the windowsills. Tragically flippant, perhaps, but horribly true. And piled on top of the fortnightly abuse by my parents, I also had Jock to contend with. Though he had now left home, aged fifteen, he would sneak back whenever the rest of the family was out, to rape me.

  I’d hear him banging into the house through the back door and shouting up the stairs, to make sure the place was empty. Once he had made sure we were alone, he would strike. He took his chances, whenever he could, grabbing me on Black Bank and dragging me into the bushes, or ambushing me by the pond. He always took me back to that same spot, with the long ferns and the itchy grass. Even if I was playing out with my friends, he was bold enough to yank me out of the group and take me away. And, of course, they never gave it a second thought. Why would they? What would I have to fear from my own big brother?

  ‘Please Jock, no,’ I sobbed. ‘Please don’t.’

  Though I pleaded with him to stop, I never tried to run away from him. I was too frightened and too subservient and I knew he’d catch me anyway. My fate would be so much worse if I tried to escape him, I was sure of that. And through it all, Jock never spoke once. I had no idea if he knew that Mum and John Wood were abusing me, or if they knew what he was up to, despite them having warned him to stop. The idea that I had been targeted twice – possibly without obvious connection and collusion – left me desolate. And from that sprung the conviction that this must be my fault.

  If I had been targeted by three members of my own family, then surely I was to blame? Evidently, I had done something to trigger this. But what? I felt dehumanised and brutalised. I was nothing more than a scrap of meat to my own family. And yet still, I longed to be loved.

  Chapter 4

  A few months after the regular abuse began, I began suffering from persistent urine infections. I was in a lot of pain at home, which didn’t seem to bother Mum much, but it was affecting my schoolwork, too, because I was forever asking to go to the toilet in class. Mum didn’t like the teachers asking any questions at all. She didn’t like any attention on our family, so she made an appointment with the GP. But, of course, she made me suffer for it.

  ‘You’re nothing but trouble,’ she snapped.

  I was back and forth from the doctors for a few weeks, and when several courses of antibiotics made no difference I was referred to a urologist at the hospital. Mum was at work when the appointment came around, so John Wood took me instead. I felt so anxious, being on my own with him. I had visions of him raping me at some point during the appointment. I knew there were beds at the hospital – would he lock me in a room and do it there? I wasn’t sure what was and wasn’t socially acceptable any more. I shrank back, like a frightened animal, every time his hand brushed mine on the bus journey there.

  ‘We’ll need a urine sample from you,’ the nurse said, when we arrived.

  I had no idea how to pee into the small sample bottle I was given and I looked questioningly at John Wood after she had gone. I didn’t want to even speak to him, but there was nobody else.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he growled. ‘Just piss into the bottle. It’s not difficult.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I nodded. ‘I promise.’

  But whether it was the infections or my nerves, I just couldn’t do it. I sat in the toilet, with tears running down my face, wondering how on earth I was going to get out of yet another mess. In the end, John Wood marched into the ladies’ toilets with a paper cup and demanded I use that instead. The idea of him in the girls’ toilets, invading my space yet again, left me trembling. Would he attack me here – in the cubicle? I just didn’t know.

  When at last I produced a sample, we went in to see the specialist.

  ‘Can you think of a reason why Maur
een might be getting so many infections?’ asked the doctor. ‘Is there any chance she could be sexually active at her young age?’

  John Wood shook his head.

  ‘You do understand what I’m saying to you?’ the doctor pressed.

  This time John Wood nodded.

  ‘I’m absolutely sure,’ he replied.

  I didn’t know exactly what they were talking about, but I was slowly working out that what happened to me at weekends had some connection with ‘sexual activity’. And I wondered whether perhaps this doctor might step in and put a stop to it. It was a faint glimmer of hope and I clung to it. But when the next assigned Saturday night came around, and I was abruptly awoken during the night, I realised I had been foolish to count on the medical profession.

  One afternoon soon after, as I played outside with some pals, we came across an old bike in the street without a seat. It was rusty and probably destined for the tip, but it gave us something to do. We all tried to ride it, and when I jumped on, the springs pinched me and cut into my groin.

  The following day I was in pain, and again, I struggled to go to the toilet.

  ‘I can’t have a wee,’ I told Mum. ‘There’s something wrong.’

  Grumbling, she made an appointment with the GP, who sent us straight to hospital. There I was examined by another doctor, who frowned and said to Mum: ‘Do you realise your daughter is no longer a virgin? She’s only ten years old.’

  Mum shook her head irately.

  ‘She sat on a bike pole, that’s all there is to it,’ she retorted.

  I felt another flicker of hope that perhaps now something would be done. Alarm bells would ring. Surely this doctor would ask me some questions and get some help? But instead, I was sent home with some antibiotic cream and that was the end of it. Except, of course, Mum gave me a clip around the back of the head for bringing trouble to the family.

  As with our clothes, she was always careful to make sure we wore good school shoes and we had the correct uniform. We had regular haircuts, and we saw dentists and doctors when necessary. Looking back now, I feel it had nothing to do with maternal instincts and it was all about keeping up appearances.