I Won't Forgive What You Did (13 page)

We set off up the road, and a few minutes later, we began approaching the area where I lived. I was turned around at the time, trying to laugh with the others, when I realized we’d just passed the turning to my house. I was too shy to say anything – was Maria’s dad going another way? – and then felt confused as we pulled up outside Maria’s house, and her dad insisted he drop her off next. She argued, but he insisted and eventually she got out. Once again we set off, but once again we passed my road. I already knew what was going to happen this time, as the van was travelling way too fast to stop there. My confusion turned to fear. What was going on? Why hadn’t he dropped me off
that
time? As each of the other girls was dropped off, one by one, I could feel a choking sensation rising in my throat. Why me? I kept asking myself. Why not one of the others? What, I wanted to scream now, was
wrong
with me?

When the last girl got out, he turned the van around slowly, and finally began driving towards my house. I’d begun praying the van would move faster and get me home, when, without a word, he began stroking my thigh. Still silent, he then moved his hand up between my legs. Terrified and speechless, I hardly dared breathe, as he pulled the van up outside my house. He then picked up my hand, held it tightly in his own, and put my fingers round his enormous erect penis, which had appeared in his lap seemingly from nowhere. I felt violently sick as he used it to bring himself to orgasm, still without saying a single word. I was repulsed and bewildered, unable to believe what had just happened. Why me, I thought unhappily, why
me
? He let go of my hand then, and I scrambled from the van, and ran as fast as I could towards our gate. I was breathing so hard I thought I might explode.

When I got indoors, my parents were watching the news on TV. I wanted to shout at them, tell them exactly what had been happening while they’d been sitting watching the bloody news! But I didn’t. I was only thirteen, but I already understood. What on
earth
would be the point in doing that? My father would start shouting, my mother would make excuses for him, saying I must be mistaken, and what did I do to cause it? All in all, I just knew there’d be a big scene and, ultimately, I’d end up feeling worse. There was no point in them knowing because I knew they wouldn’t defend me. They never had before. They wouldn’t now.

When I returned to school the following Monday, I felt changed in a new and awful way. Previously awkward around the other girls in my class and my year, I now felt worlds away from them. I didn’t know what to say to any of them now, particularly Maria. What was there
to
say?

I felt dreadful, like a traitor with a secret, that I was a bad person and that this was all my fault. It was made worse by the fact that the family lived close by and my parents knew both him and his wife. She was a leader in the Guides, and he was well respected locally . . . who would believe what he had done to me? I used to wonder what Maria would say if she knew, and felt sure she’d call me a liar. I used to watch her and think to myself ‘If only you knew . . .’

But what I mostly felt was the grim realization that I was utterly on my own, and that I didn’t really matter to anyone. That a man I hardly knew – a man who knew my
parents –
felt he could get away with doing such things to me made me sure there was something
in
me that made bad things happen. It was an awful thought and it seriously depressed me. To add to this, the girls no longer seemed to like me now that the play was over, and it made me feel angry at myself for believing I could be one of them. Everywhere I went in school now, I felt hated. Beth would slap me around the face and push me at break time. Gaynor would deliberately walk into me, knocking my head against the corridor wall, or push my tummy against the handrail if we passed on the school stairs. Vera frightened me particularly – she was so big and threatening – coming right up to my face and calling me a stupid little cow. She’d then barge me, saying: ‘Get out of my way, bitch, and stay out of it.’ And everyone, inexplicably, found this funny. They’d all laugh and then walk off laughing more.

I didn’t know how to deal with this. I didn’t even know why they were doing it. Except for the obvious reason – I was worthless and different. I was the stupid, silly girl my mother always called me. The one all the horrible men liked. The one who couldn’t tell them to go away. The one who felt so afraid all the time. I’d learn, much later, that Mar ia’s father chose
me
, a s opposed to any of the other girls he knew, because men like that often have a keen eye for a target; they know not to choose the confident girls, from loving homes. They choose vulnerable girls who are too afraid to fight them off or speak out. Girls who wouldn’t be believed. And I was one of them. I’d been conditioned from such a young age to think everything was my fault, that by now I didn’t know any different. And as no one had ever encouraged me to say what I felt or to choose what I wanted, I no longer even knew what that was. I was just a receptacle for others to abuse. An empty vessel. Everything
was
my fault.

A couple of months later, I started my periods.

Presumably because I’d missed so much school I’d learned nothing about what was going to happen, and the sight of the blood terrified me. I was so shocked I started screaming, and then shouting to my mother – who was downstairs – completely in a panic about what was happening.

She came upstairs and started talking in a stage whisper. ‘Shut up!’ she hissed. ‘What do you think you’re doing, you disgusting thing! Your brothers and dad are downstairs!’ She looked cross and I couldn’t fathom why. She pointed her finger then. ‘Do you want them to
know
?’

She went into her bedroom and returned with a dirty-looking, twisted, pale-pink thing, which I’d later find out was called a sanitary belt. She then threw some enormous sanitary towels at me, which again I later realized must have been the type used following a pregnancy. ‘Put that on,’ she said, gesturing to the pink thing in my hand. ‘And if you need some more towels, they’re in my wardrobe.’

I sat in the bathroom for a while, unable to stop crying, then finally forced myself to put the disgusting sanitary belt round my waist. I felt awful, ashamed, even more of a bad person. All this disgusting paraphernalia revolted me, just as much as it all clearly revolted my mother. And as a consequence, I now felt revolting too. Worse still, this seemed proof I was going to end up
like
my mother, which traumatized me even more. I went straight to bed and cried myself to sleep.

Nothing further concerning periods was ever mentioned by my mother again. Even so, blood was a constant in our house. My mother had always been either pregnant or bleeding, and now I understood the reason why. Her reticence about discussing periods was not unexpected, given she never discussed anything with me. But her apparent dislike of female matters being broadcast around the house was a little strange given her own habits.

She had, over a long period of time – all of my life – amassed a stack of used sanitary towels in her bedroom. They formed a pile nearly to the ceiling, beside her wardrobe. She’d regularly bring smaller piles of these downstairs, to make new stacks of used sanitary towels beside her chair. She’d intermittently grab towels from this pile and throw them on the fire while she sat and read her magazines. The smell as they burned was beyond description, and one I’d never forget.

Why she did it, I had no idea. She seemed oblivious to the stench, which was incredible, and oblivious to how anyone in the room with her might feel. I didn’t have a clue what I should do with my used towels, but there was no way on earth I was doing
that
. I used to wrap them carefully, take them to school and put them in the disposal bin.

I couldn’t bear the thought that one day I would be a woman too, and spent several months following the beginning of my periods desperately trying to pretend I was a boy.

The used sanitary towels weren’t the only foul thing around the house. My mother had had whooping cough as a child and, as a consequence, had severe and chronic asthma. She’d cough a great deal and repeatedly spit phlegm into pieces of toilet roll. Once done, she’d stuff the resultant ball either down the side of her chair or into the bucket beside it. They invariably remained there for days. It was revolting enough listening to the constant coughing and throat-clearing, but to have to clear the tissues from the chair sides, empty the bucket and, worst of all, collect up all the tissues that had missed it, was truly disgusting, and made me retch.

That my mother’s behaviour was unusual was becoming more apparent with every year, even if I’d no notion of what was usual. As I entered my mid-teens she became obsessed with the occult, and was convinced she’d lived a previous life and had returned in a different body. She believed she’d been a soldier in the war, but because she got killed before she could learn everything she should, she had to come back now to learn it.

She told me she had a spirit guide who lived on her shoulder. He was a little male Indian, called Henry, and she had to ask him if it was safe before doing anything that meant leaving the house. The house itself was apparently full of ghosts, and because she was brought up by witches (she said all the women in her family were witches, some of whom were burned at the stake), she had a relationship with them; they were people who’d ‘gone to the other side’.

She collected books about reincarnation, and now began going to strange meetings. Sometimes she’d go alone, and sometimes with other family members. They’d return with stories of dead people being spoken to, and of having had their palms read.

Only once was I persuaded to go – I found the whole idea very frightening – and it was every bit as gruesome as I’d feared. There were people walking around in long black gowns, with hoods so big they could pull them almost right over their faces, giving the impression they were faceless. They walked with a stoop, which made them seem even more ghoulish, and didn’t look up or speak at any point.

My mother was very excited – I could tell that straight away. She’d bought herself a box of chocolate peanuts and raisins, called Poppets, and was humming and tapping on the box ever more quickly while she waited for the meeting to start.

But then, suddenly, a small light pierced the gloom, illuminating three people on the stage. There were two of the shrouded figures flanking a little old lady, who immediately raised her hands and called: ‘Is there anybody there?’ My mother was galvanized by this and pulled out a little red book from her handbag, into which she started scribbling all the names the old lady was calling out.

When I asked her why she did that she told me it was so she could think about the names later, to see if she could identify any of them. She seemed desperate to have something to contribute to the list of dead people; trying to think of everyone dead she’d ever known so she could shout out that she knew them too. It was unsettling to see her like this; so agitated yet so excited by all this scary stuff.

Worse, she seemed to have half the family believing it too, even though it seemed so obvious to me it was all make-believe and self-deception. It made it feel even harder to establish what was false and what was real; she had so little grasp on the real people around her, yet, as with her animals when we’d lived at our last house, she seemed to find dead people so much easier to care about.

Perhaps as a subconscious protest against my mother’s obsession with the occult, when I was around fourteen, I joined a local church.

I’d all but given up on youth club. Aside from the reputation I seemed to have acquired, I’d grown increasingly fearful of some girls there. One in particular, who wore knuckledusters, had started threatening me; I wasn’t exactly sure what the reasons were – probably just because I was younger and new to the village and had drawn so much negative attention to myself. And I certainly wasn’t about to take her on.

So when I saw a poster outside the Free Church advertising a youth group meeting, I decided to try it. I’d had little experience of either church or churchgoers, but had gone with Nan when I was younger and always liked the sombre nature and silence of a church.

I didn’t know what I expected, but the decision turned out to be the right one. As soon as I met the pastor who ran the youth group I fell immediately in love. It didn’t matter that he was old enough to be my father. It didn’t matter that he was married – his wife was lovely too – and it didn’t matter that he had a child and another baby on the way It wasn’t a love I planned to do anything about. I just wanted to be included in his world. He was so kind to me he made me cry. It was as if he was the fantasy father I’d never had; he exuded goodness and gentleness and interest in me. I began going to church twice every Sunday.

The pastor was a wonderful man. And despite his physical presence not being that of a heart-throb, I’m sure, looking back, he was used to being the subject of adoration for many a teenage girl in need of friendship and support. He treated me so kindly, and with such respect and concern, that he immediately became my parents’ worst enemy.

My mother, in particular, was furious. She told me to stay away from ‘that church’, as it was dangerous, and the kind of people who went there were all odd and needed help. She told me there were lots of stories about the sort of people who went to ‘free churches’, and my father, whose contribution was as articulate as ever, was to simply warn me to ‘fucking stay away’.