The Step Child (11 page)

Whatever the details of the homecoming of Frances and Simon, nothing much changed for me. I should have guessed really – although Helen didn’t like an audience of adults when she laid into me, kids didn’t matter. She was as happy to hit me and scream at me in front of Frances and Simon as she had been before their arrival. And a nine-year-old and seven-year-old couldn’t do anything to save me, not that I ever saw any evidence of them trying to. When you live in fear, when you live with the constant terror that you can be belted and whacked and punched at any second – especially when you are five years old and your attacker is a grown woman – you think about yourself rather than others for most of the time. It was the same for Frances and Simon. At times, my half-sister and half-brother would be there while I was being beaten, and at times I would witness attacks on them. Sometimes, each of us would watch in horror; sometimes we’d turn our faces away; always we’d be grateful it wasn’t us getting it. In the middle of it all, Gordon, who was now two, was watching and learning.

One day, when I was about six, Frances and Simon ran away together. I was either too scared to go, or never invited – I can’t remember – but I do recall them being brought back home by the police. Helen acted terribly concerned and awfully relieved – but the door was barely closed on the helpful officers before all three of us were thrashed over the bath with a belt then made to scrub all the floors in the house. All the time Helen was screaming that we were never ever to call her ‘Mum’ as she wasn’t our mother and never would be. I think that was just about sinking in by now.

Another time, standing in my room, facing the wall after God knows how many hours, I heard Helen shout for me. She was in the living room, and I immediately walked through, still in my
vest and knickers. There was no sign of Frances or Simon, although Gordon was sitting beside his mother on the floor. Helen stared at me. Her eyes never really showed any emotion (even when she was incredibly angry, she seemed to be somewhere else). It was as if she could just remove herself from where she was, from where I was, and get on with the job in hand, the pretend job for which she had created made-up rules. Maybe that’s what abusers need to do – perhaps there is a part of them which needs to disassociate itself from what they are actually inflicting on a child. Or maybe it just becomes bread and water to them, and they couldn’t actually care less any more. Something seemed different this time – there was a tone to her, a feeling about the whole thing, a lack of control even more frightening than usual that made the hairs on my forearms stand up on end.

I didn’t know what to do.

Something was coming, I knew that. Something new. Something she had only just thought of. Should I cry? Should I beg her to stop whatever it was going to be? Should I laugh? Should I defy her? What would anger her more? What would mollify her? Even as an adult, I wouldn’t know how to act with someone like that, so the very idea that a six-year-old might know how to cope is laughable. Despite this, all these strategies ran through my mind. And always, always, there was the hope that I could do something to turn this awful woman into someone – something – more human.

Her eyes remained cold, then a spark briefly came into them. ‘Come here, Donna,’ she said, stretching out her hand. ‘Come here for a wee minute.’ I had to take her hand, I had to go with her. The pull of some contact – no matter what would greet me at the end of it – was too much to resist. She took me – dragged me – along the lobby. We were going outside. Maybe she was going to knock on Mr and Mrs Woods’ door. Maybe she was going to tell them what a bad girl I was and shame me in front of
them. It looked like that was her plan as we continued out of the front door. But we walked past their flat and started to climb the stairs. Where were we going? She couldn’t take me outside in my underwear, could she? Then people would know, people would know that she didn’t act like a good Mummy, a nice Mummy.

But we weren’t going outside.

We stopped at the door to the coal cellar.

She crouched down beside me. ‘Look, Donna. Do you know what’s in there?’

I nodded. It was the coal cellar and I told her so.

‘Think you’re smart, do you?’ she snarled. ‘It’s not just a coal cellar, Donna. It’s a place where bad girls go. It’s a place for nasty, evil wee witches. Ugly little bastards who don’t deserve good things or nice mummies get locked in coal cellars, Donna – and they never know if they’ll get out again. Maybe nobody would know you were in there, Donna. Maybe nobody would ever remember to let you out again, Donna.’

I was shivering. Shaking. This was what she was going to threaten me with now, was it? Well, she’d won. She’d got me. I’d do anything, anything she could think of, anything she could make up, to avoid going in there.

She looked at me. ‘Come on then, Donna. Let’s go.’ When we got back into the flat, I’d be brave enough to ask her – that was where we must be going now, and I would just come right out with it, I would come right out and ask her what I could do to avoid ever, ever, ever being put into that place.

‘Come on,’ she said again, and I realised that the hand holding mine wasn’t taking me back downstairs to the flat. It wasn’t taking me home. It was slowly dragging me towards the door of the coal cellar. She was taking me in there. This wasn’t a threat. This wasn’t a warning. This was real.

I was going in.

The wooden door creaked open as she turned the key in the
lock. I whimpered. I couldn’t help it. Even though I knew it might anger her, I was so scared, the noise just slipped out of me. Just inside the door were a few wooden steps which took you down into a dark, dank, musty, dirty space. I tried to cling on to her hand but what chance did I have? She slipped hers away from me, shoved me down the steps – and smiled.

‘Have a nice time, Donna. Have a nice time.’

The door was locked behind me as I waited for my eyes to get used to the dark. But they didn’t. They couldn’t. There wasn’t a single chink of light for me to focus on. I was frightened, lonely, sad and sore (I was always sore), and now I was in a place where I might be left forever.

The utter terror and complete sense of loneliness was overwhelming – so many adults have an absolute fear of the dark, and yet here I was, a tiny, undernourished, unloved, beaten child being locked into a pitch-black, freezing place. I felt as if I could touch the blackness. I kept hearing the sound of the lock turning over and over again in my memory. What could I focus on? How could I get through this?

All I could do was think of the sunshine, think of being outside. I thought that if I concentrated enough, I might be able to make a picture in my head, and forget I was there. I told myself not to scream – she might be outside listening and that could make her even angrier. I knew I mustn’t wet or soil myself – if I did, she would only rub my face in it when – if – I got out and scream at me for being disgusting. What was left for me to do? How could I pass the time not knowing if it would be minutes or hours? Or even, God forbid, days? The longer I thought about it, the more worked up I got – no one knew I was here! She could say I’d run away. She could leave me here forever – I could die in this hell hole.

I had to believe it would only be for a few seconds, even while my head and heart were screaming that she’d never let me off so lightly. I could cope. I’d have to cope. It was only darkness,
wasn’t it? There wasn’t anyone in here. I wasn’t being kicked or punched. I could get through this.

Then the noises started.

At first, I tried to tell myself I was imagining it. I hummed very quietly to myself, little bits of songs I’d heard on the radio. I couldn’t sing loudly because of the fear that Helen would be outside the cellar door. But quiet humming wouldn’t drown out what I could definitely hear. This wasn’t in my mind, and it was getting louder, more frantic. Closer.

Scraping. Burrowing. The feel of wet noses against my bare legs. The touch of wet fur against my shins. I could feel sniffing and inquisitive bodies wondering who this intruder was. I was surrounded.

There was nothing to focus on except the scraping of what I now knew were dozens of rats beside me. They got more and more confident, and I had to deal not only with their presence and their scraping about, but also with the squealing which now filled the cellar. They must have picked up on the fact that I was weak and wasn’t going to pose a threat so they started to reclaim their territory. The squeaking didn’t seem to stop; their investigation of me didn’t seem to stop. I was absolutely terrified as the sound filled my ears. Would they bite me? What would they do to me if I was there for days? For weeks? I could feel their fur against my legs, but eventually I had to sit down, even though I knew I was making it easier for them to crawl all over me. And they did. After a few moments, the scurrying around me changed to a clambering as they climbed on top of me, I felt them over every part of my body. I sat there, with my hands over my eyes, quietly sobbing, every inch of my body shaking as filth-ridden rats climbed across me in the pitch-blackness.

Suddenly, other things in my life seemed so much more bearable. The backhand slaps she gave me with hands covered in rings that scraped my face. The insults and screaming before the
near-naked degradation in the bathroom. All of that, and more, was so much better than this.

Hours later, she came for me. The door opened silently. She didn’t say a word, just waited for me to find my feet and climb out. I staggered back to the flat, where nothing was said by anyone. I fell into my room, knowing that there was something new, and even more horrific, in Helen’s repertoire.

As I stood by the wall, freezing and in shock, I looked behind me as she closed the door.

‘Witch,’ she hissed. ‘You fucking stink.’

The days continued, into weeks and months. I spent my first Christmas with my new family in that hell hole, and it was as miserable as all the other birthdays and Christmases that would follow. No one could have survived the sort of terror I had been through in that house every day. Beatings and hatred marked my everyday life – there was always something, and some days the something was even worse than usual.

Looking back on it, I do wonder where my father was in all of it. Did he really see nothing? I was so thin, so covered in bruises and so terrified that, as a parent myself now, I find it laughable to think that a father wouldn’t notice. Maybe he did see and didn’t care. Or maybe he chose not to see. He certainly spent most of his time at work. When he came back, he was faced with Helen shouting at him about how unhappy she was, how little money she had, how he had to work harder, do more hours, get an extra job. Perhaps he just switched off. The only time she ever spoke to him about me was to complain. I was evil. I gave her funny looks. I was difficult. She would tell him he had ‘no idea’ what I was like. And she was right. He was absolutely clueless. How could a grown man not notice that Frances had been scalped? That Simon was terrified? That I was starved? My
father does not escape from this story without guilt, and I will never know just how much he did collude with Helen in my misery.