‘We can play together,’ he said. ‘It’ll be fun.’
I was almost shaking with fear. I didn’t want this
fun
. I felt betrayed by him. He was the one person who I thought cared about me and yet he could still hurt me like that.
He walked across the room smiling. ‘Come on, you know you like it. I’ll make you feel really good.’
Like it? Feel good? How could he think that when I’d told him he had hurt me? Why would I like that?
He put his arm around me and pulled me down to the floor then he held me with one arm and started kissing me all over my face, scratching me with his bristly chin. The floor was hard and hurting my back. He pulled my hand and pressed it against the front of his trousers, forcing me to touch him.
‘No!’ I cried, trying to wriggle away. ‘Please! Please don’t hurt me again.’
He wasn’t listening. He just carried on moaning and slobbering over me. It was horrible and I knew I couldn’t let it happen.
I managed to wrench my hand out of his grip and tried to push him away but he was very strong. With his free hand he had lifted my skirt and was pulling at my panties, trying to touch my shaking body. He opened the top of his trousers and his
awfulness
was showing.
What was he doing? What was happening? Surely he shouldn’t be doing that to me, should he?
Summoning all the strength I possessed, I struggled out from under him and made a bolt for the stairs. In complete panic, I raced up to the bathroom and locked the door behind me, then I sank down on the floor sobbing uncontrollably.
Was I safe? Would he break the door down? How would he explain the situation when Mum and Dad came home?
‘Come on, Cassie, don’t be silly,’ Uncle Bill coaxed through the door. ‘What’s the matter with you? It’s just a harmless bit of fun.’
But I wouldn’t come out.
His tone changed. ‘You can’t ever tell anyone, you know. They won’t believe you. They might even take you away to a children’s home. That’s where they put all the naughty boys and girls. In children’s homes everyone would want to do things with you, they’d all be trying to kiss and cuddle you. Why don’t you come out now and we can do something else instead? Would you like to play ball in the garden?’
But I wouldn’t come out, wouldn’t even speak to him, I was so traumatised by what had happened. Eventually he gave up trying to coax me and went back downstairs, but still I stayed huddled behind the locked door until my parents came home.
When they got back, I heard the adults talking downstairs but couldn’t make out what was being said, then I heard my mother’s footsteps clumping up the stairs.
‘Come out right now,’ she ordered. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’
I unlocked the door and faced her, my eyes red and swollen from crying.
‘Get into your bedroom,’ she said, frowning and pushing me towards my room, ‘so you can tell me what’s been going on.’
I followed her through, shaking with fear.
She sat down on the bed and raised an eyebrow. ‘So? Why have you been so rude to Bill?’
I stumbled as I tried to get the words out. ‘He kissed me, Mum, and it hurt. He hurt me. I don’t like him kissing me. It’s horrible. And he touched me there.’ I pointed between my legs. ‘In my panties. And he made me touch him, and I don’t want to do it any more. I don’t like kisses and cuddles with him.’ I was crying and stuttering and I think I was still shaking with the shock of the whole thing.
Mum listened calmly. She didn’t seem at all angry or surprised. When I’d finished, she got up and left the room without saying a word to me and I heard her going downstairs.
Everything would be OK now. Mum would stop it from happening to me ever again. She had to, didn’t she? Mums had to protect their little girls.
I heard raised voices downstairs and crept out onto the landing to listen. Dad sounded angry but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Surely he and Mum would make sure that Bill
never came back to the house, even though he was my godfather?
Suddenly the living room door opened and Bill and my Mum appeared in the hall. They didn’t see me watching from above.
‘You don’t believe any of this, do you?’ Bill asked her. ‘You don’t believe I would ever do anything to hurt her?’
And then something happened that shattered my world. Mum leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. The man who had hurt me, her own little girl, so badly.
‘Of course I don’t believe her,’ she said. ‘She’s a liar. Perhaps you should stay away for a while until things cool down, and I’ll make sure she never says anything like this again. She won’t dare!’
I didn’t understand. Why would she say that? I was telling the truth. I didn’t lie. But if my own mother didn’t believe me, who would? Why would I make up something like that? I thought Uncle Bill had loved me. I wanted him to love me. I didn’t want any of this to have happened.
After Bill left, Mum called me downstairs and I stood in front of her feeling very frightened and confused. I thought at first that she was going to try and explain my uncle’s actions or reassure me that he would no longer be welcome at her house, but how wrong I was.
‘How could you be so wicked?’ she screamed. ‘How could you tell such lies? If Bill kissed you, he was just being affectionate, because he loves you—not that you deserve his love.’ She slapped me hard across the face. ‘You’re an evil, ungrateful liar.
I can’t believe a word you say. Bill is a good man who has been nothing but kind to you, and this is how you repay him! Now there’s no one left who loves you and it’s all your own fault.’
I was thinking that if what he did was affection I didn’t want it. It hurt. It scared me. I didn’t want it to happen again. But I didn’t dare say any of this to Mum as she stood in front of me, shouting at the top of her voice, going red in the face with the strength of her fury.
‘Get up to your bedroom right now!’ she finished. ‘And I don’t want to hear you ever mentioning this again. Do you hear me?’
I nodded and ran upstairs, distraught. Uncle Bill had been right when he said no one would believe me. No one could protect me. I was completely on my own.
When I saw Dad at breakfast the next morning I tried to catch his eye to see if he would at least sympathise but he wouldn’t look at me. I don’t think he believed me either. If he had believed me, he would have stopped Bill ever coming to the house again. I know he would, because although he could never show it, I think he wanted to love me, but wasn’t allowed. So that’s why he couldn’t even look at me.
‘Here comes the liar!’ Mum sneered whenever I walked into a room over the next few weeks. She treated me as if I had committed a crime, and seemed to be punishing me for reasons I couldn’t begin to understand. If she had been cold to me before, it was a whole lot worse now. She was either ignoring me completely or being scathing and mean and making me feel even more the outsider in the family.
Uncle Bill didn’t come round for a while after that, so at least I was safe from his attentions. But Mum’s hatred of me had deepened; there was no question that she loathed and despised me now. I was the black sheep of the family. I had ruined her life.
E
very day, or so it seemed, Mum reminded me of how I made her life a misery. How I told lies and made things up. How things would have been so different if only I hadn’t been born. The only thing I wanted, the one thing I craved and yearned for, was her love and approval, but I never got it. Nothing I did was ever good enough. I clung to the hope that one day she would be kind to me, one day she would be proud of me, one day she would love me. But that day never came.
School provided a respite from the unhappiness at home. I was a quiet girl but I had lots of friends. Children usually accept people at face value, and because I needed these friends I always tried to please everyone so they would like me and include me in their games. I wasn’t academically brilliant, but I tried very hard at all my subjects and enjoyed my time at school. When I did well at something, I hurried straight home to tell Mum my news, but it always fell on deaf ears. There was never any praise or enthusiasm.
Mum had always wanted one of her children to be musical, and as none of the others seemed interested this fell to me. I thought in my naïvety that if I were good at playing an instrument then she would love me. I spent hours and hours practising the violin, my mother’s choice, passing many exams and being chosen to play for the Youth Orchestra. But still this wasn’t enough. Mum never came to hear me play when we gave concerts unless there was a guest of honour she wanted to meet, in which case she would appear at the end of the performance carrying a huge bouquet of flowers. Heads would turn, because she was such a striking woman, a larger-than-life character. When the music had finished and the encores had been taken, Mum would send my little sister Anne up onto the stage to present the guest of honour with the flowers. Everyone applauded and remarked on how cute she was and how kind and generous my mother had been to make such a lovely gesture.
I wanted to tell them that she was just play-acting. She was pretending to be kind, pretending to be generous, but no one outside the family ever saw beyond the public face. She was far too good at it.
I took up singing lessons with a lovely teacher called Mrs Conti, who gave me loads of encouragement. She was a large, round Italian lady with olive skin and dark, almost black hair, who came to choir practice dressed in bright floral skirts and vivid blouses. She wore lots of jangly jewellery and I thought she was wonderful.
On one occasion I was chosen to sing ‘Where’er you walk’, a lovely Handel aria, at a concert in the Albert Hall, and we
were told there would be television celebrities in the audience. I was very nervous at the prospect, but also very excited. Surely this would make Mum proud?
I rushed home to tell her the news. She was making the tea as I ran into the kitchen.
‘I’m going to sing at the Albert Hall, sing on my own!’ I just couldn’t help myself.
‘Will you stop that shouting,’ she yelled at me. ‘Just shut up that noise.’
‘I’m going to sing at the Albert Hall,’ I cried again. ‘The Albert Hall, in London! In front of famous people.’
Hope was alive. She must be proud of me now.
She laughed harshly. ‘So what’s all the fuss about? If you think I’m going to waste my time going all that way to see people I can see on the TV in my own front room, then you’re more stupid than I thought.’
We were the first people in our street to get a television and Mum was always referring to it. The neighbours would come at seven o’clock every evening and crowd round to watch the news, and Mum loved the kudos this gave her.
I spoke in a very small voice, trying hard not to cry: ‘But I’m going to sing solo.’
I won’t cry, I told myself. I won’t.
‘Well, I’m certainly not going to listen to that,’ she said nastily. ‘I wouldn’t waste my time and effort.’
My bubble of excitement burst and disappointment flooded over me. I didn’t want to sing in the Albert Hall now. There
was no point. I went up to my room feeling very heavy and sad. Hope was dashed.
Next day I went to tell my singing teacher that I had changed my mind and she would have to find someone else to sing the solo.
This putting me down, this failure to praise my efforts was a regular occurrence in my young life. Once there was a writing competition at school and I wrote a story about Jack Frost. It was sprinkled with verse and my headmistress thought it was so good that she entered it into the county competition. It won the county prize and then it went up for the national competition and won that as well. It also won the overall prize for story content, style and poetry. My teachers were very proud. I wasn’t sure what ‘national’ meant but it sounded important. Surely Mum would be proud of me now?
I rushed home with a copy of my story in my hand. ‘Mum, I wrote a story about Jack Frost and my head teacher entered it for a competition and it won!’ I tried not to show too much excitement, even though my tummy was letting me down. ‘It won the local competition then another and then it won the bigger one, I think it was called the national competition.’
I waited for something. I’m not sure what, but I waited.
Did she hear me? Did she understand the hugeness of this happening?
I went on: ‘They say it will be at the National Exhibition and will be on display for everyone to read and will be sent round all the schools in the area. Isn’t that good?’
Why did I expect this to be different? Why did I think that this story success would have changed things?
‘I don’t know why you look so pleased with yourself,’ Mum said. ‘It’s only a story and you probably copied it anyway. You’re no good at anything. Start getting the table set for dinner and stop wasting my time.’
Maybe my life would have been easier if I had given up hope of ever pleasing her instead of constantly trying to achieve the impossible. But still I clung onto hope, no matter how futile. I couldn’t stop hoping that one day, if I just won enough prizes and got good enough marks, surely she would have to love me the way she loved my sisters and brother? Mum always made a huge deal of any of their achievements. I wasn’t jealous but just wished that one time she would show the same kind of interest in me.
But why would she? I was different, unlovable, unwanted. An unfortunate mistake.
As time went on, I became withdrawn and depressed at home. I was still traumatised by the attacks by Uncle Bill, the one person who I thought had loved me. I felt desperately upset when I thought about the nice memories of him being kind to me, back before his love changed into something horrible, into a kind of love I didn’t want. Now no one loved me at all.
I continued to work hard at school and poured out my private thoughts in stories and poems, but I stopped bringing work home to show Mum because I knew she wasn’t interested.
One day when I was about eight I wrote a very sad little story about a girl who felt unloved and unwanted. Because it
was how I felt, I wrote it from the bottom of my heart. It caused a storm in my life, and if I had realised what the outcome was going to be I would never have written it.