Can't Anyone Help Me? (29 page)

Still I looked doubtful. Where would I go? What would I do? Eddie had controlled my life for a year, even down to what I wore and what I ate. The thought of having to make all my own decisions was suddenly very frightening.

Gina played her trump card. ‘Oh, come on, Jackie! You can stay with me, if you’re worried about where you’d go. I just want you to get sorted,’ she said. At last I began to waver. ‘And I’ll take some time off work and come with you to the clinic,’ she added, for good measure. She went on to tell me she had discussed it with Anna, the girl she shared her flat with, and they had agreed they wanted to help me.

‘OK, then, I’ll do it,’ I said.

I was so scared the day I left Eddie, plain terrified that he might walk in and catch me. My whole body was shaking as I hastily pushed clothes and my music into plastic bags. I told Gina to wait outside in a taxi – I wanted it there ready to jump into and make a quick getaway.

I left the short skirts and skimpy tops behind. It was the jeans and T-shirts I wanted. I found some money stashed in his bedroom, about three hundred pounds. Nothing to what I had earned for him, I thought, as I shoved it into my pocket. Then, gathering everything up, I pulled on my leather jacket, raced out of the flat and jumped into the waiting cab.

The next few weeks were hard. I went to rehab, and although they prescribed methadone, coming off heroin was still worse than anything I could have imagined. I shivered and shook, sweat poured off my body and it seemed that every inch of me was racked with pain. There were so many times that I wanted to give up, find a dealer, inject the heroin into my veins and feel at peace, but then I remembered those girls with the dead eyes. Some spark of my old fighting spirit told me to persevere. Or maybe my feelings for Gina did.

The worst side effect of being drug-free was that my five-year-old self put in an appearance. It was the drugs, the doctors explained, that had kept her at bay. The methadone helped make her disappear again and, gradually, I began to feel better. I put on a little weight and started to believe that I had succeeded in turning my life around.

After I had finished my treatment I made contact with my parents. Scared they might trace the call, I had only done that once before. I felt that contacting them was part of getting well.

My mother was distant, but my father sounded excited to speak to me and wanted to know if I was all right. I told him I was clean of drugs and wanted to look for work. I had nice friends and they were helping me. ‘If you need anything, I can send you money,’ he said.

Had I hoped he would say, ‘Just tell me where you are and I’ll come and see you’? Maybe, but I consoled myself that at least he had offered me something, even if it was only money.

I loved living in Gina’s flat. Anna, her flatmate, was a short, stocky girl who looked at the world myopically through thick glasses and fussed over me continuously. I could see that she had a huge crush on Gina. But she was so kind to me, I couldn’t bring myself to feel jealous.

I started to wonder about looking for work. My sixteenth birthday had come and gone, which meant I was no longer an underage runaway.

My embryonic contentment made me careless. I forgot that Eddie had spies everywhere. Although we were careful not to frequent the music venue where I had first met Gina, we still went out in groups to other places where, unknown to us, there were doormen and barmen who did business with him. I don’t know who told him where he could find me, but find me he did.

I was not in a bar or club when I saw him but walking down the road in broad daylight.

‘Hey, Jackie,’ he called.

A sick feeling of fear nearly paralysed me.

With long strides, he caught up with me. He looked calm, not angry, and somehow that terrified me even more. ‘Go away,’ I said, thinking that the people milling around on the street would ensure my safety.

‘Don’t be silly, Jackie, you’re coming back with me,’ he said, catching hold of my arm.

I stared at him defiantly. Surely he couldn’t do anything to me in broad daylight. ‘I’m not,’ I answered. ‘You can’t make me.’ I jerked my arm free and started to walk away.

But the presence of other people didn’t frighten Eddie. I should have remembered what I’d once told Gina. He would rather a girl was dead than have her escape from him. I don’t think I had taken more than a few steps when I felt the searing pain of the knife that was thrust deep into my back.

I heard Eddie’s footsteps as he walked away, then the world went black.

The next thing I knew I was waking up in hospital, with no recollection of how I had got there, for the second time.

The doctors told me I was lucky. If the knife had been a fraction higher and had sliced into my vertebrae or entered a vital organ, I would have bled to death. As it was, I had lost a great deal of blood. With such a shock to my system, they wanted to keep me in for a few days. They asked for my parents’ telephone number but I managed to fob them off by saying they were abroad and instead gave them Gina’s. She arrived later that day. So did the police: a middle-aged sergeant with the tired eyes of someone who had seen too much death and violence in his life, and a younger constable. They arrived with their notebooks at the ready, looks of sympathy and endless questions.

‘Do you know your attacker?’ was their first question.

Fear silenced me. ‘No,’ I said.

Could I describe the person who had assaulted me?

Again I said no.

The nurse saved me. ‘That’s enough for today,’ she said sternly. ‘She needs to rest.’ But I knew they would be back.

I was right. They returned the following day, but this time I had my story ready for them. I believed that if I gave them Eddie’s name he would find me again and his revenge would be much worse. Gina tried to persuade me otherwise, saying that if he was behind bars he couldn’t do me further harm. I was too terrified to believe her. I had heard of bail being given and guilty people walking away from what the police believed would be a conviction. I was adamant in my refusal.

‘I think someone tried to grab my bag,’ I improvised, before they had time to put a question to me.

‘And then he stabbed you?’

‘That must be what happened,’ I replied.

‘So, let’s get this right, Jackie,’ the older one said. ‘You were just walking down the street and someone unknown to you stabbed you with a knife – someone you didn’t see and didn’t speak to?’

‘Well, he was behind me, so I couldn’t, could I?’ I said, thinking that would satisfy him and they would go away.

‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘The passer-by who called the ambulance said he saw you talking to a young black man just before you fell. So, who was that, then?’

‘I can’t remember. Maybe someone asking directions.’

By their expressions, I knew they were not fooled. They tried to reassure me that if I told them who it was they would find him. It was attempted murder, there was a witness and, if arrested, he would go to prison and I would be safe.

I still didn’t believe them. Eddie, I was sure, would find me before they found him. The next time he wouldn’t miss. So again I maintained that I couldn’t remember who had spoken to me.

They left eventually, but the older one gave me his card. ‘Well, Jackie, if you decide to remember any more, give us a ring, OK? Or …’ he gave me a thoughtful look ‘ … if it turns out to be someone you did know, someone you’re frightened of, give me a call as well, all right?’

I was doubly scared then – scared that Gina would want me to leave and scared of Eddie finding out I was alive. Surely he hadn’t meant that knife wound simply as a warning.

But she reassured me that he didn’t know her name or where she lived. The club only knew her first name, so he couldn’t trace her and, anyhow, he, too, would be scared of the police. She was convinced he would leave me alone, but for weeks, I wasn’t reassured. I accepted my father’s offer of money. I was too frightened to find work as a waitress, which was all I thought I would be offered. I might be seen, and he would come back for me again.

It was Gina who saw the article in the paper.

Eddie had been arrested – more, he had been to court. Large amounts of heroin had been found in his flat, as well as a safe stuffed full of money with traces of drugs on most of the notes. He was also part of a group involved in porn and prostitution. His sentence was ten years. He was off the streets. I wondered if the girls whose lives he had destroyed celebrated their freedom or if, desperate for their next fix, they just went to another man who could supply them with drugs. Sadly, I thought, it was likely to be the latter.

I was determined that my past was behind me and it was time to move on. For the first time in nearly two years, I felt safe.

I knew Anna was in love with Gina, but I also knew that she would never do anything about it. I wondered what to do about my own feelings. With every day that passed, I found it increasingly difficult to get Gina out of my head. I found my eyes following her around the flat and I used every excuse I could think of to spend time alone with her.

If my persistence in gaining her attention bothered her, she never showed it. She was the same caring person who had rescued me. In the throes of my first major crush, I saw it as something else. I questioned Anna about where Gina went when she was not in the flat. All Gina ever said, when she was leaving to go out or wasn’t coming straight home from work, was that she was meeting a friend. The thought of her being somewhere where I was not, of meeting people I didn’t know, began to consume me with jealousy. It was those repeated questions that enabled Anna to put two and two together.

‘Jackie,’ she said one evening, when we were alone, ‘Gina’s not …’ I waited for her to continue. After what seemed a long time she added, ‘… you know, not gay.’ She gave me a kindly though penetrating glance.

I felt a hot tide of red suffuse my cheeks. Then a wave of anger swept over me because I had been found out and embarrassed. ‘What do you mean?’ I retorted. Surely I hadn’t been that transparent.

‘Jackie, I may be short-sighted but I’m not blind,’ replied Anna. ‘She likes you – likes you a lot. But not in that way.’

I thought of my friendship with Gina, how she had hugged me when I had completed rehab and how she had encouraged me to leave Eddie. If she wasn’t interested in me, what had all that been about?

Anna was just trying to warn me off because she was interested in her, I kept telling myself. But that delusion came to an end when Gina announced she had a new boyfriend she wanted us both to meet. I was desperate, but at least she didn’t know how I felt about her. I just thanked my lucky stars I hadn’t made a fool of myself by telling her.

That was how I met my husband, Kevin, not a man I loved and certainly not a nice man. He was a friend of Rob’s, Gina’s boyfriend, and I decided when I met him that he could be my camouflage. I now used the word ‘boyfriend’ both loosely and often, ignoring the concerned expression on Anna’s face. She wasn’t fooled when she heard me arrange for Kevin and me to go out in foursomes with Rob and Gina. Thus, however painful it was, I was still able to spend time with Gina.

I managed to keep a smile plastered on my face when I saw Rob’s arms round her shoulders. Before I slept with Kevin, I managed to look cheerful when they dropped me off, knowing that Gina would be spending the night with Rob. Gina, believing that any friend of Rob’s would be as nice as him, was just happy that, after what I had gone through, I had a boyfriend.

Everything might have been all right – Kevin and I would have eventually broken up and maybe then I would have found someone else with whom to have what I had wanted with Gina – except that I discovered I was pregnant.

How could I have been so stupid? I, who had slept with so many men!

The difference was, I suppose, that I hadn’t exactly slept with them. Condoms were used, and as soon as the sex was over, they or I left. There was no waking up in the middle of the night wanting to repeat the act, or a steamy sex session in the early hours when half asleep.

But another factor had entered my life: I had seen Dave again.

‘I told you, didn’t I,’ I said to my therapist, ‘that I saw him one more time?’

She nodded, and waited for what was to come next.

‘It was four months before my wedding,’ I said, ‘and in a way he was part of the reason I got married.’

Dave had written to me, care of my parents. My father had forwarded the letter. He said he was still in London, he had never left the city, just moved to another area. He told me that he was sorry he had left me, that he hoped I was happy and had sorted my life out. He also explained why he had written.

He was ill, very ill, and he told me what was wrong with him. ‘I will understand if you cannot face seeing me again.’

I went to him.

He lived in a small flat on the same type of estate that, the moment he was old enough, he had tried to escape. I rang his doorbell and heard shuffling footsteps. When a feeble voice asked who it was, I told him it was me, Jackie, and asked him to let me in. The bolts that kept the outside world out were drawn back, and for the first time in nearly two years, I was face to face with Dave again.