‘We’ve had an idea, though,’ Claire’s mum said. ‘I know your mum has got her hands full with all you kids at home and I
wondered if maybe she would let you come and stay with us during the week and you could attend the new school with Claire? Then you could go home at weekends to catch up with your family. It would be like boarding school, except you’d be boarding with us. Would you like that?’
‘Oh yes!’ I exclaimed immediately, hope springing up in my heart. ‘Yes please! I’d love to come and live with you.’
‘Maybe Claire could come and stay at your house on Saturday and Sunday and that way the two of you need never be separated. Would you like me to pop round and ask your mum?’
My spirits sank. Reality started to dawn. Mum would never agree. She wouldn’t do something that would make me so happy. Besides, who would do all my chores at home? Of course she wouldn’t agree.
Still I clung to hope as Claire’s mother left the house to go and see my mother. After a while, she returned. She didn’t look very happy and I held my breath.
‘I asked your mum, Cassie,’ she said quietly. ‘I explained how close you and Claire are and that I felt this friendship was good for both of you. But I’m afraid she says that she can’t spare you at home so the answer is no.’
Claire started to cry and I stood, stock still, flooded with misery. How would I cope without Claire?
‘You can still see each other at Brigade on Fridays and maybe your mum will let you stay the weekend,’ Claire’s mum said hopefully. ‘You’ll just be at different schools during the week.’ She pulled us both over for a hug. ‘It won’t be so bad. You’ll get used to it.’
But it
was
bad. Second year started and I was in mourning. Every break time and every lunchtime I stood at our school gates, crying for my friend. No one could comfort me. No one understood why I needed to see Claire every day. No one understood that life wasn’t bearable for me without her around. She was the only person I knew who loved me and made me feel all right about myself. Her constant cheerfulness was the only thing that could break through my depression, and without it I sank deeper and deeper into a hole.
I tried over and over again to get Mum to change her mind but she stuck her heels in and refused. The more I asked her, the more adamant she became.
My teachers became concerned about me because I wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t socialising with the other girls, and my grades started to slip. A couple of teachers took me aside and asked if I had any problems, if there was anything they could help with. I told them I just wanted to go and live with Claire and go to her new school with her, but there was nothing they could do. It was my mum’s decision where I lived and they couldn’t intervene. They thought mine was just the normal reaction of a little girl who’d been separated from her best friend. They didn’t know how much I relied on Claire, how unbearable my life was without her.
Eventually, over the months, I got used to being without Claire and I got closer to some other girls. There was Wendy, with whom I’d done confirmation classes, who was a quiet, studious girl, and Maureen, a funny girl who could be naughty at times. But neither of them could make up for the loss of
Claire. Our Friday nights just weren’t enough to make me feel happy and loved again.
I still had my daydream that the well-dressed man and wife would turn up on our doorstep and claim me as theirs. Occasionally I thought back to the argument in which Mum had told Dad that he had no rights over me. What had she meant by that? Maybe it meant it was true that I was adopted and that my real mother and father were out there somewhere hunting for me. I knew it was only make-believe but I couldn’t stop dreaming. It kept me going.
Then, in January of my second year at the secondary modern, came some news that I had been dreading with all my heart and soul. Whatever the row between Mum and Uncle Bill had been about, they had made up.
‘Bill’s coming round tomorrow,’ she said happily over tea one night. ‘He’s been away on holiday but he’s dying to see us so he’s coming over as soon as he gets back.’
I froze with fear and my heart started beating hard. What was I going to do? Where would I be safe now? Who would help me? I couldn’t understand why God had let this happen. Had he stopped listening to me altogether?
Mum chattered happily throughout the rest of the meal but I couldn’t eat, couldn’t breathe for terror. I would be at the mercy of evil once again. There was nowhere left I could hide.
M
um insisted I had to come straight home from school the next day. There was no way out of it. Uncle Bill was coming for tea and she wanted the whole family at home to greet him.
When the front door was opened and I saw him standing there with his black curly hair, his eyes darting straight over Mum’s shoulder to where I stood in the corner, I felt physically sick. I tried to disappear into the wallpaper, to shrink out of sight, but he was coming over, coming my way. I wished I was anywhere but there.
‘Hello, Cassie, how are you?’ he asked, grinning broadly at me.
My throat closed up so I could barely speak. ‘OK,’ I mumbled.
‘Come and sit down, Bill,’ Mum said, gesturing to a chair. ‘What can I get you?’
‘I’ve brought presents for everyone,’ he said, and it was then I noticed the carrier bags he was holding. ‘Who wants theirs first?’
‘Me!’ my sister Anne cried excitedly. He handed her a new skipping rope and a pop-gun that fired a ping-pong ball on a string. Then he walked over to where Tom was sitting and gave him a large coloured ball and a box containing cricket stumps. Tom was thrilled to bits. Then he came towards me. I started shaking. Couldn’t they all see how scared I was? I wanted to run from the room before he could reach me, before he got close.
‘Here you go, Cassie,’ he said. ‘This one’s for you.’ He held out a ribbon for my hair and a little handbag with a brush and comb set inside. ‘These will make you even prettier.’
I didn’t want his presents, didn’t want him to think I was pretty, so I wouldn’t take them. I just couldn’t. It felt as though he were buying me, paying for the games he made me play. I didn’t want to touch anything that he had touched.
‘Don’t be so rude!’ my mother snapped. ‘Take those presents straight away. Bill’s gone to a lot of trouble to get them for you.’
I stretched out my hand and tried to take them without looking at him, but his thumb brushed my fingers and I flinched. These were the hands that gripped me tightly and held me down, that poked inside my panties, the hands that hurt me.
‘Now give him a kiss to say thank you,’ Mum ordered. ‘Honestly, that girl has no manners whatsoever. Go on!’ The last thing I wanted to do was to kiss the man who had hurt me so badly. But she insisted.
I was forced to lean over and brush my lips across Bill’s cheek, my whole body shaking with revulsion. There was that familiar whisky smell I hated, the touch of his sweaty skin, the smirk on his face. My stomach turned over.
How could my mother make me kiss him? She
knew
I was terrified of him. I’d told her he touched me between the legs. I’d told her he kissed and hugged me and hurt me. If she didn’t want to banish him from our house altogether, why didn’t she stop him from seeing me on my own? It’s the very least any mother should have done. But she wasn’t any mother—she was
my
mother, the woman who for some reason hated me. I was never going to get protection from her.
Bill looked at me. ‘I’ve missed you, Cassie. We’ll have to go out together some time soon and catch up.’
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak. I thought my heart would stop completely if he looked at me one more time. Go out with him? I never wanted to go out with him ever again.
‘Cassie, you ungrateful girl. Say thank you very much to Bill for the kind offer.’ Still I said nothing, just stared at my feet. My face was burning and I was sure it must be bright scarlet. ‘Excuse my rude daughter. She’d love to come out with you, Bill. Just let us know when you want to take her.’
‘She’s only teasing, aren’t you, Cassie?’ he chuckled.
Suddenly I couldn’t take any more. Mumbling that I had to go to the toilet, I rushed out of the room and ran upstairs. I hurried into the bedroom and shut the door behind me, but I knew I wasn’t safe even there. He could come up at any moment. I wasn’t safe anywhere any more. I threw myself down on the bed and began to shake convulsively, the memories of all the awful things he had ever done to me and all the pain he had caused me throwing my body into spasms.
He didn’t come upstairs that day. I was left to myself, although after he went Mum came up and gave me a huge row for being so rude.
I reverted to my old strategy of trying to avoid being in the house when I knew Bill was coming round. I’d walk the dog for longer and longer stretches of time; I’d stay behind after choir practice; I would even go and help Auntie Mary in her fish and chip shop, peeling potatoes or cleaning the deep-fat fryers—anything that kept me out of the house. But it got harder and harder to predict when he was coming, and Mum tried to arrange his visits so that I’d be there, for some reason. It was as if she was trying to force him upon me.
After he had been back in favour for about a month, he asked if he could take me out for a drive one day. I froze, and my face must have shown the sheer terror I felt, but Mum said, ‘That’s a good idea. You two go off and have a nice time together.’
I panicked. ‘Please, Mum, I’ve got lots of homework that I have to do by tomorrow. I can’t go. Please don’t make me.’
‘Don’t be silly, Cassie. Of course you can take an hour off to spend with your favourite uncle. He’s missed you. He’s been looking forward to spending time with you.’ She gave me a don’t-you-argue-with-me look.
‘I really can’t, Mum. My teacher will be cross. I’ll get into trouble at school. Don’t make me go.’
‘This is ridiculous!’ she snapped. ‘Poor Bill is standing here offering you a treat and you throw it back in his face. Get out to the car right now. I won’t hear another word.’
There was nothing I could do. As we left the house and walked down the path, Uncle Bill took my hand, for all the world as if he were a loving uncle with his favourite niece. He was always telling me I was his favourite: that I was special, that he cared about me, that he loved me. Words, lying words. To me the word ‘love’ meant something nasty and horrid and evil. The word ‘love’ was a lie.
Bill led me to the car and helped me into the front seat, his grip vice-like just in case I decided to make a run for it. He wasn’t going to let me slip away now. He was going to make sure he had his way.
I didn’t know where we were going: didn’t know and didn’t care. Anywhere was going to be bad. He could have taken me to Heaven on Earth but it would have been Hell for me.
We drove for a long time, much longer than usual. He was talking to me, I think, but I didn’t listen and I’ve got no idea what it was about. There was a rushing sound in my ears and my heart was beating hard. I knew what was about to happen. I knew he was about to hurt me.
Bill was obviously dying to get to our destination because he swore when we came upon a diversion sign in the road. He had no choice but to follow the signs, but shortly after we turned into the new road he pulled up in the middle of nowhere, just by a path that led into a field. What was he doing? What now?
He suddenly lurched towards me and grabbed my leg, pulling it over to his side of the seat, and he began to kiss me roughly, squashing my teeth against my lip. ‘Oh, I’ve missed
this. I’ve missed you,’ he slurred, grabbing at my skirt and trying to push his hand inside my panties.
I wanted to cry for him to stop but I couldn’t. I was so terrified I couldn’t make a sound. I hadn’t forgotten the pain of the many times he had abused me before. I prayed that this time he would stop before he hurt me as badly as the other times.
I prayed that God would prevent this happening. After all, I was a good girl. I’d been confirmed now. Why wasn’t God listening?
Uncle Bill grabbed my hand and thrust it into his trousers. There were no preliminaries today, no pretence that we were playing a game of ‘find the love toy’. He seemed desperate. He was swearing under his breath, and his hands were rough and urgent. He couldn’t wait.
Suddenly he pulled my legs apart, yanked my panties to one side, lay on top of me and pushed inside me with a loud grunt. I braced myself for the onslaught of shoving and pushing but this time it was all over in a second and he had collapsed on top of me with a sigh. Was that it? Had God been listening? Was it over already? Could we go home now?
The relief I felt was short-lived. He fastened his trousers again, fumbling with the buttons, then started the car and pulled out onto the road, still driving in the same direction. Why hadn’t we turned back towards home? What was going to happen now?
After what seemed like eternity, we drove down a path by a stretch of water, the towpath of a canal or river, although I’ve
got no idea which it was. Then we stopped and he put the car in reverse and drove slowly alongside a boat. A houseboat.
Bill parked carefully and put the brake on, then turned to me with excitement, his face animated. ‘We are going to have such fun here,’ he grinned. ‘There’s no one around so we can play games for as long as we want.’
My stomach was knotted so tightly I couldn’t move. Bill came round to my side and grabbed my hand to pull me out of the car.
‘Don’t you want to come and have a look?’ he asked, as if I should be excited and eager. Did he really think I enjoyed these games? Did he honestly think they made me happy? Why did he think I cried and screamed and begged him to stop? Was he deaf and blind to my pleas?
‘Come on, let’s get on board,’ he urged.
‘I don’t like boats,’ I said in a small voice, the only one I could manage. I didn’t like boats, didn’t like his games, didn’t like him.
‘It’ll be all right. I’ll look after you,’ he told me.
I knew about his kind of looking after and I didn’t want it. I wanted to be back at home, in my bedroom, on my own. I looked around, up and down the towpath, but there was no one else in sight. No other boats were moored on that stretch. I was utterly and completely at his mercy. I considered trying to make a run for it, but where would I go? In which direction would I run? Anyway, he was a grown man and would catch me before I got far at all. I was still a skinny little girl and not a fast runner.