Escape From Evil (17 page)

So Mum had died of cold, that much was true, but only because she was out of her head on drugs. She’d overdosed, collapsed in an alley on a really frosty night and been too wasted to move. Those were the facts, but even as I made Granny go over and over the details, they wouldn’t sink in.

So much of it just didn’t make sense to me. It seems stupid now, but I never had any perception that joints or bongs were drugs. We might as well have got out a packet of biscuits. I had no idea at all.

‘Drugs’ was a word I’d heard about and I knew they were bad. When the police had taken that pouch hidden in my panda, they’d mentioned drugs then. But Mum had assured me they’d got it wrong. And of course I’d believed her. The fact that they’d released us so quickly backed up her story in my mind.

In other words, I knew early on that drugs were bad. People who took drugs were bad. So what did that make my mother?

But it turned out that Mum hadn’t died from marijuana. She’d been addicted to heroin, Granny said, for years. Even though I didn’t know what ‘heroin’ meant, I got the sense that it was as bad as you could get. ‘The police and the doctors said it’s the worst drug there is,’ Granny explained, as innocent as me in such matters.

‘So the newspaper was right?’

She nodded. In fact she went to a drawer and pulled out a different clipping from another paper. I’ve still got it today.

‘Do you want to hear what it says?’ she asked. When I said yes, she began to read.

‘A grim warning about the dangers of drug abuse was given at the Brighton inquest of a 23-year-old girl. Jennifer Wilson, a drug addict since she was just seventeen, died on April 30 from septicaemia and bronchial pneumonia brought about by a barbiturate overdose. Said coroner Dr Donald Gooding, “This is an oft repeated story of a young person who starts on marijuana, which is supposed to be harmless. It is not. It is dangerous and invariably leads to the situation where a person progresses from one dangerous drug to one even more dangerous.”’

‘“Drug addict since she was seventeen”?’ I repeated the words over and over, but they still wouldn’t sink in.

How had she kept it a secret? Why hadn’t I noticed?

Obviously she hadn’t kept it a secret at all. Any adult who’d observed her behaviour for more than a day would have put two and two together. And if they’d turned up while the bong was being passed around, it would have taken all of a second to work it out. But how was I to know any of this? Even now, I keep reading that heroin is supposed to make you skinny. But Mum was bloated when she died. The pictures I have of her are of a woman with a lovely figure, nice and shapely, until the point when she’d put on weight, while we were at Telscombe Cliffs. If she’d lost weight maybe I would have noticed. But she hadn’t.

But if she’d seemed to hold it together physically, the clues were certainly there in her behaviour. The days she went missing, her lethargy, her constant sickness, her mood swings, her dependence on me – all those things I put down as ‘normal’ were actually classic signs of heroin abuse.

There was a lot more in the newspaper article that Granny didn’t read to me. I discovered that when I was fourteen, when I was finally brave enough to go back to it myself. It was gruesome reading.

Consultant pathologist Dr David Melchett said Jennifer developed deep pneumonia and there was internal infection of the lungs and windpipe . . . and was taken into the intensive care unit at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton. When she regained consciousness she told doctors she had taken fifty barbiturate tablets and was mainlining – injecting drugs into the bloodstream – three times a day.

I couldn’t imagine anything worse than injecting yourself. I still can’t. To this day, I can’t fathom how she was doing this without me noticing. I never saw a needle or powder or foil or liquids or any of the stuff you associate with heroin. I told Granny this.

‘Obviously this is what she was doing when she went out,’ Granny surmised and I agreed. All those times she was out for hours or nights on end, she was high on heroin.

‘So why was it different this time? Why did this time kill her?’ I asked.

Granny had obviously been thinking about it too.

‘Maybe the question is: why didn’t all those other times kill her?’

I wonder when I would have discovered the truth if I hadn’t seen that newspaper by chance during my art lesson. It was yet another example of my grandparents ‘protecting’ me. But look where it got them. I’d been denied closure at the hospital, then at the funeral. I’d appeared to be coping better than expected – better than them, in fact. But it all had to come out eventually.

For weeks I was horrible, hitting, shouting, refusing to do anything but rail, question, accuse – and cry. Finally the tears had come.

It felt good to have such an emotional release, but no sooner had the tears dried than the vicious circle began again and I was looking for answers. Whereas Granny had channelled her anger towards the mythical figure of my father, I just blamed her.

‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’

‘Why didn’t you stop her?’

‘Why didn’t you let me say goodbye?’

I was out of control, completely screwed up and thirsty for blame. Someone had to be responsible. I needed that, I needed an outlet. And, I’m ashamed to say, for an unpleasant few weeks, it was my grandparents.

Grandpa did his best to hide away. I’m sure he thought he’d been tested as much as he ever would by Mum’s behaviour and her unnecessary death. But I was something else. There I was, a guest in his own home, accusing him and his wife of not caring. No army training had ever prepared him for this.

‘That’s not true, Cathy!’ he shouted.

‘Then why didn’t you save her?’

‘I tried. We all tried.’

‘Then why did she have to die?’

‘Because,’ Granny interrupted quietly, ‘she didn’t want to be saved.’

Every few days we’d have the same argument. The same accusations, the same answers. Even when we weren’t arguing, I didn’t have a civil word in my head. Doors were there to be slammed, books just things to be thrown whenever I felt like it.

I was awful, I know that now. I had no right to talk to them like that. They’d lost their daughter – no parent should ever experience that – and in the most stomach-churning circumstances. They would have done anything to have saved her: they’d bought the flat, after all. They’d recognized the problem and done what they could. And now here was a foul-tempered child accusing them of not doing enough.

I’m amazed we ever got through it, but we did. You can only stay angry for so long. I just needed to let off steam, shed the tears I’d bottled up for too long. It wasn’t Granny and Grandpa’s fault, I knew that. Nothing was. They were victims, just like me.
No,
I realized with great sourness,
there is only one person who deserves the blame for this. Mum.

TEN

It wasn’t just losing their daughter that tested Reg and Daphne Beavis. As far as Granny and Grandpa were concerned, they’d raised their family, watched them grow up and moved on to plot their retirements together. Now here they were, saddled with an eight-year-old at their time of life. On top of that, Grandpa had been forced to take early retirement to get the money to try to save his daughter. He’d bought the flat, done as much as he could. And now Jenny was gone – and so was his job. In the end, he took a part-time job in advertising. Anything to get out of the house.

In hindsight, it can’t have been easy for either of them. Being grandparents is one thing – and I’d always loved staying with them at weekends or random week nights, either with Mum or alone – but taking on a parental role is something else entirely. That’s when rules come in. And I was not a child used to rules.

Time had little meaning when I was living with Mum. In this new, scary world, I discovered that everything ran by the clock. There was a time for breakfast, a time for lunch, a time for evening meals. There was a time for school, a time for playing, a time for church, for Brownies, for cleaning my teeth. There was even a time for bed. That was the hardest one of all. After a lifetime of falling asleep, eating and playing when I felt like it, fitting into this regimented structure was difficult.

I wasn’t the only one who lived by the clock. My grandparents did too. After Grandpa’s military background, it was probably the only way he knew.

For example, Saturdays began with homework, if I had any, before I was allowed out to play with friends in the woodland or park at the back of the house. There was a pitch and putt course, which was always fun, especially if you could get on without paying, and there were tennis courts where I would later practise when I was part of the school doubles team. Sundays were even more rigid: after church it was my job to clean all the brass in the house, while Grandpa chopped the vegetables and Granny prepared the weekly roast. Afterwards Grandpa always washed up, while Granny and I retired to the lounge to play cards, with some classic Sunday afternoon Bing Crosby or Omar Sharif film playing in the background. Grandpa never played, but he would come in and do the
Telegraph
crossword until he fell asleep. Then, at 4.30 on the dot, it was time for high tea – and scones! Then the radio would come on for the evening or we’d listen to the Carpenters on Granny’s old eight-track player. It was a lovely, calm atmosphere and I really appreciated all the effort my grandparents were making.

If only things weren’t quite so regimented . . .

I wasn’t a wild child, exactly, but I was used to my independence. I’d always come and gone as I pleased, just as Mum had done. I could wire a plug, peel vegetables, light fires. I could lay kitchen floors, for Christ’s sake. In effect, I’d been living as an adult for as long as I could remember. All that came to a screeching halt at Tremola Avenue and, I admit, it was hard to go from a lifetime of semi self-governance to a world where Granny insisted on brushing my hair, I wasn’t allowed out in the dark and touching sharp knives was forbidden because they were too dangerous for someone my age.

My grandparents were only trying to give me back some semblance of a childhood, but I couldn’t see that. All I could see was that they were imposing rule after rule after rule and taking away the one thing I’d always had: my freedom.

Initially it was a rough ride. I was a handful and I thought their curfews were silly. They probably came down on me hard at the start, but you can understand why. They’d lost one child to indiscipline. They were damned if I was going to go down the same carefree route.

Whatever our early teething problems, I know their hearts were in the right place. When my grandfather died, Granny gave me a box of his letters which included Grandpa’s claim to become my guardian. In it he says, ‘I am a fit and capable man on early retirement and able to offer a good home and background to the said minor. I am in receipt of a pension of £4,000 a year and own capital property worth approximately £30,000. Said minor has for some years been very close to me and my wife because of my daughter’s illness and incapacity prior to her death. I am confident that my wife and I will provide a good home and education for Cathy.’

He also goes on to say he would ‘allow reasonable access for the petitioner to the said child’. It’s all so formal and, when I first read the letter, I struggled to make out who was who. I was obviously the child, but who was the ‘petitioner’? And then I came across another letter, from my father. So he was the petitioner and he had requested access. I was a bit shocked by his demands: ‘I would ask that reasonable access should be defined as being allowed to take my daughter out for one day a month, following three days’ notice.’ One day a month? In all honesty, I can’t recall seeing him at all during my younger years.

My grandparents took all responsibility, then, and became my surrogate parents. I don’t know if you ever appreciate at the time the people who do the most for you – and children, of course, take for granted the fact that someone will be there for them. In an ideal world, out of sheer gratitude alone, I would have been the perfect child. For a while, and to a certain extent, I was. But it wouldn’t last.

Because of Grandpa’s early retirement, he wasn’t exactly flush with cash. I didn’t appreciate that at the time and, approaching my ninth birthday, I decided it was time to finally get rid of my biggest embarrassment.

‘Can I have a new bike, please, Grandpa?’ I begged.

He thought about it for less than a second.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘but I’ll get you another tyre!’

And he did. What other nine-year-old wakes up on their birthday to unwrap a black tyre and wheel? In hindsight, of course, he did the right thing. I’m the same now. My son isn’t spoilt. Tough love is the only way to go. But no child appreciates it at the time.

Apart from my grandparents’ rules, school quickly became the mainstay of my life. I couldn’t get over the way it just continued to be there, day after day. I’d never had structure in my life. Getting to grips with timekeeping and homework deadlines took a while, but once the penny had dropped I was a new person. Whatever it was in me that enabled me to survive the unwanted attentions of men like Mark, Brian and their mates had made me stronger. School was nothing compared to that. Just as I’d actually enjoyed making the bongs and joints and taken pride in caring for our flat and for Mum, I totally embraced schoolwork. It was a challenge, there was a logic to it and I could see the path I needed to take to make progress. That was enough for me. I love a challenge.