Mummy Knew (30 page)

I didn’t visit my family again but sometimes, especially when I’d been drinking, I would ring Cheryl or Jenny and simply cry on the phone. Sometimes Davie would answer the phone at Jenny’s because he was still living with her, and it became clear that he didn’t have a clue what was wrong with me. Diane, Cheryl and Jenny had decided he must never know, because they feared it might make him confront Dad, and he would get hurt or else end up in trouble with the law.

‘I don’t understand what’s wrong, Lisa,’ he said. ‘We lose touch for years, and then get back in touch and you’re crying down the phone. Why aren’t you happy? I don’t get it.’

Usually Jenny, the woman I’d idolised as a child, would snatch the phone from him at this point in case I told Davie what was wrong. ‘Put the past behind you, Lisa,’ she always advised.

If only it were that easy.

W
hen I was twenty-five, the landlord announced that he was selling the house I lived in so I would have to move. I scoured the small ads looking for somewhere suitable and went to view a flat in Fulham. A guy called Neil, who was already a tenant there, showed me round. I wasn’t too keen on the room but Neil was another matter. Straight away we started chatting as if we’d been friends for years. It all felt completely effortless and natural. I knew I wanted to see him again, and could tell he felt the same way. He was completely different to the men I’d met in the past, who tended to be highly successful workaholics who liked having a pretty young girl on their arm in restaurants. Neil was around my own age and worked with his family in their building firm. He was funny and kind and I recognised something special in him. He was like nobody I’d ever met before. I took the room, and almost immediately we became an item.

We connected on many levels, which was surprising because we’d had vastly different life experiences. Our sense of humour was the same, and we spent hours laughing
together, but beneath that we understood each other on a deeper level. I found it easy to open up with him. There was none of the inhibition I’d felt with previous boyfriends–and it didn’t take long for Neil to discover everything there was to know about me.

Naturally he was horrified when I told him about my upbringing, and he helped me see for the first time ever how crazy it was for me to feel any sense of shame about it. With his help, I was finally able to shed the burdens of guilt and shame I had carried for so long, and truly move on in my life. But there was still something niggling.

‘I want to report him to the police,’ I said, ‘but I don’t feel strong enough. I don’t know whether I’d be able to stand in a courtroom full of strangers and talk about it.’

We debated the subject for hours, but in the end I still felt too raw to seek justice. All I wanted to do at that stage was forget the past and forge a new life.

Within a year, Neil and I were married. We had a registry office wedding followed by a small party for a handful of friends and Neil’s relatives.

We spent our honeymoon doing up a cottage we’d bought in a village on the northeast coast of England. It was a fresh start and we were blissfully happy. Within a couple of years I was expecting our first child and, with my hormones all over the place, the past came back to haunt me once more. At the ante-natal clinic I’d see girls surrounded by their sisters and mums. Neil was great but I really wished I had a family to lean on. I began having nightmares about Mum and Dad again, and all the old feelings of shame came flooding back,
but this time I felt anger as well. I became outraged that my parents had shattered our family and not only robbed me of my childhood, but taken away the rest of my family too.

Neil spent hours reassuring me that everything would be alright, and when the baby came, I was consumed with love for her. I was determined not to dwell on the past any more; life was about the future now.

I surprised myself by taking to motherhood quite naturally. Throughout the pregnancy I had been worried about how I would cope, especially when I had been set such an appalling example of motherhood, but it turned out to be easy. I just did everything Mum never did and threw myself into being the kind of mother I’d always wished I’d had.

Both Neil and I wanted a large family. For my part, I couldn’t bear the thought of our children ever being alone in the world. There would be strength in numbers. I wanted them to always have one another for support. I had experienced first-hand how lonely the world could be without a soul to call on in times of need. Things would be different with our family. Over the next few years I had five more children before we decided our family was complete.

As I held our sixth child in my arms, I started to wonder about Kat. She had been nine years old when I left home, and even though I hadn’t been able to contact her since, she had never been far from my mind.

‘I just want to know she’s alright,’ I said. ‘I should have got in touch before.’

‘Please don’t beat yourself up about the past,’ Neil urged. ‘You’ve always done the best you can. And at least she didn’t have to grow up with that monster around.’

‘Maybe we could try to find her?’

I couldn’t remember Mum’s address, but within half an hour Neil had found it on the Internet. ‘It looks as though Kat’s still living with your mum. She’s on the electoral roll there.’

The next day I paced up and down, unsure whether I wanted to bring the past back into my life. But I had spent so many hours looking after Kat when she was a baby that every time I looked at my own children I was reminded of her. At the same time, I was worried about stirring up the emotional silt. It had taken me years to get to a point where I was happy. I had my own family, untainted by abuse and rape.

In the end, I knew I would never be able to rest if I didn’t find out if Kat was OK. I sat down and spent hours writing and rewriting a letter. I addressed it to both Mum and Kat, and included photos of my children. As soon as I posted it I wanted to reach into the postbox and pull it out again, because suddenly I couldn’t bear the thought of Mum looking at or touching photos of my children. But it was too late; it had gone.

Neil told me I had done the right thing.

A few days later the phone rang. I picked it up and when there was silence at the other end, I knew it was Kat.

‘It’s me,’ she said at last. ‘Mum told me to ring and tell you never to write again.’

‘It’s you I care about. I’ve never stopped thinking about you,’ I said. ‘I just have to know you’re alright.’

Kat was quiet on the other end of the phone.

‘Are you there?’ I asked. ‘So you’re still living with Mum, are you?’

‘Mum, yeah,’ she said. ‘Mum and Dad.’

I almost dropped the phone in shock, and my heart pounded in my ears.

‘What do you mean–he’s there?’ I asked, thinking I’d misunderstood somehow. ‘Mum said he went to Spain. Everyone said he went to Spain.’

‘He never went,’ she said.

For the next three hours we stayed on the phone talking. She told me that after I had left, Dad gave up the flat immediately, and moved in with her and Mum. Mum and Dad were back together and lived as man and wife. Kat said my name was never mentioned in the house, and neither was the divorce. It was as if it had never happened.

I was mortified to realise that in the fifteen years since I escaped, Dad had been there all the time. It was the final confirmation that Mum had a massive screw loose. How on earth could she stay with a man like that? I had long understood and accepted that she had never cared about me, but how could she put Kat at risk like that?

Kat insisted that he had never touched her in a sexual way, but told me some hair-raising stories about his violence. There were other disturbing echoes of my experience too. He routinely spat in her food, and if she ever went out she had to account for every minute she was gone. He would even
inspect her till receipts to check the times tallied. Also, Mum and Dad would meet her at lunchtimes, just as they used to do with me. It sounded as though he controlled her every movement and she told me she was desperate to get away.

‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘You don’t have to put up with it any more.’ I told her about the way I finally managed to escape and helped her to make her plans.

She was calling from work, where she had very understanding bosses. They arranged a police escort to meet her at Mum and Dad’s flat so she could gather her belongings, and a girl she worked with offered her a place to stay. I wanted her to join me as soon as she could. I wanted to look into her eyes, and ask her again if he’d ever touched her because I knew how difficult it was to discuss such things and I suspected she wasn’t telling the truth.

When we spoke later that night, she was in the safety of her friend’s flat and elated to be free from fear and violence. ‘Thank God you got in touch, Lisa. There’s no way I would have been able to get out on my own.’

We arranged that she would come up to see me the following weekend and I hung up the phone with my customary mix of emotions: pleased that Kat was free, but heart-sick I hadn’t contacted her earlier. As usual, Neil reassured me that I could only do my best at any one time.

Kat said she would ring to let me know which train she was catching so we could pick her up from the station, but instead she called to cancel the trip. Things had changed. After she had left with the police, Mum and Dad had a blazing row. Mum walked out and set off to Diane’s house, the
sanctuary she had denied me all those years ago when I was bruised and bleeding. At last she was free, and Kat said she was going to stay with her now. So I didn’t get my little sister back, but at least she was out of danger. That was the main thing.

T
hirty years too late, Mum had finally left Dad. It was easy in the end–she just upped and went. Kat told me they were both going to stay at Diane’s for a while, and then they would get a flat together. I knew at that moment that Mum would never let me develop a relationship with Kat. She would be lost to me forever, just like my other sisters and my brother.

The irony was that by writing the letter, I had reunited Mum with her family. Apparently everyone was overjoyed to have her back in the fold. Very quickly Kat stopped returning my calls. I spoke to Mum a couple of times, even sending presents for her new flat. I was pleased she had finally left Dad. No matter how badly she had hurt and betrayed me in the past, I wanted her to be happy.

However, writing the letter had a disastrous effect on me. I became depressed and unable to sleep properly. I’d look at my young daughters and think about Dad and the vile things he did to me at the same age. It was becoming clear that I had to do something. It had got to the stage where I couldn’t bury the past any more. Motherhood and contact with people from my childhood had brought it all back.

I decided to report my abuse to the police. I looked at my own innocent children and realised that Dad could hurt anyone. He could infiltrate another unsuspecting family and target another child, just as he had done with me. Guilt was back, but this time I didn’t feel guilty about what had happened to me–that was old thinking; now I felt guilty that I had let him get away with it. For the first time ever, I realised that I had a duty to report him. Too many people kept silent about their abuse, thinking that because they had ‘survived’, it was over. I knew from my own experience that an abuser could go on to abuse other children and I had to make sure that didn’t happen.

I made a statement to the police, detailing everything that had happened, and in liaison with the Crown Prosecution Service, they decided that Mum had a case to answer too. It was never my intention to report her, but in recounting events it became clear that she had acted in a highly negligent way.

One early morning in August 2005, both Mum and Dad were arrested and taken to separate police stations for questioning. When I spoke to the detective later that day, I noticed a change in her tone. Earlier she had been completely sympathetic and supportive, but now she said that Mum’s and Dad’s stories were completely different from mine. They claimed there had been no abuse. Dad had admitted he had a sexual relationship with me when I was sixteen but he insisted I was a fully consenting adult and even said he had tried his best to push me away. Mum had told the same story.

‘But they’re lying. Who on earth would consent to sex with their dad?’ I cried. ‘And don’t forget they’ve had years to come
up with the same story. They were worried I was going to report them back when I first left.’

‘But he’s not your blood father, is he?’ said the probationary detective constable who had been assigned to my case.

I felt as if my whole world was crashing down. This was madness. Dad was claiming I had willingly entered into a relationship with him a few days after my sixteenth birthday. It seemed that the only person who could back me up was Mum, and apparently she was outraged at her arrest and desperately telling defensive lies in order to wriggle out of the charges of neglect. It became clear that in order to save herself she was proving to be Dad’s biggest asset. As long as she stuck to the story that I had fallen dramatically in love with Dad a couple of days after my sixteenth birthday she would be alright, and so would he. The only way the police had a chance of proceeding against Mum would be if Dad admitted everything, and there was no way he was going to do that. Mum had done wrong–there was no doubt in my mind–but the person I really wanted to bring to justice was Dad.

I gave the police every detail I could think of, including the names of people who could confirm my stories of missing school and violent attacks in public. But a few weeks later I received the phone call I had been dreading. The CPS had decided there was insufficient evidence to proceed against Dad. I was devastated.

I tried to move on for the sake of my young family, but I couldn’t let such a massive injustice rest. Not after what Dad had done. Now that I was older and a mother, I began to
worry he could infiltrate another family and do the same to someone else. I couldn’t let that happen.