The Little Prisoner (14 page)

Although Silly Git was encouraging us to be together all the time, he was also warning Nick off doing anything he would regret in the half-jokey sort of voice that he used most of the time. ‘You mess with her,’ he’d warn, ‘and I’ll be cutting your fucking dick off!’ As usual it was impossible to tell from his tone whether he was joking or serious. It was confusing, but I was so happy. For the first time in my life I felt truly loved and part of a kind family. I knew that Nick would never ever do anything to hurt me and he never pressured me about sex.

The only bad part was that Silly Git demanded that I do him a lot more favours in exchange for all the times he let me go round to Nick’s house, making me feel dirty before I even started. He would tell Mum he was paying me to cut the lawn or clean the car, but then tell me that it was really to do him a favour. It was beginning to dawn on me that he was actually paying me to do him favours in exchange for my freedom. He had turned me into something close to a prostitute as well as a slave, and I hated him for it. But at least while I had Nick there was hope that I would eventually be free, that I would soon be leaving home and spending my life with a man who loved me and was kind to me. I was falling in love for the first time and it felt very good.

I should have known better. It wasn’t long before Silly Git changed the rules of the game again and started to become jealous of the amount of time I spent at Nick’s. He would make up reasons why I couldn’t go round and then he would make up other reasons why Nick couldn’t come round to our house.

‘That boy’s taking you for a fucking idiot,’ he told me one day. ‘You have to dump him. Go and do it now and come straight back.’

I could tell from his tone of voice that he’d made up his mind. And once he’d made up his mind, that was it. I had to end the best relationship that had ever happened to me there and then, and I wouldn’t be able to explain why because then Nick would want to go round and talk to Richard about it, which would make him furious and I would get a beating. Since Nick had left school and our paths never crossed during the day, I would never even have a chance to get him on his own in order to give him a proper explanation.

I was gutted, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to fight it. Richard had just been teasing me with a glimpse of what a life of freedom might be like and now he was going to snatch it away from me again, just to show that he could.

‘Go on, go round and fucking tell him,’ he snapped.

I knew that Nick was as besotted with me as I was with him. As well as the stuff from his mum, he had given me some gold necklaces, one of which had a locket containing a picture of us together which I treasured more than anything. Richard told me to give them all back.

‘Give him a hard time,’ he told me as I went out the door. ‘Make him suffer for the way he’s treated you.’

I couldn’t do that, but I couldn’t make it easy for him either, because it would all have to be done quickly so I could get back home before Richard followed me to see why I was taking so long.

I dragged my feet round to Nick’s house, feeling that my whole world was about to end. I knew there was nothing I could say which would explain why I was calling a halt to a relationship that had been going so well.

Nick could see something was wrong the moment I came in, but he had no idea I was about to dump him. I wanted to scream and cry and tell him how much I loved him, but instead I had to tell him it was over. I had to keep myself from crying as well, otherwise my eyes would be puffy when I got back home and I would be punished for being miserable. Nick must have thought I was a right hard cow to be able to drop him and not shed a single tear. But if I had told him that Richard had ordered it he would have wanted to go round and sort it out, which would inevitably have led to violence. There was no way Nick would have been able to make Richard change his mind; he was just a teenager.

When I’d explained that it was over and returned the presents I walked back home, knowing that I’d just been made to destroy my chance of experiencing love and happiness. I couldn’t even cry when I got back home because I would have received a beating if Richard had caught me. I just had to sit with him, my mind a miserable blur, agreeing with all his stupid reasons for why it had been the right thing to do. The hope of escape that I had been nurturing had been snuffed out and I was back where I started.

When I turned sixteen and was working full time in the shoe shop I hoped once more that things would change and I would be given a bit more freedom. I was occasionally allowed to do the odd thing like going out with friends in the evening, but compared to everyone else of my age, I was still virtually a prisoner.

One night I was allowed to go to a twelve-hour MTV party being held at the local youth club to raise money. There I met a boy called Joe who seemed to be very chilled out, probably because of all the joints he was smoking. He was a bit wayward and not the most ideal boyfriend material, but I liked him because he wasn’t loud and mouthy and he didn’t seem to be just after sex like the other boys who were asking me out at that stage. They were the sort of blokes who think it’s funny to shout, ‘Get yer tits out!’ at girls as they pass in the street, and I had enough of that sort of thing at home. I was terrified of the thought of having to have sex with anyone after everything I’d experienced, and it was nice to be with someone who didn’t put any pressure on me, just as it had been with Nick.

It was three months before Joe and I slept together and when we did it was a nice experience – well, as nice as the first time can be for any girl. By that time I was besotted with him and his gentle ways. I think I would have clung to anyone who was kind to me at that stage.

Despite Joe’s unsuitability as a boyfriend, Richard went back into his liberal mode, letting me go out most nights and even allowing me to stay round at Joe’s house when I wanted to. It seemed that the rules had changed again, but I was aware they could change back at any moment.

Once Richard invited Joe to come with him and me to visit my nan at her bungalow. I liked the idea of Joe coming with us because I thought that would mean Richard wouldn’t be able to get to me, although I was nervous about what sort of humiliation he might have planned for us. He told me that Joe and I would have a separate room, but when we got there I discovered we were all going to be sleeping in the sitting room, Richard on the sofa and Joe and me on the floor. I made sure Joe was next to the sofa.

‘I ain’t sleeping next to him,’ Richard joked. ‘You swap over.’

Not being able to tell Joe why I didn’t want to swap, I had to do as he said. Once Joe was asleep, Richard’s hand crept under the covers and started fiddling with me. I just wanted to die of shame.

Despite all his apparent friendliness, Richard took great pleasure in humiliating Joe in the most childish ways possible, like putting laxatives in his drink or sending him over to the shop and then making me get into the Cortina and drive off with him before Joe got back, leaving him alone for hours while Richard made me masturbate him in the car somewhere. When we eventually got back I had to lie about where we’d been. Joe put up with all of it with really good humour and patience, but then I guess his home life wasn’t that great either, and being so young, he wasn’t in a position to make a fuss. He was an easygoing chap anyway and Richard wasn’t someone you would argue with if you didn’t have to.

Joe had said he liked the idea of getting a tattoo. ‘Time for you to get this tattoo, young man,’ Silly Git said one day and took us both down to the coast for a day out. While we were in the tattoo parlour he made me pay for him to have some swallows put on his hands. He already had Mum’s name written on his neck. It was considered quite normal in our family. Mum had quite a few tattoos on her arms. Joe chose to have an eagle on his back.

Now Richard kept asking me if Joe and I had had sex. He made it sound as if he was teasing me, but I suspected a trap so admitted nothing. And anyway, I didn’t want to talk about personal things like that with him. I didn’t want him to think that I might have done something like that and actually enjoyed it.

In the end, however, he got me down on the kitchen floor with his hand around my throat, slapping me round the face while somehow managing to convince my mum that it was all just a bit of a laugh, and I couldn’t hold out any more. Part of me was still grasping at straws, hoping that he would stop making demands on me himself if he thought I was having sex with someone, while another part of me just didn’t have the energy to lie about it any more.

‘Yes, alright,’ I admitted, ‘we’ve had sex.’

I couldn’t tell what effect my confession was having. Was I going to get a beating for being a slag? Would he be jealous or would he just make a joke of it? Would it mean that he would finally leave me alone? Would he use it as an excuse to beat up Joe?

I braced myself for a blow, but it never came. My confession didn’t send him into one of his rages after all, but it did have a dramatic effect on his attitude to me.

In all the years that my stepfather had been abusing me, he had always been careful not to actually penetrate me. I didn’t question this, or wonder why it might be, it was just the way it was and I was grateful for it. It had never occurred to me that if I had told anyone about what he did it would have been very hard for them to prove anything, but if he had been inside me while I was still a virgin, then it would have been much easier. I suppose I assumed that he got his kicks from all the other stuff and that he was happy to save the penetration for Mum. I’d walked in on them in the bedroom once by mistake. She had her back to him and looked to me as if she was asleep, or at least pretending to be, as he humped away. It had made me feel sick. Every Sunday afternoon when I was younger they would go upstairs together, leaving me to look after my brothers until they came down. Sometimes they would be up there for hours, but it would be impossible to keep four boys quiet for that long and Richard would eventually come storming downstairs to punish me for failing in my task.

Now, as soon as he knew that I had had penetrative sex with Joe, he told me that the next time he got me on my own he and I would be doing it as well. ‘Now you’ve already done it,’ he said, ‘it won’t be any different from doing it with him.’

I just nodded, a terrible sense of dread running through me like ice, unable to believe that just when I had hoped it was going to get better, it was actually going to get far, far worse. Despite everything he had done to me over the years, this seemed something much more intimate and vile, even worse than the kissing with tongues. I had always been able to scrub the smell of him off my skin after he’d touched me, but this would be impossible to erase. From now on I was going to be raped regularly and there was nothing I could do to stop it unless I was willing to be beaten to a pulp and watch Mum suffering the same fate.

Also, once he’d discovered that I had lost my virginity, Richard instructed me to dump Joe, just like I’d dumped Nick. I felt my heart breaking all over again as I thought about telling poor sweet Joe that we were over. He used to come and meet me from work and I was going to have to tell him on the bus between work and home, with everyone else listening in. The bus was always packed, but I couldn’t risk missing it and being late home. I told him I was going to have to end it and we sat with our heads together, crying for the whole forty-minute ride. People were looking at us as if we were mad. When I got home I told my stepdad that it was done and I managed not to cry in front of him, but I cried whenever I was on my own for months after that.

Suddenly impatient to get what he wanted, Richard started laying his plans for this new stage in our relationship and told Mum that he and I were going out to get some parts for the car. As we walked out of the house together it felt as if someone had filled my stomach with ice cubes. In all the years that he had been torturing and abusing me I had always hung on to the fact that I was lucky he had never actually done this to me, and now he was going to.

‘If you do this properly,’ he told me as we got into the car, ‘you can go out this evening.’

He also told me that this was the last thing I would ever have to do for him, but I knew that was a lie because he had told me that so many times before and there was always a reason why I had to do just one more thing. As a child I might have believed him, but it was no longer possible to fool myself so completely. If he was able to do it to me today, why wouldn’t he want to do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and every day after that?

Still, as he was being so nice, and was obviously so keen for me to co-operate, I felt I was a tiny bit in control of the situation, more than I had ever been in the past. I thought it was possible I might be able to get at least one little concession.

‘Will you use a condom, please?’ I asked, thinking that I couldn’t bear the thought of him being inside me and leaving his mess behind him.

‘You don’t need to use those,’ he said, ‘you’re on the pill.’

‘Oh please,’ I begged. ‘The pill isn’t always 100 per cent safe.’