Mummy Knew (27 page)

‘What a fucking actress,’ Mum jeered. ‘I tell you what, you should get a fucking Oscar.’

‘I can’t go, I can’t,’ I sobbed.

‘Tell him that, not me,’ Mum said coldly, an unlit cigarette clamped between her lips. ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’

‘No, it’s not!’ I bellowed so loudly that Mum jumped and I felt my temples bulge.

‘Keep your fucking voice down,’ she said, removing her cigarette temporarily. ‘He’ll be back in a minute and he’ll fucking scalp you if he hears.’

‘Where do Jenny and Diane live?’ I demanded.

‘I don’t fucking know,’ Mum insisted, ‘and you should be fucking grateful I don’t. Nanny’d be turning in her fucking grave, she would.’

I blocked my ears against Mum’s spite and ran up to my room. Not for the first time I lay on my bed and wondered if any of this was my fault. My mind strayed back to the days when Dad first came to live with us. I remembered his lewd and crude ways, the nudity and the surreptitious touching and I understood for the first time that Dad had a vile plan right from the very start. That much was clear to me; what I continued to struggle with was how to get out of it.

On the day of the move, Mum helped, laughing and joking with Dad, all chummy as usual–still the best of friends. When Dad said goodbye, he gave her a lingering kiss and pinched her bum.

‘See you later, Donna,’ said Dad. ‘About four o’clock should do it. Means I get a lay in.’

‘Jammy bastard,’ laughed Mum.

The plan was that every morning Mum would stop off in a taxi and pick Dad up so they could go to work together as usual. Nothing seemed to have changed between them. This whole move to the flat was a smoke screen, designed to make it look as though Dad and I were in a relationship. This scenario was hard enough for the family to swallow, bearing in mind how long he had been my father, but the alternative–that he had been abusing me since I was very young,and he and Mum were still very much together–would have been even harder and would have stirred up all sorts of problems.

The flat was very small, on the first floor of a converted house, and about ten minutes away from Mum’s place. There was a tiny kitchen and bathroom, a cramped living room at the front and a dark bedroom at the back. There was no furniture, but Mum and Dad had thought about that.

A few days later, they marched me into various furniture shops, picked out what they wanted, and told the salesman that it was for their daughter’s first flat. I was made to sign credit agreements in my name for everything. I felt sick with fear the whole time but too terrorised to object to the new arrangement.

Once Dad had me alone in the flat, things went from bad to worse. Now there were no constraints, he was free to be as violent and sadistic as he wanted. He was drinking more and more and remained convinced that I was sleeping with all sorts of other men the minute his back was turned. I tried to explain that this would be impossible even if I wanted to, because he knew where I was at every minute of the day.

‘Oh, so you want to fuck every Tom, Dick and Harry, do you?’ he’d shout, his face twisted in fury. ‘You just don’t have the fucking time, is that it?’

There was no reasoning with him, ever.

He didn’t seem to worry about marking my face now. His new thing was to headbutt me in the face, giving me a nosebleed or a big lump on my forehead.

On quite a few occasions I thought he was going to kill me and I ran all the way home to Mum’s house, hoping that she would finally listen and try to help me. What mother wouldn’t help her daughter in a situation like this?

Once I arrived with a swollen eye and a cut lip, naked apart from my underwear and a coat. I knocked at the front door, and rang the bell for ages before she bothered to answer it. I could see the television flickering through the drawn curtains.

‘What do you keep coming round here for?’ she cried as she opened the door and I stumbled inside. ‘I’ve told you, he only gets the fucking hump with me.’

‘Please, Mum, he’s getting worse. You’ve got to help me.’

‘I ain’t got to do nothing,’ she snarled in my face. ‘Now why don’t you fuck off back to him. Or do you want him to wake Kat when he comes round and starts screaming blue murder?’

I felt I had no choice but to turn around and go back then. I didn’t want Kat to wake up frightened. The only good thing about us being in the flat was that Kat didn’t have to witness Dad’s rampages quite so much any more. Mum was right. What was the point? Dad always knew where I was, and always came to get me. I was seventeen now and the only thing I could think to do was to walk back to my abuser.

We hardly ever went out, which was how I preferred it because I imagined everybody could see the ‘secret’ and I was too ashamed. Dad was twenty years older than me, but years of smoking, drinking and unhealthy food had left him looking as though he was due his bus pass. His hair was thinning, and his eyes, like currants, were almost lost in the puffy bags that sat beneath them. The fact he hardly bothered to wash didn’t help matters. He looked unkempt, old and raddled compared to my baby-faced looks and the contrast between us
was startling enough to provoke double-takes. Most people would think I was with my dad until he came out with a lewd comment or made a grab for me.

Despite his ageing appearance, Dad remained very strong and fast. Once I watched as he knocked down two young lads who were looking at me, so I always used to dread it when he insisted on an outing because I knew it would end in disaster. One day he took me to France on the ferry because he wanted to stock up on duty-free cigarettes. When we reached the port, it took two stewards and some other passengers to rouse him from his drunken stupor. All the way home he interrogated me about what I’d been up to with an imagined man while he was asleep. Inevitably he beat me when we got home, throwing glasses and ashtrays at the wall behind my head.

Once he took me to a disco off Oxford Street. I’d try to drink as much as possible because it helped me to cope with the shame of being with him, and this went some way to anaesthetise the pain. But unfortunately, it made me make mistakes. If he said jump, I had to jump–and fast. If he said lie down in the gutter, I’d have to do it without question. When I had been drinking my reaction times weren’t always quick enough to respond to his commands, or I would lack the power of logic needed to talk my way out of danger, as I’d had to do so many times. Inside the club that night he took a bite out of my lip. It wouldn’t stop bleeding and my clothes were covered in blood. A group of girls took me into the toilet and offered to get me home to my mum. How could I explain that she would be totally useless and there was no way I could escape from the pig outside? All the way home that night he
beat me–in the street, in the cab–and no one helped. When we got inside he really went to town before once again raping me anally, which he did whenever he wanted to punish me. Luckily I passed out for most of it.

When Mum turned up at four in the morning to pick him up for work, I buzzed her up to the flat. For once, she had the good grace to look worried. My face was swollen, my lips cut and double their normal size, with caked-on blood; the dress I had been wearing was hanging in shreds from my waist and beneath it my whole body was covered in bruises, scratches and bite marks.

After tutting that she’d have to go to work on her own, she told me to be sure to come round to her place the next day when I got up. I wondered what protection she thought she was suddenly going to offer me? As it happened, I fell asleep again, only to wake up with Dad screaming that I’d managed to lose one of my earrings.

I was so petrified that I jumped out of bed and ran out of the flat and all the way back to Mum’s as passersby stared after me. She let me stay for a couple of days because I was in such a state and on this occasion Dad didn’t come for me immediately, as he usually would. When I tried to start a conversation about Dad’s violence, she didn’t want to know.

‘Change the bleedin’ record, will ya?’ she’d say. ‘What’s this got to do with me? It’s your fucking problem, not mine any more, thank fuck.’

Two days later, when Dad came round to fetch me, she ushered me out the door: ‘Off you go–and try not to upset him again ’cos I won’t open the door next time.’

One day, I got a cab home from the day shift at the tanning salon because I’d missed the bus and Dad had insisted I be home at a certain time. As I got out of the cab I noticed a brown envelope on the seat next to my bag and without thinking I picked it up. I could see Dad watching me out of the window.

After he’d inspected my knickers for semen and my body for love bites, I showed him the envelope. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that it contained about £5,000 in used notes. He was ecstatic.

‘Shouldn’t we hand it in to the police?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be so fucking stupid,’ he said, throwing handfuls of it in the air. ‘It’s a gift from fucking God, isn’t it?’

It’s very telling that at the time, I was so conditioned and beaten down that it never occurred to me that I could have hidden that money from Dad and used it to rent a flat and start a new life of my own. Dad was all-powerful and no matter where I went, I believed he would always get me in the end.

He lost most of that money at the bookies, and spent some on drink, but a hundred pounds went on buying me a fake diamond solitaire, which was his idea of an engagement ring. It made me sick to wear it and I used to ‘forget’ to put it on, but that made him mad. Usually I’d slip it in my pocket when I got to the tanning salon, but once Bridget saw it and asked me where it was from. I burned with shame as I told her my boyfriend had given it to me, and tried to ignore the worried look in her eyes.

I always thought people could see the truth and that they knew he was really my abusive dad, and I felt ashamed, as
though it was my fault. I didn’t realise that what Bridget saw was someone stuck in a violent relationship, as she had once been, and too lacking in confidence and self-esteem to take action to end the situation. She could spot that a mile off.

J
ust before Christmas 1984, the owner of the tanning salon announced he was taking all the staff out for dinner and then on to Tramp, the famous nightclub–and what’s more, partners were welcome to join us after dinner. On the night, I tried to feign illness but Dad pushed me into the cab to go to the restaurant, giving me a secret dig in the ribs. He slammed the taxi door on one of my legs, hissing that he’d see me later. The times when he was nice were few and far between now.

All evening I was frozen with fear, anticipating the moment Dad would arrive. When he did turn up, I could tell he had already been drinking heavily. He was totally out of his depth in the sophisticated environment and company. Later on I heard that my boss had warned everyone to watch out for him as he looked like trouble. People tried to make conversation but he would just glare at me and we ended up sitting in a corner while everyone else danced and celebrated the festive season.

I noticed Bridget watching me a lot, as did Dad.

‘What the fuck’s she keep looking at, fat-arsed cunt?’ he demanded.

He led me to the dance floor for a slow dance, so that he could get me on my own to give me a painful squeeze and a warning whisper.

‘What the fuck have you been saying to that slag? I can see her looking at us.’

He spat into my ear and dug his nails into my back through the soft material of my dress, so hard that they drew blood. The pain must have registered on my face, no matter how hard I tried to look impassive, because at the end of the dance, Bridget came over and asked me to go to the loo with her.

I could see Dad was absolutely furious but I went anyway, not knowing how to refuse.

‘Are you alright?’ Bridget asked once we were on our own.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I insisted, trying to hold back the tears.

‘Are you sure?’ She obviously didn’t believe me so I tried to muster a weak smile.

‘I’m sure,’ I said quietly.

When I got back outside, Dad announced we were leaving. As he marched me up the stairs of the club, hissing and spitting in my face, I suddenly felt in fear of my life. He had promised to kill me so many times and I really felt this was the night. I knew if I left the club with him, I might end up dead. He was completely beyond reason, consumed by rage.

I stopped suddenly, shrugged my arm loose and pressed myself into the wall, whimpering with fear. All I knew was that I didn’t dare leave this place where there were people who could restrain him. If I was on my own with him, I didn’t think I’d live through the night.

He went berserk, kicking and stamping on my feet and legs, shredding my tights and causing a bleeding gash on my shin.

Somehow I managed to pull away, limping badly, and ran into the ladies’ loo for safety. It was very surreal. A girl was applying her lipstick and she looked up, surprised at the sight of me. Suddenly the door burst open and Dad made a final lunge for me. Fortunately, the club’s bouncers were on him in seconds and they dragged him out. I slumped down on a chair, trembling, unable to speak.

Bridget appeared and crouched beside me. ‘It’s alright, he’s gone. They’ve chucked him out.’

‘But he’ll be waiting outside for me,’ I whispered. ‘I’ve got nowhere to go.’ I couldn’t risk going back to Mum’s because that’s the first place he would look for me.

‘Don’t worry,’ Bridget said firmly. ‘You’re coming home with me tonight.’

Her kindness made my tears well up and spill over. I don’t know if she realised it, but she had probably saved my life.

That night, Bridget tucked me into her spare bed as if I were a small child. ‘Try and get some sleep,’ she urged.

I was exhausted, and after tossing and turning for a while, I fell into a deep sleep. I woke with a start the following morning, my heart racing in panic as I struggled to orientate myself to my new surroundings. Where was I–and, more importantly, where was Dad? My stomach clenched in knots as panic rose within me.

I heard the bustle of the West End traffic coming from the street below, and someone stirring a cup in the kitchen. It was
Bridget. Memories of last night and how I had refused to leave the club with Dad came flooding back and I knew it was over. There was no way I was ever going back. It was as if a spell had been broken. I realised I would rather be dead than suffer his abuse any more. I pulled back the sheets and looked at my shins. They were bruised and bloodied, but somehow I could barely feel any pain. My mind was whirling with so many thoughts and emotions that my body felt curiously numb.