I Remember, Daddy (9 page)

There was a ball of tightly wound anger inside me, which sometimes burst out so that I lost my temper without warning. On one occasion, I grabbed hold of a girl who was talking to me and shoved her head between some railings, and someone had to call the fire brigade to get her out. No one could understand why I’d done it and I didn’t even try to explain. But the truth was that she was a girl who used to bully me. She’d made my life a misery for a long time, and I’d done nothing about it. Until, on that day, she’d said something that had annoyed me and I’d suddenly felt a red-hot rage flooding through me, and all I could think about was getting my own back on her for all the hurt and humiliation I’d suffered at her hands.

After incidents like that, I’d have no memory of what I’d done. It was as though I’d had a black-out, and when someone told me about it, I wouldn’t believe them and I’d say, ‘No, I didn’t do that. No, that wasn’t me.’ Because deep down inside I knew that I wasn’t someone who behaved in that way; it just wasn’t who I was. I can understand now what was happening and why there was so much suppressed fury inside me. But, at the time, there didn’t seem to be any rational explanation for it, and I began to worry that there was something seriously wrong with me.

I
hated the world I was living in as a child; so I created a whole new fantasy world that I could retreat to whenever I was unhappy – which, for years, was almost all of the time. I’d read books about kings and queens and imagine I was living in their world, and I was forever finding little things and hiding them away, pretending to myself that they were priceless treasures.

One day, when my parents were still married and I was very young, I’d been visiting my father’s parents when my grandfather told me about a ring he’d lost in his garden shed. Every time I went to stay with them after that, I searched for it and, some years later, I told my grandfather, ‘I still haven’t found that ring you lost, Granddad. But I promise I won’t give up looking.’

My grandfather seemed bemused. ‘What ring?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Katie.’

‘The ring you lost in the shed,’ I said. ‘I still look for it every time I come here.’

He stared at me for a moment and then, as understanding dawned, said, ‘But Katie, I made that up. There never was any ring. I just told you that to give you something to do that day. I thought you realised.’

I was devastated. Not only was there no treasure to be found in the shed, but I’d spent hours searching for something that didn’t exist. I’d often imagined the look of delight my grandfather would have on his face when finally, triumphantly, I handed him his precious long-lost ring, and I’d never given up believing that one day I would find it for him.

I probably trusted my grandfather more than anyone, and I was completely shocked to realise he’d lied to me. And, in that moment, I had a premonition that everything I had ever believed in or hoped for was going to turn out to be just as empty and pointless.

I can only remember one period when I was happy as a child. It was a long summer holiday when I was ten and my brother and I went to stay with my father’s parents in a house by the sea. It was an unusually hot summer and we woke up every morning for weeks to brilliant sunshine and clear blue skies. On most days, we went fishing with my grandfather; then we picked raspberries and made jam with my grandmother; and in the evenings, after dinner, we all played cards together.

Normally, no one ever did things like that with us. At home, it had always been clear that my father’s preference was for us to be seen when required and not heard at all. I honestly don’t think it would ever have crossed his mind, at any stage during my childhood, to have played a game with me – at least, not any game that it was intended for children to play.

I’d never before felt so free and at ease with myself as I did during those days spent with my grandparents that summer. And they remained, far and away, the best days of my entire childhood.

My grandmother was a tiny, fiery, God-fearing despot who left no one in any doubt about the fact that she ruled the roost. When I was very young, she used to read to me from the Bible, and although it wasn’t all fire and brimstone and eternal damnation, she certainly took the Ten Commandments very seriously indeed. Everyone was terrified of her, including my grandfather. But I loved her. My grandfather was my favourite, though – in fact, he was probably the person I loved best in the world. He was a lovely, gentle man who was really interested in people.

My father’s parents weren’t at all like my mother’s parents, who were old-school strict and who slapped me if I was naughty. Although my father’s father was an alcoholic, he was always good tempered. Sadly, he died the year after that summer holiday, and I rarely saw my grandmother again after that. My father had always been her favourite child, but when my parents split up and he got together with Sally and started to lead an openly wild life, my grandmother refused to have anything to do with him.

Years later, I visited my grandmother and found her alone in a cold, soulless high-rise flat, cooking on an open fire. I left her some money and then phoned my father to tell him how his mother was living.

‘I can’t do anything,’ he told me. ‘I haven’t got any money myself.’

It was a ludicrous claim, although one he often made.

He may have heard my snort of derision, because, after a moment’s silence, he said, ‘Well, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll send her something and make sure she’s all right.’

He told me later that he’d been sending her money every week since that phone call, but I discovered that in fact he’d never sent her a single penny.

She died a few years ago, and he didn’t go to her funeral – choosing, instead, to send a ‘representative’, who was someone she’d never even met. He did, however, make a magnanimous donation to the nursing home where she’d spent her final years – and where he’d never visited her – with instructions that the money was to be used to buy a brand new state-ofthe-art wheelchair. The people at the nursing home must have thought he was a very strange man indeed.

For me, one of the best things about spending time with my grandparents that summer had been that they’d made me feel like a normal child; whereas, for the rest of my childhood, I never felt as though I fitted in anywhere, and I didn’t know why. I’d often watch and listen to other children, trying to work out what it was okay to do and say. But, however hard I tried, the world just didn’t make sense to me. I was never certain about anything, and I seemed always to be in a state of bewildered confusion.

When I was 11, my mother and I moved out of the flat my father had rented out to us, when, one day, out of the blue, he said we had to leave. I can’t remember the excuse he gave my mother, but I found out later that it was because he wanted to sell the building to raise money to pay off some of his gambling debts – again. So we packed up our bits of stuff and left that horrible bleak flat and went to live in a slightly larger two-bedroom place in a marginally better area of town.

The new flat was at the top of a long road where, someone told me, there’d once been a gruesome murder. I had a friend who lived at the other end of the road, and whenever I walked to her house, I’d be in such a state of nervous anxiety I could barely breathe. I’d glance continuously from side to side and over my shoulder, longing to break into a run, but terrified in case doing so drew the attention of the murderer, who, I was sure, was still there somewhere, watching from a window in one of the blank-faced houses.

One day, I was walking along the road with my friend on the way to her house when a car pulled up beside us. The driver wound down his window and said something I couldn’t hear and then he beckoned me over. My friend hung back, but I stepped across the pavement towards the car. The man rested his arm through the open window and as I looked down I saw that his other hand was holding his penis and that he appeared to be totally naked from the waist down.

I screamed and tried to jump back, away from the car, but he grabbed my arm, his fingernails digging painfully into my skin. My friend ran off down the road, crying in loud, breathless sobs, and the man started to get out of his car, still gripping my arm tightly. I tried to pull away, tugging and twisting my wrist, and then suddenly I was free. I shouted to my friend as I ran down the road after her, and we both darted together through an open gateway that led to a tennis club.

Although there were people playing tennis and others coming and going between the building and the tennis courts, I didn’t even think to tell anyone what had just happened. Instead, my friend and I watched from behind the fence as the man drove slowly down the road, did a U-turn and drove slowly past us again. Then, as he was turning the car around for a second time, we clasped hands and ran together out of the tennis-club gate and down the road to my friend’s house, where her mother phoned the police.

When the police arrived, we told them what had happened, but the man was never caught. My friend’s mother – and, later, my own – expressed dismay that I’d approached the man’s car in the way I had, and both mothers reminded me again about never talking to strangers I didn’t know. Their warnings and advice served little purpose, though, other than to increase my already high level of anxiety and confusion about what sort of men doing what sort of things one needed to be wary of.

I didn’t often visit my father at that time. I used to tell my mother I didn’t want to stay overnight with him at all, although I never explained why. Ever since I’d been able to understand words, he’d told me repeatedly that I was worthless, useless, a little scrubber who’d end up in care because nobody loved me. And I had no reason not to believe him. I don’t think he ever told me in so many words not to talk about what he did to me, but I didn’t, partly because he managed to make me feel as though it was my fault and because he’d often tell me that I was a slut, ‘Just like your mother’.

My mother was never a slut, though; she was a lady, whose only real crime was not having the self-confidence and strength of character to stand up to my father until it was too late, both for her and for me. The way my father treated her while they were married, and afterwards, completely destroyed her sense of assurance and self-worth, and she never fully recovered from the hurt he inflicted on her, both physically and, more importantly, mentally.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever fully recover from what he did to me either. I believe that what happens to a child during the first few years of its life becomes the foundation for its understanding of everything. And, by his actions, my father ensured that the foundations of my life were a sense of worthlessness and a longing to be loved that were to colour everything I did and everything that happened to me for years, and that I still have to struggle against on an almost daily basis. I kept trying to please him and trying to gain his approval – whether by reciting fables in French without error or by being a ‘good girl’ and lying still when he took me into his bed and abused me in a way that still haunts my nightmares.

Occasionally, when he and his girlfriend, Sally, had a row, instead of storming out herself, she’d kick him out of the house – which was something that seemed completely amazing to me, as I couldn’t imagine anyone ever having the guts to do that. And it was on one of those occasions, when I was 12 years old – not long after the incident with the masturbating man in the car – that my father sexually abused me for the last time.

After Sally had locked him out, he’d gone to stay with his friend Angus, who’d moved into a flat in a nice part of town, and one night when I was staying there with him, they had a party. I was annoyed at having to be there at all, because although Angus was being nice to me, as he always was, my father clearly didn’t want to be bothered with me. I’d retreated huffily to the bedroom where I slept with my father whenever I stayed there with him and was reading my book when he came in and said, ‘Get out there and entertain everyone.’

I instantly felt sick. The whole flat was vibrating to the sound of the music that was blaring out from the stereo. I knew that everyone was already drunk and that most of them had taken drugs, and I dreaded the thought of having to stand in front of them and dance, which was what my father wanted me to do. But I was still as terrified of him as I’d always been, and it never crossed my mind not to do what he told me to do. If I entertained his friends, he’d be pleased with me; if I didn’t, he’d be angry, and when he was angry he hurt and frightened me.

I put down my book, took a deep breath and went into the living room, where I began to dance. Afterwards, my father took me into a bedroom and told me to take my clothes off and get into the bed. I waited anxiously for whatever was about to happen, and after a few minutes the door opened and a man I didn’t recognise came in, followed by a younger woman. Neither of them spoke to me as they took off their clothes, climbed into the bed beside me and started having sex, and I lay there silently with tears of humiliation and shame trickling slowly down my cheeks.

Later, my father took me to his bedroom and abused me, and that’s where I woke up beside him the next morning.

I didn’t see him very often after that, except when he wanted some information about my mother or when he decided to remind me that he was still in control.

Even when I was very young, there were many days when everything seemed so hopeless and miserable that I wanted to kill myself. The people who knew me were used to my sometimes odd behaviour, so I don’t suppose I seemed any different to them on those days from the way I did on any others. However, by the time I was in my early teens, it had become clear to my mother that there was something wrong with me. She had her own problems, though, and although she had some discussions with my father – and I think also with someone at my school – about the possibility of sending me to see a psychiatrist, nothing ever came of it, and I was left to carry on trying to battle my demons on my own.

My mother was working during the week and she used to go out quite a lot at the weekends, so she was never really around very much, and perhaps she didn’t realise just how unhappy I really was. She says she loves me very much, and I’m sure that’s true; but, as a teenager particularly, I was difficult and moody and she must have been glad when I went to stay with friends – sometimes for weeks on end – and left her free to do her own thing.

During my first year at secondary school, I stayed with my friend Megan and her parents for more than 140 days, during which time I went to see my mum just twice. I loved living with Megan in her comfortable home, rather than in our grotty flat. I loved being able to lie in the bath in a warm, nicely decorated bathroom and then walk barefoot across the thick carpet on the landing to the bedroom, where I could draw the flower-patterned curtains and shut out the night.

I’m still very close to Megan. She says now that I was like a poor lost soul, and I think that’s the way I felt, although I wasn’t really conscious of it at the time. It just seemed as though I had nothing to live for. I desperately wanted to be ‘normal’, but something set me apart from all the other girls I knew, something indefinable that I was deeply ashamed of and didn’t understand.