I Won't Forgive What You Did (12 page)

But even as she went next door to her house to make my lunch, I would help myself to things for my mother. Such a terrible breach of trust, and one that still haunts me, made worse by the fact that I was sure they always knew and, for whatever reason (awareness of my circumstances?) they chose to ignore it.

Back in school my behaviour was becoming increasingly extreme. I had started writing anonymous letters to the head teacher. ‘Faith Scott,’ I’d write, ‘is taking pills all the time and she desperately needs help.’ With the help of a handwriting expert, the school eventually traced these to me, with the result that at last my cries for help had been heard and I was sent to a child psychiatrist.

My relief was immense. Finally, someone would be interested enough to try to help me stop being so stupid and feeling bad and full of woe.

The psychiatrist seemed nice, and certainly listened, but as always I was unable to say much. Even had I been able to explain what I was feeling, I could never find the strength to get the words from my mouth. As a consequence, I spent most of the time just sitting there, feeling awkward, and wishing he’d either try to help me to speak or, if he didn’t want to, just tell me to go. Anything would be better than just sitting there feeling his eyes looking at me.

After some weeks of this, my mother, who I knew had been taking pills (Valium, and if she ran out of those, Librium and lately several medicinal glasses of brandy, every night), casually informed me she’d been speaking to the psychiatrist and he’d told her the few things I
had
said, and she’d had to let him know the ‘real’ truth. My mother’s ‘truth’ was not surprising. I apparently told lies and made up stories all the time, and had been doing both all my life. He shouldn’t, according to her, have been worrying. I’d always been a particularly difficult child and all my siblings were fine.

Armed with this knowledge of both adults’ complicity, and given that at this point I knew nothing of my mother’s fragile state, I’d no choice but to conclude, yet again, the problem lay with
me.
I realized the meetings with the psychiatrist were futile, and where I’d previously spoken little, I now didn’t speak at all. I’d spend the entire hour with him sitting staring at my feet.

It was decided, as a consequence, there was no point in my continuing to see him, and I was put on another course of antidepressants. These I did take because now I’d become really afraid there was something seriously wrong with me.

I gave up again soon after starting, however, because once again they made me feel so strange. I also felt like a nutcase – someone bad and also
mad
now – as well as hopeless and alone.

Ironically, given that the domestic science cupboard was my one place of sanctuary in school, it was during a domestic science lesson I decided I would, instead, take all my pills in one go and, hopefully, never wake up. I did initially consider doing it in the girls’ toilet, but I didn’t want to die in a toilet on my own.

By now I was really feeling lost – far, far away from everything and everyone, as if I was falling down a deep black tunnel, with nothing under my feet to hold me. I clutched on to the sink in my domestic science kitchen cubicle, to stop myself from falling, and pulled the bottle of pills from my cardigan pocket; I’d stashed them there expressly for the purpose. My fingers couldn’t seem to grip the bottle cap to undo it, but eventually I managed, and started tipping pills into my palm and popping them into my mouth. Amanda, my classmate, had been watching. ‘What are you
doing?
she asked, alarmed.

I explained my intention to swallow as many as I could, which made her laugh. But then, presumably seeing my determined expression, she called the teacher over. By the time she arrived I’d swallowed a few more, and Amanda explained what I was up to. Which made the teacher shout.

‘What on
earth
do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded. ‘What’s the matter with you, for goodness’ sake!’

Her ticking-off done, she took me off to the sick room, where she laid me on the bed and called an ambulance. I was fully conscious but even so she didn’t address me directly. ‘How many pills has she taken?’ she asked Amanda, as if she’d know much better than me. My teacher’s decision not to talk to me directly reinforced my own decision to end my life. Correctly or otherwise, it seemed pretty plain to me my presence on the earth didn’t matter in the least and my decision to die had been a sound one.

Two ambulance men arrived in the sick room and hauled me to my feet. I was then marched through the school, a paramedic at each elbow, while the pupils we passed stood and stared. I’d no idea – because nobody spoke to me at any point – the brisk walking was to keep me awake.

I was rushed to Casualty, feeling by now very drowsy, and trolleyed into a room full of doctors and nurses and equipment. Now someone did address me, if only very briefly, to let me know they must pump out my stomach. My wrists and legs were then strapped to a bed, which two nurses, taking hold of the tops of my arms, tipped so that my head hung down over the end. Instructing me to swallow, they began pushing a thick orange tube down my throat. It made me retch straight away and then I couldn’t stop retching, grasping the sheet frantically, my eyes and nose running, gasping for breath, feeling as if I was choking. One of the nurses started gently stroking my hair and saying, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay’ over and over. It wasn’t okay though. Not at all. Why was she saying such nice things, but doing something so horrible at the same time?

Eventually, however, I managed to stop retching for short periods and they began pouring liquid down the tube. I could feel it in my stomach and as it began its return journey the retching started up for a second time. It seemed like an age before they finally pulled the tube out, by which time I was completely exhausted.

When I awoke I was on a ward, with my mother and uncle (who’d driven her to hospital as my father was working) sitting next to my bed. They were talking to the psychiatrist I’d been seeing and he was suggesting I might be better off in care.

I burst into tears as soon as I heard this. I couldn’t bear lying there listening to them talk about me as if I wasn’t there. Nobody seemed to care what
I
wanted. I felt a failure – I should have known the pills wouldn’t work – and was terrified I’d now be sent away. I mostly couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from my mother, and wanted to be as far away from hospitals and psychiatrists as I could get.

Despite my intention to make death the answer to my problems, now all I wanted in the world was to go home.

I did make it to the youth club eventually.

Three months after my overdose, I decided to take a different sort of action. I was seeing the child psychiatrist again, but it seemed as pointless as ever. I felt dreadful, and confused, and at odds with myself, so nothing of consequence had changed. I had, however, reached the inescapable conclusion, in order to cope, I would need to present a different face to the world.

In most areas of my life I was still a mess. He didn’t know it, but I still felt betrayed by the psychiatrist, for colluding with my mother. School, too, was still a nightmare. Consequently I played truant most of the time. My mother didn’t care. In fact, I think it pleased her. If I didn’t go to school I could play mother to her instead.

Looking back, it seems strange that at no point did anyone suggest she was mentally ill, and probably had been for the whole of her children’s lives. How different might things have been had I grasped this one simple truth – that she wasn’t well? That she had been abused herself? That she was sick? As it was, I just continued to blame myself for everything, casting about for reasons why I felt the way I felt – a non-person, with no existence except in relation to her.

But the youth club, I decided, might provide sanctuary. In a place where no one knew me, I could pretend to be someone else. My older brother Phillip went to it, and had done for some time, and I finally plucked up the courage and asked to go with him, the incident by the river now long despatched to a hidden corner of my mind. It was held in the village hall, in the room behind the stage, and to get to it you had to walk past the other youth club members. On my first night some were playing badminton, I remember. I felt horribly self-conscious, just as I had at the Honey Globe, but right away I was greeted warmly, both by the youth leader and her husband. I was also relieved to see, as my eyes scanned the room, none of the young people there went to my school so knew nothing about my overdose. Here, at last, perhaps I might be able to make friends. Most were older, however, particularly the boys, a lot of whom had cars and motorbikes, and who seemed very keen to get to know me.

After my experience with Colin, I found this attention difficult to deal with. All I knew was being with boys always seemed to involve doing things that made me feel uncomfortable. But I so wanted to be like other girls. They seemed to like all that stuff. Why couldn’t I?

On my first night I was walked home by Paul, ‘walking home’ being the thing boys always wanted to do. Paul seemed nice. He was smartly dressed, friendly, and seemed popular. Despite my memory of what had happened with Colin, I agreed, because though older he felt safe to be with.

As soon as we reached my house, however, he started kissing and caressing me, which I hadn’t expected. We’d only walked home, for goodness’ sake! But this time I didn’t panic. I just stood there and let him. I felt absolutely nothing, nothing at all, but so desperately wanted to; what was wrong with me?
Why
didn’t I like what he was doing? And more to the point, did other girls really like it or were they all pretending? And why did being with boys always have to involve all this touching and kissing anyway? Somewhere deep inside there was another feeling too. One of wanting, just as used to happen with Pops and Daniel when they started making odd noises and acting strangely, to burst into hysterical laughter.

In the end, I said I had to go in, and that was the last I had to do with him romantically. I was now anxious around him and happy to avoid him, and he seemed just as happy to avoid me.

Over the following few weeks I was walked home a lot. By Ian, Ron or Rob, by Keith, Chris or Steve, and the routine never, ever varied. The kissing would start, and then the touching and stroking, and with most of the older boys (who scared me, as they were so insistent) there was their obvious desire to ‘go all the way’. I’d convince myself the best thing would be to pretend I liked it, while at the same time trying to find excuses not to ‘do it’, which soon meant I earned a reputation. One of the boys, Chris, made this very clear one night, when he called me a ‘prick teaser’ in front of everyone.

With the benefit of many years of hindsight, it’s so sad to look back at the girl I once was and remember that my principal response to being the subject of everyone’s derision wasn’t just the obvious one – embarrassment for myself – but also worry that I’d embarrassed my older brother, especially given what he did to me!

But my difficulties with boys, distressing though they were, would turn out to be far less of a challenge than the trauma I was soon to experience with grown men. They were, I already knew unconsciously, an infinitely more scary prospect.

When the time came for choosing roles in the end-of-year school play, I didn’t even have to audition. Perhaps sensing I wouldn’t put myself forward, and possibly because of his feelings about me, Mr John, who still taught me music, offered me a very small part, as a belly dancer, along with a group of other girls. The play,
The King and I
, was the first organized school activity I ever got involved in and, as it turned out, also the last.

Our costumes were decidedly risqué. We wore yashmaks over our faces, see-through muslin trousers and shimmery tops. It was nerve-racking performing, but positive too. We were a group, and when the girls laughed, I was able to laugh with them. For that brief time on stage, when rehearsing or performing, I felt something new – that I belonged. I also had my face half-hidden, which made it easier, and I felt proud to be a part of it, and did my best.

My parents didn’t come to see me. I asked my mother, but she said they had too much to do. This shouldn’t have disappointed me, because they never came to the school for anything, but even so it really upset me. I felt such sadness, such a strong sense of being of no consequence, especially when looking into the audience as we danced, and seeing all the other parents watching
their
children – how they threw their heads back, and laughed, and clapped. They all looked so interested and happy; not sad, angry and preoccupied, like mine were.

The performance was in the evening, and it had already been arranged that I’d be included in a lift from the father of Maria, one of the other girls. He’d obviously come to watch her and would take us all home in his van.

Despite the absence of my parents, I felt happy being with the other girls. It was late on a Friday night, which, at thirteen and a half, felt very grown up, and having to pile into the van added to the fun. Maria’s father, however, had other ideas. He suggested that I ride up in the front with him, as I was the girl with the longest legs. This was true – I was tall for my age – though in no sense an asset; it just made me feel more visible than the others, when what I desperately wanted was to blend in. I didn’t want to be in the front – I wanted to be in the back with the others, but I didn’t argue – how could I?