Don't You Love Your Daddy? (24 page)

I was soon to find out. No matter that I tried to corner each of my classmates and beg them to keep quiet. No matter that I said if they talked and Sue and my father found out, they might poison me as well. My story had been too sensational for them not to talk about it.

Within two days worried parents had contacted the headmistress and she fetched me from the class. ‘Bring your satchel and anything of yours in your desk and come to my office,’ she said. My classmates watched agog as I gathered my things and she led me from the room. I had a sinking feeling of dread with each footstep I took down the long school corridor towards her office.

She had, she told me, notified Sue of my accusations. In turn, my stepmother had contacted my father at work. They were both on their way to see her.

Sue and my father must have arrived simultaneously because they were ushered into the office together. Terrified at what their reaction might be, I couldn’t look at them, and the headmistress immediately took control of the situation.

My mother’s death had clearly disturbed me, she said, not unkindly. She went on to say that I had upset the other children with my stories and therefore she had to take things further.

I was to go home with Sue and my father and she said it was better if I stayed away from school until it was decided what to do with me.

I was only present for part of the interview. Then I was sent to wait on the bench outside her office in the echoing deserted corridor. I sat as close to the door as possible, trying to hear what was happening, but my sharp little ears, accustomed to eavesdropping at home, were only able to pick up some of the conversation.

Being sent away just before my mother’s death must have disturbed me and fuelled the overactive imagination of a young child more than anyone had thought, my headmistress said. She asked if I had attended the funeral, and when my father said, ‘No, she was at my sister-in-law’s when my wife was dying,’ she explained that perhaps that had been unwise. Clearly, I had not been able to accept her death. Her comments received murmurs of agreement from both adults.

I heard her say the word ‘therapy’, and then my father’s raised voice protesting it wasn’t necessary filtered through the shut door. ‘No,’ he told her. ‘She’s been in trouble before for making up stories. When my wife died, her grandmother spoilt her and now she rebels against any sort of discipline.’

I felt a flash of anger: I had never been in trouble before. Why had he lied about me to the headmistress and Sue? I heard more conversation between the three of them but I could not make out the words until my father’s voice rang out clearly again. ‘This fabrication has just been done to upset her stepmother, who has done nothing but try and make a nice home for her.’

More conversation and I could hear Sue’s high-pitched voice again, then the firm tones of my father, ‘I’ll deal with it, Headmistress,’ as they were seen to her door.

Then my father and Sue came out of the office and I was ordered to pick up my things and, shuffling my feet and with my head held low, I reluctantly followed them outside.

‘You can go back in Sue’s car,’ I was told by my seething father. ‘I’ll deal with you later, Sally. In the meantime I have to get back to work.’ Slamming the door of his car, he drove off. Too frightened to speak, I climbed into Sue’s Mini, and for the short journey home she refused to say one word to me.

‘I don’t know what to do with you, Sally,’ she said, once we were indoors. ‘I know you’ve always resented me, but these terrible stories are just too much. We’ll just have to wait until your father comes home and see what he plans to do about it.’ I went to my room and miserably sat on my bed. I tried to read but as I turned the pages of my book, none of the words made any sense. I thought about what I had done and my stupidity for allowing my lies to project me into this situation. I knew I would be the laughing stock of the school and, worst of all, I feared my father’s wrath.

To my surprise, my father said little about it on his return – but, then, he was skilled at biding his time. For the rest of that week I was confined to my room for most of the time and, as a punishment, my television and cassette player were removed. I was told I could read if I needed to entertain myself. But the seeming calm was only a prelude to the storm that was sure to come. I knew that my father was not going to let me get away with what I had done.

It was not until Sue’s girls’ night out that I understood just what a far-reaching effect those stories would have on me.

I had not heard the stealthy footsteps outside in the corridor or the creak of my bedroom door opening. It was not until he had crept across the room to stand over my bed that I became aware of his presence. He leant over me until he was so close I could smell his breath. It was hot and rancid, and the feel of it on my face made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. It was the smell of stale beer and sweat, but there was something indescribable too: the scent of danger. It was as though his rage had its own potent odour that seeped out through his pores to pollute my room. My spine went cold and my fingers grasped the side of the bed in terror.

My whole body was consumed with fear; the type of fear that almost paralyses you. I held my breath and felt my legs start trembling and my stomach churning acid. My dread of what was to come completely stifled my usual pleas; it stopped me telling him I hadn’t meant any harm and that I couldn’t bear to be touched. But even as those thoughts entered my head, I knew that whatever I could have said would be useless.

His fingers gripped my head, forcing me to turn my face towards him, but still he hadn’t spoken and his silence terrified me. I kept my eyes shut tight as though in some childish belief that my inability to see him would also render me invisible. But when he finally spoke there was nothing I could do to block out the sound of his voice. I could hear the hiss of each syllable that slid from a mouth that I knew, without looking, was twisted in fury.

‘I know all about the stories you’ve been making up, Sally, and we need to deal with it, don’t we, just you and I?’ he said. ‘Open your eyes and look at me,’ he ordered, but still I kept them firmly shut. It was the white-hot pain that seared my scalp that forced them to fly open. When he had crept up to my bed my father had coiled thick strands of my hair around his fist and it was his tugging sharply on them that caused my agony. Tears almost blinded me and a whimper forced itself from my throat, which had gone dry with fear.

‘What’s the matter, Sally?’ he asked mockingly, as he pulled even harder. ‘Cat got your tongue, has it? Don’t you want to talk about it now?’ Through the film of tears I could see my father’s face glaring down at me.

Summoning up every ounce of courage in my small body I tried to stand up to him. ‘I know you told me lies. Other daddies don’t do what you do to me – I’ve found out!’ I said, between sobs.

Even then I wanted him to stop being terrifying, to say something nice, to tell me I was forgiven. But he didn’t.

That same jeering laugh was the only response I got to my accusation. ‘Is that right, Sally? So what are you going to do about it, eh?’

Another tug on my hair sent the pain rushing to every nerve ending and I imagined it coming away from my scalp in clumps. ‘If you hurt me again, Daddy, I’ll tell – I’ll tell them what you do to me,’ I said desperately.

‘And who would believe you?’ he sneered. ‘Everyone knows you make up stories, Sally. Nobody will believe you now.’ And this time his sniggers sent a chilling message that frightened me even more than his anger and his ability to cause me such pain.

‘Do you know what’ll happen if you say anything else about Sue and me?’ I didn’t answer him, for I had no idea.

‘They’ll take you away. They’ll put you in a place like the one your mother was in. They’ll say you’re as mad as she was and lock you up. You remember where she was, don’t you, Sally? You went there, didn’t you, to that hospital ward with all those mad people? Mind you, maybe you are as mad as she was – always crying, aren’t you?’

I only had a dim memory of the place my mother had been in and, knowing that, he was able to colour in the faint images I had tried so hard to forget. And colour them in he did, with graphic words that painted the wards full of sad people, with staring eyes, and cruel, bad-tempered nurses, who wore jangling keys around their waists. As he vividly described his version of that ward I was terrified of what might happen to me. ‘There were other rooms in there,’ he said, ‘where they shot electricity into people’s brains. They did it to your mother and they do it to people who make up stories,’ he said, as he gave my hair another violent tug.

His other hand went round my throat and his fingers squeezed. I desperately tried to suck in air as his grip tightened. I was petrified that what had happened before when he placed the pillow over my face would happen again. My breath rasped in my chest and my whole body shook. I reached out my hands to clutch at his as I tried in vain to break his iron grasp.

His face showed little expression as he continued to apply pressure and look down at me. Then, with a snort of something that sounded like disgust, he removed his hand from my throat but kept the other tangled in my hair.

My bedclothes were ripped off the bed and my pyjama bottoms were roughly yanked down. Using his knee, he forced my legs apart.

‘No, please don’t,’ I gasped, but to no avail. His response was another hard yank on my hair.

‘I’ll do that every time you make a noise,’ he spat. ‘Now turn over. I don’t want to look at you.’ It was over in seconds. My face was pressed into the pillow and my bottom was in the air. After his bellowing climax he rolled off me, having swiftly completed an act that I was to learn over the next six years had nothing to do with love but everything to do with power and control, and the stamping of his ownership on my ten-year-old body. There was no ‘Good night’ in his gentler daddy’s voice, just a final warning: ‘Don’t you ever make up lies about me or Sue again. I don’t think you will, will you?’

‘No,’ I whispered, and he left my room to return to the one he shared with his new wife.

Something inside me withered and died that night, and he knew it. He had left me lying there feeling valueless, completely worthless. The man I had thought loved me I now knew didn’t. And somehow I imagined that it was my fault, that it must be something about me that made him do what he did to me. I knew without doubt that whatever emotion he had once felt for me as a little girl had now changed into something that was terrible, bitter and twisted.

I didn’t return to school for the week before the summer holidays began. Fearing both the answers and the possible reprisals if I asked what was going to happen to me, I stayed in my room as much as possible.

I believed that what my father had told me was true: if I talked I would just be accused of making up even more stories. Or, worse, as the enormity of my actions sank in, whoever I told would respond as Jennifer had: they would turn away in disgust and find my very presence repulsive. It would be me, not him, who would be blamed. I was certain of it. My silly fantasies, which were now viewed as blatant lies, had played into his hands and ensured my silence.

Apart from telling me that I was not to leave the house without Sue’s permission, my father said nothing more to me about the trouble I had caused. But the threats he had planted in my head were never far from my mind: they terrified me and I knew he knew it. I would catch him glancing at me, a smug smile hovering on his lips, confident that my fear would ensure my compliance.

A week after I had been sent home from school in disgrace, Billy developed a severe cold. It was then that my father announced he was going to visit his mother again. Frightened of being on my own with him, I tried desperately to think of some excuse not to have to go with him. I said I wasn’t feeling well, and then that it wouldn’t be fair to Nana if I passed on Billy’s germs to her. Neither of these reasons sounded credible to Sue.

‘Why, Sally, I thought you loved going to your grandmother’s house,’ she said, her tone telling me she wanted more of an explanation for my sudden unwillingness to visit Nana.

Unable to think of another reason she would believe, I just looked at the floor and, after a few moments of silence, I came up with car sickness.

‘Well, you’ve never mentioned that before,’ she said, and I sensed that she was becoming increasingly curious about my reluctance to go with my father. She didn’t question me further but I saw her giving him a puzzled look.

Knowing that only an illness would now put a stop to the visit, I hoped that Billy’s cold would be inflicted on me. To even up the odds I not only sat as close to him as I could, but I also dampened my vest with cold water and wore it under my pyjamas. Not even a sniffle developed.

On Saturday I was bundled into the car for the journey to Nana’s. ‘You can bring Dolly,’ my father said, when I reluctantly came out of the house, and while I fetched her he produced a rug that he put over the back seat for her to sit on.

Disarmed by this concession and the light patter of one-sided conversation he kept up during the journey, I gradually began to relax. ‘Don’t worry, Sally,’ he said, just before we arrived at my grandmother’s house, ‘I’m not going to tell her anything about your troubles. Wouldn’t want to upset or worry her, would we?’

‘No,’ I replied, and received a wink and a warm smile in response.