The Little Prisoner (25 page)

I couldn’t even guess what the outcome might be. By now I’d lost track of whether what had happened to me was extraordinary or not. The reaction of everyone who heard my story suggested that it was unusual and shocking, but then my family made it appear that such behaviour was normal, that nothing that had happened to me merited anyone being punished. I no longer knew what to think about anything.

One of the things I was saddest about was that my family now knew about Sophie. I had managed to keep her existence secret from them, but now they knew I had two daughters when I didn’t want them to know anything about my new life.

The jury stayed out for a long time and Marie and my barrister told me that was good, but I really wanted to get it all over with and to know what would be happening next. Everyone told me that they had good vibes and that they were sure we were going to win, but I kept thinking, ‘What if we don’t? What if they find him not guilty on any of the charges and he’s free to leave the court? What would I feel like then? And once he was free, what would he do to exact his revenge on me for telling the world the truth about him?’

Steve and I went to a pub close to the courthouse to wait. We wanted to be with the people who had stood up for me in the court. I wanted to share the result with them because they were the ones who had stuck by me through the whole thing, refusing to be intimidated into silence or lies like all the others. My dad turned up for the last day as well. It was one of those big pubs where you can sit around all day on sofas ordering coffees and drinks and snacks. We got there early in the morning, not wanting to miss the announcement, and the hours ticked slowly by.

Every so often my mobile would ring, making my heart miss a beat, but it would just be Marie, telling us that there was no news but not to worry, that they had all gone to lunch or that they were all back from lunch. Hour after hour we talked over everything that had happened in the courtroom and debated every facial expression that the jury or the judge had shown.

‘I caught that judge’s eye, you know,’ Steve’s dad kept saying, ‘and he gave me a look which just said, “I know, mate. I know.”’

All the signs seemed good, but how often do you read about cases where the verdict is completely the opposite to what everyone expects? How was I to know what influence Richard had exerted on the jury? Could he have intimidated them like he did everyone else? I forced all the negative thoughts from my mind.

At about three o’clock the phone went again, making me jump.

‘It’s Marie. The result is in.’

‘Yeah?’ I hardly dared breathe.

‘He’s been found guilty of all the charges except one, which he got off on a technicality.’

‘Guilty? So how long will be get?’

‘They won’t do the sentencing for a few weeks,’ she said. ‘But the judge did warn him that he would be going away for a very long time.’

‘Does that mean they’ll be letting him out until the sentencing?’ I felt a lurch of panic in my stomach.

‘No,’ Marie laughed. ‘He’ll be on remand. He won’t be going anywhere for a very long time.’

Chapter Twelve

W
hen Marie rang a few weeks later to tell me that Richard had been given fifteen years, the maximum sentence that a judge could give for the crimes he had been found guilty of, I felt a little pang of disappointment.

‘But that’s really good, Jane,’ Marie assured me.

‘I know,’ I said, ‘it’s just that he took seventeen years of my life, and well, you know … ‘

Once I had got used to the idea, however, I was pleased, and very grateful to everyone who had helped me do it.

‘Just think, Mummy,’ Emma said to me the evening after the sentencing, ‘we’re going up to our own beds now and that horrible man has got to go to sleep in a cold cell. Serves him right for what he did to you.’

The girls know that I had a cruel stepfather who did things to me that you shouldn’t do to children, but they don’t yet know the extent of it. Emma can remember the occasional time when Silly Git had me pinned against the wall by the throat, but I don’t think it worries her because she knows that my story has a happy ending.

The outcome of the case wasn’t happy for everyone. My brothers went after the people who had stood up for me. One of them chased Hayley in her car, eventually forcing her to stop. He ran over to her, kicking at the car to try to get her out so he could get at her and shouting how he was going to kill her. She went to the police but the rest of the family gave him an alibi, saying he was with them at the time she alleged the incident happened. Her family started getting threatening phone calls all night long as well.

My Uncle John also started receiving threatening calls. He was attacked beside the grave at a family funeral as punishment for ‘betraying the family’ and his car was sprayed with obscenities. It was his brother’s funeral, the uncle who had tried to intimidate me as I went into court, who had died soon afterwards from the family complaint of kidney failure. The fight at the graveside escalated when Uncle John’s wife tried to help and got her face slapped for her trouble.

Paul had the windows of his house and his car smashed and Steve’s mum and dad started receiving threats on their lives, notes through the door and phone calls telling them what was going to happen to them, and people sitting outside their house in cars, with the headlights shining through the windows, beeping incessantly on the horns. The police gave us, Steve’s parents and Hayley’s family all alarms in our houses as well as mobile ones to carry around, which we can keep for the rest of our lives. Paul has now joined the police force and had a second son. I’m very proud of him for making something good of his life.

I kept hoping that once Richard had been inside for a while and they had all had a chance to think about things, they would realize that I had done them an enormous favour in rescuing them from a man who had been bullying them all for more than twenty years. I couldn’t understand why it was taking them so long to realize. I presumed they must all still be frightened of him, even though he was inside.

A month or two before the sentencing Steve’s parents had received a call from my brother Tom. ‘Please don’t put the phone down,’ he said. ‘I don’t have anything to do with that lot and I desperately need to speak to Janey because I can’t believe all this stuff has been happening.’

‘Give us your number,’ they said. ‘We’ll pass it on to Janey and she can call you if she wants.’

I had been wanting to get in touch with Tom for years, fearing that he might be the one Richard would pick on once he didn’t have me to kick around. He and Dan had always been my favourites. When he was a baby and I was trying to get him to sleep, I used to suck on his ear lobes so much that I ended up stretching them and making them floppy. He was the one I’d thought about rescuing when we first escaped from the area. I’d heard through friends of Steve’s that he had been beaten up badly and chased out of the house and had been living on the streets and getting into drugs.

I had an old pay-as-you-go mobile which wouldn’t be traceable, so I passed that number to him.

‘Don’t you live with them, then?’ I asked when he called.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just found out about the court case because I bumped into Dan up the market.’

‘Yeah?’

‘But I ended up with two black eyes.’

‘How come?’

‘Well, Dan told me you weren’t our real sister, but you are, aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m only your half-sister.’

‘Oh.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘Well, I called him a liar and he was saying stuff about you and I wouldn’t have it. I said we love each other.’

‘Still got your wobbly ears then?’

‘Yes.’ He laughed at the memory.

I was very pleased to have got in touch with him again.

After the sentencing had been announced the local papers asked if they could report it. I was happy to agree. I knew how helpful it had been to me to read
A Child Called It.
If just one child read an article about me and realized that they too could do something about what was being done to them then it would be worthwhile.

A journalist was sent to interview me and at the moment she arrived at the house the mobile phone I had used to talk to Tom went off. Somehow the rest of the family had got hold of the number and now they were all screaming down the phone at me, telling me on the one hand I’d torn the family apart, that I’d taken away someone they loved and that they were going to do the same to me, and on the other hand that I had brought them all together for the first time in years. It seemed that family members who hadn’t spoken to one another for ages had suddenly come together to confront the common enemy: me.

‘We know where Steve works,’ one of them was yelling. ‘We’re gonna fucking kill him. We know where his parents live, they’re gonna end up fucking burned alive in their beds.’

Buoyed up by the successful verdict, I was giving as good as I got, screaming that they should be grateful that I’d put Richard away and that he wouldn’t be able to hurt any of them any more, but none of them were having it. Families, apparently, should stick together and protect their own, even when their own have been proven to be monsters.

A woman I’d never met came on the line, hurling abuse at me for taking away her kids’ grandfather. She was married to one of my brothers and would still have been a kid herself at the time I left home.

‘I’m gonna beat the fucking shit out you!’ she screamed. ‘Do you know who I am? I’m well ‘ard. And we know where you live.’

Alright then, if you know where I live, I’m on the doorstep, come and get me. Don’t forget I know where you live too,’ I said, naming the street.

Some other bloke I had never met in my life then came on telling me how he was going to cut me open.

‘You don’t even know me!’ I said.

‘We know where your husband works, so tell him to keep checking the brakes on his car.’

Then Silly Git’s sister came on the line and was trying to convince me that the boys were heartbroken at losing their father.

‘So do you think I should have let him get away with it then?’ I asked.

‘All I’m saying is that I’ve just had to run round the block with your brother who’s being chased with a knife because of this.’

‘That’s it,’ I thought, ‘this lot are loving it. They’re never happier than when they’re winding someone up. Any day without a good fight story to tell is a wasted day to them.’

In the background I heard my mother’s voice shouting over the rest. ‘What’s the matter with her then? Is she missing his cock?’

I hung up the phone. There was nothing left to say really.

The poor little journalist couldn’t get out of the house quick enough.

Now it’s all over and Steve and I can concentrate on bringing up the girls in a normal family atmosphere. I feel I’ve done what I had to. Now I’m Mrs Elliott, a normal wife and mum, taking my children back and forth to school, running the home and walking the dog, but there will always be a hole where my past should have been.

Some old schoolfriends contacted me through the Internet and invited me to a reunion in a pub near the old school. I wanted to see them all, but it was hard to travel back to the area where my family still lived. In the end I summoned all my courage – after all, Silly Git had been taken off the street and I reckoned I could deal with my brothers. I used to change their nappies, for God’s sake!

‘Oh my God!’ the girls shrieked when they saw me coming into the reunion. ‘It’s the nutter herself.’

I gave a joyful laugh at the sight of all their familiar faces.

‘Ah, you’ve still got that terrible laugh!’ they cried.

As we got talking they started to tease me about my accent. ‘You’ve started putting “t”s in the middle of words like water,’ they laughed. ‘You’re getting posh.’

‘That’s funny,’ I laughed, ‘because where I live now they think I’m dead common.’