Mummy, Make It Stop (10 page)

Jamie was still banging on about his holiday. He seemed to be enjoying the fact that Tanya and I looked miserable. I kept quiet - I had already been humiliated once and I wasn’t going to risk it again - but Tanya suddenly spoke.

‘Mum,’ she said. Mum, engrossed in her programme, didn’t appear to hear her.

‘Mum,’ she tried again. ‘Terry tried it on with me.’

I stared hard at my plate, trying to see sideways what Mum’s reaction was. She carried on eating, and for a minute we thought she hadn’t heard. Then she said, ‘So what did he do to you?’

Tanya took a breath. ‘He tried kissing me and touching me, but I kept pushing him off and hitting him.’

‘Well, as long as he knows then,’ Mum replied. I had expected fireworks and a blazing row, but Mum could have been discussing a shopping list for all the emotion she showed.

I looked up at Tanya. Her face looked tired, her expression almost blank. I could see the emptiness in her eyes, and the hopelessness she felt. I realised then that she had been through the same ordeal as me. We had both tried to push Terry off, and we had both failed.

Neither of us said another word, and Mum didn’t mention it again. We finished our tea and cleared the plates and I went back to the living room and sat down, staring at the clock, wishing the day would end. But it wasn’t just the day I wanted to end, it was my life. I felt numb. There didn’t seem any point in going on. People who said they loved me kept hurting me and no-one wanted to listen or help. I was sore and tired and sad and hurt, and it felt as though nothing was ever going to make it better. I was nine years old and my life didn’t seem worth living.

Chapter Seven

The following morning, Tanya and I got up and got ourselves ready for school. Neither of us said anything about what had happened with Terry or Mum’s reaction. There seemed to be an unwritten rule that we should never talk about it. We both knew that Terry had done the same frightening, painful things to both of us. We didn’t need to say anything; it was as though we could read each other’s minds. A look was enough to tell us that we knew and understood and shared the hurt. Tanya and I were the same: children trapped in a world we didn’t understand, crying out for love and attention, betrayed and let down by the people who should have loved and protected us.

That morning we were like wounded creatures, limping along, trying to find a way to pick up the pieces of our lonely existence and carry on. Tanya, so often the chatty one, was unusually quiet. She hardly said a word all the way to school. I didn’t know it then, but it had all got too much for her, she couldn’t hold in the pain any longer. Later that day, she broke down in tears at school and told her teacher everything.

In the afternoon, I was called out of class and taken into an office where one of the teachers was sitting with the head teacher. She told me not to worry or be frightened, but that Tanya had said some things about Terry. She asked me if anything had happened to me when I was with him. She was kind, her voice was soft and she held my hand, and that was all I needed. I began to cry, and to tell her what Terry had done and how much it had hurt and how scared I’d been. She stayed calm and quiet, and I was so glad there was no shouting. It was a relief to get it all out. After I had finished, she thanked me for telling her and said I was to go back to my class. I felt shaky and a bit worried about whether I’d been right to tell, but I didn’t dare ask her what would happen now.

Tanya and I walked home together, both of us quiet, neither of us mentioning what had happened. I’m sure we were both thinking the same thing - please don’t let Mum find out that we told.

At home everything seemed normal. We had our tea in front of the TV, relieved that everything seemed OK. But before we’d finished we heard a commotion going on outside. Jamie went to the window and shouted, ‘It’s the police; they’re outside Terry’s house.’ Mum shot across to the window, and Tanya and I followed her. We didn’t look at one another.

The image of Terry being taken away by the police is one I will never forget. I stared, transfixed, as he was brought out of his house, a policeman holding each arm. He looked up and his eyes didn’t move from the window where we stood. I wanted to run and hide but I couldn’t move; I was stuck to the spot, horrified.

Mum’s reaction was extraordinary. She must have been told what Tanya and I had said - social services would have informed her - but she didn’t let on. Instead, she started laughing out loud. Grinning from ear to ear, she opened the window and shouted, ‘You’re not laughing now, are you?’ as he was pushed into the back of the police car. It was as though she was enjoying the show. She seemed amused by the fact that Terry was no longer in control, and behaved as if she had been calling the shots all along. She didn’t appear angry that her daughters had been abused, or to blame herself for encouraging him to become part of our family and have me and Tanya over at his house. To see her then, you would think it was all a big laugh.

I didn’t know what to think. I was unnerved by the way Terry had stared at us. I felt his eyes had been fixed on me alone, and was terrified he would find a way to get revenge on me. But even worse than that was my fear about what would happen next. What had we done? What would Mum do? What would happen to us? The anxiety paralysed me, as I watched the police car drive away with Terry in the back.

As soon as it was out of sight, Mum turned to me and Tanya. ‘What were you playing at? Both of you are old enough to look after yourselves and look what you’ve done now,’ she yelled. ‘You should have said no; you know it’s wrong,’ she spat. ‘God knows what they’ll do now.’ Tanya and I stood silent under her onslaught, heads bowed, as she cursed us again and then grabbed her cup of coffee and walked off.

That evening, she sat in front of the TV, drinking one cup of coffee after another, as Tanya and I crept around the house, both of us miserable and wishing we’d never said anything. Jamie, mirroring Mum’s reaction, told us he didn’t believe us. He said we were lying to get Terry into trouble and that he was ashamed to have two sisters like us.

The next morning, Anna from social services arrived, with another woman, and drove Mum, Tanya and me to the social services offices, where we sat in a waiting room with another social worker. Then Tanya and I were taken, one at a time, into an office where two more people were sitting behind a desk. When it was my turn, they asked me lots of questions about Terry and his friendship with our family and what he had done. I told them everything I could remember, but all the time I was feeling scared and worried that we shouldn’t have said anything. First George and now Terry. Mum was very angry and upset and it was our fault.

Over the next couple of weeks, things got even worse. In police interviews, Terry denied touching us, so Tanya and I were subjected to endless interviews, medicals and examinations. It was far worse than it had been after George. We were taken to all kinds of different places, where different people asked us to tell them all over again what had happened. We were told by the people who interviewed us that it wasn’t our fault and we weren’t to blame, but we didn’t believe that for one minute.

The medical examinations were the worst. They hurt dreadfully, and this time they took photos of me with no clothes on and my legs apart. I felt so upset I just closed my eyes and tried to count, like I did when George and Terry were doing what they did to me. It didn’t feel any different.

It turned out that I’d suffered an internal tear to the vagina wall, which was why I had bled so much. It had healed by this time, but there was a scar. And both Tanya and I had chlamydia, a sexually transmitted infection that we needed pills and creams for.

We got home after the medicals and interviews feeling tired and confused and emotionally wrung out. We needed to be held and comforted and reassured that no-one would hurt us again. Instead, Mum started on us, blaming us for ruining her life. She was angry all the time, and either ignored us or told us we’d caused her trouble she didn’t need. ‘Why couldn’t you have just told him no, instead of getting social services and the police on our backs,’ she’d yell.

She behaved as though it was she who had been the victim. Her new relationship was coming to an end under all the pressure, and she paced around the house, drinking, smoking and shouting at us.

To make things even worse, some of the neighbours abused us on a daily basis, smashing our front windows and yelling from outside the house, calling me and Tanya slags. Why they turned on two children, I don’t really know, except that they hated Mum and somehow that rubbed off on all of us. One of them had called social services in the first place, but it wasn’t out of concern for us kids, it was to get at Mum. We would watch Mum chasing people down the street with a hammer or anything else she could lay her hands on, screaming and swearing and calling them interfering bastards and telling them to keep their noses out.

Then came the day when I was called out of class and told I had to go home. I got there to find Tanya and Jamie had been called home too. Mum was in her bedroom, crying her eyes out. She said she couldn’t go on, and that she was going to end everything. We begged her not to, and when she said she wanted John, Jamie ran round to his house to get him. He came over, and sat with Mum and calmed her down. But once again we were left feeling that we had made her want to die. We couldn’t have understood then that it was probably all just a ploy to hang onto John.

Our life was quickly falling apart at the seams. But worse was to come. The next few days were the most dreadful time I had ever lived through. For all her faults, I could never have imagined being anywhere else but with Mum. She was a terrible parent who had no idea of the difference between right and wrong, and no idea how to protect her children, but in her own warped way I think she loved us. Certainly we loved her. Throughout all the awfulness we had been through, Mum had been there, even if she didn’t really have any idea how to care for us and let us down on a daily basis. I had no idea that we were going to lose her too, until one wet spring day shortly after Terry was arrested.

And despite all I had been through in my nine short years, that has stayed in my memory as the most horrendous time of all.

It was about two weeks after Terry had gone, and life was just beginning to get back to normal. School had finished and Tanya and I had made our way home through the back alley and onto our street. That’s when we spotted the police cars in front of our house. We weren’t too worried at first - they’d been back a few times since they’d taken Terry, because of the disturbances between Mum and the neighbours

But as we got nearer I knew something wasn’t right. Nanna was there with her arm around Mum, who was crying and shouting. There must have been five or six other people gathered in the front garden: a couple of police officers and a few others we didn’t know. Then I saw that Jamie was there, and a strange man was standing next to him with his arm around his shoulders.

Tanya began to run towards them and, suddenly feeling very scared, I followed, chasing her and yelling at her to wait for me. But she was too fast. She tore up the street and into the garden, where she headed towards Mum, who by this time was becoming completely hysterical. But before Tanya could reach her, a lady I didn’t know and a policewoman grabbed hold of her and held her back.

When I got there I stopped at the bottom of the path, confused and frightened and unsure what to do. Then I saw Anna Smithson. She smiled at me, but she looked uncomfortable and I could tell she was hiding something.

Mum was still shouting, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying, only our names, which she called out again and again. I ran towards her, but Anna stepped forward and stopped me.

I burst into tears. I didn’t know what was going on, but I was sure it was something very bad. ‘What’s happening, Mum?’ I screamed. Tanya, Jamie and I were all being held back by the people in the garden and we were looking at Mum, desperate for her to tell us what it was all about, but she just continued to cry and scream.

Anna leaned down towards my ear and spoke gently. ‘Come on, Louise, it’s time to go, sweetheart.’

Go? Go where? What was she talking about? I was becoming frantic.

‘Mum,’ I called, pulling away from Anna. ‘What’s happening? Mum, please.’

‘They’re taking you away from me, they’re taking you all away from me,’ she shouted, her voice breaking.

At that moment my heart seemed to explode, sending shock waves through my small body. I started to tremble violently and to sob so hard my throat hurt. What had we done? Why were we being taken away?

It seemed as though we were being punished twice - once by Terry and now by the social services, who had decided to take us away from our mum. Years later I was able to understand that they felt it was in our best interests. But the way they did it was brutal and insensitive. And what they didn’t know, because they had never asked me, was that I could take all the beatings, all the sexual abuse, all the loneliness and neglect, the daily put downs and the lack of love and affection, but I couldn’t bear being taken away from Mum. This was my home and my family and all I had ever known. Nothing could have prepared me for that moment, when I realised I was going to lose them. I felt as if I had been cut open and my insides were spilling out on the floor.

I looked around, searching for answers that weren’t there, staring at the strangers who were taking us. I looked over at Jamie, hoping he could do something, but he looked as scared as I felt.