On the next Tuesday, although terrified, I got into Bill’s car and to my surprise he drove me straight home. He came in for a coffee with Mum afterwards, and all seemed well. I was so relieved that I tried hard to convince myself that everything would be all right now. I hoped that from now on he would leave me alone. Hope was my byword.
The next Tuesday evening I climbed into his car feeling a little more confident. He told me he had to get some petrol on the way home and so he drove off in the opposite direction, to a garage. He asked me how the class had been and, after filling the car, he set off again in the dark. I didn’t have a good sense of direction and it was some time before I realised that we weren’t going in the direction of home.
‘Where are we?’ I asked, timidly.
Bill didn’t answer me, but seconds later he drove off the road into a field. It was pitch black outside and I began to feel very scared. I slid as far over on the seat as I could and huddled against the door.
‘You are the most important person in my life and you mean the world to me,’ Bill said as he inched closer. At that time, cars
didn’t have separate seats in the front. It was one long seat made of leather, which was easy to slide on, and there was no handbrake and gear stick in the middle, as there would be in a modern car.
My heart was pounding, but I was so terrified I couldn’t speak.
‘I love you so much. You know that, don’t you?’
I didn’t want him to love me. Not now that I knew what it meant.
‘I just want to show you how much I love you,’ he said, grabbing hold of me and covering my face with his slobbery kisses. I remember he smelled of whisky, a smell that I would hate for the rest of my life. Mum often gave him a glass when he came to the house.
I found my tongue at last. ‘I want to go home. They’ll worry if I’m late.’ But as I spoke, I knew that of course they wouldn’t. Mum wouldn’t worry because she knew I was with him and, according to her, he loved me.
Uncle Bill took no notice. He was hot and sweaty, a film of moisture on his skin. He pulled me down so that I was lying on the hard leather and started tearing at my underclothes.
I tried to scream but nothing came out of my mouth. There was no one to hear out there in the field anyway.
Then he grabbed my hand and made me touch his body. ‘Come on, you know you like it. Make me feel good. Come on.’ His voice was husky and urgent.
He pulled open his trousers and lay on top of me and I felt the awfulness of his ‘love toy’ twitching against me. I was utterly repulsed.
In panic, I began to struggle as hard as I could but I was trapped underneath his weight. ‘Please, please take me home. I want to go home,’ I sobbed, but he wasn’t listening.
He was breathing heavily now, fumbling between my legs, prodding and hurting me, oblivious to my tears.
And then I suddenly felt a new pain, a hot, terrible, tearing pain between my legs. It was as if I was being torn in half. I couldn’t work out what had happened but Uncle Bill was bouncing on me now, groaning in his throat, pounding away between my legs, and I felt as though he was somehow inside me.
Now I couldn’t cry out. The pain was so terrifying, I thought it was going to kill me. I’d never felt anything like it before and I actually wanted to die rather than go on like this. It went on and on until finally my uncle gave one last groan and slumped on top of me, squashing my face in his armpit.
I lay, my neck twisted to one side, feeling the horrible sharp pain between my legs. I had no idea what had just happened to me. Was this what grown-ups did? Is that what love was about?
Uncle Bill pushed himself up and started buttoning his trousers. I couldn’t bear to look at him. I was shattered, physically and emotionally. My tummy and ‘private bits’ were burning and hurting badly. This couldn’t be love, or anything like it. If it was, I didn’t ever want to be loved. I had been taught at church that it was wrong to hate, but I felt hatred for the man in the car beside me who was combing his hair in the mirror and humming under his breath.
He started the car and began to drive home, still humming and obviously very pleased about this new development. I tidied myself up as if in a hypnotic trance, then turned to stare out the window at the dark shapes outside. I saw houses with their lights on, looking cosy and inviting, and I wished I lived in any of them. Anywhere but the place I really lived, where there was a mother who didn’t care about me, who let me go out with this evil man.
When we reached the house, my uncle turned and looked at me, his little victim, and smiled a smile that I would learn to hate and fear over the next few months and years.
‘You can’t tell anyone what happened,’ he told me, ‘because you know no one will believe you.’ He patted my knee. ‘Your mum is a good friend of mine. She didn’t believe you when you told her before and she won’t now. Besides, you know how upset she was and what happened afterwards…’ He paused to let the threat sink in, smug in the knowledge that Mum wouldn’t listen to a word against him. ‘Let’s just keep it our little secret, Cassie. OK? Off you go. Night, night.’
As I got out of the car I saw Mum at the window and Uncle Bill waved cheerily to her before driving away. I went indoors and called out in a shaky voice that I was tired, then I ran upstairs to the bathroom. I locked the door and finally all my strength left me and I collapsed on the floor, my whole body shaking.
After a while, I ran some water in the bath and started to take my clothes off. It still hurt very badly between my legs and when I pulled my panties down I was horrified to see
blood on them. What on earth had happened to me? All I wanted to do was cleanse my body of this horrible experience as soon as possible. I scrubbed and scrubbed at my bruised flesh, all the while sobbing silently. What had I ever done to deserve this? Why was I being punished? Why wouldn’t God save me?
After washing myself thoroughly and scrubbing the blood out of my panties, I scurried to my room and went to bed. I huddled under the blankets and tried to sleep, but my thoughts were racing. Every time I closed my eyes I felt his hot smelly breath on my face and his sweaty body against mine. I wanted to scream out loud but I couldn’t. I wanted to run to someone to be held, but I couldn’t. I began to cry with huge racking sobs, but that made me feel even more isolated. I shared a room with Ellen and Rosie at the time, but they were both out. Ellen had a boyfriend and Rosie worked late during the week. I couldn’t have told them, anyway. I couldn’t have told anyone because no one would believe me.
My dog Bobby came and licked my hand, trying to comfort me, and I lifted him up onto the bed for a cuddle. I prayed that sleep would come so that I would no longer have those horrible images in my head. I prayed that when I awoke I would find it had all been a bad dream. Finally I nodded off out of sheer exhaustion.
When I opened my eyes next morning, I knew straight away it hadn’t been a dream. The pain in my tummy seemed worse than the night before and I had a throbbing feeling between my legs in the part where he had hurt me.
Dad looked round the bedroom door. ‘Time for school, Cassie,’ he said.
‘I don’t feel well,’ I mumbled.
He came over to look down at me and for a moment I froze, thinking ‘Oh no! Not him too.’ I knew in my heart that my beloved dad would never hurt me, but a great deal of damage had been done the evening before. My trust had been betrayed and, now that I knew what men were capable of, for a moment I didn’t even trust him.
‘You don’t look too well,’ he said kindly. ‘Perhaps you’re coming down with a bug. Just lie there and I’ll tell your mum that you’re staying in bed today.’ He tucked the blanket gently round me then headed off downstairs.
The sound of my parents rowing did nothing to comfort me. It was the last thing I needed and, once again, I hid under the bedclothes, trying to blot out the world. I heard my mother pound up the stairs and thunder into my bedroom.
‘Get up for school!’ she demanded. ‘You know I’m supposed to go out with my friends today and you’re just being selfish and trying to spoil things for me. Don’t think I am going to put this off to look after you!’ She glared at me. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you anyway. I’m not taken in as easily as your dad.’
Then she looked at me more closely. ‘Hmm…Maybe you do look a bit peaky.’ Was she suddenly going to have a burst of maternal concern? Suddenly going to put her arms round me and reassure me that she would look after me? No, of course not. She was furious. ‘That’s typical! I suppose I’ll have to put off my day out now!’
More than at any other time in my life, I yearned for her to be a mother to me that morning. I was desperate for comfort. Couldn’t she see how devastated I was? Didn’t she have any natural maternal instincts towards me at all? But it seemed she didn’t.
‘I’ll be OK on my own,’ I told her quietly. ‘I’ll stay in bed for most of the day. I’m sure I’ll feel better soon.’
The relief on her face was obvious. I didn’t show her how much this upset me. Make-believe time again.
I tried to imagine what a real mother, like Claire’s mother, would do if their daughter was lying in bed, distraught and in pain. Surely they would sense that they were hurting and try to comfort them? Claire’s mum always asked her how she was, listened carefully to the answers and went to great pains to reassure her if she was upset about anything. But then I couldn’t believe that Claire’s mum would let a man like Uncle Bill anywhere near her daughter. She would have believed Claire if she told her what that man had done, way back in the beginning. She would never have let Claire go through the horrific experiences I’d been subjected to.
But Mum didn’t see my pain, or didn’t want to see it, and she went out to meet her friends as planned. I locked the doors and ran a bath. I was only eleven years old and all I knew was that the brutal events of the night before had left me feeling soiled and dirty. The bleeding had almost stopped but I was swollen and bruised down there. I lay in the warm bathwater and closed my eyes, wishing that I could keep them closed for a long, long time and that, on opening them, I would find that
all the pain and fear had gone, and nothing would hurt me ever again.
How could I prevent this from happening? How could I avoid being taken home by this evil man who professed to love me but caused me so much pain and fear? If I stopped going to confirmation classes the vicar would want to know why, and if my mother hadn’t believed me the first time, no one else would, I was sure. All day I tried to think of a way out of this awful trap. I prayed and prayed to the God who is supposed to keep you safe, just as I’d prayed before. But he wasn’t listening, was he?
At four o’clock a friend called Wendy came to the house to see why I hadn’t been to school. I said I had a tummy upset but would be back the next day, even though at that stage I couldn’t imagine ever going out of the house again.
‘But it’s half-term,’ she reminded me. ‘School has broken up for the rest of the week.’
I had completely forgotten.
As we sat talking, I looked at her and wondered if she noticed anything different about me. I felt completely different to the way I had felt just twenty-four hours earlier. Something fundamental had changed and I didn’t think I would ever be the same again.
But Wendy seemed to believe my tummy-ache lie and didn’t notice anything else. She chatted away as normal about what had happened at school and passed on news of our other friends.
I was relieved it was half-term. Normally I loved school but I couldn’t face going back to mix with my friends again the way
I was feeling. I was broken, damaged, dirty. Keeping up pretence was normal for me, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pretend this time.
Before Wendy left, she asked if I would like to go on the Sunday school outing that Saturday, if I felt better. I said that I would. Anything rather than stay there, where he could get me if he chose to. It was agreed that I would spend the Friday night at her house, because it was to involve an early start in the morning.
The next few days were difficult. I was still very shaken. My body was hurting and the mental anguish was almost unbearable. What had he done to me? How could I stop him doing it again?
The Sunday school outing was light relief, though. All the teachers knew me and had heard that I hadn’t been well. They could probably see that things weren’t right with me and because of this gave me more attention and kindness than usual. This helped me a little and I began to feel slightly better.
I was still terrified about what would happen the following Tuesday. The thought of Bill, my abuser, picking me up and doing the same thing again made me feel physically sick. Wendy also attended confirmation classes, though, and this gave me an idea. I asked Mum if she could stay over at our house on a Tuesday night, and because Mum couldn’t think of a reason why not, she agreed.
I was relieved beyond words when Wendy said she would love to do this, that it would be fun. It was as though a heavy
horrible weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I was safe. God was listening after all.
When Uncle Bill turned up and realised he had two girls to ferry home on Tuesday, he seemed cross, but he could hardly retract the promise he’d made in front of the vicar and say he wasn’t going to collect us after all. He could do nothing but let us into the back of the car and drive us straight home.
Soon it was spring and the evenings became light enough for us to walk home, and then the classes finished and I was confirmed. Wendy and I were very excited about the confirmation service. We were to wear white for this special occasion and I knew that white was a pure, special colour: brides wore white and so did angels. Wendy’s mum was getting her a new dress and I asked if I could have one too. Mum said no, absolutely not, but Nana C volunteered to make me one. She was good at dressmaking and she created a beautiful white dress that made me feel as if I were a bride for the day.
Mum didn’t attend my confirmation but my dad and Nana C did. Dad looked so proud of me that it made me wish Mum had been there, because I wished I could have seen that look on her face. But it wouldn’t have been there; I knew that deep down.