Abandoned (12 page)

Chapter 24

I
t was only a few seconds, but I feel as though he has been looking at me like that forever.

The police lead him away through the small side door into the station. I can’t move. They’re prising my fingers from the drainpipe one by one, but softening their voices, saying,‘It’ll all be alright.’

‘Your mum’s inside waiting for you,’ they say.‘Come on now, Anya, let go, it’s okay.’ I can hear impatience in the taller one’s voice.‘This is silly,’ he says, squatting down beside me.‘Come on now, we don’t want to force you. But you’ve got to come in with us.’

They promise that I won’t see him again; that he won’t do anything else to me. They say it was a mistake, that I shouldn’t have seen him, that the car he was in must have got delayed somewhere. They promise me that Mummy’s waiting for me inside and that they’re bringing me to her, not him. I don’t trust anything any more. They’ve tricked me; this is all a trick. I know they’re lying again.

Somehow they get me to go in. We stand at the end of a long, blood-red corridor, quiet and dark after the lights in the car park outside. There are doors along both sides, doors which could fly open any time and him leap out. It’s too quiet. I won’t go forwards.

‘Show me where she is,’ I say.‘Please, just let me see her first.’

One of them goes off reluctantly, his hat under his arm, his boots echoing loudly down the empty corridor. It feels like I must have fallen asleep for a moment standing there, because one of them taps me on the shoulder and says,‘Look, there she is.’

I drag my head up from my chest, my eyes flickering open, and see Mummy in one of the doorways right at the end. She’s like an apparition with the light fanned out behind her, frail and tiny, standing there with her beige mac still belted.

I stumble towards her, crying loudly, convinced that he is going to jump out from one of the other doors and get me. Poor Mummy. Her face is bone-white, her eyes bloodshot and swollen from crying, her hands shaking, wringing white tissues. I throw myself at her, burying my head in her chest, saying,‘Sorry, Mum, I’m sorry,’ as she puts her arms around me.

The interview room is empty apart from two white tables and some orange plastic chairs with cigarette burns. A window, with painted white bars on the outside, overlooks big steel bins under sheds opposite. Mummy’s grey leather handbag is on one of the tables, and cups and saucers and a half-empty bottle of milk are on the other one, next to some blank sheets of white paper. Another policeman sits down and shuffles them straight.

All I can think is that my uncle is somewhere in this building, and that I have told. After all his threats and warnings over the years,
I told
…That, and the way Mummy looks.

‘We’re just going to ask you a few things about what he did to you and you can answer them.’

I don’t want to. I can’t. All these years I have never put anything into words. Now I’ve said too much already.

‘It’ll be all right, Mum will be in the room. You just have to tell us what he did, then we can make sure he never does it again.’

How are they going to make sure? This is my uncle they’re talking about, my uncle who can do whatever he likes. I look up at Mummy to see if it’s okay but she’s turned to light a cigarette. I shake my head.

‘It’s okay, isn’t it, Mum?’ they say, and Mummy nods. She’s crying loudly into a tissue, refusing to sit down, pacing around, up and down the room, saying she feels sick.

‘I don’t want to, Mum. Do I have to?’

There’s a long silence.‘It’s all right. Tell them,’ she says.

I can hear from the way she says it that it isn’t all right. Nothing is right now. I turn back around in my seat and listen to her draw on her cigarette, her crying getting louder as a policewoman locks the door.

They’re easy questions to start with, about what time I got up that morning and what I had for breakfast, what time Mummy left, where everyone else was, how many brothers and sisters I have, their names…Then they start asking questions about him.

I don’t know how long it goes on for. The ashtray is full and Mummy is still walking up and down, chain-smoking, her face twisting in pain. I am not going to say any more; I can’t make Mummy hear any more of this. But they keep on.

‘Take your time,’ they say.‘It won’t be much longer. Just a few more questions then you and mum can go home.’

They carry on, asking when it happened and where everyone else was at the time. They want to know how many times, how many years. What did it feel and sound and smell like? What did it taste like?

I don’t know—nothing…dirty…disgusting…bad…it made me heave…
I don’t have words for these things
.

They push for descriptions, saying they know how tough this is, and they promise it will be over soon, but just try to tell them, describe it properly. Was there anything semen tasted like? How much of it was there? How thick was it? What did it feel like? Was it like anything else?

How do I know? I’m not even twelve…

I’ve got one ear on them and one tracking Mummy behind me, walking up and down at the back of the room, sobbing loudly. When I answer more questions Mummy doubles over, retching into the tissue. Nothing comes out, but she goes for the door, trying to unlock it, saying she can’t listen to any more of this.

‘Your mum’s going to stand in the corridor,’ they say,‘just outside to get some air. Is that okay?’

But I’m frightened of letting her out of my sight. I don’t know what she’s thinking—or where my uncle is.

This is all my fault.

‘Sorry, Mum…Please stay with me, Mum,
please
, I’m sorry.’

But she lunges for the handle, rattling it loudly, saying,‘No, I can’t stay, I can’t breathe…let me out. I have to get out of here.’

When she comes back in, a policewoman rubbing her back and plucking tissues for her from a box, they start again.

‘What else did he make you do?’

I swallow back the taste of sick from the back of my throat and look up at Mummy. I can’t get any words out. But they coax them out of me: about the things he made me push inside him while he masturbated—the handle of the yellow screwdriver or parsnips or the red plunger which I sat beside that afternoon inside the cellar door. I tell them about having to push it in until I was frightened he would rip open; about hitting him with his belt, his trousers around his ankles as he bent over the bed telling me to do it harder; or kneeling on the bed on his hands and knees, showing me how to push them in as he masturbated over opened-out page threes spread all over their double bed, or made me masturbate him.

They ask me about the pictures, but I always tried not to look at them or what he was making me do. I would stare outside into the trees as my hands moved, or his moved inside me, until he would turn around and thump me, saying,‘Watch what you’re doing; keep your mind on what you’re doing.’

They ask me why I thought he asked me to hit him with the belt, but I don’t know. I tell them that I was frightened of hurting him, that I didn’t understand why he would want me to hurt him, why anybody would.

The bald one is shaking his head, as tears fall onto the backs of my hands in my lap. I can’t lift my head to look at him. I am too ashamed.

Mummy leaves again and I hear her crying outside, moaning loudly like she did after some of the worst arguments. It sounds even worse here, echoing in the long corridor, with strangers sitting opposite me hearing her, and me the one causing it this time. They say they have to wait until she comes back again.‘No wonder you were frightened of coming in and bumping into him,’ one of them says.‘Don’t worry, this will all be finished soon.’

They sit there awkwardly, glancing up at each other and around the room, asking if I want a drink. I take a sip of the cold water and blow my nose with the tissue they hand me. I stare at a big Kit-Kat box sticking out of the top of one of the bins outside; I’m sure I see something move behind it.
My uncle could be anywhere…waiting.

When they’ve finished, the bald policeman reads out what they’ve written down and makes me sign each sheet of paper. It’s the first time I’ve signed my name anywhere, and for years after, whenever I have to give a signature, memories of this day are there in my fingertips.

A lady with red shoes and long blonde hair to her waist like Marie’s arrives and we follow her downstairs to a room with a bed. While the blonde woman snaps on rubber gloves, the policewoman tells Mummy that the lady is a doctor and is just going to have a quick look inside me.

‘Why?’ I ask Mummy.‘I don’t want anyone to.’

I lie on the hard bed, feeling the feathery ends of her hair brush against my hands, my knees up. I have been crying so much my eyes are almost sealed closed but I feel everyone looking at me and burn with shame. She smells of flowers, and the cold she brings in with her clings to her jumper. I feel her long, sharp nails through her gloves. I can’t blink the lights straight. She asks me some questions, and when she takes off her gloves I watch her write some stuff down on a clipboard and then shake her head at the policeman who has come in from the corridor and is towering over me.

When she asks me when the last time he was inside me was, I’m silent for a long time because I can’t remember, and I don’t want to remember. I shrug and she scribbles something down. I never get to tell her it had been at least a couple of months. The last time he did it I bled, and I think it frightened him. Next time I told him that Mummy saw the spots of blood in my knickers and wanted to know where it was from. He makes me do things to him now instead. He says I’ll be ready soon.

Chapter 25

M
arie met us outside the police station in a taxi. Suitcases packed with some of our things were in the boot, and somebody had lent her money for the train fares. Marie had arranged everything. We were not going back home; we went to King’s Cross to get the train up to her house in Leicestershire. Everything in my life had changed in a moment. The girls had gone ahead in another taxi with Peter, and were meeting us there. The boys had stayed behind somewhere in London with one of my uncle’s brothers.

Everything seemed to be outside our control. We were all unprepared for the fear and shock of what had happened, overwhelmed by it. Mummy and I were trying not to cry on the train so as not to attract attention or upset the girls, who weren’t being told what was going on, just that my uncle had been taken away for hitting me.

We had table seats to ourselves at the end of a carriage, but there were other people nearby and Mummy and Marie whispered over the girls’ heads. Mummy’s tears set mine off again and neither of us could stop. It was late and the girls were tired, but they had a new packet of felt-tip pens and colouring books, and I watched their blonde hair slide across the table as they filled in the same picture of a clown standing on a beach ball, juggling sticks. Marie put her finger to her lips and whispered to me not to cry because I was upsetting Mummy.

When Peter came back from the buffet car with bottles of Pepsi, and crisps and Mars bars and tea for Mummy and Marie, we were still crying. I glanced over at Mummy, trying to make her look up at me, but she wouldn’t. I felt cold inside and alone; ashamed that she now knew all that stuff. ‘Why don’t you go outside in the corridor with Peter for a bit, to get some fresh air?’ Marie said, putting her arm around Mummy.

I didn’t want to, but I went. Peter and I stood there for ages without talking, bumping together now and then and pulling away awkwardly as the train rattled on, both of us staring through each other’s reflection in the black windows as we tried to make out the dark shapes of the countryside speeding past. I knew Peter didn’t know what to say. But I didn’t either.

I wished somebody would hold me.‘Do you want one of these?’ he asked, taking another two Mars bars from the inside pocket of his leather bomber jacket. I nodded that I did, but when he passed it to me I threw up into his hands. He wiped his jumper at the small silver hand basin in the toilet, and I turned around sleepily to watch Mummy and the others through the sliding glass doors. It felt like a dream, seeing them there like that, watching their lips move without being able to hear them, seeing them all huddled together, Mummy’s white cigarette smoke streaming into Marie’s loose blonde hair, Jennifer in denim dungarees asleep across her lap, the little ladybird on the end of her gold hair clip sliding down past her ears, her felt tips rolling without lids across the sticky, map-blue table.

None of us had ever been to Marie’s house before—except for Mummy, on the day Jack was born. And although it was late we took our shoes off and lined them up at the back door the way she showed us. With our anoraks still on, we followed her in a daze from room to room as she showed us around. She pulled pillows and bedding from the airing cupboard at the top of the stairs, and made up the spare bed and a put-up bed in the back bedroom overlooking the long narrow garden. I could see through the dark that it had a badminton net across it and shuttlecocks lay on the black grass. Nothing else seemed to be there, and I tried to cover my jumpiness, but every movement and every unfamiliar sound felt like my uncle lying in wait for me.

The house was tiny and spotless, like a doll’s house, with everything neat and in its place. There were white panelled doors with brass handles and soft pink carpeting in every room and up the stairs. I had the put-up bed while Stella and Jennifer slept head to foot in the spare bed next to Jack’s cot, with its Winnie the Pooh covers to match the wallpaper. But I couldn’t sleep.
What if my uncle had escaped?

I went downstairs to tell someone I was feeling sick again. I just wanted to be with them, suddenly frightened of being on my own. But I didn’t know how to make a fuss, or tell someone what I was feeling. I confused the hallway with the one in our house and bumped into the coats hanging on a stand by the front door, thinking it was someone standing there waiting to get me—my uncle about to pounce. I shivered and tried to blink away that look from earlier—the way he lifted his head slowly from his chest, and looked up at me sideways in the car park as he was led away in handcuffs. That look that was there when I closed my eyes for years afterwards.

Marie gave me a towel and the red washing-up bowl to put at the side of my bed in case I threw up during the night, and I went back up, hurrying past the coats without looking. I wished I was like the girls, the age when someone could pick you up and hug you. Grown-ups were always awkward around me; I was never the type of child people took to, my uncle’s treatment of me made sure of that. I was too withdrawn, too wary and distant, my eyes too full of secrets. Marie came up again later with a hot water bottle and said if I needed anything else to call down but I never did, not even when I woke up during the night and, forgetting about the bowl, threw up onto the new pink carpet by mistake.

The next evening our Uncle Brendan came over, which seemed to make Mummy even more upset.

‘What am I going to tell him?’

As I pressed Lego bricks into place on the breakfast bar with Jack, I heard Marie telling her she had nothing to be ashamed of, that none of this was her fault. I felt myself blush and look away, wondering if they thought it was all mine. There was lots of talking in the kitchen when he arrived. The others drank coffee with him while we were sent into the front room with a big glass bowl of crisps to share, to watch TV and play with Jack. Later, Brendan came in to say hello. He always shook my hand when he first arrived, but this time he just sat next to me and said,‘Are you okay?’

I nodded.

‘I heard what happened,’ he said after a minute and I nodded again, staring at the TV, blushing bright red. I hated having anyone know.

I didn’t know what Mummy had told him—how much? How much she’d told anyone.

For nights and nights they were up talking, trying to make plans about what to do next. During the day there was lots of staring at me, until I looked up and then everyone looked away. Everyone was kind and treated me nicely, but nobody talked about it. I was left alone with my thoughts, having to force them all back down, push everything back in, like the girls did with the red jack-in-the-box in our bedroom at home.

Sometimes as I passed someone in the hall or took things into the kitchen they would ask if I was all right and smile, and I would smile back shyly, nodding, unused to being the focus of attention. I could see that everyone was uneasy around me. The feel of the room would change when I walked into it. But nobody was fighting or shouting and everybody was being nice to me, and when I woke at night pouring with sweat after bad dreams I was allowed to go and sit downstairs, and sometimes Marie poured me a cup of tea to bring back up.

But nobody talked about what happened. They never have, ever. Years later, when I asked Brendan why no one talked to me about it from that day on, he shrugged and said they thought that if they didn’t talk about it then I would forget it. They didn’t want to remind me of it, he said…they thought that was best. We were a family used to not talking about things, used to sweeping problems under the carpet.

We stayed at Marie’s for a couple of months in the end. None of us belonged this time, not just me, and for a change not belonging brought us together rather than set me apart. Everyone treated it as a bit of a holiday at the beginning—there was no school and none of the old routine to keep to—but it all felt a bit fragile, ready to shatter any minute. Every time a door banged or there was a sudden loud noise, I’d swing around expecting the peace to be ripped apart. There were no chores to do at Marie’s. Suddenly I was a child again, with just books and games and playing with our nephew Jack, who laughed at everything; and no men except for Peter and Brendan, neither of whom shouted or bullied. And none of the things my uncle made me do. All of that was over. Though it was years before I trusted that.

We went on outings, me and my two little blonde sisters in our new cork-heeled sandals. Sometimes we all dressed the same, like triplets, in new clothes Brendan bought us from C&A—petrol-blue boiler suits with zips up the front and racing-driving patches sewn onto them: Ferrari and Silverstone and Marlboro. We walked into the town centre with Marie on Fridays to do the weekly shop in our new outfits, thinking we were the bee’s knees. My two little sisters and I inseparable, as it should be, Stella no longer the boss now that my uncle wasn’t around.

Brendan bought bunk beds for us, to put in Jack’s room.‘They can easily be dismantled again,’ I heard him tell Peter. But he never mentioned when that might happen. Nobody did. All of us were adjusting to life without my uncle, growing new skins, nobody mentioning him, not even the girls. Not having to do the housework as I did at home, I was almost a child again: playing badminton on the long summer evenings and chasing my sisters around the long narrow garden; reading
The Little Prince
to the girls on the kitchen step until it was too dark to make out the words; brushing their long silky hair as we watched TV on the black-and-white portable in Marie and Peter’s bedroom. Meanwhile, Mummy was falling apart downstairs; I tiptoed around her, not understanding why she had changed towards me, why I seemed to be upsetting her so much—thinking it was all my fault.

Kathy came over for a few days and all I remember is her sitting in with Mummy whispering and crying most of the time. When she and Brendan went back to Ireland, Mummy got worse. She wore sunglasses if she came into town with us. Her head shook and she was jumpy and weepy and kept the girls around her like bodyguards whenever I tried to sit or be near her. I knew instinctively it was her way of trying to put all that vile stuff she’d been forced to hear at the police station out of her head, and I knew to keep out of her way, but it still hurt to feel her pulling away from me.

During the day, indoors, she sat in the front room with the curtains drawn watching TV, living on Silk Cut and milky tea and her nerves. When she passed me to go to the bathroom one morning after getting a postcard from the boys asking when she was coming home, I smelt drink on her breath. I smiled at her but she looked away and went off, wiping tears. She looked terrible: cold and bony. Everything was my fault.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. I kept waiting for something to happen. Everything made me jump. I laughed it off, but every shadow and every sudden movement was him, lying in wait for me. But after the first time, when I ran in breathless, slamming the back door, sure I’d seen him crouching behind the wall at the bottom of the garden, I didn’t tell anyone.

‘He’s not there,’ Marie had said.‘They’re not letting him out. And anyway, don’t worry, he doesn’t even know where I live.’

After helping Marie wash the soup bowls from lunch I asked her if I could bring Mummy in her cup of tea. I put a small plate of Rich Tea biscuits on the arm of the settee, but she didn’t even look at them. I stood there staring at the TV. It was
Crown Court
again: all the serious-looking men in grey wigs and black gowns in the wooden courtroom. I plumped up the cushions and wanted to ask Mummy what was going to happen now but I didn’t want to remind her of it all. Instead I just asked if she wanted me to open the curtains. She shook her head and took a sip of her tea, and then took headache tablets from the white tub on the shelf behind her and knocked them back. I didn’t know what else to say, standing there feeling foolish and lonely and shut out. I wished I could make her smile the way the girls could.‘Is there anything else you want me to do?’ I asked, standing awkwardly in the doorway, but she had already closed her eyes and slid down on the settee with one of Jack’s blue baby blankets pulled up over her.

‘Is Mummy okay?’ I asked Marie when I went back out.

‘She’ll be alright. She just needs a bit more of a rest.’ I watched her wipe tomato soup from the top of the cooker and fill the kettle again. ‘No…actually I’m getting a bit worried about her, to tell you the truth. I might give the doctor a call,’ she said, lowering her voice so the girls didn’t overhear.

Deep inside me something shook.‘Why?’ I asked, spinning around.

‘She’s started drinking during the day and can’t stop crying. She can’t go on like that much longer. She’ll have to go back to London soon. Everyone has to get back to school.’

I asked if there was anything I could do to help.

‘Just keep out of her way, and let her see you’re okay. That’s the best way you can help, by letting her see that.’

That evening Marie whisked up big bowls of butterscotch Angel Delight for dessert, and I sat outside on the kitchen step watching the girls spin red Hula-Hoops with their skinny, hipless bodies. I felt numb and distant, hollow inside, worrying about what was happening to Mummy. When I heard the tap in the kitchen go and turned to see her there at the sink pouring a glass of water, I knew I had to show her I was all right. I began singing out the scores along with the girls, clapping and laughing loudly as Jennifer’s hoop wobbled down onto the crazy paving, cheering Stella on; getting up, taking Jennifer’s hoop and saying,‘My turn now. Show me how to do it, Jen.’ Hoping Mummy could hear me—me being all right—me pretending everything was normal.

As the summer went by the girls became restless. Nobody, not even they, talked about my uncle, but they said they missed their friends and Michael and Liam who were still in London, and started to ask Mummy more often when we were going home. Kathy came over again and slowly Mummy pulled herself out of it. She started to drink less and did jigsaws with the girls on the dining room table; she polished her shoes and went into Marie’s hairdressers in the precinct to have a perm. But when she had to talk to me, she still seemed to stare between my eyes, not at them.